JUST BORIS: A Tale of Blond Ambition (11 page)

Boris was now ensconced in a closeted upper-class world of entitlement and wealth, socially a million miles away from his family’s Exmoor hill farm. ‘What fascinates me is the ease with which he took to the grand life,’ noted Anthony Howard. ‘Stanley went to Sherborne – quite a respectable public school – but Boris was a first-generation Etonian. The way he adapted to the ways of the rich and grand, including people like Charlie Spencer and Darius Guppy, and the members of the Bullingdon was astonishing. It was not in his background at all.’

Boris was present at the now-infamous Bullingdon evening in Oxford when a pot plant was thrown through a restaurant window and a couple of members ended up in police cells – dramatised on TV in 2009 in the docudrama,
When Boris Met Dave
. Boris claims he was one of those locked up overnight, before being released without charge. Others, who were incarcerated, insist he is merely trying to play up his prankster past and that he was never in fact held in custody. There are several other discrepancies between Boris’s and other accounts of what he describes as that ‘deeply pathetic’ evening.
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An exact contemporary from Eton who also joined the Bullingdon, remembers that Boris did not attend frequently and held reservations about the wildest alcohol-fuelled antics. ‘He did not like the lack of control shown by others by drinking so much, and did not want to do the same himself. That is not his scene.’ Indeed, many friends and college neighbours of Boris’s from that time report never having seen him the worse for drink. Even as a student, he did not like ‘losing it.’ One contemporary remembers sharing a joint with Boris at Oxford, but says: ‘It was clear that he had hardly ever smoked and certainly
never more than a drag or two. He would never want to get stoned or in fact let it affect him at all.’

It is perhaps surprising that Boris joined ‘The Buller’ when many more thoughtful Etonians avoided it. Even one of his few close friends – Charlie Spencer – steered well clear. A number of those who did join now bitterly regret it – but not, it would seem, Boris. The ‘Buller’ was notorious for its casual vandalism of other people’s rooms, property and feelings. Trashing bedrooms was the standard method of initiation. In the middle of the night at Pembroke College, Boris led the destruction of his friend Radek Sikorski’s room when a dozen tail-coated members smashed furniture, books and hi-fi. At the end of the proceedings, Boris is reputed to have shaken Sikorski’s hand and said: ‘Congratulations, you’ve been elected.’
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Not everyone enjoyed the pointless vandalism. One now highly successful businessman at Oxford at the time remembers: ‘I really didn’t like the Bullingdon. I had a few run-ins with people from the Bull and there was an occasion when they decided to come round to my house in Oxford to play one of their irritating pranks on me. Fortunately I wasn’t there, but I complained to Boris and he feigned some mock outrage. He wasn’t there that time, but why did he join at all?’

Most believe that Boris’s membership was a question of tribalism, a need to reinforce his upper-class credentials perhaps with an eye to securing the Old Etonian vote when he stood for student office. He certainly appears to have been keener to advertise his membership than adhere to some of the club’s rules and rituals. Anthony Frieze, another Oxford contemporary, remembers once looking out of his window to see an open-top bus pass by on Broad Street. ‘There was Boris with the others on the top deck with a case of Bollinger champagne, chanting “Buller! Buller! Buller!” at the top of their voices to bemused bystanders.’

Public exuberance was one thing, the financial extravagance quite another; Boris seems to have been less enthusiastic when it came to settling the club’s hefty bills for meals, drink and ‘collateral damage’ caused by the ensuing high jinks. Smashed windows and vomit – known as ‘parking a tiger’ – were the expected outcome of any decent
evening’s entertainment. One of his fellow members ruefully recalls that Boris never made his £125 contribution to the cost of one lavish evening, leaving him to pick up the extra tab. Nearly twenty years later, at a smart Christmas party in Notting Hill, he even confronted Boris about the unpaid debt – albeit in a teasing manner. The Bullingdon pays its way out of trouble, but the expense is considerable and Boris had something of a reputation for being difficult to part from his money.

In stark contrast to his hearty Bullingdon pursuits, Boris chose to study at Balliol College – traditionally, a haven for bright young Lefties rather than dim hoorays – presumably because of its glittering reputation for Classics. Founded in 1263, it had also produced three former prime ministers: Herbert Asquith, Harold Macmillan and Edward Heath, as well as literary giants such as Matthew Arnold, Graham Greene and Robert Browning. More recently, it had become known for its periodic fits of left-wing agitation in favour of miners or Irish republicans and other modish causes. The JCR – the Junior Common Room (a sort of Oxbridge student union) – was an orange-painted hotbed of middle-class student activism, plotting the downfall of the Conservative government and generally rebelling against their parents. Sited in the Olav Room, a prominent bust of Lenin had been removed shortly before Boris’s time from what was considered a bleak, but busy student hangout; the sticky brown flooring and tired G-plan seating around the walls remained, however.

The basement bar, with two wooden picnic benches under sun umbrellas, drew a regular crowd, many of whom would come to watch Boris hold court. Most Old Etonians gravitated to the grander, High Tory colleges such as Christ Church, Magdalen or Trinity. Boris continued to mix with his old school chums – notably Spencer and Guppy, who were both in the more ‘obvious’ Old Etonian surroundings of Magdalen. Although he was friendly with many others – and liked by the Balliol radicals as a harmless clown – he made few other genuine friends at university, sticking clannishly with the close-knit duo from Eton; boys he had known for the past six years and who, with their wealth, breeding and looks were redolent of the Brideshead era.

Mark Carnegie, who later watched Boris closely as he prepared to stand against him for Oxford Union President, was struck by his opponent’s insularity, whatever his public persona of bonhomie. ‘There was never any real depth of conversation with Boris – he’s an intensely private guy. Other than Charlie and Darrie, he didn’t open up to anyone. They were all locked in with each other in a tight triumvirate. A few people like Radek Sikorski were on the outskirts, but that’s it.’

While Boris did not form close bonds with outsiders at Oxford, he knew hundreds of other undergraduates and quickly became a university celebrity. His over-the-top plummy speech, stage eye-rolling and frequent ‘aaaaghs’, ‘errrs’ and ‘grrsss’ became widely imitated. His distinctive dress style – sagging cords, ragged tweeds and haystack coiffeur – contrasted beautifully with the spiky-haired, post-punk look of many state-school undergraduates and the faux-Brideshead polished Young Fogey confections of others. It was an era when the pared-down monochrome look of The Smiths – led by self-confessed ‘misery’ Morrissey – was the inspiration for many student wardrobes. Against this drab cultural backdrop of post-New Romantics, pre-City Big Bang, Boris stood out like an eccentric, shambling throwback. He was widely ridiculed, yet liked and seen as essentially harmless because he made people laugh. As so often in his career, this was a perilous underestimate: the ascent of Boris was about to get under-way in earnest.

In the early days at Oxford he played along with the rigid social caste system. At the apex were the toffs or ‘socialites’, with genuine aristocrats like Spencer mixing with an assortment of other upper-class undergraduates. They would refer to those who had attended what they viewed as minor public schools – in other words, almost anyone outside the big three of Eton, Harrow and Winchester – as ‘Tugs’, the contemptuous Etonian term for non-fee paying King’s Scholars. One contemporary, who attended a middle-ranking private school, remembers, ‘a great banging at my door one day, it was virtually knocked off its hinges. Then Guppy stormed in and issued his command: “Sellotape, Tug!” No preamble or hellos, and addressing me as “Tug” – you were made to feel your rank. I got the Sellotape for him.’

Below Tugs – encompassing virtually anyone who was grammar or state-educated – came Oxford’s version of India’s untouchables, known as ‘Stains’. Lloyd Evans, a classicist from a south London state school, who went on to write for Boris at the
Spectator
, was one such Stain. He too was casually dispatched on errands by Guppy: on one occasion, he was expected to wait in the street, as if a servant or public school fag, while Guppy wrote a lengthy message to Boris. He then had to deliver it to Boris’s pigeonhole. Evans remembers how class defined almost everything at Oxford in the early 1980s: ‘He just presumed I would wait. Class was an issue, you see. It was all a question of which school you’d been to. Had you been to one of the top ones or not? Boris hung out with those public-school types – his best mate was Guppy. But if you’d been to a comp like me, then forget it, you were beyond the pale.

‘There was probably a 50/50 split on state and public-school entrants across Oxford as a whole but the place was very much geared to the public-school ethos. There was a whole network of secret symbolism that I transgressed such as asking whether so and so had been to Harrow – of course you should just know, but how could I? I had also never heard of the Bullingdon all the time I was there, as no one would have mentioned it to someone like me.’

According to a neighbour of Boris’s on Staircase V at Balliol, he rarely invited others to his double-width set of rooms (with views over Broad Street on one side and the library quad on the other). Apart from the occasional woman friend, Guppy was the only frequent visitor. Boris co-edited the Oxford University satirical magazine
Tributary
with Guppy, a stint that was not universally applauded. ‘I edited the magazine after them and like them, did the usual thing of touring round the shops in Oxford, persuading them to take advertising,’ recalls Evans. ‘Some of the reaction we got was incredibly hostile. Guys would come out from behind the counter and say, “Get out of here!” Eventually one woman explained that she had had some “terrible man” in there before, selling advertising for the mag. He said he was going to do “something terrible” unless they advertised, she said, and now no one would touch it – that was Darius. The tutors used to take bets on how soon after Oxford he would end
up in prison. He did, of course. He talked bullshit the whole time, while posing and preening. I was always writing nasty things about him after that, calling him, “Zorba the Creep”. Boris told me he thought that was very funny. That’s when I first thought, he’s not really that loyal to his friends, is he?’

Although extravagantly handsome, many women undergraduates felt intimidated by Guppy and disliked his attentions, which could become too persistent. ‘I would sometimes be asked to interrupt or rescue women from conversations with Guppy,’ recalls one undergraduate puzzled by Boris’s close friendship with this ‘strange, oily character.’ ‘He was not someone you’d want to hang out with. I was always fascinated by that relationship, it seemed strange for an aspiring politician: Guppy was the fly in the ointment.’

Evans was frequently derogatory about Boris in the magazine, calling him, variously, an ‘exiled Armenian chicken farmer’, product of ‘a hideous Nazi war experiment’ and ‘Aryan bull pig.’ All was tolerated until he made the mistake of describing Boris as ‘incompetent.’ Boris stormed round in the middle of the night to where Evans’ co-editor, Aidan Hartley, lived and delivered a stream of abuse: ‘He went incandescent, really mad, grabbing the typewriter and re-writing the piece. I was surprised at how angry he was – it was coming from a deep, dark place.’

Boris’s association with Guppy would go on to cause him far more serious problems and they rarely see each other now – particularly as Guppy has moved to South Africa. Later, Boris was publicly dismissive of the man to whom he had been so close. When commenting on the disgraced Conservative politician Jonathan Aitken being sentenced for perjury, he added: ‘There is a touch of the Darius Guppy about him, a Walter Mittyish refusal to face up to reality, and an inability to sort out right from wrong.’
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As Paul Goodman, a former colleague of Boris’s astutely observes: ‘Churchill surrounded himself with a galaxy of oddballs. He and Boris are similar in being drawn to larger-than-life characters: Guppy is a key example.’

Fraternising with the controversial Guppy certainly marked Boris out but it was really by dint of his extraordinary appearance and cartoon
personality that he became a well-known figure at Oxford, even in that first Michaelmas (autumn) term of 1983. Boris wasted no time in exploiting his notoriety to launch his political career. Within weeks, he had put himself forward in the election for a lowly position on the Treasurer’s Committee of the Oxford Union, the world-famous student debating society and politico nursery slope. ‘There was a 9.30 p.m. deadline on the Sunday evening for nominations and Boris sauntered into the Union at 10, expecting to put his name down,’ recalls a now-influential Tory. ‘Of course it was too late and he wasn’t allowed to stand – much to the amusement of those who rather hoped he wouldn’t run against them. You see, he was already seen as a strong candidate – provided he could get his name on the ballot paper, of course.’

Boris was supposed to be the obscure young thing at the bottom of the ticket – a purely supporting role designed to ensure Balliol turned out and voted for (future investment banker) Larry Grafstein as President. Was he embarrassed about the faux pas? It seems not, unlike those he was supposed to be helping and whom he had now let down.

Grafstein, a Canadian post-graduate student, won the Michaelmas 1983 presidential election despite Boris’s oversight. His shortcomings as a team player did not deter Boris from seeking greater glory for himself and he next stood for Secretary for Trinity term 1984, one of the four top jobs in the Union. It was a prize normally granted only after distinguished service lower down the pecking order. Boris, however, never climbs any figurative mountain by the conventional path. At Oxford, the Union Secretary leads a stage life tailor-made for an exhibitionist. His duties would include reading the minutes at the beginning of a debate – a gift-wrapped opportunity for putting his personal mix of wit and charm on public display – and hosting social events, where he could also energetically peddle ‘brand Boris’ to as wide an audience as possible.