BULLING DON CLUB 2013
Private jet, morning suits and champagne for desert grouse shoot – move over Boris, it’s...
IN THEIR navy tailcoats and sky blue silk bow ties, and with the desert as a backdrop, they do not look like the typical grouse-shooting party.
But this is the new breed of members of the infamous Bullingdon Club.
And instead of donning tweed and taking to the Scottish moors, they chose to celebrate the Glorious Twelfth earlier this month in the more exotic surroundings of the South African veldt.
Oxford University’s notorious male-only dining society — whose alumni include David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson — usually pose for their annual photo on the steps of Christ Church, the Oxford college.
The club is famously discreet about its membership and gatherings. But today the Mail can reveal the latest line-up of ‘Buller men’ and their antics.
Standing arm-in-arm, the class of 2013 show off their haul of game after a day’s sand grouse shooting. The gathered party of current and recent members illustrates how the invitationonly club continues to be open only to the super-rich or those from aristocratic families.
The presence of George Farmer, the son of Tory treasurer Michael Farmer — a close ally of David Cameron who has donated £4million to the Conservatives — shows how closely it is linked to the high echelons of the party. Others in the group, which flew into Johannesburg before taking a private plane to the shoot, include the great-grandson of the founder of Marks & Spencer and a member of one of America’s most powerful dynasties.
On board the small aircraft used to fly the men to the exclusive jaunt, each seat pocket was filled not with an in-flight magazine but with a bottle of champagne. While on the five- day shoot, the men — who are without exception the product of incredible privilege — donned the 200-year-old society’s formal dress.
The full uniform, which costs around £3,500 is usually worn for the Club’s annual dinner. But the members seemed eager to pose in the South African desert in their specially-tailored navy tailcoats, each with a matching velvet collar, offset with ivory silk lapel revers, brass monogrammed buttons, a mustard waistcoat and bow tie.
After successfully shooting dozens of sand grouse, which are regarded as the kings of African game birds, the group quaffed more champagne before leaving discarded corks in the dirt. Members perhaps felt at ease dressed in their full regalia, being so far from Oxford where the ‘modern Buller’ rarely wears the full attire for fear of attracting attention.
Sand grouse shoots, which typically last two hours, take place around the waterholes where the birds come in to drink during the mornings. The birds have small pigeon-like heads and necks but sturdy compact bodies and incredibly tough skin.
The Bullingdon Club was founded in 1780 and has a notorious reputation for its destructive binges. It is banned from meeting within 15 miles of Oxford since a dinner in 1927 when its member smashed every window in a college quad. Former members ran riot around the town for decades, paying thousands of pounds in cash to buy the silence of dining establishments they damaged during their disorderly evenings.
David Cameron and George Osborne have seemed embarrassed by the emergence of photographs of them dressed in their Buller ‘ uniform’. Other former members include Edward VII, Earl Spencer and broadcaster David Dimbleby.
One of the nine men on the grouseshooting trip is unidentified, but the other 2013 Buller Men are:
THE HON MICHAEL MARKS
THE great-grandson of Michael Marks, the Victorian co-founder of Marks & Spencer, he will one day be the 4th Baron Marks of Broughton.
The 24-year- old Old Etonian read politics, philosophy and economics at Balliol before becoming a visiting scholar at Harvard. In college, Michael held a curious position which involved looking after Matilda, the 17-year-old college tortoise. When Matilda died, he was ordered to eat a whole lettuce as punishment.
After graduation, he worked for blue-blooded bank Rothschild but this year joined Robertson Robey Associates. His father Simon, 53, the 3rd Baron, also studied at Eton and Balliol. His South African- born mother Marion is a ceramics restorer.
JAMES TILNEY
HE studied chemistry at Lincoln College but, after securing an internship with one of the world’s leading hedge funds, he decided to pursue a career in finance. On graduation, he took a job at global investment bank Jefferies & Co. But last year he was poached by Italian banker Corrado Scian, a former Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase executive, who employed him to take charge of business development at his new investment management company Glider Trading.
CASSIUS MARCELLUS CORNELIUS CLAY
BORN in Massachusetts into the Clay business dynasty, 6ft 5in Cassius was invited to join the Bullingdon Club despite attending Oxford for only two terms as part of his history of art studies at Yale – where he gained a reputation as an imposing cravatwearing figure who carried a pocket watch and $5,000 Hermes Birkin bag. During his second year at Yale he took a leave of absence after Kanye West invited him to become his right-hand man. Cassius was described in the press as the rapper’s stylist, but said he was uncomfortable with the term, stating: ‘The word risks either oversimplifying fashion’s broader significance to identity and aesthetics, or somehow glorifying dressing up as some glamorous veneer du jour.’
The 22-year- old was a member of the infamous Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Yale – the closest American equivalent to Bullingdon. It has produced five US presidents, including both Bushes, but was banned after video footage of an initiation involving songs about necrophilia and sex acts was posted online. A direct descendent of slavery abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay, after whom the boxer Muhammad Ali was originally named, he will start a postgraduate degree at Cambridge in October.
NICHOLAS GREEN
WHILE reading engineering at University College, the Old Etonian was led away by police in handcuffs – wearing his Bullingdon Club tailcoat – following an alleged serious assault on a fellow student in a row over a girl, but was not arrested or charged.
The 24-year-old, a friend of Princess Beatrice, was featured in Tatler’s list of 200 ‘sexiest singles’ in 2009. He now works for a mining company in Johannesburg. His stepfather, Patrick Quirk, is thought to be a mining tycoon in Zimbabwe. Green’s Facebook page at one stage showed apparent support for an anti-Obama group – as well as a seemingly sexist group calling itself ‘The awkwardness when a woman doesn’t choose the iron in a game of Monopoly’.
TIMOTHY ALDERSLEY
THE 24-year- old shared a student
house with Nick Green while he read physics at University College. He appeared in a student production of Alan Bennett’s comedy The Madness of George III and was described as ‘suitably raffish’ in the role of king-hating radical Charles James Fox. He now works on the mining investment team at RK Capital Management, the hedge fund owned by George Farmer’s father.
CHARLES CLEGG
WHILE many students have to make do with college digs, the Exeter College undergraduate was able to buy a flat in the centre of Oxford which he later sold for £420,000. The the 26-year- old economics and management graduate has followed his investment banker father Christopher into finance and works at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. His mother, Jane Morris, is an interior designer who runs a shop in Knightsbridge.
Since returning from the South Africa shoot, he has changed his Facebook profile picture to one of him brandishing a gun.
ALEXANDER ‘ALICK’ DRU
A DESCENDANT of the 4th Earl of Carnarvon, the Old Etonian, 21, is in the final year of his history degree but has already started to map out a career in finance – he took an internship with Paris-based HMG Finance last year. His father Auberon, 61, and mother Catherine, 53, own a firewood business. His Facebook page shows him with a double-barrelled shotgun.
GEORGE FARMER
ACCORDING to friends, George boasted that he once flew all his Bullingdon Club peers to Bordeaux on a private jet owned by his father, Tory Party co-treasurer and donor Michael Farmer. He went to St Paul’s – George Osborne’s old school – then read theology at St Peter’s and was social secretary of the Oxford University Conservative Association.
OUCA became embroiled in scandal and was barred by the university after candidates for election to its committee were asked to tell the most racist joke they knew and name their ‘least favourite minority’. George was not present but his father – a hedge fund founder who is currently 522 on the Sunday Times Rich List with a worth of around £150million – helped bail out OUCA and also funded George’s Bullingdon membership.
George was club president during his final term. The 23-year- old is now an investment banker with Jefferies & Co. His Facebook page includes a picture of him and Nick Green with Boris Johnson at a Conservative Party fundraiser.