LONDON (AFP) - London Mayor Boris Johnson waded into the debate about where politicians should go on holiday Tuesday, lashing Prime Minister Gordon Brown for staying at home by the boring English seaside.

In typically politically-incorrect style, Johnson said he would be going to somewhere "as sunny and foreign as possible" this summer, and praised Brown's predecessor Tony Blair who regularly jetted off on exotic foreign breaks.

"It will not take place in Cornwall or Scotland or the Norfolk Broads. I say stuff Skegness. I say bugger Bognor," he wrote in a column in the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

"I am going to take a holiday abroad, and in my view it would be absurd, hypocritical and frankly inhumane to do anything else."

The issue of politicians' holidays is a perennial fascination of the media, who for years took Blair to task for "freeloading" by taking prolonged stays at famous or wealthy friends' homes in Tuscany, France or Barbados.

Brown, who succeeded Blair last June and is notoriously workaholic, could hardly be more of a contrast: last year he planned a week on the south English coast, but cut it short after only hours to deal with a foot-and-mouth crisis.

This year he is going to Southwold on the east coast, again for a week.

"And we all know what will happen then. He will have about four hours' holiday, gnawing at his nails and staring at the drizzle, and then some 'crisis' will compel him to return to Downing Street," said Johnson.

"The prime minister is plainly exhausted. He has run out of steam... If he wants to recover in the polls, then he must swallow his inhibitions along with his fingernails, and get away somewhere hot," he added.

The colourful Conservative politician and journalist, who ousted "Red Ken" Livingstone in May elections, listed past political leaders including wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill who had taken lavish foreign holidays.

That tradition had continued until recently, he said.

There was no criticism, though, of Conservative Party leader David Cameron. He has also opted to stay in Britain, heading to Cornwall in southwest England.

Commentators have put politicians' preferences for British holidays down to the weak pound, as well as a desire to be seen as more frugal as the credit crunch bites into personal finances.

The phrase "bugger Bognor" was reputedly the last words of king George V after it was suggested to him that he might recover from illness in Bognor Regis, on England's south coast.

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