Was Boris bumped because the PM refused to sit next to him?

Downing Street has scoffed at an extraordinary claim made on Tuesday by London mayor Boris Johnson that at a memorial service last year for the murdered schoolboy Damilola Taylor he was moved to the back row of Southwark Cathedral so that Gordon Brown would not have to sit next to him. The Prime Minister's office today called the allegation "categorically not true".
 
Johnson made the claim while giving evidence about the Damian Green affair to the Home Affairs Select Committee. The Mayor is charged with abusing his position as head of the Metropolitan Police Authority by speaking to Tory colleagues about the MP's upcoming arrest before police officers entered Parliament. While answering a question about when he first spoke to David Cameron about Green, Boris leapt out of the frying pan and into the fire.
 
He claimed that the first time he spoke to Cameron after the arrest was at the memorial service. However, "whatever conversation took place was exceedingly brief since Gordon Brown decided that it would be quite wrong for me to be sitting next to him, and so I was moved somewhere else," said Johnson.
 
"So any conversation that might have taken place between me and the Leader of the Opposition was made very perfunctory thanks to the sensitivities of our great leader."
 
A spokesman for Gordon Brown has replied to Johnson's suggestion of an affront, saying: "There was never any instruction from the Prime Minister to suggest that he should or should not [change seats]," prompting a response from Johnson's own spokesman who says that it was "undoubtedly true" that his boss had fallen foul of a last-minute change of seating plan.

This raised the question: what does 'last-minute' mean? Rosa Prince, writing for the Daily Telegraph today, may have the answer: she says that the mayor had expected to sit with Cameron and Brown because all three were reading at the service. But the seating plan was rejigged the night before and, as our picture shows, Harriet Harman was placed between Cameron and Brown while Boris was moved, not to the back, but into the second row.

Prince suggests that the PM requested Harman sit between him and the Opposition leader to avoid having to make small talk with Cameron. Now that does sound like the truth. ·