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Bullingdon revisited for Boris and Dave
Ross Lydall02.10.09
They are destined to become the Blair and Brown of their generation.
Boris Johnson and David Cameron have been contemporaries since Eton, and rivals since Oxford.
Now, with Mr Cameron on the verge of becoming Prime Minister and Mr Johnson in the ascendancy as London Mayor, their complex relationship and overlapping but contrasting ascent to power can be seen in a fascinating, hilarious and mischievous drama-documentary to be shown next week.
It mixes cod acting - some of their more notorious student antics that resulted from membership of the Bullingdon Club are imagined by the programme writers - with astute commentary from both men's biographers, and first-hand evidence from their Oxford contemporaries.
It shows how Mr Cameron was caught with a cannabis joint but avoided punishment in a drugs bust while at Eton that resulted in the immediate expulsion of seven of his contemporaries. But it avoids any sense that Mr Cameron has dabbled in harder drugs.
It also dramatises the occasion when Mr Johnson and other Bullingdon Club members at Oxford spent the night in police cells after a plant pot was thrown through a restaurant window.
This shows a drunk Mr Johnson, played by Christian Brassington, attempting to escape the police by crawling through a hedge, ending up flat on his back and trying unsuccessfully to take himself off home. By contrast, Mr Cameron is seen lurking in the shadows, having smartly left before the behaviour deteriorated.
The programme also quotes for the first time a Bullingdon member breaking its "code of silence" to talk about an infamous photograph of 10 club members - including the future Tory leader and Tory Mayor of London - in their dinner suits.
Asked if Mr Cameron should be embarrassed by the image, which has since been withdrawn from circulation, Ralph Perry-Robinson said it was "sexy" and added: "People who were in it were considered to be important. There is a certain amount of swagger which at that age is something that is interesting."
He added: "The photograph is an interesting artefact historically. I probably spent about 20-odd years getting over it. To see it resurfacing just as I am becoming moderately mature was a little bit of an upsetting incident."
The 90-minute programme contrasts hilarious footage of a bungling Mr Johnson, from forgetting his lines playing Richard III as an Eton schoolboy to posing as Churchill and getting girlfriends to do his laundry, to a much more controlled Mr Cameron, who is shown playing air guitar to Smiths records while wearing tennis whites.
Novelist Toby Young, an Oxford contemporary who part-wrote the script, says: "In a sense, it's David Cameron's Achilles heel, the Bullingdon. It is something he is acutely embarrassed about and refuses to discuss if he is given any choice."
Young said Mr Johnson had far greater "intellectual candle power" and added: "Boris must be driven insane with envy when he sees Dave reaping all the rewards that he thinks rightfully should be his."
