And God created St Tropez...

Pampelonne Beach, just outside St Tropez, is so much more than a stretch of sand. It is a place of legendary excesses, both financial and sexual, of effortless Provençal glamour, of beautiful girls and the rich older men who appreciate them. Discovered by Brigitte Bardot and Roger Vadim in 1955, it has been a locus of VIP cool ever since. In recent years it has become famous for the wanton high jinks of the regulars, for the bottles of Cristal champagne lopped open with sabres and sprayed over tanned breasts, and the flunkeys carrying suitcases of cash to pay the extortionate prices charged by the restaurants. It has been described as 'a Fellini cast party on Dexedrine and Viagra'. But if the local councillors of Ramatuelle have their way, this den of delightful decadence could be changed forever.

Pampelonne's 4km beach is characterised by a series of family-run restaurants that are, essentially, glorified beach huts. There are 28, each offering a different hedonistic vibe, from the classic navy and white elegance of Club 55 to the Miami-white day beds of Nikki Beach and the naughtiness of La Voile Rouge, the birthplace of topless sunbathing.

These businesses are well-loved by a host of celebrities, from Bono and Roman Abramovich to Naomi Campbell and Paris Hilton, but they also earn 40 million a year and attract up to 30,000 visitors a day. So it is no surprise that when the council announced plans to demolish the huts, force all proprietors to reapply for their licences and reduce the number of licences from 28 to 23, thereby shutting five of the restaurants, there was uproar.

'We are ready to fight to the death!' says Carol Balligand, who runs the Aqua Club and is chairwoman of the Save Pampelonne campaign. So, last Monday, despite the usual hordes of bikini- clad ladies and plutocrats, the owners of the beach huts of Pampelonne downed tools. No sardines were grilled, no steaks flipped and no champagne was sprayed.

'Everybody who closed on the 16th [day one of a month-long public inquiry] lost a lot of money, but we want to show the authorities we are very angry,' continues Balligand. The shack-owners' fury has been further incensed by plans to site half of the new constructions behind an artificial sand dune with no view of the sea, and to reduce the space they occupy by one third.

But the killjoy Mayor of Ramatuelle, Roland Bruno, is unrepentant: 'We want to keep the identity of the beach but we believe that Pampelonne deserves something better. In winter, it's a shantytown.' He also claims the clubs are eroding sand dunes and damaging plant species vital to their protection.

Patrice de Colmont, the son of the couple who founded Club 55, is having none of it. 'Here we have an example of an international tourist place made by family-managed clubs,' he says. 'If things change it will be very bad for the special spirit of Pampelonne. Under the new proposals, the contracts will be for nine or ten years. At the moment, the big hotel groups have no interest in applying for contracts because they are only for one year, but if they were for ten years we would see many big structures and the spirit of the beach would be completely different.'

The council would also make considerably more money. As things stand, the beach clubs pay 1.3 million a year between them for the right to operate, which works out at a very reasonable 46,500 apiece. The introduction of long-term licences would attract multimillion-pound bids from international chains with much greater resources.

One of the most powerful weapons in the owners' armoury is their celebrity regulars. Plans are afoot to encourage them to sign a petition and no one is more unhappy about the proposed changes than the actress Joan Collins, who has been a regular at Club 55 for many years. 'If this crazy, misplaced scheme goes ahead it will suck the heart and life out of St Tropez,' she tells ES, 'not to mention destroy the livelihood of thousands of people who work in and around the beaches of Pampelonne. One only has to look at the miles of desolate litter-strewn beaches in Santa Monica, California, to see how destructive these public renovations can be. Santa Monica, like Pampelonne, used to be cared for by privately-run businesses and now it has been all but abandoned. When people think of St Tropez, they think of beautiful beaches with golden sand
and clear water, but it's the beaches of Pampelonne they are thinking about. The beaches in St Tropez are largely privately owned and impossible to get to. If the council feels the beaches are being eroded then simply generate new guidelines for the owners to maintain them – the owners have more invested in the preservation of these beaches than anyone. But to wipe everything out and ask them to rebuild is just rampant capitalism in sheep's clothing.'

It was all so different in 1955 when film director Roger Vadim and his then wife Brigitte Bardot were filming And God Created Woman. The beaches could be reached only by Jeep or Land Rover, and were populated by just the occasional avant-garde sun-worshipper or wrinkly fisherman. One day, feeling a little peckish, Roger and Brigitte spotted a couple preparing food over an open fire outside a hut and, mistaking it for a beachfront bistro, asked if the owners would mind cooking for the crew. Monsieur and Madame de Colmont were happy to oblige and Club 55 – named after the year of its foundation – was born. On the back of the patronage of Bardot, it became a magnet for fashionable Parisians and over the years bred a host of competitors, most notably La Voile Rouge, opened by male-thong pioneer Paul Tomaselli in 1972.