Being blackballed is a bore I know only too well...

After William Cash was denied membership of the Garrick, Toby Young recalls his own club humiliations

Iscoffed when I heard that my friend William Cash had been blackballed by the Garrick. Call that a humiliation? Not only have I been blackballed by the Garrick, I am also banned from the Groucho. And remember, that is named after the very same Groucho Marx who famously said he refused to join any club that would have him as a member.

William Cash’s alleged sin was to have used his father’s club membership to gatecrash the Garrick tent at Royal Ascot four years ago. That struck a chord with me, because I passed myself off as William in order to get into the Vanity Fair Oscars party in 1993 when he was Los Angeles correspondent for a British newspaper. (It all went a bit pearshaped when William himself turned up five minutes later). You’d think such ingenuity would be rewarded by the Garrick, particularly as it is named after a man who made his living pretending to be other people.

The reason I was blackballed by the Garrick is because I’d made a passing reference to the food at the club not being very good in a restaurant column. Turned out the head of the catering committee was also on the membership committee. Blackballing is supposed to be anonymous – usually, no one knows who has objected – but in this case the man was happy to advertise his identity. It was an act of revenge and he wanted me to know who’d wielded the knife.

Being blackballed is a bore because trying to get into a club can be a time-consuming process. Typically, you get a member to propose you and another to second you, and your name is then “put up” or “posted” in “the book” – usually a leather-bound affair – which lies open on a table somewhere in the bowels of the place. You then have to wait until enough members “sign your page” before you’re considered for

membership. There’s no specific number, but you need at least two dozen to be safe. You’re not supposed to “campaign” – that’s thought to be ungentlemanly – but everyone does, obviously. This involves getting members to take you in as a lunch guest and applying the oil as liberally as possible. Top tip: don’t comment on the food because the man opposite you may be on the catering committee.

To get into the Garrick – assuming enough members have signed your page – your name has to go before the Candidates Committee. Only if you get over that hurdle are you then considered by the General Committee. In between those two stages, you’re invited to a cocktail party so the members of the more senior committee can look you over. Many a horse has fallen at this clubland equivalent of Becher’s Brook. In Cash’s case, the gatecrashing accusation was passed on to the chairman of the Candidates Committee by some club members. But others pointed out that the allegation was false: Cash had actually sought and received the Garrick’s permission to enter its sacred tent. Duly cleared, his name was then sent up to the more senior committee and he received a precious invitation to the cocktail party, where he applied said oil. Unfortunately, when his name came up at the next meeting of the General Committee, the case for the prosecution was laid before the assembled jurors, but not the case for the defence. As a result, Cash was blackballed – which in this case means that at least four members of the 24-strong committee objected by anonymously placing a ball on the wrong side of a