Boris Will Be Boris: Non-Stick, Sticky Moments

They are rare but there are a handful of politicians to whom nothing ever seems to stick.

Alex Salmond and Nigel Farage seem to walk away relatively unscathed from gaffes that might be career-ending for others.

But even they have nothing on Boris Johnson, the man who can turn getting stuck on a zip wire into a popularity-boosting event.

Even the latest incident, in which he fired an expletive-laden missile at a taxi driver, has not drawn scorn in the way it might have done had it been George Osborne, let alone Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper.

Here are some of his finest moments:

1) The zip wire:

And it should have been such a simple stunt. London Mayor travels down zip wire with Union Flags for a promotion event at London Olympics 2012. Only he got stuck. Suspended at 150ft (45m) above Victoria Park, Mr Johson simply chatted with the crowds gathered below.

Even David Cameron was moved to say: "If any other politician got stuck on a zip wire it would be disastrous. With Boris it's a triumph."

2) The IQ test:

It wouldn't have been so bad but it came after he claimed 16% of "our species" had an IQ of less than 85 and suggested millions of people were too stupid to get on in life. Ouch.

Live on LBC radio in 2013 he failed to answer correctly two questions. The first: "A man builds a house with four sides of rectangular construction each side with southern exposure. A big bear comes along. What is the colour of the bear?"

Mr Johnson said brown. The answer is white because for the house to have four southern facing sides it needs to be on the North Pole and the bear, therefore, must be a polar bear.

3) Wiff-Waff:

This is the one where he insulted a lot of Chinese people and sparked a bit of an angry backlash from other people in Ping-pong.

While in Beijing for the Olympics the London Mayor said: "I say this respectfully to our Chinese hosts, who have excelled so magnificently at Ping-pong. Ping-pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century and it was called Wiff-waff!"

His comments were attacked for inaccuracy, in chief by a man whose family commercialised the game. He said wiff-waff was invented years after Ping-pong.

He went on - five years later - to challenge Pippa Middleton to a game.

4) Boris falls in the river:

In which Mr Johnson falls into a river in Lewisham while helping volunteers clear up litter in 2009. He ended up chest-deep in the water.

Ed Miliband was pilloried just for his wellies while visiting flood victims.

Mr Johnson needed no liferaft telling reporters: "I think it is a fantastic thing to clean up our rivers. And of course in order to promote this to the max, I made the ultimate sacrifice - I decided to fall in, in a very spectacular way."

5) Boris bike

If you were going to promote your new bike scheme you would pick a "member of the public" to pose alongside who had a fighting chance of staying upright, right?

Not necessarily.

At the photo shoot in West London in 2011, the mayor pedalled away smiling but 26-year-old Samantha Brown lost control and fell. She'd not ridden a bike in three years.

No harm done. Well only to Ms Brown's ego. She later told reporters it was "the most embarrassing moment of my life".