THE terrible twins appear to have been tamed. After four years of grabbing headlines as the party-loving, cocktail-swilling student daughters of President George W Bush, Jenna and Barbara Bush have settled into an unexpectedly sedate adult lifestyle that yesterday found both of them in Africa helping children with Aids.

Jenna is accompanying her mother Laura on a five-day tour of African countries where the president’s wife will speak about Aids relief and education initiatives. Their first stop was South Africa, where Barbara Bush has been quietly working for the past six weeks as a volunteer in a children’s hospital.

The emergence of the 23-year-old twins as hard- working supporters of African causes is in marked contrast to their chequered careers as celebrity students with a penchant for breaking America’s draconian underage drinking laws.

Jenna was once caught with a fake identity card in a Mexican restaurant and was photographed after falling on the floor at a student party at the University of Texas. At Yale, Barbara was described as a “wild child” who frequently eluded her secret service bodyguards and took off for bars and parties that were reported to have included at least one nudist gathering.

The twins are now more likely to be spotted working for a living than shaking a leg at Smith Point, once their favourite nightclub.

Jenna, the blonde one, last week accompanied her parents on an official visit to Denmark, followed by the G8 summit. The tight jeans and belly-baring tops had been replaced by a conservative tweed jacket and comparatively sober skirts.

Since her graduation last spring, Jenna has been working as a low-paid teaching assistant. Barbara, generally regarded as the more serious — or less frivolous — of the two, left Washington almost unnoticed in late May to work at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital in Cape Town.

Although her experience might have been promoted by the White House as evidence of Bush’s personal commitment to Africa, the White House has stuck to its policy of refusing to discuss the twins’ work, both as a security precaution and to protect their privacy.

The twins’ transition from bar-hoppers to role models began during last year’s presidential election, when they joined their father’s campaign and proved unexpected hits with younger voters.

Barbara and Jenna remain America’s most eligible bachelorettes, Washington’s equivalent of Prince William and Prince Harry, and any sightings of potential heirs to the Bush family’s political fortune are certain to generate the kind of headlines that bedevil the royal family.

Both women have joked about the perils of bringing boyfriends home to meet dad — they must apparently first be frisked for weapons.

Even their grandmother, the senior Barbara Bush, once noted that during the family’s visit to the 2004 Olympics the entire US men’s wrestling team asked for dates with the first daughters. Not even charity work in Africa can spare them that kind of attention.

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