A degree in decadence: The Oxbridge student clubs that make Cameron's Bullingdon chums look like the Girl GuidesCurry-throwing, vomit- ing, broken glass, incoherent drunkenness and the parading of a newly elected captain of boats naked around a city centre super- market. Ah! What happy memories it all brings back of my undergraduate days at Oxford. Yes, I know. It’s disgusting, it’s inexcusable, it’s the very last thing one might hope for in the supposed brightest and best of their generation. Nonetheless, reading a recent selection of discipline reports from 15 Oxbridge colleges — newly released under Freedom of Information legislation — I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of nostalgia about the days when I, too, yearned to be a dissolute member of an infamous Oxford drinking club. Ideally, I would have liked to join my contemporaries, Boris Johnson and David Cameron, in the Bullingdon Club, but the Buller — as it’s known — wouldn’t have me. (I got terribly excited one evening when they turned up at my house to initiate a new member. But it turned out the room they’d come to trash — part of the initiation process — belonged to my more socially acceptable flatmate, Ewen.) Instead, I found a less glamorous group of reprobates to join. Every Oxbridge college has at least one. Most have several — women-only ones as well as all-male ones. Traditions and rituals vary, from drinking club to drinking club, but the aim is always the same: to get heinously drunk, to behave quite appallingly and to show that the spirit of Evelyn Waugh’s Bright Young Things did not die with the Vile Bodies and Brideshead Revisited. Here are a few of the contenders for the title of Oxbridge’s most debauched drinking club. CAMBRIDGE THE WYVERNS (aka The Gentleman Wyverns of Magdalene College) WHO? Cambridge’s most notorious drinking society. Open only to members of Magdalene who have played in at least two college sports teams. Their dark blue tie with a gold wyvern (a legendary winged creature) emblem is believed by members to exert magical powers over members of the opposite sex. (It doesn’t.) DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: First class. Initiation: Students participate in a drinking club initiation ceremony during 'Suicide Sunday' organised by the Wyverns drinking society during the University of Cambridge May Week Initiation: Students participate in an initiation ceremony during 'Suicide Sunday' organised by the Wyverns drinking society during the University of Cambridge May Week INITIATION CEREMONY: In a small room lined with plastic sheeting and wheelie bins, initiates must spend an afternoon and evening consuming a 24-course meal of ostentatiously disgusting delicacies. These can include raw leeks, sheeps’ eyeballs, pigs snouts in wasabi sauce, raw squid and live goldfish that should — ideally — be regurgitated alive. OTHER TRADITIONS: Banned from the city centre, their infamous garden party on so-called ‘Suicide Sunday’ — the last day before exam results are published — has to be held out of town, where attractions include semi-naked female ‘jelly-wrestling’ in a paddling pool full of, er, jelly. If members are in the college bar when the Seventies song Tiger Feet by Mud is played, tradition stipulates that by the end of the song they must have downed their drink and removed all their clothing. THE PITT CLUB FOUNDED: 1835, in honour of Pitt the Younger. WHO? Still mainly public schoolboys, drawn by its traditions, exclusivity and old-fashioned club-house in rooms above Pizza Express. Former members include Edward VII and George V; economist John Maynard Keynes; spies Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt; and TV presenter David Frost. Dotty: A Cambridge University drinking game sees a girl covered in clingfilm whilst she downs her beverage Dotty: A Cambridge University drinking game sees a girl covered in clingfilm whilst she downs her beverage DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: 2:2. Depravity is not encouraged, but vulgar displays of wealth are. Quattro formaggi pizzas are washed down with magnums of champagne. Drunkenly propositioning the Pizza Express waitresses at the end of the evening is almost mandatory. INITIATION CEREMONY: Having been to the right sort of school; having a bottomless wallet. BEEFSTEAK CLUB WHO? Mainly for young men who wish they could join the Bullingdon but can’t because they’re at Cambridge, not Oxford. DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: 2:1. INITIATION CEREMONY: Members are treated to a lavish seven-course dinner, each dish accompanied with a full bottle of wine. The meal is served in a room with a tarpaulin covering every surface to avoid damage to the property. FERRETZ WHO? A men’s drinking club originally limited to Cambridge rugby players, but now open to any male university member of an aggressively bibulous disposition. DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: First class. INITIATION CEREMONY: Consuming an initial 80 units of alcohol, beginning with a bottle of gin and finishing with a bottle of port consumed through a condom. ‘You have to bite the condom. If you bite too much and spill the port you have to do it again.’ OTHER TRADITIONS: Lying under a keg of beer and drinking until you vomit; stripping naked and covering your private parts in ultra-spicy Dave’s Insanity sauce; drinking tequila from 10am until you drop. Most initiates end up in hospital or jail. High-class fun: A party organised by Cambridge's Newnham College Drinking Society, the Newnham Nuns famous for jelly wrestling and initiations involving eating cream off topless men High-class fun: A party organised by Cambridge's Newnham Nuns, famous for jelly wrestling and initiations involving eating cream off topless men GENTLEMEN PATRICIANS WHO? Gentlemen who love to booze, but aren’t necessarily great sportsmen. (Though cricketer Michael Atherton was reportedly a member). All-male, Downing College drinking society. DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: 2:1. INITIATION CEREMONY: Drinking a minimum of eight pints in two hours (known as the ‘eight before eight’.) The more pints downed, the greater the kudos. ‘Any less than 11 is pretty weak.’ OTHER TRADITIONS: No fancy rituals — just more drinking. One member woke to find himself in France having somehow clambered aboard the Eurostar; another tried to walk across the roof-tops from Downing College to the town centre. THE MISFITS WHO? All-female club founded in the Eighties. ‘We are nice young ladies who get together dressed as schoolgirls for the purpose of dining with the pick of the university’s buffest sportsmen.’ DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: 2:2. INITIATION CEREMONY: Only the president is initiated and rituals are tailor-made by their predecessor. They involve alcohol, a little humiliation and some degree of skill. For example, the last initiation was to consume an entire raw cabbage and three pints of ale within three minutes.’ Not very nun-like: Members of the Newnham Nuns at Newnham college are known to indulge in to odd jelly wrestling tournament Not very nun-like: Members of the Newnham Nuns at Newnham college are known to indulge in to odd jelly wrestling tournament NEWNHAM NUNS WHO? Open to girls at Newnham College. DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: Third. INITIATION CEREMONY: Eating liquorice held in a man’s teeth — the girl then kisses him when she reaches his lips. Next, a topless man covered in whipped cream and chocolate buttons must be cleaned by the girl using her mouth. Finally, girls must put a condom on a banana, again using only their mouths. OTHER TRADITIONS: Though probably no more debauched than any other Cambridge college, Newnham did acquire a reputation when, two years ago, the college authorities issued a memo urging undergraduates to be more discreet with their nocturnal activities because the walls were ‘very thin’. Also known to indulge in a spot of jelly-wrestling. OXFORD THE BULLINGDON (aka the Buller) FOUNDED: 1780. WHO? Plutocrats, aristocrats, would-be world leaders from the richest homes and finest public schools, desperate for the chance to sport the distinctive £3,500 Bullingdon tailcoat and follow in the footsteps of such alumni as Edward VII, David Dimbleby, Boris Johnson, George Osborne and David Cameron. DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: 2:1. Apart from the two notorious occasions in 1894 and 1927 when its members smashed almost every window in Peckwater Quad, Christ Church, Buller members are not quite the worst. Bullers: A picture of the 1993 Bullingdon Club which included Chancellor George Osborne (far left) Bullers: A picture of the 1993 Bullingdon Club which included Chancellor George Osborne (far left) INITIATION CEREMONY: On election to the Buller, an initiate’s rooms and possessions are ritually destroyed by his fellow members. OTHER TRADITIONS: Members are famously discreet about their antics and are rich enough to buy — in cash — the silence of those dining establishments they damage during their riotous evenings. Wild thing: Hugh Grant at the annual Piers Gaveston Ball in 1983 Wild thing: Hugh Grant at the annual Piers Gaveston Ball in 1983 PIERS GAVESTON FOUNDED — though they would rather you didn’t know it — as recently as 1977. WHO? Poseurs, homosexuals, pretend homosexuals, exquisites, degenerates. And also actor Hugh Grant, Rory Stewart MP, banker Nat Rothschild, Tom Parker Bowles. Its Latin motto ‘Fane non memini ne audisse unum alterum ita dilixisse’ roughly translates as: ‘Truly, none remember hearing of a man enjoying another so much.’ DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: First class on a good day, though some observers have found its attempts at decadence a little strained and self-conscious. INITIATION CEREMONY: Named after Edward II’s court favourite and lover, the club organises Bacchanalian parties at grand country mansions fuelled by champagne, caviar and illegal drugs. Excess, high camp, ostentatious decadence and public copulation are encouraged. But in practice only a minority really go for it. GRIDIRON CLUB FOUNDED: 1884. WHO? Public schoolboys, mainly, determined to behave like crusty old men in a miniature version of a London gentleman’s club. Alumni include John Le Carre, the Marquess of Bath, Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski and David Cameron (president in 1987). DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: Ordinary (that’s what you get if you’re too dull even to pick up a Third). INITIATION CEREMONY: None. You are put up for membership by a proposer and seconder (just like in a gentleman’s club) and if no one blackballs you, then you’re in. Very civilised. Leopardskin and chains: Actor Hugh Grant and a female friend dressed up for debauchery Leopardskin and chains: Actor Hugh Grant and a female friend dressed up for debauchery BEER VEDGE WHO? Men-only drinking society for members of Christ Church (aka the House; aka the ‘Hice’). Not as smart as Christ Church’s poshest drinking society, the Loder. DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: 2:2. INITIATION CEREMONY: None. The only requirement is to be able to drink five pints of beer — usually while playing drinking games — followed by five tequila slammers without vomiting. Ed Ball's plastic breasts: The future MP, who then liked to be known as Eddie, admires a friend's plastic chests, left and wearing a Nazi uniform, right Ed Ball's plastic breasts: The future MP, who then liked to be known as Eddie, admires a friend's plastic chests, left and wearing a Nazi uniform, right Ed Ball's plastic breasts: The future MP, who then liked to be known as Eddie, admires a friend's plastic chests, left and wearing a Nazi uniform, right STEAMERS WHO? A now defunct Keble College drinking club founded by shadow chancellor Ed Balls. DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: 2:2. INITIATION CEREMONY: Unclear, though there is an incriminating photo of Balls in Nazi uniform staring at the crotch of a fellow student wearing comedy plastic buttocks. PENGUINS FOUNDED: 2009. WHO? A male drinking society open to members of Hertford College. Maroon tie with penguin logo. DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: 2:1. INITIATION CEREMONY: Eating raw squid; running naked round the university smeared in goose fat. In 2009, 15 members were suspended after private emails were publicised by a whistleblower. These contained a ‘list of fitties’ (the most attractive girls) they planned to invite to a dinner; a girl’s photo with the ungallant message ‘Only if we’re desperate’; and the memo: ‘Buy condoms.’

Curry-throwing, vomit- ing, broken glass, incoherent drunkenness and the parading of a newly elected captain of boats naked around a city centre super- market. Ah! What happy memories it all brings back of my undergraduate days at Oxford.
Yes, I know. It’s disgusting, it’s inexcusable, it’s the very last thing one might hope for in the supposed brightest and best of their generation.
Nonetheless, reading a recent selection of discipline reports from 15 Oxbridge colleges — newly released under Freedom of Information legislation — I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of nostalgia about the days when I, too, yearned to be a dissolute member of an infamous Oxford drinking club.
Ideally, I would have liked to join my contemporaries, Boris Johnson and David Cameron, in the Bullingdon Club, but the Buller — as it’s known — wouldn’t have me. (I got terribly excited one evening when they turned up at my house to initiate a new member. But it turned out the room they’d come to trash — part of the initiation process — belonged to my more socially acceptable flatmate, Ewen.)
Instead, I found a less glamorous group of reprobates to join. Every Oxbridge college has at least one. Most have several — women-only ones as well as all-male ones.
Traditions and rituals vary, from drinking club to drinking club, but the aim is always the same: to get heinously drunk, to behave quite appallingly and to show that the spirit of Evelyn Waugh’s Bright Young Things did not die with the Vile Bodies and Brideshead Revisited.
Here are a few of the contenders for the title of Oxbridge’s most debauched drinking club.

CAMBRIDGE

THE WYVERNS (aka The Gentleman Wyverns of Magdalene College)
WHO? Cambridge’s most notorious drinking society. Open only to members of Magdalene who have played in at least two college sports teams.
Their dark blue tie with a gold wyvern (a legendary winged creature) emblem is believed by members to exert magical powers over members of the opposite sex. (It doesn’t.)
DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: First class.

 

Initiation: Students participate in an initiation ceremony during 'Suicide Sunday' organised by the Wyverns drinking society during the University of Cambridge May Week

INITIATION CEREMONY: In a small room lined with plastic sheeting and wheelie bins, initiates must spend an afternoon and evening consuming a 24-course meal of ostentatiously disgusting delicacies.
These can include raw leeks, sheeps’ eyeballs, pigs snouts in wasabi sauce, raw squid and live goldfish that should — ideally — be regurgitated alive.
OTHER TRADITIONS: Banned from the city centre, their infamous garden party on so-called ‘Suicide Sunday’ — the last day before exam results are published — has to be held out of town, where attractions include semi-naked female ‘jelly-wrestling’ in a paddling pool full of, er, jelly.
If members are in the college bar when the Seventies song Tiger Feet by Mud is played, tradition stipulates that by the end of the song they must have downed their drink and removed all their clothing.

 

THE PITT CLUB
FOUNDED: 1835, in honour of Pitt the Younger.
WHO? Still mainly public schoolboys, drawn by its traditions, exclusivity and old-fashioned club-house in rooms above Pizza Express.
Former members include Edward VII and George V; economist John Maynard Keynes; spies Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt; and TV presenter David Frost.

Dotty: A Cambridge University drinking game sees a girl covered in clingfilm whilst she downs her beverage

DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: 2:2. Depravity is not encouraged, but vulgar displays of wealth are. Quattro formaggi pizzas are washed down with magnums of champagne.
Drunkenly propositioning the Pizza Express waitresses at the end of the evening is almost mandatory.
INITIATION CEREMONY: Having been to the right sort of school; having a bottomless wallet.
BEEFSTEAK CLUB
WHO? Mainly for young men who wish they could join the Bullingdon but can’t because they’re at Cambridge, not Oxford.
DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: 2:1.
INITIATION CEREMONY: Members are treated to a lavish seven-course dinner, each dish accompanied with a full bottle of wine.
The meal is served in a room with a tarpaulin covering every surface to avoid damage to the property.
FERRETZ
WHO? A men’s drinking club originally limited to Cambridge rugby players, but now open to any male university member of an aggressively bibulous disposition.
DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: First class.
INITIATION CEREMONY: Consuming an initial 80 units of alcohol, beginning with a bottle of gin and finishing with a bottle of port consumed through a condom. ‘You have to bite the condom. If you bite too much and spill the port you have to do it again.’
OTHER TRADITIONS: Lying under a keg of beer and drinking until you vomit; stripping naked and covering your private parts in ultra-spicy Dave’s Insanity sauce; drinking tequila from 10am until you drop. Most initiates end up in hospital or jail.

 

High-class fun: A party organised by Cambridge's Newnham Nuns, famous for jelly wrestling and initiations involving eating cream off topless men

GENTLEMEN PATRICIANS
WHO? Gentlemen who love to booze, but aren’t necessarily great sportsmen. (Though cricketer Michael Atherton was reportedly  a member). All-male, Downing College drinking society.
DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY:  2:1.
INITIATION CEREMONY: Drinking a minimum of eight pints in two hours (known as the ‘eight before eight’.) The more pints downed, the greater the kudos. ‘Any less than 11 is pretty weak.’
OTHER TRADITIONS: No fancy rituals — just more drinking. One member woke to find himself in France having somehow clambered aboard the Eurostar; another tried to walk across the roof-tops from Downing College to the town centre.
THE MISFITS
WHO? All-female club founded in the Eighties. ‘We are nice young ladies who get together dressed as schoolgirls for the purpose of dining with the pick of the university’s buffest sportsmen.’
DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: 2:2.
INITIATION CEREMONY: Only the president is initiated and rituals are tailor-made by their predecessor. They involve alcohol, a little humiliation and some degree of skill.
For example, the last initiation was to consume an entire raw cabbage and three pints of ale within three minutes.’

 

Not very nun-like: Members of the Newnham Nuns at Newnham college are known to indulge in to odd jelly wrestling tournament

 

NEWNHAM NUNS
WHO? Open to girls at Newnham College.
DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: Third.
INITIATION CEREMONY: Eating liquorice held in a man’s teeth — the girl then kisses him when she reaches his lips. Next, a topless man covered in whipped cream and chocolate buttons must be cleaned by the girl using her mouth. Finally, girls must put a condom on a banana, again using only their mouths.
OTHER TRADITIONS: Though probably no more debauched than any other Cambridge college, Newnham did acquire a reputation when, two years ago, the college authorities issued a memo urging undergraduates to be more discreet with their nocturnal activities because the walls were ‘very thin’. Also known to indulge in a spot of jelly-wrestling.

 

OXFORD

THE BULLINGDON (aka the Buller)
FOUNDED: 1780.
WHO? Plutocrats, aristocrats, would-be world leaders from the richest homes and finest public schools, desperate for the chance to sport the distinctive £3,500 Bullingdon tailcoat and follow in the footsteps of such alumni as Edward VII, David Dimbleby, Boris Johnson, George Osborne and David Cameron.
DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: 2:1. Apart from the two notorious occasions in 1894 and 1927 when its members smashed almost every window in Peckwater Quad, Christ Church, Buller members are not quite the worst.

 

Bullers: A picture of the 1993 Bullingdon Club which included Chancellor George Osborne (far left)

INITIATION CEREMONY: On election to the Buller, an initiate’s rooms and possessions are ritually destroyed by his fellow members.
OTHER TRADITIONS: Members are famously discreet about their antics and are rich enough to buy — in cash — the silence of those dining establishments they damage during their riotous evenings.

Wild thing: Hugh Grant at the annual Piers Gaveston Ball in 1983

PIERS GAVESTON
FOUNDED — though they would rather you didn’t know it — as recently as 1977.
WHO? Poseurs, homosexuals, pretend homosexuals, exquisites, degenerates. And also actor Hugh Grant, Rory Stewart MP, banker Nat Rothschild, Tom Parker Bowles.
Its Latin motto ‘Fane non memini ne audisse unum alterum ita dilixisse’ roughly translates as: ‘Truly, none remember hearing of a man enjoying another so much.’
DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: First class on a good day, though some observers have found its attempts at decadence a little strained and self-conscious.
INITIATION CEREMONY: Named after Edward II’s court favourite and lover, the club organises Bacchanalian parties at grand country mansions fuelled by champagne, caviar and illegal drugs.
Excess, high camp, ostentatious decadence and public copulation are encouraged. But in practice only a minority really go for it.
GRIDIRON CLUB
FOUNDED: 1884.
WHO? Public schoolboys, mainly, determined to behave like crusty old men in a miniature version of a London gentleman’s club. Alumni include John Le Carre, the Marquess of Bath, Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski and David Cameron (president in 1987).
DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: Ordinary (that’s what you get if you’re too dull even to pick up a Third).
INITIATION CEREMONY: None. You are put up for membership by a proposer and seconder (just like in a gentleman’s club) and if no one blackballs you, then you’re in. Very civilised.

 

Leopardskin and chains: Actor Hugh Grant and a female friend dressed up for debauchery

BEER VEDGE
WHO? Men-only drinking society for members of Christ Church (aka the House; aka the ‘Hice’). Not as smart as Christ Church’s poshest drinking society, the Loder.
DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: 2:2.
INITIATION CEREMONY: None. The only requirement is to be able to drink five pints of beer — usually while playing drinking games — followed by five tequila slammers without vomiting.

 

 

Ed Ball's plastic breasts: The future MP, who then liked to be known as Eddie, admires a friend's plastic chests, left and wearing a Nazi uniform, right

STEAMERS
WHO? A now defunct Keble College drinking club founded by shadow chancellor Ed Balls.
DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: 2:2.
INITIATION CEREMONY: Unclear, though there is an incriminating photo of Balls in Nazi uniform staring at the crotch of a fellow student wearing comedy plastic buttocks.
PENGUINS
FOUNDED: 2009.
WHO? A male drinking society open to members of Hertford College. Maroon tie with penguin logo.
DEGREE OF DEPRAVITY: 2:1.
INITIATION CEREMONY: Eating raw squid; running naked round the university smeared in goose fat. In 2009, 15 members were suspended after private emails were publicised by a whistleblower.
These contained a ‘list of fitties’ (the most attractive girls) they planned to invite to a dinner; a girl’s photo with the ungallant message ‘Only if we’re desperate’; and the memo: ‘Buy condoms.’