Petronella Wyatt

Petronella Wyatt
Born	1968 (age 55–56) London, England
Residence	St John's Wood, North London
Nationality	British
Education	St Paul's Girls' School
Alma mater	University College, London.
Occupation	Journalist, writer
Home town	London
Parent(s)	Woodrow Wyatt Verushka Banszky von Ambroz

Petronella Wyatt (born May 1968), is a British journalist and author. She is the daughter of the former journalist and Labour politician, the late Woodrow Wyatt, and his fourth wife, the Hungarian Veronica (Verushka) Banszky von Ambroz.

Biography

Born in St. John's Wood, London, Wyatt attended St Paul's Girls' School in London and was offered a place to read History at Worcester College, Oxford. After dropping out of Oxford due to persistent bullying and harassment owing to her political views, she later graduated from University College London.

She has been a weekly columnist for the Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator, of which she was deputy editor. She currently writes political interviews and main feature articles for the Daily Mail. Her interviewees have included John Major, David Blunkett, and Piers Morgan. Wyatt is known for her direct and playful interview style. In 1996, when interviewing the proposed Labour Minister for Women Janet Anderson, Anderson joked that "under Labour, women will become more promiscuous", which Wyatt reported as policy. Denis Healey regretted at the close of an interview with Wyatt that there was no time left for "rumpy pumpy".

Wyatt's television appearances include Question Time and Newsnight.

Personal life

Wyatt, known to her friends as "Petsy," lives with her mother in St John's Wood, North London.

After she had lived in the United States for the latter half of 2003 with Charles Bruce Berry at his home in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2004 British newspapers reported that she had had a four-year affair with the then-Conservative MP Boris Johnson. The affair, which had been well hinted at in UK newspaper gossip columns, included passionate London taxi cab rides around St John's Wood during which they would ask the cab driver to insert cassette tapes of Wyatt singing Puccini. Although Johnson had promised to leave his wife, after a break-up, they had rekindled their relationship during which Wyatt had become pregnant and then had an abortion; resulting in her mother discovering the affair and reporting it to the press. Johnson was sacked from his shadow cabinet post by Michael Howard, not because of the affair but because he had lied about it.

Wyatt's hobby is singing and lyric-writing; she also co-wrote a cabaret act called Kiss and Tell with the pianist and composer Jeremy Limb, poet Lloyd Evans, and opera singer Melinda Hughes. It debuted at London club Volstead in November 2007.

Wyatt writes about her attention to her Wikipedia entry. In May 2007, Private Eye reported that Wyatt had been instructed by Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, to pen an attack on Wikipedia over the content of her entry on the site. This was published on 22 April 2007 when Wyatt admitted to writing her initial entry and then threatening to sue over vandalism to the page.

Views on cycling

She writes against cycling in London, as championed by her ex-lover Boris Johnson. Her half-brother, Pericles Wyatt, promotes cycling where he lives. In September 2012 doubts were raised over the veracity of one element of an article written about her mother being run over by a cyclist. On 7 October Wyatt's employer, The Daily Mail, published a correction saying that the bag snatch reported in the article had happened in 2008, not 2012 as originally reported.

Publications

• Father, dear Father: Life with Woodrow Wyatt, Hutchinson, London, 1999. ISBN 0-09-929760-4