BBC presenter Nick Robinson has apologised to Nadine Dorries in a row over Boris Johnson’s supposed gold wallpaper in Downing Street.
Robinson challenged a claim by the former culture secretary when she appeared on Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday that the infamous wallpaper in Number 11 – where Mr Johnson stayed when he was PM – never existed.
But in doing so he gave the impression he had seen the lavish decorations in the then prime minister’s accommodation.
Ms Dorries said at the end of the interview: “You know, Nick, there was no gold wallpaper. It doesn’t exist.”
Robinson replied: “Funnily enough, I’ve had that wallpaper pointed out to me by someone inside 11 Downing Street.”
Ms Dorries later took to X, formerly Twitter, to claim he admitted off-air that he “hadn’t actually seen gold wallpaper”.
According to the Mail on Sunday, Robinson was given a tour of the Johnsons’ former flat above 11 Downing Street by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who currently lives there.
Mr Hunt reportedly pointed to a red painted wall in the dining room and joked it was once covered in gold wallpaper.
Robinson told the newspaper: “I hadn’t heard about the alleged scandal about the gold wallpaper before Nadine mentioned it to me on air. I was so surprised I responded by saying that I’ve had that wallpaper pointed out to me by someone inside 11 Downing Street.
“It would have been more accurate to have said ‘I’ve had the wall on which that gold wallpaper was alleged to have hung before it was painted red pointed out to me.’
“I apologise to Nadine for the distress I seem to have caused by implying that her friend Boris Johnson’s £112,000 refurbishment of the flat had involved gold as against what the designer Lulu Lyttle calls distinctive yellow wallpaper.
“I congratulate her for fearlessly stripping back the ungilded truth which others had papered over.”
But Ms Dorries, who is due to make a formal complaint to the BBC tomorrow, said it was a “very inelegant apology”.
It had been claimed that the Johnsons decorated their Downing Street accommodation with £840-a-roll gold wallpaper.
But allies have insisted it was untrue and part of an attack on Carrie Johnson.
Designer Lulu Lytle later said it was a yellow design in the kitchen which cost £120 per roll.
