Jennifer Arcuri has admitted she feels “betrayed” by Boris Johnson during a live TV interview in which she refused four times to say whether they had an affair.

The US businesswoman said she had not received any contact from the prime minister since a furore erupted over her receiving public money and access to foreign trade missions when Mr Johnson was London mayor.

Asked by Good Morning Britain presenter Susanna Reid whether she “feels betrayed”, Ms Arcuri replied: “Of course.” But she added: “I think Boris has enough on his plate right now ... I don’t need him right now. Britain needs him right now.”

She said stopped regularly speaking to Mr Johnson when she became pregnant at the end of 2016.

Ms Arcuri, giving her first televised interview over the scandal, said she met Mr Johnson at a business event in 2011 and found him “electrifying”. She claimed they later bonded over a “mutual interest in classical literature” and she saved his personal phone number under the “code name” of “Alexander the Great”.

Biggest lies told by Boris Johnson Show all 5 1 /5 Biggest lies told by Boris Johnson Biggest lies told by Boris Johnson Made-up quote for The Times Johnson was sacked from The Times newspaper in the late 1980s after he fabricated a quote from his godfather, the historian Colin Lucas, for a front-page article about the discovery of Edward II’s Rose Palace. “The trouble was that somewhere in my copy I managed to attribute to Colin the view that Edward II and Piers Gaveston would have been cavorting together in the Rose Palace,” he claimed. Alas, Gaveston was executed 13 years before the palace was built. “It was very nasty,” Mr Johnson added, before attempting to downplay it as nothing more than a schoolboy blunder. PA Biggest lies told by Boris Johnson Sacked from cabinet over cheating lie Michael Howard gave Boris Johnson two new jobs after becoming leader of the Conservatives in 2003 – party vice-chairman and shadow arts minister. He was sacked from both positions in November 2004 after assuring Mr Howard that tabloid reports of his affair with Spectator columnist Petronella Wyatt were false and an “inverted pyramid of piffle”. When the story was found to be true, he refused to resign. PA Biggest lies told by Boris Johnson Broken promise to boss In 1999 Johnson was offered editorship of The Spectator by owner Conrad Black on the condition that he would not stand as an MP while in the post. In 2001 he stood - and was elected - MP for Henley, though Black did allow him to continue as editor despite calling "ineffably duplicitous" PA Biggest lies told by Boris Johnson Misrepresenting the people of Liverpool As editor of The Spectator, he was forced to apologise for an article in the magazine which blamed drunken Liverpool fans for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster and suggested that the people of the city were wallowing in their victim status. “Anyone, journalist or politician, should say sorry to the people of Liverpool – as I do – for misrepresenting what happened at Hillsborough,” he said. PA Biggest lies told by Boris Johnson ‘I didn’t say anything about Turkey’ Johnson claimed in January, that he did not mention Turkey during the EU referendum campaign. In fact, he co-signed a letter stating that “the only way to avoid having common borders with Turkey is to vote Leave and take back control”. The Vote Leave campaign also produced a poster reading: “Turkey (population 76 million) is joining the EU”

Mr Johnson reportedly wrote a letter of reference for Ms Arcuri, then a 27-year-old student finishing a one-year business course in London, for a £100,000-a-year job running a government-funded technology company in 2012.

Her application was rejected but she went on to set up a series of companies which were awarded £126,000 in public money and accompanied Mr Johnson on three overseas trade trips.

Jennifer Arcuri refuses to deny she slept with Boris Johnson

Last month, the Greater London Authority referred the prime minister to the Independent Office for Police Conduct over allegations, first reported in The Sunday Times, that he granted favours to Ms Arcuri.

Ms Arcuri insisted she had “never, ever” received “favouritism” from Mr Johnson.

Asked about the extent of their relationship, she said he had visited her Shoreditch flat “five, 10, a handful” of times for professional meetings at her home office.

The technology entrepreneur is reported to have told friends she had a sexual relationship with the Conservative mayor, but she said on Good Morning Britain: “It’s really categorically no one’s business what private life we had or didn’t have.”

Pressed by Reid and co-presenter Piers Morgan on whether the pair had an “intimate relationship”, Ms Arcuri repeatedly refused to deny having an affair with Mr Johnson.

She told them: “Because the press have made me this objectified ex-model pole dancer, I am really not going to answer that question. I am not going to be putting myself in a position for you to weaponise my answer.”

Ms Arcuri said she and Mr Johnson had “tried having drinks out in public or having lunch” but “it just became too much of a mob show” so they met instead at her flat.

She said the prime minister had “asked me to show him a few things” on the pole-dancing pole in her home.

Ms Arcuri said she had suggested Mr Johnson try out the pole himself, but asked directly by Morgan if he had ever used it, she laughed and replied: “I’m never going to tell you that.”

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Mr Johnson has denied a conflict of interest over his relationship with Ms Arcuri, although he refused to rule out claims of an affair.

John McDonnell, Labour’s shadow chancellor, said Monday morning’s interview showed the prime minister was “unfit for office”.