Ms Hirsch, a best-selling author, was born in Norway to a British father and Ghanaian mother and raised in Wimbledon. She studied PPE at Oxford and qualified as a barrister before moving into journalism, working for both The Guardian and Sky News.
She has previously accused Mr Johnson of making a “litany of racist statements” and claimed his “oafish stupidity” was part of his “electoral brand”.
Elsewhere in the interview, Ms Wheeler, who has four children with Mr Johnson, described the final years of her marriage as “impossible” and said she feels “free” after her divorce.
“I suppose I do feel that, as you become more senior as a woman, and, I guess, post-divorce, if I’m honest, it does free you up,” she said.
“You can look at the world again and do things that can make a difference.”
Ms Wheeler said she never felt like a politician’s wife during her marriage to Mr Johnson, but admitted: “I did spend a lot of time trying to avoid people putting rosettes on me… I didn’t always succeed.”
Since her ex-husband quit the Commons, she has joined forces with Labour as its “whistleblowing tsar”, assisting with the party’s plans to crack down on sexual harassment at work.
But she told Ms Hirsch that she is “decidedly not party political”.
“I like the fact that I’ve had feet in lots of different camps, but always slightly been a bit anthropological about it and just interested in observing how people function,” she said.
She said she thought the unpaid, voluntary role would be a “limited thing”, but she has actually “put way more time into this than I think was expected”.
Alluding to a possible future with the Labour Party, she said: “I have become so immersed in it that I will carry on in some way, even after I’ve shared my findings.”
Mr Johnson declined to comment.
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