Pigs, pranks, but no Dave

I attended the Piers Gaveston Society in the mid-1980s, when I was at Oxford in the year above David Cameron. The parties were debauched and tremendous fun. But Dave was not there.

The most remarkable figure at the heart of the Gaveston was Gottfried von-Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor’s great-great-grandson who, after his untimely death at just 44 in 2007, was said by the Telegraph to have led an ‘exotic life of gilded aimlessness’. The paper’s beautifully written obituary almost paid tribute to this ‘louche German aristocrat with a multifaceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies…’ I did not ever know Goffried well or see him in full throttle, but he was clearly on a mission.

My friend Marcus Edwards-Jones, who in those days was one of the Piers Gaveston’s select few members, whereas I was an occasional guest, says, ‘I remember meeting you sporting fishnets, a jockstrap and not much else except for make-up at a Gaveston do in 1986, but don’t remember Dave being there.’