KEY POINTS:
As Boris Johnson - known to all simply as Boris - takes his place tomorrow in an airy office overlooking Tower Bridge and the Thames, he will be facing the most fraught northern summer of any politician in Britain - with the exception, of course, of Prime Minister
Gordon Brown.
The first 100 days of Mayor Johnson's reign will involve altercations over the future of the Underground, visits from international Olympics figures and representations from key financiers. It will be a baptism of fire for the MP for the posh town of Henley who is known more for his personality than for his grasp of fine detail.
Yesterday, he was still finalising the details of his 12 key staff who will be his eyes and ears at City Hall, with Conservative Party leader David Cameron keen to parachute in executives who will avoid slip-ups and are good at running big projects.
But Johnson, 43, has already set out his key priorities.
Top of the agenda will be crime and, in particular, how the city can be made safer for young people following a spate of stabbings. One of his aides said: "While the votes were being counted on Friday night, a 15-year-old boy was stabbed to death in Southwark. We have to find alternatives for young people other than being in gangs."
One of his key pledges will be met early on - to provide an extra £2.6 million ($6.57 million) for hand-held metal detectors and so-called "knife archways" - fixed detectors similar to those seen in airports - at transport hubs, to curb the number of teenagers carrying dangerous weapons around the capital.
Improving public transport, by pushing forward plans to rebuild the Victorian Underground system and trying to negotiate a no-strike deal with tube workers, will also be high on the agenda. Tony Travers, a transport expert and head of the London Group with the London School of Economics, said he thought that achieving a no-strike deal would be "very, very unlikely".
"The RMT and Aslef [rail unions] have negotiated some of the best pay terms and conditions for their workers in the world and they have done it by an aggressive use of strikes and threats," he said, pointing out it could take years to achieve, with London beset by a series of long strikes.
"The question is, would the city stomach this? And would the public be on their side?"
The other big challenge - perhaps the toughest job of all - is the renegotiation of the 30-year deal with Metronet, the Tube contractors.
The company collapsed last July, and the new mayor will have to hammer out an agreement this northern summer, with the aim of speeding up repair work and signalling on Underground lines. And, in only two weeks' time, Johnson will find himself standing on the steps of City Hall to welcome the International Olympic committee's co-ordination commission - the officials who will inspect the London plans and check they are on track to deliver infrastructure for the games.
An extra 440 police-community support officers on London's buses were promised by Johnson during his colourful campaign, as well as an end to some of the paperwork faced by police officers. Johnson will stop his predecessor, Ken Livingstone's, planned introduction of a £25 congestion charge on gas-guzzling cars.
The mayor's budget of about £11 billion, covering transport, police and fire, is spent with the help of about 730 staff at City Hall. But many of them are not sure whether they will be in a job by the end of the week.
- OBSERVER
BORIS: THE BIOGRAPHY
"He's very good at Greek and Latin," proud father Stanley Johnson observed as election victory loomed. "And I can tell you something: if you can do Greek and Latin you can do anything, certainly run a city like London."
It is Johnson's impressive intellect, as much as his eccentric personality, that has set him apart.
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (known to family as Al) was born in New York to English parents in 1964 and was, until recently, an American citizen.
After attending the European School in Brussels, and Ashdown House Preparatory School in East Sussex, he won a scholarship to Eton.
Johnson went to Balliol College, Oxford, to study classics in 1983. He became a member of the notorious Bullingdon Club alongside David Cameron, and used his time at Oxford to pursue his obsession with politics.
He met Allegra Mostyn-Owen during his first year and they married, at just 23, in 1987. The marriage lasted less than three years.
After an ill-starred attempt to become a management consultant, Johnson became a journalist, although he was sacked by the Times for making up a quote.
In 2001, when he was editor of the Spectator, he won the seat of Henley, Oxfordshire. After an unsigned Spectator editorial, accusing the citizens of Liverpool of wallowing in their "victim status" over the murdered Iraq hostage Ken Bigley, Tory leader Michael Howard sent Johnson to Merseyside to apologise.
He was sacked by Howard a few weeks later for allegedly lying over an affair with journalist Petronella Wyatt, something he vehemently denied.
- INDEPENDENT
