Speaking in the House of Commons the former prime minister paid tribute the Elizabeth II and recounted what he described as “a personal confessionâ€.
“A few months ago the BBC came to see me talk about Her Majesty the Queen. And we sat down and the cameras started rolling. And they requested that I should talk about her in the past tense,” he said.
“And I’m afraid I simply choked up and I couldn’t go on. I’m really not easily moved to tears, but I was so overcome with sadness, that I had to ask them to go away.”
Mr Johnson, who went to see the Queen at Balmoral to resign just three days ago, added: “I know that today there are countless people in this country and around the world, who have experienced the same sudden access of unexpected emotion.â€
He was speaking at a packed house of parliament on Friday as MP after MP stood up to pay tribute to the monarch with dedications expected to continue into the evening and on Saturday.
In an earlier statement, Mr Johnson branded the Queen “Elizabeth the Greatâ€, on account of her being “the longest serving and in many ways the finest monarch in our historyâ€.
Speaking in the Commons on Friday he said: “That impulse to do her duty carried her right through into her 10th decade to the very moment in Balmoral, as my right honourable friend [Liz Truss] has said, only three days ago, when she saw off her 14th prime minister and welcomed her 15th.
“I can tell you, in that audience, she was as radiant and as knowledgeable and as fascinated by politics as ever I can remember and as wise in her advice as anyone I know, if not wiser.â€