Inside the BILLIONAIRE BOHEMIAN CLUB

Welcome to the most secretive club on Earth, where world leaders, movie stars and business tycoons kick up their heels behind locked gates in the bucolic Californian countryside.

- WILLIAM LANGLEY

If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise. It could be the sight of a group of naked billionaires drinking gin fizz out of a fire bucket, or a line-up of world leaders singing showtunes in drag. And look out for when everyone gets together for the ritual sacrifice to the great owl god.

The problem is that going down to these particular woods is extremely difficult. Held among the drifting shadows of a giant redwood forest, the annual July gathering of the ultra-secretive Bohemian Club is one of the more hotly debated but little observed events on Earth. Carried to northern California in fleets of private jets and blacked-out limousines, hundreds of powerful, wealthy and eminent men vanish into a 10-square kilometre chunk of wilderness known as Bohemian Grove, where they are billeted in bare-bones camps with captivating names like Lost Angels, Mandalay and Cave Man.

The identities of these men – absolutely no women are allowed – is one of the global elite’s most closelyheld secrets. Tales abound of hard drinking, skinny-dipping, Elvis impersonations and ribald songs around the campfire. Peeing against trees is held to be “the inalienable right” of all Bohemians – possibly because many are long past their best bladder control days. At least five US presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, are known to have been members, along with statesmen such as the late Henry Kissinger, tycoons like John D. Rockefeller and a galaxy of overseas luminaries.

The current intake is believed to be more eclectic, with a smattering of tech and media tycoons, including Rupert Murdoch (honorary), and a showbusiness contingent headed by Hollywood veterans Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger and two members of the Grateful Dead rock band.