Boris Johnson has revealed a surprising secret held by his Parliamentary hairdresser - the same one he gave an OBE when he left office.
The bombshell came in the former PM's lengthy memoir, which was published today. He describes the days following the publishing the first Partygate stories - describing his anxiety at the prospect of Tory MPs trying to oust him in the wake of the scandal.
Tory MPs can trigger a leadership contest if 15% of them write to the chair of the 1922 Committee - then Sir Graham Brady - to express no confidence in the leader. The letters - and the number that have been delivered - are often the subject of wild speculation whenever a Tory leader appears to be getting into trouble.
Sir Graham insisted he kept the number of letters a closely guarded secret and never revealed the volume of correspondence to a soul. But in the book, Mr Johnson claims his hairdresser had inside information.
"The hairdresser, Kelly Dodge, sees all and knows all," he wrote.
"As she snips and twirls the locks of the MPs and polishes their pates with her hot towels, she hears the things the whips don't pick up. She also had a contact in Sir Graham Brady's office."
He went on: "'It's OK,' she told me one morning as she gave me a trim. 'We think there are only about a dozen'"
Mr Johnson awarded Ms Dodge an OBE in his resignation honours list.
Later in the book, Mr Johnson denies it was either Partygate or the row over Chris Pincher - the Tory whip accused of sexual misconduct whom the then-PM initially defended - that brought him down.
"The fundamental problem was that too many Tory MPs just wanted me out of their hair," he wrote.
"Some had certainly been rattled (unnecessarily, I think) by the hate storms of . Some disliked me, some of them for personal reasons, some of them because they thought they could do better under someone else."
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He went on: "If Caesar had twenty-three stab wounds I ended up with sixty-two, in the sense that a grand total of sixty ministers decided to follow [ ] and [ ] out the door. And if you want to know the formal reason why I resigned two days later, it was because in this absurd situation I really didn't feel I could go to the Queen and say that I was able to appoint her ministers from the very best of the governing party."
