#SaveBully: Why We Must Fight to Save the Bullingdon Club

The first time I met the Bullingdon Club boys, I knew I had found my tribe, my home, nirvana. As I approached one of their meet-ups for the first time, the sound of barrister's sons setting fire to £50 notes in front of beggars filled my ears. Turning a corner, soggy biscuit survivors threw bottles of £800 wine across a squash court in the vague direction of a priceless vase. Outside, lifelong bonds were made over imported cigars, as the young Bully boys made a fresher from a non-private background drink a gallon jug of piss. I was home.

And I'm not afraid to say it: Bully was where we went to be free.

Sadly, the younger generation will never know such freedom. As the Telegraph reports this week, the Bullingdon Club at Oxford University faces extinction because nobody wants to join it any more. Tarred with the lurid brush of polytechnic-educated tabloid journalism, Bullingdon – to the young, up-and-coming, white and wan, blue-veined, inheritance tax-avoiding male – is a poisoned chalice. Its usual 12-strong crew of brave boys has reportedly worn down to just two. Never again will Oxford's corridors echo with the laughter of a dozen 19-year-old boys giggling wildly as a young recruit is pegged by a high class escort. Never again. Never again.

Where will the next generation of lawyers, MPs, high-ranking middle-management advertising executives, lawyers, Bond actors, MPs, lawyers, Telegraph columnists, management consultants, strategy consultants, parachute CEOs, London Mayors and lawyers go to let loose? Where will boys – who will, remember, always be boys – be boys? Where will that fragile, spindly, spiderweb-like network of high powered professionals that fits over the economy like a sugar cage come from now? Every job I have ever had – consultant, consultant, executive, lawyer, consultant, MP and now CEO – has been as a direct result of friends made at the Bullingdon Club, when I was young and fresh-faced and had a lit cigar popped up my Osborne. Where are tomorrow's leaders meant to make the connections that prop this country up like a backbone? Where are our future leaders meant to take in flagrante polaroids of their possible future enemies as they have ironic paid-for sex with a grandmother? Where, pray tell me, are they supposed to develop a loud, raving addiction to cocaine?

The fear, of course, is that the impending crisis of the Bullingdon Club will push this behaviour underground, where it becomes more dangerous. At any one time there are three paramedics on hand at Bullingdon in case you get your beller stuck in the offal, and now our young Tories will be doing it in the fields with no education or access to healthcare. Back in my day, before you destroyed a pub or a restaurant, you made sure daddy knew the owner full well first and had £16,000 behind the bar on layaway. I dread to think what will happen to a young chap who – without the safe hand on the shoulder of the Bullingdon Club – goes out into the wide world and beats the ever-loving shit out of a waiter. What will happen to him? Will the police be called? Will the papers or his father hear about it? Will he be arrested?

What hurts the most is that the collapse of the Bullingdon Club is the result of people who aren't in it and don't understand it making decisions on its future. Club membership and club interest has dwindled because of lies and mistruths about what the club is and how it handles its members. How can you blame the Bullingdon Club if some of its members take cocaine? Or whip nude women while making them bray like donkeys? Or push a closed champagne bottle up an innocent shop proprietor? A few isolated incidents have tarnished the club's name, and it's Bullingdon – that years-old institution – that pays the ultimate price. It just isn't fair.

The best times of my life were spent cunted on Bolly in a three-grand tux. The best times of my life were spent up to my todger in a dead pig's throat. The best times of my life were spent in a 6AM Charlie haze while I wanked off the now-Secretary of State. The best times of my life were spent at Bully. Where will our young Timothys, our Barneys, our Oscars and our Pearces: where will they learn to become men? I fear a weak future without a 12-strong team of hooded acolytes silently pulling the strings from behind while beaming evilly from below.

Please, sign this petition, tweet with the hashtag "#SaveBully" – anything you can do to keep an institution Britain so desperately needs in the hands of those we can trust the most to maintain it: young, rich, privileged, rich, sickeningly rich, young, so pale and white they are translucent, rich, young, rich, horrible young men.

@HarveyBF

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