FACTBOX: New London Mayor Boris Johnson

(Reuters) - Opposition Conservative member of parliament Boris Johnson, 43, was elected Mayor of London on Friday. He defeated Ken Livingstone, the candidate of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's ruling Labour Party, who has run Britain's capital for eight years.

Johnson will oversee a budget of $22 billion covering public transport, police and fire services in a city of some 7.5 million people. He will prepare London for the 2012 Olympic Games and promote policies on housing, the environment and the economy in Europe's biggest financial centre.

Here are five facts about London's new mayor:

-- Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is the great grandson of a Turkish journalist who was briefly a minister in the defunct Ottoman empire.

-- He was born in New York and educated at the exclusive private school Eton College and Oxford University. There he was president of the Union debating society and a member of the exclusive Bullingdon dining club alongside Conservative Party leader David Cameron.

-- A former editor of weekly magazine the Spectator, he succeeded Michael Heseltine as the member of parliament for the rich town of Henley in June 2001 and was appointed opposition spokesman for the Arts in April 2004. He was made opposition spokesman for Higher Education in December 2005.

Of his political ambitions he once said: "My chances of being prime minister are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive."

-- With his flyaway fair hair and habitually rumpled attire, Johnson revels in his scruffy appearance. A columnist wrote of his wardrobe: "It would be unfair to say it looks as if he dresses at a charity shop, because no charity shop would accept stuff in that condition."

-- Johnson is no stranger to controversy. In 2004 he managed to offend the entire northern city of Liverpool by criticizing its grief over murdered Iraq hostage Ken Bigley. An editorial in the Spectator said the city "wallowed" in its "victim status". Bigley's brother called him a "self-centered, pompous twit".

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