Pictures of the Bullingdon Club have become something of a political battleground in recent times. The Tory PM-in-waiting, David Cameron, and the current mayor of London, Boris Johnson, were members of the infamous Oxford University drinking society for toffs, and were pictured together at the club. But the picture was later withdrawn from wider usage and the BBC was moved to recreate the picture in a painting in order to retain the image.
Now a picture has emerged of the evening-suited 1992 Bullingdon Club featuring the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, and the ultra-wealthy Nathaniel Rothschild, two of the key characters in the political shenanigans over who said what to who on a yacht off Corfu, which has embroiled the new cabinet minister Peter Mandelson and his opposition.
But the new picture - used today in the Mail on Sunday, the Sunday Times and the News of the World - appears to have been doctored.
Peter Hitchens, writing in today's Mail on Sunday, asks:
"I bring you the Mystery of the Missing Toff. Who is doctoring pictures of the Bullingdon Club? And why?
By a mysterious process, almost all photographs of this unlovely society for rich, young drunkards have now been suppressed, which suits David Cameron very well, since he is in so many of them, looking so very rich and arrogant. I have seen them.
But last week a new study of the lads appeared (above), featuring George Osborne and his (now former) friend Nat Rothschild. To the left of the middle, there's a mysterious gap where somebody ought to be standing but isn't. Odder still, there's a patch of shirt-front and waistcoat there, with no person attached. Odder yet, Mr Rothschild's right trouser leg has a white lapel, not usual even under the bizarre dress code of the Bullingdon."
However, more than a year ago the Daily Mail used the picture to illustrate this piece:
Oxford 1992: Portrait of a 'classless' Tory: The Tories' attempt to build a classless image has hit another obstacle as Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, like his leader David Cameron, was "outed" as a member of the hellraising Bullingdon club at Oxford University.
The pictorial elements that so intrigued Hitchens are missing from the April 2007 version of the picture.
Has the picture been Photoshopped, and, if so, who has been taken out? Were you there? Do you own a copy of this picture? Can you shed any light on the mystery?
Or is it all just a digital malfunction?
The Mail identified eight of those pictured, including Rothschild, Osborne, David Cameron's cousin Harry Mount and Ocado founder Jason Gissing. Can you identify any others?
