‘Saltburn’ for Real: Meet the Young, Rich ‘Narco-toffs’ Who Party Hard
The extraordinary claim by Rebel Wilson that she was invited to a drug-fueled orgy by a minor royal at an LA party was greeted with wry amusement by friends of some hard-partying members of the aristocracy and minor royals this week.
Dubbed the “narco-toffs” by their peers, there has always been a section of the upper class that has incorporated copious drug taking alongside the more traditional society pursuits of hunting, shooting and fishing.
Take the famously dissolute John Hervey, the 7th Marquess of Bristol who inherited a vast fortune but died penniless from drug addiction in 1999. The writer Anthony Haden-Guest described his parties as places where “cocaine and heroin were catered like flowers.” Hervey kept a helicopter at his country estate, and would famously steer by a road map on his knees, while snorting cocaine off it. He died in agony of multiple organ failure brought on by drug use.