Boris Johnson Shrugs off 'Anti-Tory' BBC's Sherlock Lampoon

Boris Johnson has hit back at the BBC after hit show Sherlock lampooned the mayor of London's transport schemes.

Nine million viewers who tuned in to the hit detective show saw a newspaper story about a harebrained scheme by the mayor to turn the River Thames into a watery M25.

Absurd details of the scheme such as commuters falling into the "rat-infested drink" plus the mayor's upper class twang and love of history echoed Johnson in real life.

He hit back on LBC Radio and accused the BBC of being biased and holding a leftwing agenda.

The surreal news story in Sherlock read: "A new plan by the current mayor of London to turn the Thames into a bustling waterbound version of the M25 has hit rush-hour traffic as reaction has been damper than a dip in the rat-infested drink.

"The harebrained scheme involved chartering disused boats, paying for their conversion into a version of London's famous bus, the Routemaster, but this plan has already foundered after pilot schemes revealed that customers were walking straight off the boat and into the icy currents of the Thames.

"When asked to explain how the system might move forward, or even be profitable, or perhaps even to explain the point, the mayor, who was at a self-promotion event, was found to be dithering, incoherent, and self-interested."

Johnson told radio listeners on 'Ask Boris:" "I think it is perfectly legitimate for people to satirise politicians.

"Whatever the BBC may say, they are entitled to spend taxpayers' money on attacking Conservative politicians, that's what they do, that's their raison d'etre.

"I don't in any way want to discourage them.

"I don't rule out that this was actually an attack on the previous mayor, who after all himself spent large sums of public money on investigating whether there should be a Thames Estuary airport and used to drivel on about putting people on the river," Johnson continued.

"But unlike the previous mayor, I actually expanded river transport. We've doubled the number of passengers on the river and we're actually getting somewhere at last in sorting out our aviation capacity problems."