Boris’s beach blonde who was star of a VERY risque student play
SHE may have gone to ground since finding herself at the centre of a political storm, but there was a time when Carrie Symonds was rather less camera-shy, as these pictures show.
Taken from Miss Symonds’s own social media posts, they show the 30-year-old former Tory aide, who has been linked to Boris Johnson, in a variety of glamorous poses on holiday, and even starring in a ‘satanic sex cult’ theatre production during her university days.
One of the photographs shows her on a beach, thought to be Saint-Tropez on the French Riviera, holding a watermelon.
Others were taken of her at the helm of a yacht, lying in the sun in Tuscany and drinking a glass of rose wine on a balcony.
But the most shocking pictures show her performing in an X-rated play. It is thought she took part as a drama student at Warwick University, where she studied from 2006 to 2009.
The production was based on the writings of self-styled mystic Aleister Crowley – an unabashed occultist who, prior to his death in 1947, revelled in his infamy as ‘the wickedest man in the world’.
His form of worship involved sadomasochistic sex rituals with men and women, spells which he claimed could raise evil gods, and the use of hard drugs, including cocaine and heroin.
For the play, Miss Symonds is wearing a black dress and torn black tights with heavy black makeup smeared around her eyes.
In one picture she is kneeling on the floor with a table in the background. On the table are written the words ‘cognac, c*** and cocaine’ – a reference to one of Crowley’s most notorious poems.
A bottle of cognac and small pile of white powder, believed to represent cocaine, are on the table, which is surrounded by a circle of cards. The words ‘Do As Thou Wilt’ are scrawled in chalk in the centre of the circle.
Alongside Miss Symonds sits a bare-chested male student with ‘Big Beast’ and ‘Do As Thou Wilt’ daubed across his chest and throat in black ink.
Crowley’s poem Leah Sublime includes the foul-mouthed lines: ‘Straddle your Beast, My Masterful B **** ... Spit on me, scarlet, Mouth of my harlot... Soak me in cognac, c*** and cocaine.’
Away from the stage, Miss Symonds has also dabbled in more conventional activities. A passionate environmental campaigner, she founded a company for making an alternative to plastic straws, it has emerged.
She set up The Final Straw Ltd last December, with herself as the sole director and shareholder. The firm describes its business as the ‘manufacture of cutlery’ in filings at Companies House.
At the time, she was the Tory Party’s director of communications.
One of her biggest successes in her role at Tory HQ was to campaign with environmentally-conscious MPs such as Zac Goldsmith and Michael Gove.
Her firm does not have its own website and it is unclear whether it has manufactured anything yet.
In April, under pressure from campaigns including the Daily Mail’s drive to ‘turn the tide on plastic’, the Government announced a ban on the sale of plastic straws and drink stirrers. The Foreign Office under Mr Johnson has led the way, banning single-use straws earlier this year.
Less than two weeks earlier, Mr Johnson had been spotted with Miss Symonds in a restaurant on Valentine’s Day while his police protection officers sat nearby.
Miss Symonds campaigns on a range of issues close to her heart.
After leaving Tory HQ last month, she is due to start as a clean oceans specialist at Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable arm of the City tech giant. She postponed her start date this week as the furore over her links to Mr Johnson’s marriage breakdown continued.
‘Wickedest man in the world’