Boris Johnson, an outspoken, gaffe-prone former foreign secretary who was London's mayor when the city hosted the 2012 Olympics, shares more than a few similarities with US President Donald Trump.

According to a book last year by former White House aide Ben Rhodes, previous US president Barack Obama was one the earliest politicians to dub Mr Johnson "Britain's Trump." It's an epithet also increasingly heard, often with resignation, from British politicians and voters.

In the final hustings with Conservative members in the party's leadership run-off, Mr Johnson staged another stunt few of his peers would dare to perform.

He held up a kipper - a smoked herring - and an ice pack to make a point about the supposed costs to business of EU food-packaging regulations. He blamed Brussels erroneously, according to EU officials.

Such details are unlikely to worry Mr Johnson.

His self-confidence, intellectual vanity and fawning were forged in an education in which he rose to head boy of Eton, one of Britain's top private schools, and president of Oxford University's famous debating society.

Mr Johnson, 55, loves to quote British wartime leader Winston Churchill and the European classics, which he read at Oxford.

His booming voice, posh accent and mop of blond hair - recently trimmed in a prime ministerial makeover - make Mr Johnson, known to many Londoners as Boris, or "BoJo", instantly recognisable.

Mr Johnson separated last year from wife Marina Wheeler, with whom he has four children, and has insisted he will no longer discuss his private life amid intense media focus following a domestic row with his girlfriend.

The former journalist on the Times and the Telegraph was born Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson in New York on June 19, 1964. He enjoyed a privileged, itinerant childhood before Eton and Oxford.

Mr Johnson was sacked by the Times in 1988 for fabricating a quote by a scholar, telling the Independent later it was his "biggest cock-up."

He moved to another pro-Conservative newspaper, the Telegraph, where his colourful reporting from Brussels raised more eyebrows.

Pascal Lamy, chief adviser to then-European Commission president Jacques Delors in the 1990s, said Mr Johnson's reports "looked so jokey, so silly, so fake."

"He did what people 30 years later would call fake news and provocation," Mr Lamy told the Financial Times this month.

Despite doubts over his news reporting, Mr Johnson was increasingly admired for his brave and witty writing and eventually landed a role at the Spectator.

But controversy continued as his articles criticised Islam, raised concerns about uncontrolled immigration and described African children as "piccaninnies".

While still writing for the pro-Conservative magazine, Mr Johnson stood as a parliamentary candidate for the party, winning the seat of Henley in 2001.

He was sacked from the Spectator in 2005 but remained a member of parliament until he won the hearts of London's voters in a 2008 mayoral poll.

Mr Johnson returned to parliament in 2015, co-leading Conservative rebels to form the "Vote Leave" campaign, which helped secure a surprise slim majority for Brexit in a divisive 2016 referendum.

Vote Leave was criticised for whipping up anti-immigration sentiment during the often bitter campaigning and making wild claims on how much money Britain could save by ending its financial contributions to Brussels.

Mr Johnson has previously been accused of encouraging Islamophobia, including by backing a controversial Conservative campaign against Labour's Sadiq Khan, who was elected London's first Muslim mayor in 2016.

"If sometimes I say things that cause a fluttering in the dovecotes or plaster to come off the ceiling, if it gets people's attention, if it interests them in politics, then I think that is no bad thing," Johnson told the BBC last month.

Australian Associated Press