Like so much in his life, David Cameron’s hopes for his 50th birthday celebrations were upended by Brexit.

Back in 2016, he had envisaged a grand gathering for hundreds of the great and good at Chequers, the prime ministerial country retreat.

Plans were apparently under way – but the nation’s vote to leave the EU four months prior to his big birthday meant he was forced to quit as Prime Minister and Tory leader.

Without Chequers at his disposal there was, instead, a small private get-together at the home of a wealthy friend.

A decade on, as the now Lord Cameron turns 60, there’s no such minimalism to be seen.

Instead, this weekend, the former prime minister and his wife Samantha have made plans to celebrate his landmark day – his actual birthday was yesterday – in lavish style.

On the agenda are two nights of partying for more than 100 friends at his holiday home in Cornwall, followed by a ‘surf-off’ for anyone hardy enough to venture into the water on Sunday.

This will almost certainly include chef Gordon Ramsay, one of the invited guests and a big fan of surfing just like Cameron, who is noted for his enthusiasm for bodyboarding locally in a shorty wetsuit. Indeed, Ramsay’s luxurious bolthole in Rock is less than a mile away from Cameron’s holiday home.

Celebrities – including the superstar chef and his family, TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson and actress Helena Bonham Carter – were expected to gather at Cameron’s pad yesterday. (His main home, a five-bedroom £1.5million Victorian stone house with a recently added 15m swimming pool, is in the Cotswolds.)

The Cameron crowd will enjoy two dinners provided by Paul Ainsworth, the Michelin-starred chef, based around local cuisine and served in the giant marquees which have appeared in the Camerons’ back garden.

White pennants flutter from their roofs and the marquees are illuminated by festoon ‘festival’ lighting.

Local sources say that they are well aware a ‘big do’ is about to occur and there has been talk of a really big order of breakfast pastries to be delivered today.

This summer, Mr Ainsworth re-opened the St Enodoc hotel in Rock, where some of the guests are staying.

Specialities of the local chef – who also runs restaurant Paul Ainsworth At No6, based in a Georgian townhouse in Padstow – include Cornish Ewe lamb served with black garlic and miso aubergine, as well as Cornish lobster accompanied by a pumpkin seed praline.

His tasting menu at No6 normally runs to around £200 a head.

Meanwhile, wines for the three-day bash will come from the Waddesdon estate in Buckinghamshire owned by the Rothschild family.

The wine cellars there are rated as ‘one of the world’s most remarkable private collections’ with over 15,000 bottles, many dating back more than a century. The core of the collection comes from the Rothschild family’s Bordeaux estates, Chateau Lafite Rothschild and Chateau Mouton Rothschild.

A source says: ‘Everyone will gather from Friday and there are dinners on Friday and Saturday evening, with Saturday as the main event. There will be surfing on Sunday to blow away the hangovers and then a giant cream tea before people go home.’

Cameron’s holiday home, which overlooks the area’s striking cliffs, is certainly tailored to hosting a bash like this.

Purchased in 2017 for £2million, it was, Cameron said at the time, one of his ‘bucket list’ items. It has since been remodelled to fit a ‘chillaxing’ vibe, in keeping with its owner’s famous love of a party.

Additions include a snooker room which was constructed with a flat Sedum roof – a green ‘living’ roof covered with vegetation – in 2019. There is also an £8,000 wood-burning luxury hot tub. And, of course, there’s a shepherd’s hut, too.

Cameron famously installed a £25,000 hut, with walls lined in sheep’s wool and a wood-burning stove, in his Cotswolds garden, using it to write his memoirs, before adding a similar one to his Cornish property. And locals this week told the Daily Mail the Camerons often visit, with one observing: ‘He keeps a low profile and tends to blend in. He and Samantha have been spotted on the coast path and you see him bodyboarding.’

There’s also a good chance karaoke might feature this weekend.

Cameron is a keen party singer, with his go-to choice The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, which he says he favours because it’s ‘old, familiar and fairly easy to sing’. He notably performed it at a birthday party for Blur bassist Alex James in 2010. He also likes belting out Frank Sinatra’s My Way.

Cameron is now a strategic adviser to the law firm DLA Piper, as well as being an adviser at US firm Scale AI and the private equity firm Finback Investment Partners.

He sits in the Lords as Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton. Married to Samantha, he has three children, Nancy, Florence and Arthur, who are now grown up. A fourth child, Ivan, died in 2009 aged six.

The family’s Cornish property has already made headlines for its parties. In 2019, it was reported that Cameron had to eject teenage friends of his then 15-year-old daughter after a gathering got a little out of hand.

Newspapers reported at the time: ‘While Nancy is adamant they weren’t drinking, David was joking to locals that he’s sure they were p***** as newts.’

As well as celebrities, political friends will also be at his 60th.

Oxford University friend Andrew Feldman, now Lord Feldman, the former co-chair of the Conservative Party who was made a life peer by Cameron in 2010, is set to join the gathering.

Absent will be former friends who no longer feature in his social circle.

Former education secretary Michael Gove – with whom Cameron famously fell out over their differing opinions on Brexit – remains persona non grata. And Sasha Swire, wife of former Tory MP Hugo, is also unlikely to attend after her headline-grabbing memoirs which revealed much about Cameron’s off-duty partying.

As Swire described, he indulged in heavy drinking – enjoying wine, whisky, brandy and Negronis – which makes those stodgy breakfast pastries, then, look like a thoroughly sensible move...