'New' Ibiza uncovered

It's midnight at Sgt Peppers, a bar in the notorious West End district of San Antonio in Ibiza, and 300 drunken strangers are all shouting at me to down a pint of lager in one. This is my first night on the island, portrayed by Sky One's Ibiza Uncovered series as a place where every night is an orgy of drinking and sex. I've been picked out of the crowd to compete in the drinking game.

That's probably because I stick out like a sore thumb. I'm not horrendously drunk, not wearing a boob tube and miniskirt with tattoos, and I'm on my own. A lone girl is rare here. It usually means only one thing - she's not intending to stay single for long. In fact, I turn down so many advances I start to think I must be irresistible until I realise the boys then immediately try their luck with other girls.

I'm here on a week's package holiday with Escapades, a tour operator of the Club 18-30 type, and this is just one of the excursions I've signed up for - drink all you can for two hours and get to know the people you will be spending the week with. Last month, on the island of Corfu, intimacy was taken all too literally as three female reps for Club 18-30 were videoed by a Greek businessman performing oral sex on two male colleagues and a holidaymaker.

In the scandal that ensued, the local police chief described the participants as "hooligans who destroy Britain's image". Not long afterwards, Lieutenant Nicholas Rallis resigned after admitting he was unable to control the behaviour of British holidaymakers.

For years Ibiza, too, cultivated its reputation as the freebooting sex, drink, drugs and music capital of the Mediterranean. But two years ago, the locals decided they had had enough. The Ibizan authorities said they would rebrand the island as a family destination. They introduced regulations limiting decibel levels and capacity in the clubs and the distribution of fliers advertising them.

This year, too, prices have gone up. Entry into one of Ibiza's top clubs, such as Eden or Privilege, can cost up to £40, and for a round of drinks you need a second mortgage. Even a small bottle of water is over £5.

"After what Ibiza Uncovered did to us, we had to do something," said Daniel Whittle, brand director for Pacha, another of the island's clubs. "The cameras showed kids spewing in the gutter. Everyone decided prices needed to go up - Ibiza was going to become more exclusive."

Well, that may be the intention, but as I walk back through San Antonio's West End to my hotel, it's obvious that Ibiza Uncovered could come back again. Almost everyone is British on the main strip, a stretch of neon-lit bars and clubs, all pumping out competing noise.

You have to run a gauntlet of girls dressed in miniskirts and knee-high boots, coaxing you into the bar they're working for with offers of free booze. Packs of young men - bare-chested, drunk and singing football songs - are prowling for sex or a fight, preferably both. Others are being sick in the gutter, and vomit trickles down the sloping street.

I spot a couple trying to have sex in a doorway, but both look too drunk to accomplish it. "I've already slept with four different blokes in a week," says Lindsey, 20, a leisure and tourism student from Bolton. "I love it here - you can do stuff you don't do at home. If I want to shag around, I can."

Her friend, swaying and drooling over a piece of KFC chicken, chimes in: "You shag around at home too, you slag." Outside a British-style pub, a shaven-headed, tattooed youth has just been sick into a pint glass and his friends are trying to persuade another to drink it.

Cheap alcohol is the preferred option of most in the West End, but drugs are readily available. Every so often, I'm offered "Es, hashish, charlie?" from shady characters known as the lookylooky men. Around the corner from my hotel is a brothel. Two ageing prostitutes hang around outside, their sun-withered cleavages trussed in bikini tops. Business is slow, but then there would have to be something seriously wrong if you had to pay for sex in this town. Back at my hotel, which is crammed three or four people to each tiny room, I hear a group of Irish lads suddenly shouting: "He's going to s**t the bed!"

By day, San Antonio resembles a town under siege by Britons. Union Jack towels hang from balconies like flags, and restaurants dish up all-day English breakfasts and toad-inthehole. Groups of young men, sunburnt and tattooed, swagger around in football shorts, white trainers and gold chains. The girls - blonde and wearing bikini tops and hotpants - sunbathe or check out the fake Louis Vuitton handbags on street stalls, waiting for night to fall and the chance to slap on make-up and slip into a miniskirt and heels.

It is true that monied, civilised young professionals visit Ibiza for its famous clubs. Ibiza town already attracts an older, richer crowd, as well as the odd celebrity: Jade Jagger and Elle Macpherson are regular visitors, and this week P Diddy is staying on his yacht there. But in San Antonio, 16 kilometres away, outrageous hedonism shows no sign of slacking.

Large crowds come on package tours for the cheap drinks, easy sex, tacky bars and clubs of the West End. Emma Dowson, a 21-year-old from Brighton, who is in San Antonio for three months to hand out club fliers, is part of the huge contingent of mostly British " workers" who cater for them. "I went to one party and there were a couple having sex on a sunlounger right in front of everyone," she recalls, scandalised.

At one of the island's biggest club nights, Manumission at Privilege, a vast place outside San Antonio, I see a large group of drunken Sunday league footballers from Scunthorpe stumble around while a girl is being sick in the garden. It's hardly "exclusive".

I go on to an all-you-can-drink bar, where a drag queen is the entertainment for the evening. "Let's get sh**faced!" she screams periodically, as if anyone needs encouragement. "How many blokes have you shagged so far?" she asks one girl in a miniskirt and tight, white top who is dancing on a bench. "Seven!" is the reply. Later, four boys get up and strip to music. The audience votes on who has the most impressive appendage.

My week passes in a blur of alcohol. On day six, we're all herded off by Escapades reps and board a catamaran for what's been advertised as the "Booze Cruise". Sitting on the top deck as the jugs of sangria pass round, we are verbally assaulted by a compere who is sexist ("fookin' nora, lads, look at the bazookas on her"), xenophobic (all Germans are "sausage-eating bastards") and just plain offensive (handicapped people are "ming mongs"). The crowd loves it.

Then Johanna from Belfast lies down topless while the reps pour cheap fizz-and-orange juice down her throat. During the bellyflop competition off the side of the boat, she asks: "Do I win a T-shirt if I take my pants off ?" She then strips, surrounded by leering drunks.

But Johanna surpasses herself at an open-air restaurant where we have docked. She has recently had a baby and begins expressing milk from her breast. A rep with a microphone goes over and has a look. "That's one thing I've never seen," he announces to the enthralled crowd, as she squeezes her breasts.

Several more jugs of sangria later, we're moved on to a giant sandpit for a kind of Gladiators on-heat contest, involving simulated sex, and a game of "eggy-bum the rep". Katie, small and pretty with enormous breasts, has hers smashed in her cleavage. Kelly doesn't get off quite so lightly - her egg is smashed in her pants to chants of "get your flange out".

Most of the people I spent the week with were just doing what young people reasonably do on their annual holiday in the sun - getting drunk, dancing and having sex. Yet almost everyone I spoke to complained that they hadn't had as much sex as they expected.

It is also easy to be a snob and dismiss those who go to San Antonio as drunken louts - though many of them are. Everyone, in fact, should go on an 18-30s-style holiday if only to return older, wiser and with an almighty hangover. But will I go back?

Only if I'm staying on P Diddy's yacht.