Thread by @theousherwood

Jennifer Arcuri to @GMB: "I'm here to tell the truth. I'm here to tell my side of the story."

@GMB First question: "How are handling all the attention?"

Arcuri: "It's insane. It's a headtrip to say the least, what has happened in the last few weeks."

@GMB Arcuri says it was "electrifying" to see Boris Johnson turn a room of "grovelling men" complaining about the weather into "howling schoolgirls". She handed the then mayor her card, and his aides shooed her away "as quickly as humanly possible".

@GMB This was all at a venture capital club.

Arcuri then returned to London for her tech summit and they "bonded" over classical literature, including Voltaire, and Shakespeare.

@GMB Her friends demanded she changed his name in her phone so he had a codename. He became "Alex the Great".

@GMB Arcuri: "I always made sure Boris got a win out of my events."

@GMB Arcuri says that Boris Johnson spoke for her four times. She says he was never paid.

They had lunch. "We tried to have drinks or lunch out but it became too much of a mob show." Arcuri says that her office was her flat. He visited at her flat a "handful" of times.

@GMB Starts at five times. Become ten times. Might be six or seven.

Arcuri: "I didn't think it was awkward at all."

Asked about the pole in her flat, she replies: "I love core strength and so I tried it out."

@GMB Piers Morgan: "Boris never tried (the pole) out for a laugh?"

Arcuri: "I am never ever going to tell you. The pole sat in the living room, yes he saw the pole. I asked him to have a go. It was a laugh. That was it."

Piers: "Did he try?"

Arcuri: "No, he sat down with his tea."

@GMB Blue route: Straight home after work.

Red route: via Arcuri's flat.

To be fair, not that much of a detour.

@GMB Arcuri dismisses a letter of recommendation from Boris Johnson as "fake news".

She says that she was lying when she wrote in an email that she had a letter of recommendation.

@GMB Arcuri: "These rules... are meant to ensure that the best of the best are represented. As the end of the day I was able to go on that trade mission because of who I was...."

@GMB Arcuri denial. "Boris Johnson had nothing to do with my grant."

DCMS "came to us and said 'we have this pot of money'."

@GMB Arcuri: "I stopped speaking to Boris when I got pregnant at the end of 2016."

Piers Morgan: "Have you had any contact since this blew up?"

Arcuri: "Absolutely not."

Morgan: "Do you feel let down?"

Arcuri: "I don't need him to call me right now. Britain needs him right now."

@GMB Over to Lorraine.

Thank god.

"Do you think a love of literature is going to be a new euphemism?"