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Never one to mince his words, London Mayor Boris Johnson has lashed out at Gatwick airport officials, calling the managers there "chimpanzees". Mr Johnson was furious after he and his family arrived back to chaos at Gatwick following a holiday in Italy.

A chronic lack of passport officers coupled with delayed luggage was the cause of his wrath, and the "snivelling" and "insincere" apology that he received in a standard letter which was handed out to passengers for the sixth night running did nothing to pacify him. In his usual humourous fashion he likened the hundreds of passengers “shuffling round the ox-pens” to “inmates of some Victorian penitentiary”. He then described the passengers’ offer to liberate their luggage which they knew was on the tarmac in an “Entebbe style raid”. Many of them had been waiting for two and a half hours but needless to say this offer was turned down on health and safety grounds.

Officials from BAA and Servisair were conspicuous by their absence but, in the letter, the delay in luggage arriving on the carousel was put down to staff shortages.

Mr Johnson has been outspoken in his concerns that with the London Olympics only four years away, Gatwick is going to have to get its act together. Spanish owned BAA may well be compelled to sell Gatwick if the Competition Commission rules that the stranglehold over the UK’s biggest seven airports should be loosened. It has been accused of ill-serving airlines and travellers alike and of putting shopping over the needs of passengers.

Mr Johnson was not the only politician to be put out by his Gatwick experience last week. John Prescott was reportedly seen as looking most perturbed when trying to check in at the Easyjet desk for a flight to Edinburgh. Given that his tickets were for the BA flight perhaps it is not surprising that he was not on the passenger list!