There's more truth than you might think in First Class' baddie gang

The origin of the X-Men series' shadowy, scantily clad, agenda-bending Hellfire Club goes back to 1980, when writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne were inspired by the A Touch Of Brimstone episode of ‘60s TV show The Avengers, in which the Club is presented as a group of pleasure-seeking pranksters turned nasty (said episode's most notable for Dian Rigg's risque "Queen of Sin" get-up).

But this in turn was inspired by a genuine exclusive gentlemen's club – or rather series of clubs – established in 1719 by the Duke of Wharton, a notorious rake. His Hellfire Club cocked a snook at religious mores and rites in order to enliven its members' "dull traditional Sundays". It was shut down by royal edict three years later for "corrupting... minds and morals".

The most (in)famous incarnation, though, was that founded in 1746 by Sir Francis Dashwood (although he modestly called it 'The Knights of St. Francis') as a mock monastic order, which counted the likes of John Wilkes, William Hogarth and, supposedly, Benjamin Franklin and Horace Walpole among its number. Originally meeting at the George & Vulture pun in London, it eventually moved to Medmenham Abbey near Dashwood's ancestral turf of West Wycombe, beneath which the 'Hell-Fire Caves' were tunneled.

Rumors of Satanic ceremonies and orgies occurring in this subterranean pleasure-maze remain unsubstantiated (as do more recent claims that the Club was a glorified paedophile ring), although the "monks" certainly took "women of good humor" there for "private devotions". The hewn-from-chalk Caves are still intact, and in fact open to the public, so if you're ever in West-Wycombe, you can go get a whiff of the debauchery yourself...