The Chancellor is only commenting through his lawyers – who dismiss Natalie Rowe as a dodgy witness – but the former hooker from that photo has her book out today. Guido will bring you some key extracts today, suitable for a family blog.
Their first meeting:
“Chris met George Osborne while at Oxford; they were both members of the infamous Bullingdon Club. By the time I started seeing William, the three of them were close friends and often turned up at my place together. I called them my ‘Three Musketeers’. Individually, William was ‘Willie Wonka’, George was ‘Georgie Porgie’ and Chris was ‘Christopher Robin’. George first arrived at my place with Chris, along with his friend Philip Delves Broughton, a writer for the New York Times. George was an attractive 22-year-old and it was immediately clear that girls considered him to be highly eligible – they were always vying for his attention. I thought he was quite good-looking but much preferred William. At this time George didn’t show any signs of the defiant character he went on to display as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Chris and William teased him about his background, that he was the “son of a curtain salesman” (his father is the co-founder of Osborne & Little, the fabric and wallpaper designers) and because he didn’t go to Eton. George took it without complaint; he had this ‘look’ he would give me that said ‘How pathetic are they?’”
Osborne gets naked:
“On one particularly drunken evening at my flat in Prince of Wales Terrace, I made a bet with George, Chris and William that they would strip off naked, run out the door, down the street to a building that was fifty metres away and back again. The first one back would get a ‘prize’. Eventually, after a bit of cajoling, the three of them agreed, stripped off and waited by the front door. “Ready?” I said, my hand on the door handle. “Set… Go!” I threw open the door and off they ran down the front steps, bottoms wobbling as they pounded down the street. And, of course, I locked the door and went back inside. I watched as they came running back, cheering them on. They all arrived more or less at the same time and couldn’t believe what I’d done to them. “Please let me back in!” the future Chancellor of the Exchequer pleaded. They all begged, hands over their willies, and I just watched, laughing. I laughed so much that I collapsed and thought I might even wee myself. Luckily for them, my building was in a quiet cul-de-sac. I gave them a good few minutes, which must have seemed like hours, god knows what any passer-by would have made of three naked men standing in the street. Finally, when I’d decided they’d had enough, I let them back in. They loved it and were all laughing afterwards – they’d enjoyed the joke.”
Rowe is very clear that the character of “Joe”, a young politician with the safe word “Mary” is not Osborne.
Though regular readers will remember the word “Louise” from a while back…
