Ibiza Uncovered: How a TV Show Taught Me to Stop Worrying and Start Living it Large

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Ibiza Uncovered: How a TV Show Taught Me to Stop Worrying and Start Living it Large

Party like It’s 1999 with Kez, Sam, Mel, Phil, John Hood and Tony Teeth

I was eight years old in 1999, so the most turnt I got was getting giddy on Panda Pops whilst skanking to B*Witched's "C'est La Vie". I was pleased to discover then yet another nugget spawned from how the internet lets us time travel: an entire video archive chronicling the ups and downs of party-goers and promoters in Ibiza at the turn of the century.

For those, like me, too young to have watched it first time round, Ibiza Uncovered was a reality show, that followed different characters and their hedonistic dreams. Imagine Airport sponsored by WKD. The clubbing scene depicted is a lost world in comparison to 2015, where sticking your tongue out was the ultimate act of gaudy defiance, and everyone was 'living it large'.

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Ibiza Uncovered wasn't just about the behemoths of the club scene, documenting also the realities of owning a small bar and the puke-soaked pressures of holiday rep training. It was Ibiza as we think we know it: crop tops and crimped hair, baggy football shirts and gobby Little Englanders.

I tried to watch every episode under the Ibizan sun, all in glorious 240p, but a rancid combination of jealousy and repulsion took hold so I only managed to battle through episode one. You can watch the whole episode here, but for now here are my personal highlights from this televisual time capsule.

THE THEME TUNE IS ABSOLUTE SAUCE

Welcome, instantly, to the world of Ibiza Uncovered via Mighty Dub Katz "Magic Carpet Ride", a slice of dubby balearic conjured up by a pre-Fatboy Slim Norman Cook. It's as saucy as a Heinz sponsored wet T-Shirt competition, and that's basically the sort of tone this show always aimed to aspire to.

THE CONDOMS IN SPAIN ARE SUBPAR

Ibiza Uncovered introduced me to 52 year old Michael, a man packing his suitcase for a 'leather week' (what's a leather week? a Balearic shag riot?) on the island. As someone who doesn't cope well with mild heat at the best of times, I hope Michael considered the temperature shift as he stuffed those sweaty chaps into his bag. While he doesn't name his source, Michael is under the impression that, "the quality of condoms in Spain and perhaps Ibiza isn't very good." With that in mind he's stockpiled some serious, top-quality homegrown rubber, and there's something wonderfully endearing, and oddly British, about the micro-management Michael applies to locally sourcing his sex life.

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Read about avoiding death in Ibiza here.

IF YOU WANTED TO BE A HOLIDAY REP YOU NEEDED A NICKNAME

This holiday rep training session was a painful reminder of exactly why I've always hated PE teachers. Head rep Simon was like the kind of irredeemable tosser who'd pull your pants down in front of the lads as a joke, but also cry uncontrollably as soon as he's drunk about how all that shithousery is him lashing out at the world/your crotch because he never knew his dad. Anyway, in this scene he lets the new recruits into a few secrets, chiefly the HILARIOUS nicknames he's ascribed to the other reps. Thus we meet "Fat Version of Scary Spice" and her brother "Tony Teeth." Tony has too many teeth, you see. That's nice, isn't it?

Everyone giggles at everything Simon does in a timbre that rings clearly of the nervously oppressed.

YOU ALSO NEEDED TO BE PROFESSIONALLY UP FOR IT

Cut to 7 minutes in: Tony Teeth finna turn up!

EVERYONE IS UP FOR A SHAG

Ibiza Uncovered features more talk of shagging than an amateur British porno, and in doing so proves the forgotten glory of the word we now only hear from twats dressed up as Austin Powers.History won't look kindly on Mike Myers. Your great-great-great-great-great grandchildren will stumble across his shagadelic, and painfully unfunny, creation one dark night and shudder to think at how we once gathered round to watch it at Christmas. He definitely killed the word 'shag' which is a massive shame because shagging is great. Shagging isn't quite making love. It isn't fucking. It's one above bonking and three up from rutting. It is flippant without being thoughtless. Raunchy without being seedy. Cheeky without being crude.

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Read our Youtube history of Ibiza here.

IBIZA WAS CHALLENGING PRECONCEPTIONS LONG BEFORE BRITAIN'S GOT TALENT

Welcome to what was Ibiza's best kept secret in the late 90s: Phil and Mel's bar, a business and life partnership to be reckoned with. When we first join them Phil is poignantly performing Tammy Wynette's "It's Hard to be a Woman". Mel then adds that people are surprised that voice comes from someone who looks like that. I should add this happened a whole ten years before Susan Boyle. Watch and weep.

GREASE IS THE WORD

At one point, in a Butlins-esque twist, the club reps have to learn a dance routine to Grease. Because what do 18-30 year olds in Ibiza love? Shots, chirpsing, and musical theatre. This, perhaps, is another reminder that the forced-fun and herded-hedonism of package holidays is nothing more than a continuation of the fizzy drink-fuelled school discos we enjoyed and endured as prepubescents. It's an acknowledgement of the fact that each and every one of us in this life is petrified of growing up, and in a way, this scene of the club reps body popping to "We Go Together" is a complex and sorrowful portrait of the grasping fear of dying that grabs us by the throat every waking minute.

PEPE COLIMAR COULD MAKE YOU A 2-4-1 OFFER YOU CAN'T REFUSE

Pepe came from a modest Ibiza family. He was sent away, made his money in hotel management and returned. "Ibiza," he tells us cooly, "is one of the wealthiest places in Spain." Pepe is Ibiza Uncovered's Don Vito.

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Watch our very own Ibiza documentary here.

NEXT TIME I'M IN IBIZA, I'M GOING ON A LEATHER PICNIC

Our favourite condom hoarder, Michael, is back and now he's starting to explain some of his leather based chat. The 'leather picnic' is "basically just a bunch of guys who are into leather, who like wearing leather, who get together, getting to know each other and exchanging fashion tips on leather." This is the first evidence I've seen of the legendary lost debauchery of Ibiza, sitting at my shared desk space watching Michael rub tanning oil into the wrinkly bottom of a cohort.

ROMANCE IN IBIZA IS NOT DEAD

I know what you are thinking. Romance in Ibiza means meeting somebody in a chip shop, finding the change to buy them a battered sausage before squeezing in a fumble on the beach, falling asleep, and being woken up by the litter picker. Well, think again. Frank and Ginny are a couple who, after years together, have flown to the island to get married. They want to "tie things up so they are nice and legal, and also we're not getting any younger." Nothing screams LOVE louder than the barely concealed terror of mortality and the grinding bureaucracy of judicial convenience.

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?

An important lesson can be absorbed by comparing Ibiza Uncovered with ITV's current series Ibiza Weekender. The modern incarnation is a San Antonio set Geordie Shore, full of tightly toned torsos and peachy bums. It's a show centered around their petty squabbling, and countless tears are shed each week because "Deano has said he wouldn't go on the banana boat with Imogen because he saw her flirting with Jordan who was supposed to be looking after reception but got too fucked" or something. At least Ibiza Uncovered, whilst chronicling it's fair share of emotional tumult, largely favoured fun over stress, shots drunk over shots fired.

Yes, the revellers might all look like Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps characters, but their unbreakable spirit and faith in the island seems to come from a purer place. A sense of fun and reckless abandon now buried under three layers of spray tan. It is a chapter in time where clubbing culture was less refined, where everyone were "going mental" and "up for a shag". It would be easy to laugh, but whilst you are buttoning up that checked shirt and unloading that can of Elnett onto your forehead, there is a party going on, preserved on Youtube, where all you needed was a shit load of enthusiasm and a large pack of British condoms.

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