Deputy mayors have been in the news a lot recently. On Friday Ray Lewis resigned as Deputy Mayor of London amid a welter of allegations about his previous incarnation as a Church of England priest.
While his departure was a blow to Boris Johnson, he has quite a few other deputies.
However, only one of them is the statutory Deputy Mayor, the one mentioned in the legislation that created the post of Mayor of London.
That man is Richard Barnes, who has been out and proud, and fighting, for so long that sometimes it seems he was the original gay Tory.
A Hillingdon borough councillor since 1982 and former council leader, he has served on the London Assembly since its creation in 2000.
After eight years of Ken, he is finally in power and, before last week's Pride parade, he sat down with PinkNews.co.uk to talk about Boris, HIV prevention, and why the terrorist attacks exactly three years ago today showed our city at its most resilient.
PinkNews.co.uk: Congratulations on your appointment. I understand that you are the statutory Mayor, can you explain what that entails?
A statutory Mayor is a legal requirement and should be there if anything untoward happened to the Mayor.
Does that mean you are a heart beat away from being Mayor?
I'm just a little bit further but yeah.
How does that work in terms of influencing the Mayor, do you meet regularly, do you have conversations?
We will meet regularly but obviously during the course of the campaign Boris and I did establish a close rapport and we worked very closely together.
When we were talking about Boris Johnson in November and even in January and February there was this idea that his candidacy was a Tory bit of fun …
I don't believe that.
Well what I was going to say is his majority is sizeable, a considerable vote, did that surprise you having been on the campaign trail with him, or were you expecting it on election night?
Before he was selected I just had that gut feeling that he was that symbol of change that everybody in London wanted and given the way his magnetic celebrity status on the campaign trail people just flocked to him.
I've been out with (former Mayor) Ken and you see people on opposite sides of the street say "oh there's Ken Livingstone."
With Boris they had to get near him, they had to get their photograph taken with him.
They want to be close to him which is that difference between premier division and a full star if you like.
You have been and assembly member since the beginning. What sort of changes did you want to see over those eight years, what changes do you want to see now and what do you think Boris will bring forward?
I would rather look forward than look backward.
But you must have seen an organisation that you thought could be better run?
I thought the organisation has improved since we came into office, that it was dysfunctional, the decision making was channelled through a very small coterie of people.
The professional offices were not allowed to make decisions of their own, they were all referred upwards.
What I believe is that you should trust the offices and professionals that you've put there, that you should allow them to get on and make decisions, clearly ask for checks and balances.
They just got a budget which has been examined and approved. I don't expect them to come back on a monthly basis and say "can I spend part of my budget?"
Boris had a bit of a rough ride from the gay community….
