David Cameron has faced some extraordinary allegations this week as part of an ongoing spat with the former Conservative treasurer Lord Ashcroft.
Published in extracts from the peer’s unauthorised book “Call Me Dave”, they include claims made by an unnamed MP that the Prime Minister “inserted a private part of his anatomy into a dead pig's mouth” as part of an initiation ceremony during his days at Oxford University.
The allegation, which Lord Ashcroft writes may have been a “case of mistaken identity”, is claimed to have been part of an initiation to the exclusive Piers Gaveston Society. The founder of the group, Valentine Guinness, has dismissed the story and said he did not believe Mr Cameron had ever even been a member.
But there is one secretive Oxford drinking society that Mr Cameron definitely did attend – the infamous Bullingdon Club. Here’s what we know about its activities.
The club is more than 200 years old
Though its precise origins are uncertain, the club is thought to be more than 200 years old.
Founded as a hunting and cricket club, origins which are alluded to in the group’s logo, by the late 19th century it was claimed sport had become “secondary to the dinners”.
A double page spread in the New York Times told American readers in 1913 that: “The Bullingdon represents the acme of exclusiveness at Oxford; it is the club of the sons of nobility, the sons of great wealth; its membership represents the 'young bloods' of the university.”
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It’s very much still around
Bullingdon exists today as a “small and exclusive” dining club, though members tend to book private rooms under assumed names because of the club’s reputation for causing considerable damage to property.
Though the society is not officially acknowledged by the university itself, it is claimed that club events are banned within 15 miles of Christ Church after members caused significant damage there in the 1920s.
Despite its notoriety, normal Oxford students “could probably get through their time at the university without knowing it existed”, a recent former student told The Independent.
“It was quite secretive. Their parties were more small and exclusive [than other Oxford drinking societies].
“You heard of dinners happening every once in a while where stuff would get smashed up, and they would just pay for it all afterwards,” the source said.
Membership is expensive
According to The Oxford Student newspaper, which spoke to an anonymous Bullingdon member in 2006, the club maintains its exclusiveness in part through cost.
Tailormade blue tailcoats, the club’s uniform, cost at least £1,200 each, it said. Formal dinners would cost a minimum of £100 per person, plus the inevitable cost of paying for damaged property.
The Bullingdon Club members were notorious in Oxford (AP)
Richer members are asked to pay larger membership fees - “sometimes approaching £10,000” – the Oxford Student reported.
It is defined by class
Oxford sources say that, even now, the Bullingdon Club mainly consists of “Old Etonians and the like”. But while the group usually only has between 15 and 70 members, insiders claim it can be difficult to find “the right kind of people”.
In Lord Ashcroft’s book, Mr Cameron’s Oxford contemporary and present-day columnist James Delingpole says he “rather wanted” to be in the Bullingdon.
He says: “Looking back — a) I didn’t have enough money, and b) I wouldn’t have actually enjoyed the sort of things they did, because I’m not very good at drinking heinous quantities and behaving really, really badly.
Membership to the club requires rare credentials (Getty)
“It’s about mindless destruction, and conspicuous excess and the rather ugly side of upper-class life. It’s loathsome.”
They like to drink. A lot
The Oxford Student’s insider tells the newspaper that unlike some other societies in the city, Bullingdon prides itself on keeping to just alcohol for its substance abuses.
David Worth, an American postgraduate student who was reportedly in the club at the same time as Mr Cameron, told Lord Ashcroft he remembered a boat trip with the future Prime Minister to Cliveden House, a stately home in Berkshire.
He said: “I remember David quoting Winston Churchill extensively by memory — Churchill was a bit of a lush, so they were quotes about drinking — and he was very funny. A few leaned over the side of the boat occasionally — if you’ve drunk two bottles of champagne in an hour, your stomach’s going to get queasy.”
They have dubious ‘initiations’
Besides the general bad behaviour, new Bullingdon members are reported to be put through increasingly elaborate and offensive “initiation ceremonies” each year.
In 2013, an unnamed friend of a member told an Oxford student newspaper that the process involved making would-be joiners burn a £50 note in front of a beggar. It was condemned as “distasteful and disgusting” by the Labour MP Ian Mearns.
Burning cash in front of beggars is involved in one of the reported initiation ceremonies (Rex)
In 2004, a group claiming to be from the Bullingdon Club wrecked a 15th Century country pub in Fyfield, near Oxford, smashing crockery, wine bottles and windows.
Staff told the BBC at the time that the group, four of whom were arrested, appeared to be carrying out “some sort of ritual”.
Landlord Ian Rogers said: “It was very peculiar. They were not rude or violent to my staff.
"Even when I pulled them off each other when they were fighting and chucking bottles at the walls, they would say 'Sorry old chap, just a bit of high spirits'.”
It has some famous alumni
London Mayor Boris Johnson says of the Bullingdon Club: ‘You wake up with that terrible hung-over sense of shame, accentuated by the feeling that you could have had much more fun if you’d just taken your girlfriend out to dinner. What was the bloody point?’
Other well-known former members include Lord Bath and Alan Clark, who gained fame as a political diarist after serving as a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher's government.
Boris Johnson: 'You wake up with that terrible hung-over sense of shame' (Getty)
One unnamed Tory colleague told Lord Ashcroft “considerable” significance should be placed on Mr Cameron’s decision to join the Bullingdon Club. The MP claimed to have attended a meeting of the society but walked out “in disgust”.
He said: “What it basically involved was getting drunk and standing on restaurant tables, shouting about ‘f***ing plebs’. It was all about despising poor people.”
