Ibiza Entourage
a holiday is a terrible thing to waste
TEXT LUCILLE HOWE
PHOTOS HELEN CATHCART
Imagine the hit Hollywood TV show relocated to the Mediterranean. One speedboat, two hummers, five VIP passes and a weekend to remember…
So, you’ve arrived in Ibiza to rock the party island with your posse. You’re waxed/freshly shaved, manicured/ groomed, decked out in your best clobber and ready for your close up. There’s only one problem — you haven’t a clue where to start. There are girls in hotpants flogging tickets for the big clubs at thirty quid a pop but you don’t want to get ripped off. You know all the best hangouts are off the beaten track, but don’t know how to find them. Cue: the Godfather.
Charlie Chester is to Ibiza what Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone was to New York — only more likely to blag you in to a cool party than leave a horse’s head in your bed. Together with his wife, DJ Jo Mills, Charlie has developed a legendary reputation as a club promoter on the island. The culmination of all those decades of partying and networking is his new company, Icon, and they’ll make you feel like one during one of their tailor-made clubbing weekenders.
Whether you want a jeep safari with www.adventura.com, a trip to the white beaches of Formentera in an Italian speedboat, or a VIP table at Pacha, Charlie can sort it.
Our Fixer for the weekend is Chris Vaux, Charlie’s right-hand man. The 28-year-old DJ from Portsmouth spends the season driving celebs around in his pimped-up Hummer (yours for 120 eur an hour) and walking them into clubs without so much as a second glance from security. Last year he had 24 hours’ notice that P. Diddy would require entertaining after his yacht sprung a leak. “He wanted plasma TV screens with his videos on loop,” says Chris before he dictates a quick email into the Parrot next to the wheel and then cranks up the Bose sound system.
Hosting Diddy also meant holding “castings” for barmen to service parties at his villa who wouldn’t then blab to the press, finding chefs to do the catering and sourcing huge generators to power the music system. “The whole time he wore white fluffy socks with black sandals,” Chris laughs. “If you’re sun-bathing that’s going to leave you with bad skin socks”.
Chris has also picked up Sienna Miller “a bit worse for wear” and drove Jade Jagger to one of her club nights last season. And if it’s not celebs in the back seat, then it’s super-rich businessmen, like the South African who sat at a £10,000-a-night minimum-spend table in Pasha, drinking £800 bottles of Dom Perignon. Or the 28-year-old property developer from Berlin who’s given Chris a millionaire’s budget to stage a birthday party for him this month.
Burlesque-styled girls in frilly knickers wink from the podiums and an aerial acrobat hangs off a giant disco ball
So, with my Wing Woman turning heads, we pull up outside Eden for Pete Tong’s Wonderland opening night of the season. His move from Pasha to the superclub in the more touristy San Antonio (or “San An”) is the most controversial news of the summer but that hasn’t stopped the crowds gathering at 2am. Icon can fix you up with VIP access before you can say, “it’s all about me, me, me,” so the velvet rope has been unhooked and we’re in the pit with Kaz from the Bodyrockers and Simon and Yasmin Le Bon. Some of the real Ibiza players are there, ordering champagne and fluttering their fans in time with the baseline — and that’s just the boys. Burlesque-styled girls in corsets and frilly knickers wink from the podiums and an aerial acrobat hangs off a giant disco ball.
The Groove Armada DJs bash out tune after tune, while Charlie’s wife, Jo, rocks the upstairs Looking Glass room. Then Pete Tong takes the booth for his set which be simultaneously broadcast live on Radio 1. The pouting brunette at his side is protective and squeezes beside the decks with him, flicking through the album of discs waiting to be played — vinyl having been long since abandoned. The freeze frame of the night: 2,000 people going mental to Superstyling.
ACCESS ALL AREAS: OUR ENTOUR AGE CHECKS OUT LIFE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE VELVET ROPE
The perfect location for beautiful people to languish on divans that cost £40 a day to rent
If there’s an Ibizan way to ease through a hangover, it’s spending the afternoon at a beach club, so we head to the Blue Marlin at Cala Jondal (bluemarlinibiza.co; tel: +34 616 233 678 for all Icon restaurant bookings), the perfect location for beautiful people to languish on divans that cos
t £40 a day to rent. A fashion show takes the boys attention away from their £11 pincho pollo sate (chicken satay). “I want that dress,” says my Wing Woman as she eyes a sheer kaftan over the rim of her £13.50 sangria. With the hot and toned extras and sun-drenched chill-out soundtrack it’s the perfect Entourage crowd shot.
If there are opening credits to this episode, then it’s you and your crew posing in a speedboat from the www.boatchartercompany.com (tel: +34 616 422 978) with its skipper, Lenny. All part of the Icon experience, you can park yo
ur bikinied behind on the cream leather seats or stretch out your limbs on the helm, where the sun, sea and salt combine to tan you the colour of walnut veneer. Forty minutes later we’re moored off a beach on the neighbouring island, Formentera, where the dreamy water is clear as cling-film. You can wave sympathetically at the smaller boats and pretend you’re not impressed behind your oversized sunnies when the bigger ones pass.
THE BIG CHILL: TAKING IT EASY AND CATCHING SOME RAYS ON SEA AND LAND
Cut to night-time Ibiza and there are two places you should take your taste buds on their hols — either rock up yourself, or get Icon to book you the top table in advance. The first is Sa Capella, a converted church in Carretera Santa Ines (tel: +34 971 340 057) which has attracted the likes of Carl Cox, Pete Tong and Calvin Harris to dine in its alcoves. Start with a Kir Royale then enjoy the novelty of cooking your own slivers of ox steak over a bed of heated rock salt.
When Wayne Rooney hit San An for his stag do there were twenty paps on his trail. If you want attention from the right people, go and watch the sunset at the legendary Mambo (where Rooney camped) then hop in the Hummer for the second must-do, latest destination venue Aura. A successful entourage can take over a place and at Aura scene-stealing groups can grab seats in the garden booths for tapas so insanely tasty they deserve a credit of their own, and then commandeer the amber-glowing dancefloor while sipping watermelon martinis.
TOP TABLES: ICON CAN BOOK YOU INTO THE SMARTEST PL ACES TO E AT AND DRINK
Chris knows how to keep the ladies happy and drops us at the spa at the new Gran Hotel. Open for just a few months old, it’s packed with the most sophisticated pampering gear and £36 buys you a day pass. Brave the biothermal shower with its alternate ice cold/stinging hot jets, clear your lungs in the hammam with its salty steam, or sleep off the previous night’s clubbing — like this entourage did — in the relaxation room with water beds and heated wooden chairs.
INDELIBLE MEMORY: HEAD TO INK ADELIC AND GET TAGGED FOR LIFE LIKE THE BIG NAME DJ’S
As this special Ibiza episode of Entourage comes to an end (LA? Pah — so last year!) this girl surrenders to Jade Jagger’s tattoo-artist mate to mark the crazy times with ink at Inkadelic (www.inkadelic.com; tel: +34 971 192 985). Neil Aherne — hot as hell, with a piratey gold tooth and a dog called Scratch — is the real thing. “Ask yourself why you’re having the tattoo,” he suggests. I already know why and it’s a secret I’m not sharing. “And I don’t do angels or fairies,” he warns scathingly. Which is fair enough. It’s really best to leave him to it because he’s going to design you something more beautiful than you could ever doodle on a scrap of paper. With the fans whirring overhead and D’Angelo and remixes of classic Stones records distracting me from the pain, it’s a strangely sexy experience.
With the entourage nodding heads to Balearic beats in the Hummer, it’s time to leave the island and go back to being nobodies again. But while there’s a tan, a tattoo and a Facebook album of superfly pics to remember it by, it’s not really The End. Besides, there’s still the season’s closing parties to head back for.
To be continued…
For more info visit www.iconibiza.com
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