Pong at City Hall

London mayor Boris Johnson moved to quell reports that illicit games of ping pong – or “pingers” – were consuming official time in City Hall today.

He slapped down the rumour-mongers assuring the tax paying public that it was only played late at night.

Are we even sure pingers means ping pong?

Anyway, ping-pong-gate never really got off the ground on the Andrew Marr show this morning – which was missing its gangly front man.

Instead stand-in Fiona Bruce ambushed Johnson with claims that he’d used tax payers money to pay for hotels at the Tory conference last year.

His answer wasn’t very convincing but it was off the cuff.

“The mayor of the city goes to party conferences and there’s absolutely no reason why his bill should not be paid by the taxpayer,” he said.

“I think it’s greatly to our credit that this statistic has appeared, because it would of course have been concealed by the previous administration.”

He did manage to somehow turn it into a dig against populist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez – so top points for ingenuity.