Quote:Andrew Gimson, biographer of Boris Johnson, reported about the club in the 1980s: "I don't think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash. [...] A night in the cells would be regarded as being par for a Buller man and so would debagging anyone who really attracted the irritation of the Buller men."

Quote:Who doctored the toffs?
I bring you the Mystery of the Missing Toff. Who is doctoring pictures of the Bullingdon Club? And why?

By a mysterious process, almost all photographs of this unlovely society for rich, young drunkards have now been suppressed, which suits David Cameron very well, since he is in so many of them, looking so very rich and arrogant. I have seen them.


Two faces are mysteriously missing from this picture of the Bullingdon Club

But last week a new study of the lads appeared, featuring George Osborne and his (now former) friend Nat Rothschild. To the left of the middle, there’s a mysterious gap where somebody ought to be standing but isn’t. Odder still, there’s a patch of shirt-front and waistcoat there, with no person attached.
Odder yet, Mr Rothschild’s right trouser leg has a white lapel, not usual even under the bizarre dress code of the Bullingdon.

On close examination, the three seated figures at the front appear to have been stuck in place after being moved from somewhere else.
If you know what’s going on, please let me know.

Quote:PROVOKATEUR

Bully for you

Time that Provokateur stopped harking on about itself and used the power of Blog for the forces of good, evil and general mischief.

Where better to start than by ensuring that David Cameron’s happy days at the Bullingdon Club are fondly remembered by all. Aaaah, those were the days. £1,200 tails, buckets of champagne and a rather fine sneer known only to the Ruling Class. If you listen closely, you can just about hear their braying ‘haw haws’.

Be afraid! One of these men could be the next Prime Minister. God help us.

Oh, and if are interested, here’s the names of this bunch of splendid chinless wonders.

1) Sebastian Grigg

2) David Cameron

3) Ralph Perry Robinson

4) Ewen Fergusson

5) Matthew Benson

6) Sebastian James

7) Jonathan Ford

Boris Johnson

9) Harry Eastwood

Can’t see any of this lot wanting to ‘hug a hoodie’.

Quote:During the melee the group had claimed they were members of the Bullingdon Club, a notorious secret drinking society made up of some of Oxford University's wealthiest undergraduates.

The 100-year-old club, whose previous members have included such hellraisers as Lord Bath, Darius Guppy, Earl Spencer's best man, and the diarist Alan Clark, has a history of drunken vandalism.

Quote:HOW ROYALS, ARISTOS AND TARTS FELL UNDER THE SPELL OF ...

SOCIALITE fraudster Darius Guppy had all life's privileges - money, good looks and a brilliant brain.

He was also close pals with Princess Diana's brother Earl Spencer, even standing as best man at the young aristocrat's 1989 wedding.

But there was one fatal flaw in the Old Etonian's make-up. He found trying to make an honest living boring.

Instead he had the arrogance to believe he could commit the perfect crime and get away with it.

Even after his arrest, and in the face of overwhelming evidence, he was convinced he could fool a jury - just like he had fooled New York police and insurers Lloyds of London.

A friend said: '"Darius wanted to go against the odds to see if he could win.""

He planned his spectacular sting after setting up a jewellery business called Inca Gemstones in 1988 with business partner and former school mate Dominic Marsh.

Champagne

The pair jetted to New York in March 1990 where they told police they had been being "robbed" of precious stones in their hotel room.

In fact, the gems were safely tucked away in a secret deposit box somewhere in the Big Apple. Guppy and Marsh drank champagne before staging the faked hold- up. Then accomplice Peter Risdon fired a shot into a mattress before tying them both up in the bathroom and leaving the room's safe door open.

In what was described as a ""brilliant performance"', Guppy was discovered by hotel staff "sobbing like a baby.

The pair then convinced street-wise New York police they had been robbed by two masked raiders. Within five weeks, they had a cheque from Lloyds for pounds 1.8million.

Meanwhile they had flown back to New York to pick up the gems they claimed were stolen.

Only greed brought Guppy's downfall which ended with him and Marsh being jailed for five years in 1993.

Risdon was paid pounds 10,000 to carry out the "theft" and angrily confronted Guppy when he realised the huge scale of the sting.

Guppy's attitude infuriated Risdon who later went to police and turned prosecution witness.

Raising

Believing himself invincible, Guppy also tried to sell the stones in London's Hatton Garden while they were still 'hot, raising the suspicions of a jeweller.

In addition to jailing Guppy, Judge Andrew Brooks also fined him pounds 533,000 for conspiracy to steal - later changed to a compensation order.

Marsh handed over money but Guppy did not. The judge said he believed Guppy still had access to " ill-gotten gains" even though the fallen businessman denied it.

Judge Brooks told him: ""I take the clear view you should not profit from your acts."

But Guppy was freed from jail in February this year after a mystery benefactor paid pounds 156,000 to Lloyds.

Guppy, who declared himself bankrupt in 1994, was let out of Ford Open Prison late at night to be re-united with wife Patricia, 29, and two-year-old daughter Isabella. Patricia was carrying the child when her husband was convicted.

Her background couldn't have been more different from Guppy's privileged upbringing.

He is the son of writer and explorer Nicholas Guppy His mother Shusha was an Iranian folk singer and writer who had influential pals in the "Chelsea Set".

But Guppy's parents split after 12 years together and his mother sang in clubs to help pay his school fees.

Patricia, maiden name Holder, was born into a working class family in Sunderland and married at 18, divorcing two years later. The beautiful blonde worked as a presser in a clothing factory where she told a colleague she felt there must be more to life than a dead-end job.

Patricia uprooted to London in 1989 and met Guppy at trendy Soho club Groucho's. While he awaited trial, she was mixing with vice queen Zoe Bowman who was running an escort agency.

Bowman charged distinguished clients up to pounds 1,000 a night for high-class hookers on the books of her agency, named Diplomat.

Bowman, who claimed Guppy knew about her business, did not work as a prostitute herself but hand-picked girls and fixed up appointments.

Charming

The London Madam had been a guest at Patricia's society wedding to Guppy in July 1991 and her daughter Natasha, eight, was a bridesmaid.

Bowman rubbed shoulders with Princess Di, Earl Spencer and his wife Victoria at the wedding.

Later she said: "I chatted to all the guests and found them charming, especially Earl Spencer and his wife, who of course had no idea what I did for a living.""

Patricia blamed the stress of waiting for the trial for the loss of one twin she was expecting.

At this point, Princess Di's brother was a great help to the Guppys, lodging pounds 250,000 surety to keep him out of jail as he awaited trail.

The Earl also promised to look after Patricia and the surviving baby while his pal did his time.

Guppy had befriended Earl Spencer, then young Charlie Althorp, when they were at Eton and then Oxford together.

It was said Guppy harboured a secret and unfulfilled infatuation for his friend's sister, Princess Diana.

When Guppy was finally put behind bars, he whined that he had been hard- done-by.

In an interview with Hello! magazine sold for a reported pounds 75,000 he moaned about missing the birth of Isabella and watching her grow up.

It was certainly a far cry from his days at Oxford when Guppy swanned around the cloisters in spats, a waistcoat and monocle, introducing himself at parties as 'published poet and socialite".

He belonged to outrageous student societies which required members to have pounds 10,000 available to cover damages at binges where one meal included half a hippopotamus. Guppy also founded the Ranulph Flambard Society, a drinking club named after an alcoholic, homosexual bishop.

But he graduated from Magdalen College with the joint top honours degree in his year for modern history and French.

He tried his hand at various banking jobs but kept on being sacked because he refused to do jobs he thought beneath him, like photocopying.

Blasting

Before his arrest, he would cruise London's most fashionable spots in his black Mercedes, with the James Bond theme blasting from his stereo.

The pounds 1.8million proceeds of the robbery have never been found. He claims he handed them to a Middle Eastern businessman named only as Mr X.

Only last month he gave a newspaper a self-serving version of his prison "ordeal" and future plans.

It made no reference to a proposed career in video piracy.

Quote:The revenge of deadly Darius
by FIONA BARTON

Last updated at 21:55 18 August 2006

Smeared with blood and sweat, the two men grappled and thrashed around. The taller man groaned in pain from a fractured cheekbone and injuries to his ribs and nose as his attacker savagely kicked and punched him like someone possessed.

As the violence escalated, three young children watched and cheered their father from the windows of their home.

The son and three daughters of the other man could only look on in dumb horror as their father was battered into submission. It was an extraordinary and shocking scene. But all the more shocking given the identities of the combatants.

This bloody confrontation was between the brother of Princess Diana, Earl Spencer, and his best friend, the convicted fraudster Darius Guppy. Guppy, who emerged the victor from the brawl, had deliberately lured his former friend, who had been his best man and provided £250,000 bail after his arrest, to his South African home for a showdown.

At stake was the honour of the wife Guppy adores and a bizarre accusation of treachery dating from more than a decade ago.

Spencer's 'crime' - an allegation vehemently denied by the Earl - was to have attempted to seduce Guppy's wife Patricia while his friend was languishing behind bars. It was a betrayal that Guppy, who has known Spencer since they were 13-year-old Eton schoolboys, insisted required extreme retribution.

Revenge has always been a dish relished by the disgraced Old Etonian. According to his old friend, Tory higher education spokesman Boris Johnson, he lives by the 'Homeric code of honour, loyalty and revenge'.

Indeed, as we shall see, it was his thirst for revenge that led to Guppy being jailed in 1993 for staging a faked jewel robbery and fraudulently claiming £1.8 million from insurers.

But it was thought that Guppy's wild days were over when he emerged from prison, having served half his five-year sentence. He declared himself keen to start a new life with his family away from the public gaze, first in Ireland and then in South Africa.

So how does Guppy live today? Where does he make his money?

Intriguingly, a Mail investigation has discovered that while he has an affluent lifestyle - including a mansion with swimming pool, international travel and shark-diving with friends - he has literally disappeared as far as officialdom is concerned.

He has no bank account in South Africa, no property or business under his name nor any registration with the tax authorities.

And he would have remained in the shadows but for the emergence last week of his act of vengeance when Guppy raised his patrician profile above the parapet to punish one of his closest and best-known friends.

But what was it that drove him to punish Charles Spencer?

Patricia Guppy, a pretty, delicate blonde from Sunderland, who once ran an escort agency, is understood to have kept the alleged incident that sparked Guppy's fury secret for more than a decade because she did not wish to upset her husband.

At the time, with her husband just starting his jail sentence, she was living on Spencer's Althorp estate in Northamptonshire.

Having turned down his sister Diana's request for permission to reside in the Garden House at Althorp, the Earl instead offered the house to Patricia and her toddler daughter, who was born shortly after Guppy's incarceration.
Friends of Guppy claim that while she was there - and later when she
for a face-to-face meeting came a month later when Spencer was due to visit Cape Town for his birthday on May 20. Guppy, who had returned from a European business trip specifically to confront his friend, called Spencer on his mobile phone and said he believed his story, but wanted to hear it from him in person.

A wary Spencer, who had married his second wife Caroline 'Pidge' Freud in 2001, agreed to meet Darius in a public place, but his friend convinced him it would be better to keep it private and assured him he would be safe at his house.

Patricia Guppy was away at a spa for the weekend when the Earl arrived at the house at lunchtime on May 21.

According to friends of Guppy, Darius asked his friend for an explanation and the Earl insisted he had never made advances on Patricia. Guppy accused him of lying and began punching and kicking him on the lawn in front of his children, who are said to have been 'cheering from the window'.

The attack left Spencer with cuts to his nose, a black eye, concussion and a fractured cheek bone.

It ended only when the new husband of Spencer's ex-wife Victoria - who also lives in the area - climbed over the gates to the Guppy house after hearing the fight.

Called Jonathan Aitken, though no relation of the disgraced former Tory MP, he was accompanied by Spencer's four children from his first marriage who were appalled at what they witnessed. Aitken pulled Guppy off and took a battered Spencer home.

Two days later Darius is understood to have written to Spencer accusing him again of sexually harassing his wife. To make sure he added insult to injury, 'friends' of Guppy let Earl Spencer's humiliation become public by briefing journalists and offering to show them Guppy's letter to Spencer.

The Earl has made no comment about the allegations or the attack. But the dramatic rupture of his friendship with Guppy has astonished those who know them.

The two were inseparable at Oxford during their wildest excesses, they were each other's best man and Spencer housed Guppy and his family when he was released from prison.

But Guppy's acts of retribution are legendary. At university, he famously engaged in a feud with a landlord during which he made a six-hour
abusive phone call and pushed fireworks through his target's letterboxes.
Then, in 1990, there was the tabloid journalist who Guppy wanted to have beaten up (with the reluctant assistance of the bumbling Boris
Johnson, who agreed to help discover the writer's address) for probing into his background.

But perhaps his most famous vendetta - until this week - was against Lloyd's of London. Guppy, who was named after the Persian king Darius by his Iranian folk-singer mother, risked his place in top-drawer society by faking a jewel robbery in a New York hotel.

He and fellow Oxford graduate Ben Marsh hired a stooge to tie them up and shoot a pillow so they could claim £1.8 million insurance to avenge Guppy's father, who had lost all his money as a Lloyd's name.

It was Charles Spencer who congratulated Guppy on his wedding day for fulfilling his prediction that he would be a millionaire or in Wormwood Scrubs by the age of 30.

And it was Charles Spencer who was rewarded with thanks for his 'steadfast loyalty' in Guppy's lurid autobiography, Roll The Dice. But the bond between the two men has been shattered irrevocably by the violent scenes in the quiet Cape Town enclave of Constantia. The confrontation has also raised fresh questions about the mercurial Darius Guppy.

Since his release from Ford Open Prison in February 1996, he has kept a low profile (apart from painting a Georgian mansion he bought in County Tipperary an interesting shade of lilac) and sought to escape his notoriety. It is perhaps inevitable that he ended up in South Africa, a popular refuge for a number of former villains over the years.

The fraudster, his wife - a former factory worker turned model - their daughter and sons are now firmly ensconced in their new home, bought under his wife's name for £433,000 in October 2004.

The sprawling bungalow sits at the top of a steep drive and is obscured from view by trees and bushes in the landscaped gardens.

Compared with the fake chateaux and huge Spanish-style villas that surround them, the house is modest, but it has all the accoutrements of a luxury expat life with its tennis courts and large swimming pool. Discretion is guaranteed in the oldest and most prestigious of Cape Town's southern suburbs. The place exudes the easy ambience of old money. Guppy's neighbours include diplomats, rich businessmen and Cape Town's settler aristocracy; families who have owned land in the area for generations.

Locals speak of him as a rather menacing, egotistical man with an interest in martial arts and extreme pastimes such as diving with sharks. But he remains something of an enigma to them. And Guppy, 42, would like to keep it that way.

He and Patricia prefer to socialise with a small and close circle of British expatriates including Charles Spencer's ex-wife, Victoria, a reformed drug addict, and her new husband Jonathan, a former Dior male model.Until recently, Earl Spencer, who spends part of the year in Cape Town, was part of their close-knit group.

The aristocrat has a grand mansion set in formal gardens with a stunning glass atrium just 200 yards from the Guppys and close to the impressive house sold by Mark Thatcher for £1.5 million last year after his conviction for attempting to help finance a coup in Equatorial Guinea.

The views from the Guppys' house, across the mature woodland and pastures of Bel Ombre Meadow on the other side of the road to the wooded slopes of Table Mountain beyond, are spectacular.

At weekends, the Meadow is thick with joggers - including Patricia - and locals walking their dogs.

It is Patricia, who celebrated her 40th birthday last week, in particular who appears to have settled best into Constantia life.

A model 'yummy mummy', she is a familiar figure at the village shopping centre, with its Cape Dutch-style limewash buildings packed with restaurants, designer boutiques and coffee shops.

She is a regular at the Carlton Skin Care Centre, where Constantia housewives go for their facials, and at the local Virgin Active gym and Constantia tennis club, where her sixyearold twin sons have lessons.

The children are privately educated at schools where fees are a fraction of their British equivalents.

Annual fees at the all-boys prep school attended by the Guppy boys are between £1,000 and £2,500 for day pupils, rising to just under £4,000 for boarders - a sixth of the £25,000 a year charged by Darius's alma mater, Eton College.

So life is good for the Guppys. But, one has to ask, how are they paying for all this?

Guppy left prison apparently penniless. He and his co-conspirator Ben Marsh were estimated to have made around £4 million from crime (there was a spot of gold smuggling as well as the insurance scam) and both were ordered to pay a £533,000 fine at the time of their conviction.

Marsh paid up the full amount, but Guppy claimed his share of the money had been spent or given to a mysterious businessman who had vanished. His fine was reduced to £227,000 on appeal and turned into a criminal compensation order payable to Lloyd's.

In 1994, he declared himself bankrupt in order to avoid paying the cash, but the judge, Mr Justice Holland, was unimpressed and ordered Guppy to stay in prison until he came up with the money.

Eventually, a deal was done and the fraudster paid £165,000 (borrowed from a benefactor) to get out of jail.

Guppy made an estimated £100,000 from the serialisation of his life story in a newspaper and set up a couple of import and export companies in Ireland, although neither seemed to do much business.

He also marketed himself on the after-dinner-speech circuit with Marsh offering, as his promotional literature says, 'incredible stories of a "James-Bond lifestyle including Uzi sub machineguns and crooks singing like canaries to the NYPD!"'

But, according to documents in his new country of residence, he is now a property investor.

It is true that he appears to have made a nice profit from his Irish house, which cost £250,000 and was sold five years later, after significant refurbishment, for £800,000. But no money from that project seems to have been invested in the Guppys' Constantia property.

It was bought from Jemplan Ltd, a company registered in the Isle of Man, with a mortgage for just under £500,000 - more than the total value of the house - from one of the largest banks in South Africa.

The house - and a blue Nissan Almera car - are registered in Patricia Guppy's name.

Her husband is not listed as a director of any company in South Africa, nor, despite his job title, does he own any property in the country, and is unknown to the main players in the property industry.

Guppy's 'business' certainly involves travel. 'He's never there,' says one neighbour. 'He's away two weeks in every month. It's always Patricia holding the fort.'

The tall, handsome Guppy is a familiar figure to regulars on the overnight flight from Johannesburg to Paris and has also been seen in London and Amsterdam.

His European sojourns mean that he pays no income tax in South Africa - residents who spend more than 183 days out of the country are exempt from tax on income earned abroad. But it means long absences from his family.

Patricia Guppy insists their marriage is as strong as ever - the couple recently celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary with a threeweek holiday in Istanbul. 'We're very happy,' she said last week at their home.

However, friends are concerned about the fallout of the confrontation with Earl Spencer. One said: 'Patricia is freaked out by exposure. Her big concern is the kids.'

She may be hoping that this is the last outing for Darius Guppy's violent alter ego.

Interestingly, he used a quotation from a famous Sir Francis Bacon essay to start his autobiography: 'Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man's nature runs to it, the more ought law to weed it out.'

The elusive Guppy appears to have learned nothing from his 17thcentury hero, who goes on to issue this dire warning: 'Nay rather, vindictive persons live the life of witches; who, as they are mischievous, so end they infortunate.'

Quote:The brawl at the White Hart in Fyfield was an initiation ceremony for Alexander Fellows.
http://www.oxfordstudent.com/ht2005wk0/news/bullingdon_brawl_ringleade r_is_princess_diana%27s_nephew
“Alexander Fellowes is an Old Etonian who is President of the Claret Club, an Old Etonian Society which counts Trinity President Hon. Michael Beloff QC amongst its members.
Fellowes's father was appointed as the Queen's Private Secretary in 1992 and drafted her first speech after the death of Diana in 1997. His mother, Lady Cynthia Jane Spencer, is one of the elder sisters of the late Princess of Wales and gave a reading at her funeral in September 1997.”

Quote:Mystery of the two missing hellraisers; Members only: A photograph of Oxford University's notorious Bullingdon Club in 1992. Two mysterious pieces of clothing, circled, appear in the picture suggesting that the image has been doctored in some way. Only eight of the 20 members have been identified, including Shadow Chancellor George Osborne and financier Nat Rothschild.

DRIPPING with privilege and arrogance, it is an image the Tories have been desperate to downplay.

Yet their embarrassment over the picture of George Osborne in a notorious Oxford University drinking club intensified yesterday.

Two ghostly figures appear to be lurking alongside the future Shadow Chancellor and his fellow members of the hellraising Bullingdon Club The Bullingdon Club is a socially exclusive student dining club at Oxford University, without any permanent rooms, infamous for its members' wealth and destructive binges. .

The mystery over the snap from 1992 led to speculation yesterday that it might have been doctored.

Near the middle of the picture is the lining of one of the ?1,000 tail coats worn by club members. Yet no one is attached to it.

There is also what appears to be a disembodied shirt lapel.

Last night Bullingdon Club members said they did not believe anyone was missing from the photo.

But, in an intriguing twist, Chris Coleridge confirmed that the published version of the picture - with the apparitions - is the same as his member's copy.

He told the Daily Mail: 'I just looked again at the version I have and they are the same: both those things are in the picture.

'It is really weird. I can only assume that it is something the original photographer in Oxford did at the time. As far as I can remember we are all in the picture.

'I don't think anyone has been taken out. It must be just one of those things. It is possible the phantom figures in the pictures were accidentally added because of teething problems with digital technology, which was in its infancy when the photograph was taken.' A similar picture of the Bullingdon Club from 1987, featuring Tory leader David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson, was described by critics as 'Lord Snooty and his pals'.

After the furore following its publication, permission to show it was withdrawn by the Oxford photographers, Gillman & Soame.

The Bullingdon Club, infamous for wrecking restaurants and other riotous behaviour, is open only to the super-rich and the sons of aristocratic families.

Mr Osborne joined as a student at Magdalen College, together with Nat Rothschild, who last week accused him of trying to solicit a ?50,000 political donation from a Russian billionaire.

During his time in the Bullingdon Club, he was reportedly nicknamed 'Oik' because he had gone to St Paul's public school instead of Eton or Harrow.

A popular lark among his fellow Buller men was to hold him upside-down by the ankles by and scream: 'Who are you?' After several 'wrong' answers, each followed by Mr Osborne being dropped on his head, he was finally released after squealing 'I am a despicable ****.' Former members maintain a strict code of silence about their activities.

Their unity was shattered last week however when Mr Rothschild made his claims, which are denied by the Shadow Chancellor.

They are among only eight of the 20 students in the Bullingdon photograph to have been identified.

The eight are:

1 George Osborne, eldest son of barone Sir Peter Osborne, a wallpaper magnate.

2 Harry Mount, journalist son of Sir Ferdinand Mount, another baronet. Formerly a lawyer and Latin teacher, he has written two books. He works for Reader's Digest and writes for the Daily Mail..

3 Chris Coleridge, descendant of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. At Oxford he launched a racy student magazine with Mr Rothschild which featured a guide on how to steal cars. In 2005, he launched V Water, a vitaminenhanced drink.

4 Lupus von Maltzhan, management consultant at Accenture and a relative of the private banker Bruno Schroder. He owns an estate in Scotland where he flies planes and breeds pigs.

5 Mark Petre, son of the 18th Baron Petre. After leaving Oxford he edited International Homes, a glossy property magazine.

In 2004 he died after an overdose of the sedative te·maz·e·pam
n. at his family's stately home in Essex.

He was awaiting trial for driving under the influence of drugs.

6 Peter Holmes a Court, son of billionaire businessman Robert Holmes a Court, whose investment firm he runs. In 2001, he sold his family's theatre group to Lord Lloyd- Webber. He owns an Australian rugby team with actor Russell Crowe.

7 Nat Rothschild, ultra-rich only son of Jacob Rothschild, the fourth Baron Rothschild. He had a wayward start in life, marrying a model he met on a beach in India.

He has since turned his back on alcohol and runs the Atticus hedge fund hedge fund, in finance, a highly speculative, largely unregulated investment device. Originating in the 1950s, the funds "hedge" by offsetting "short" positions (borrowing a security and then selling it at a higher price before repaying the lender) against "long" , which invests in Russia.

8 Jason Gissing, one of three founders of the upmarket up·mar·ket
adj.

Appealing to or designed for high-income consumers; upscale: "He turned up in well-cut clothes . . . and upmarket felt hats" New Yorker. grocery delivery company Ocado. The company is valued at ?272million..