What is the Bullingdon Club at Oxford University, why do they burn £50 notes during initiation tests and who has been a member?

OXFORD University’s controversial Bullington club is an exclusive dining society synonymous with heavy drinking and lewd behaviour.

Let’s take a look at the club which boasts famous former members such as ex-PM David Cameron and current Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

What is the Bullingdon Club?

The club is an exclusive dining society for Oxford University toffs.

The club was founded in 1780 as a hunting and sport club, notably playing cricket.

But it is now known for its nights of wild abandon and has become a byword for the excess of young British privileged men who reportedly avoid the consequences of their extreme partying thanks to their wealth.

Members known as Bullers wear a specially made tailcoat that costs £3,500.

Membership is unofficial but exclusive and at one point just 30 members were allowed. Membership has reportedly declined to just a few members as Oxford students are not keen to be associated with the upper class elitism and contempt for the poor it represents.

Former members include former PM David Cameron, Foreign minister Boris Johnson and former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne – who were famously pictured together in 1987.

The group was satirised in the film The Riot Club, based on the play Posh.

Why do Bullingdon Club members burn £50 notes?

It has been claimed anyone wanting to join the club has to burn a £50 note in front of a beggar as part of an initiation ceremony that celebrates members’ ostentatious wealth and contempt for the poor.

A friend of one of the members revealed the sick prank to  student newspaper in 2013.

Labour MP Ian Mearns was horrified and said: “This kind of thing takes us back to the loads-of-money days under the last Tory government.

“Then it wasn’t just about having cash – you had to rub it in the faces of those who didn’t. It’s distasteful and disgusting.”

Why is the Bullingdon Club so notorious?

On 12 May 1894, after dinner, Bullingdon members smashed almost all the glass of the lights and 468 windows in Peckwater Quad of Christ Church.

In 2005, the club smashed 17 bottles of wine, every piece of crockery and a window in a fifteenth-century pub. Four members were arrested.

In 2013 a Bullingdon member is alleged to have set off fireworks in a club.

Boris Johnson, a former member, referred to the club as “a truly shameful vignette of almost superhuman undergraduate arrogance, toffishness and twittishness” while Cameron admitted the 1987 photo made him “cringe”.

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