(Amit Roy, who covers Europe for The Telegraph, recalls his days with Boris Johnson, the scandal-ridden British Prime Minister who announced on Thursday he would resign, at The Daily Telegraph newspaper in London.)

London: For all his faults, I am sorry to see him go.

When we were colleagues at The Daily Telegraph on the 14th floor of Canary Wharf, he used to sit round the corner from me. He used to write for the comment section under the editor, Max Hastings, who had made his name with his coverage of the Falklands War. Max was never a Boris fan, and recently disclosed he had cut links with former friends who remained close to the outgoing Prime Minister.

Of course, at the time I had no idea he was going to be Prime Minister one day. We knew Boris was a lot cleverer than he pretended to be. He had been to Eton and carried his learning lightly.

I liked the fact he was a man who believed in loyalty. When he was mayor of London, we bumped into each other at a Hinduja Diwali party. “Amit,” he said, “we Telegraph people should stick together.”

As the Hindujas expected him to make a speech, he asked: “What shall I say?”

I knew his strengths, and so, said jokingly: “Just slip in a few jokes.”

He was re-elected mayor of London in a tightly fought contest with Labour’s Ken Livingstone because of the Indian vote in his favour. At one Indian function, he said that when Livingstone went on trade missions to India, he squandered hundreds of thousands of public funds. “But when I go, I don’t spend a penny because I stay with my relatives,” he said, as the crowd cheered.

He has always been good meeting people, especially Indians. On another occasion, when he was still mayor, I invited him to dinner with the Indian Journalists’ Association. He turned up late, looking dishevelled as usual, on his bike. As it was a sit-down dinner, I wanted him to take his place at the top table while the speeches were followed by dinner. But he would have none of that. He wanted to go round the room chatting to people, and it was clear he was enjoying the exchanges hugely.

He proved to be a liberal mayor. As home secretary and then Prime Minister, Theresa May wanted to create a “hostile environment” for immigrants. In marked contrast, Boris wanted to bring in an amnesty for illegal immigrants.

I find it a little sad that many of the Indians he promoted turned against him in the end. Boris has to be given credit for having the most diverse cabinet in British political history. And the jobs he gave to Indians were among the most senior. After Sajid Javid’s resignation, he made Rishi Sunak chancellor of the exchequer.

He was loyal to Priti Patel and would not sack her as home secretary even after she was accused of bullying staff. Alok Sharma was made COP26 president and put in charge of climate change. Another Indian, Suella Braverman, was appointed attorney-general. These were not simply token appointments but the most elevated in the land.

The person who kept Boris grounded was his wife of 25 years, Marina Wheeler, whose mother was Sikh, Dip Singh, and father, the BBC journalist Charles Wheeler. But Boris dumped her for Carrie Symonds, a Tory party press officer, while Marina was suffering from cancer.

Boris does have this ruthless streak. Another of his girlfriends, Petronella Wyatt, used to sit at the next desk to mine at The Daily Telegraph. Petronella has attested to the fact that Boris was never a serial groper, a common species in British politics. Had he stuck to Marina, mother of his four children, there are those who say he would still be Prime Minister.

What will he do now? He once told me he could knock off a column in 45 minutes. Before the EU referendum in 2016, he wrote two versions for The Daily Telegraph – one in favour of leaving Europe, another backing Brexit.

David Cameron, the Prime Minister, was furious with Boris’s duplicity after he chose to go with Brexit. British politics can be quite brutal. Boris knifed May to get to the top, and has now been brought down by colleagues to whom he gave his loyalty.

What will he do now? The Daily Telegraph is his natural home and he might return to the paper where he was earning £5,000 per column. I guess he will now get round to finishing his biography of Shakespeare.