Exposed: Sex, social climbing and bad wine with the Adonian Society

Pitt, Bullingdon, Beefsteak: societies where admittance is based on where you went to school, who your friends are and how much of the Scottish countryside your family owns.

But what if there was a secret society where the only criteria for admittance were to be young and beautiful? And male. Definitely male. Welcome to the Adonian Society.

The rumours about what goes on at the Adonian dinners are well known. A secretive group of fellows and old boys invite the most attractive male undergraduates in Cambridge to a candlelit dinner in Peterhouse college’s great hall — the oldest secular building in Europe still used for its original purpose. In a darkened room, as the evening goes on, the wine flows and the candles are blown out. What happens next is up to you.

But what actually goes down at the Adonian Society? What is it like to be one of the privileged few who get the gilded invitation in their letterbox? We tracked down some students who were lucky enough to score an invite and asked them.

The evening begins with a four course dinner, with the undergraduates scattered throughout the hall. The seating plan rotates halfway through, and undergrads who have caught the eye of one of the society bigwigs can find themselves fast tracked to the top table. The dinner costs £50 to attend, but the majority of students will be “sponsored” by the older man who invites them, so don’t have to pay.

The famous Peterhouse food

For some, the society’s name conjures up images of decadence, glamour and free expression of sexuality. But the truth is somewhat less exciting. The food, in the words of one guest, is “absolutely shite”, and the wine is “alright, apart from this pink Greek wine that is like drinking diabetes”.

The Adonian society is less about sexuality, more about gender. Although the exactly mythology about the society’s creation is a bit murky, most agree it was founded in 1985, the year Peterhouse admitted women: an attempt to hold on to the good old days, when the college was not blighted by the horror of oestrogen.

The hallowed hall

Ed, a recent graduate who attended two dinners during his time at Cambridge, says most of the people who run the society are straight – they just really like the atmosphere. As for the undergrads, gay or straight, most attend out of curiosity or simply for the bragging rights.

Another attendee, Sam told us he was informed by an older guest that women used to be invited, but this decision was eventually reversed on the basis that, when women were in attendance, “you would say one ‘ni**er’, or one ‘cunt’ and the whole conversation changed”. Apparently the ladies’s sensibilities didn’t quite fit the chat.

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Sam, who is straight, reports he was invited to art galleries, weekends at country homes and West London town houses, and another guest told him he was moving towards the upper echelons of the society because he had “sucked all the right dicks”. After expressing uncertainty about what he wanted to do when he graduates, Sam was given a business card by his dining neighbour, who told him to come and visit his place of work and be shown the ropes.

But enough of the job opportunities — more of the sex. Sam tells me in the cigarette breaks between meals, there were many older and younger men to be seen emerging from the bushes in the college’s deer park. Peterhouse students claim to have found used condoms in the bushes the morning after.

The deer park of love

Ed backs this up: “I started talking to a nice man — a grad student very much my own age. We went for a fag and he asked if I wanted to have sex up against a tree in the garden.

“I declined on the basis that dogging is dogging. We then went back to the hall and were met with withering looks. I thought it was disapproval at first, then worked out it was pity because we’d been gone six or seven minutes and everyone took that to mean we didn’t have much stamina.”

After dinner, there is a drinks reception and the guests disseminate throughout Cambridge to cocktail bars and private rooms. My source tells me there is an unwritten rule undergrads and young grads have until 2am to partner off or go home, as “after that point it becomes completely acceptable for the older gentlemen to leer”. Another source reports seeing queues of taxis lining up outside Peterhouse at 2am, with well-dressed men, old and young, climbing in.

Taxis not pictured

But the really sexy stuff is found at the summer garden party, which was described by an attendee as “scrambled eggs and orgies”. Ed asked about it, and “didn’t really get a description from the old men who used words. Just winking and gurning”.

Perhaps deliberately, the Adonian Society feels like something from a bygone era — a shady secret in a cabinet minster’s past dug up by the press, rather than something which still takes place in Cambridge today. For now, the liberal left tears its hair out about Cameron and BoJo’s Bullingdon photo. Given the connections forged at these dinners, and the leg-ups which come with them, are we looking at the scandal waiting to haunt the leaders of tomorrow?

Some of the names in this article have been changed.