Cameron regrets Bullingdon days

Conservative leader David Cameron has said he is "desperately embarrassed" about the picture from his days in Oxford University's Bullingdon Club.

He told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show "we do things when we're young that we deeply regret".

The picture shows him alongside other members of the notorious dining club - including Boris Johnson - in bow ties and £1,200 Bullingdon Club tailcoat.

Asked if the picture showed "the real David Cameron", he said: "No."

He added: "I think people have had, over the last four years, the chance to get to know what I want to do with the Conservative Party, what I want to do with the country and get to know me as well."

Destructive high jinks

Mr Cameron's time in the Bullingdon Club is the basis for a Channel 4 docu-drama about David Cameron and Boris Johnson which is to be broadcast on the eve of the Tory leader's party conference speech on Thursday.

When Boris Met Dave tells the story of the two men's time at Oxford University in the mid-1980s, when both were members of the exclusive all-male drinking society with a reputation for destructive high jinks.

The photography company that took the picture of Mr Cameron in his Bullingdon Club outfit withdrew permission for it to be used by the media more than two years ago.

Meanwhile shadow chancellor George Osborne, asked by Adam Boulton on Sky News if he regretted his membership of the Bullingdon Club a few years after Mr Cameron, said when anyone was confronted by some of their photographs from university days "you cringe a bit".

But Mr Osborne said that people who knew him knew that he worked hard at school and at university and was working hard now as shadow chancellor to make sure "we are in a position to get Britain working".

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