Despite the setback of having been born into a well-off family and sent to Eton, Boris has proved that he can talk to anyone – although just at the moment he doesn't appear to want to say very much.
But the whole palaver of electing a mayor for the capital city made me wonder whether this system would work for towns up and down the country, as it does in France.
At present we have volunteer councillors, unpaid, at county, borough (or district) and parish (or town) levels, who elect a chairman from among their number who, in some cases, is called a mayor.
It's just a figurehead position, although if the council is very divided politically it can be quite difficult to balance all the views and chair the meetings successfully.
But all the work and much of the policy is developed by and through the officers employed by the councils.
It means that if you throw the councillors out at election time, the officers will still be there, implementing slightly different policies, but in much the same way.
The realisation of this, which is becoming more and more widespread, may be a major reason why fewer and fewer people bother to vote at local elections.
They can't see that anything will change as a result.
In the case of London and the professional mayor, it is a different matter altogether.
Boris will be gathering around him a whole lot of new people, and Ken Livingstone's main aides will be out of a job like he is.
Much more of the power is concentrated in one individual and when you elect a different one, there will be changes, if only of personnel, depending how radically different he or she is.
We don't know yet with Boris, but commentators seem to think it unlikely he will be as hands-on as Livingstone was and will appoint people to do many of the main jobs, but under his supervision.
So, if, by some extreme stretch of imagination, we could envisage this sort of system in Haverhill, or in St Edmundsbury, who would we want in charge?
Centralising power in one person can be very effective as far as decision-making is concerned.
Things might get done a lot quicker.
But would it be a person from Haverhill, or from Bury, or from one of the villages?
Last week it became clear the new venue being built in Bury St Edmunds will cost £1.5million more than St Edmundsbury thought.
That's a lot, I thought, but I had not kept up to date with developments, because I thought that was above the £9million originally floated as the cost.
In fact the current estimate had been £12million and it's now going to be £13.5million – so far.
This is for a 500-seat venue in a town which already has a regional theatre and a cathedral – two large and varied performance spaces.
One assumes the people of Bury are eventually going to be spoilt for choice as far as live performance goes.
The concerns about how much the venue is going to cost to run have not been answered, and we remember from the early days of Haverhill Arts Centre, how easily the council spent £1million on creating it, but had not budgeted anywhere near enough to run it properly.
I think if a mayor, rather than a council, had been in charge, the venue project would either not have happened at all, or would have been completed effectively and efficiently, depending on the interest and experience that individual had in creating such a facility.
As it is, there is a lot of consultation, drift, back-covering and simple ignorance at work. It may all turn out well, but it does seem a bit of a gamble.