Boris recruits farmer Boycott in food drive

If you expected Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, to do away with all those advisers and tsars appointed by his predecessor Ken Livingstone, think again. The full-figured Boris has just appointed a 'food champion', the Guardian reports, and a little improbably his wand has fallen on a feminist once firmly attached to the left, Rosie Boycott, the Cheltenham Ladies College girl who rose to become a national newspaper editor.

Boycott (pictured) founded the feminist magazine Spare Rib before becoming an alcoholic, a heroin user and then, when she had pulled herself together, the editor of the Independent on Sunday and the Daily Express and Sunday Express.

The good cheer for Londoners is that Boycott now owns an organic farm in Somerset, writes regularly about food and she won't be paid for chairing London Food, where she will be charged, says Johnson, with the job of championing "the provision of high-quality, nutritious food in the capital".

Says Boycott: "It simply does not need to be the case that Londoners cannot have access to locally produced, top-quality food, but we have to have a radical rethink to find ways of making this happen." It can only be a matter of time before St James Park goes under the plough.