A young fashion tycoon who has been advising No 10 has been caught on camera snorting cocaine.
Gymshark boss Ben Francis – who made £73million by the age of 26 and has visited Downing Street – is seen taking the drug with three friends.
In the clip he boasts a bag he is sharing around cost £40, while his friends give each other tips on how to take the Class A drug.
Francis, 27, held his hands up and said: “I made a stupid mistake that I massively regret.”
In the four-year-old video, he peers towards the camera before bending down to snort one line of coke.
A friend is heard saying: “It’s my second time doing it.”
Then Francis’s musclebound pal Ross Dickerson, a fitness model followed by 1.4million on Instagram, chips in: “You’ll be wide awake after that.”
Later, when Dickerson snorts another line, a pal says: “That’s your eighth line.”
Dickerson replies: “Now you know that I do sh**loads of cocaine.”
The footage emerged after a meteoric rise in the business world by Francis.
He launched his exercise clothing company from his parents’ home while he was a student at Aston University in Birmingham.
Gymshark is now valued at £500million, has 1.2million customers and employs 215 people at its HQ in Solihull, West Mids.
Its success led to Francis being invited to join then-PM Theresa May’s Small Business, Scale-Ups and Entrepreneurs Business Council.
He posted pictures of himself at No 10 last July, with one captioned: “From the sewing machine to 10 Downing Street.”
Francis appeared on the 2019 Sunday Times Young Rich List, ranked above pop stars Little Mix and world heavyweight boxing champ Anthony Joshua.
In 2017 he posed with Sir Richard Branson as the Virgin boss presented him with an award for Britain’s fastest-growing company.
He was chosen to open trading at the New York Stock Exchange and travelled the world launching pop-up shops.
And Gymshark is set to open its first permanent shop in London’s Covent Garden.
Confronted with the cocaine video, Francis – who has almost 200,000 followers on Instagram – said: “Four years ago, I was a young guy.
"I got caught up in a moment and made a stupid mistake that I massively regret.
“It was a mistake I learned from. I’ll continue to dedicate myself to learning from the people around me and work towards becoming the best version of myself.”
Ross Dickerson said: “The video was four years ago. I got carried away and I regret it.
"I was younger and I made mistakes. I’m always learning from them and I’ll try to continue to do so.”
A Government source said Francis was no longer on the advisory council.
A No 10 spokesman said: “The PM remains committed to closely working with industry.”
