Laura Wade: return of the thugs

Her play Posh was inspired by the violent antics of the Bullingdon Club. Laura Wade tells Kira Cochrane why she has updated it for a post-riot, Tory-led, bankrupt BritainOne evening during the first run of her play Posh, the writer Laura Wade was drawn into a heated argument in the interval. An audience member demanded to know just why she hated Old Etonians.

The person was very cross, she says, and asked "what [Old Etonians] had ever done to me. As if I was enacting some sort of dreadful personal slight against an ex-boyfriend or something.

"The argument was misdirected for several reasons. One is that it is hard to imagine someone as serious as Wade embarking on a play because of a dodgy ex, or any other dubious personal reason (Posh did, after all, take her three years to write). Another is that her play isn't specifically about Old Etonians. Instead, it concerns an even more exclusive group, which the country's three most prominent Tories – David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson – all just happen to have been a part of. Posh centres around a fictional dining society called The Riot Club, made up of wealthy, male, public school-educated Oxford University students, which closely mirrors the real-life Bullingdon Club.                 Read More