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.’
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I clearly recall the only reason for me wearing drag was that I had come straight from playing the role of Frank N. Furter out of The Rocky Horror Show in a variety show at my college, Balliol. My only performance ever as a transvestite had been a big hit, so I kept the kit on for a while because it made people laugh.
The party that spring was in the castellated brick house over the Isis on Folly Bridge, the one decorated with the little white statues. There were lots of attractive women, who were the focus of my interest, and Gott-fried, who I’d met some months before, had rather hopefully covered the furniture and floors with polythene.
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