Ibiza Rocked By Stu Griffiths

STU GRIFFITHS

IBIZA ROCKED PMM Group www.ibizarocked.com

This book is entirely the work of the author. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author‟s recollection of events and imagination, except in the case of historical fact. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. This paperback edition 2009 1 Copyright © Stuart Griffiths 2009 Stuart Griffiths has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work, the title Ibiza Rocked, and the artwork associated with this title. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN – 9781907188084 Set in Times New Roman, 13pt by Stu Griffiths Printed and Bound in the United Kingdom by Colour Images, Unit 1A, Follifoot Ridge Pannal Road, Harrogate, HG3 1DP

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the author‟s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Prologue

I think a lot of people fancy being an Ibiza holiday rep, but few achieve the privilege of such an opportunity. I was one of the lucky ones and Ibiza Rocked is my journey during my time as a 1st year Ibiza rep. I planned on meeting lots of single women, partying and generally having fun. I worked with a team of reps based in San Antonio, Ibiza. It was like being out with your mates on a Saturday night, except every day felt like a Saturday night, whether we were working at beach parties, foam parties, bar crawls or the infamous Fiesta Del Agua at Es Paradis. It never once crossed my mind that during my time in Ibiza I would find something far more important in life. And neither did I believe that I would one day lose it all.

“A funny, interesting account of being an Ibiza holiday rep – Brilliant” - DJ Vicky Devine (Judgement Sundays / Charlys Angelz) .

Chapters The Beginning Fear of Flying The Bahamas Hotel San Antonio The season starts Weekly Rep meeting / Charlys Angelz Chilling out in Formentera The reps The Hostel Tarba Friday Saturday Judgement Sunday Illa Vedra Cruise Mid Season Jolly Ibiza Town That sinking feeling Hoedown In the dock Stag and Hen party On the move again Reality TV Peddling for our lives It‟s my birthday Winding down End of season Benidorm I don‟t like the way you treat women Ibiza Bound The final Chapter

5 11 17 21 27 45 53 59 65 81 91 101 109 115 121 127 131 137 143 147 149 151 155 157 163 165 177 181 185

The Beginning The first time I went to Ibiza was with my brother in August 1999. We went on a clubbing type holiday to San Antonio. I remember being wide eyed and excited by what I saw, the parties, the women, it was brilliant. It was after that holiday whilst sat at my desk back home in my normal nine to five job working for a newspaper, that I realized that all I wanted to do was to be back in Ibiza reliving all that fun we had. The weather was great over there, compared to the usual washout summers in the UK. I just couldn‟t seem to get excited anymore by the job I was in or to be honest in this country anymore. I felt that apart from the weekends there‟s not a lot going for young people in this country. We‟re overrun with crime, illegal immigrants, and poor prospects, Ibiza on the other hand was a 24 hour party island and that was temptation too great to resist. That was when I knew I had to become a holiday rep. That night I got home and went onto the internet straight away to find out how I went about becoming one. I knew I didn‟t want to be a holiday rep dealing with families, couples or children. It had to be the 18-30‟s aged holidays or nothing at all. I found several companies that dealt in those types of holidays; so I downloaded the application forms that were your typical load of rubbish, asking questions such as “Can you give an example of excellent customer service you have provided”? I mean let‟s be honest, who really tells the truth, it‟s all made up, I guess these HR departments know it‟s made up, and are looking for the best of the blags sent in to them. Anyway I sent off my completed application forms full of my excellent customer service skill (lies) and over the next few months I sat in the office where I was working and waited, and waited. One morning I received a letter, I took it to work with me as I was already late,

stuffing it into my pocket, I didn‟t remember I had it until lunchtime, then when I opened it, I read between the lines and could see it was asking me to an interview. “Yes, nice one”, I remember muttering under my breath. The interview was to take place at Jury‟s hotel in Bristol. We were told we needed to have a presentation ready on a holiday destination of our choice. “That‟s easy” I thought, as I almost word for word remembered the sales pitch our rep had given us the previous year in Ibiza, so I just copied that and spiced it up with a few of my old gags, and whacked them in to my sales pitch to make it a bit more entertaining. I remember arriving at the hotel, and there were at least 30 or 40 people all there for an interview, most from the South of England and a few from South and West Wales. The women there for interview were really dressed smartly, probably a bit too so in my opinion. They reminded me of air hostesses, you know the ones that there make-up is so thick and defined it gives them a doll like look about them; well that‟s what it was like. There were three managers there doing the interviews, two male and one female, and I can only liken it to the current TV show “XFactor”, whereby they are all sitting on a top table watching the presentations being done. They asked, “Who wants to go first”? All the other reps sat around and nobody offered. People nervously glanced at each other over their shoulders. “I haven‟t got all day I thought” so being a bit confident, I had piped up “I‟ll do it”, so up I got in front of 50 or so people and the managers and began my presentation. Standing there I could feel my legs shaking slightly but this wasn‟t the time to show fear, it was time to be a man, to stand up and be counted and with a bit of luck bag a job in Ibiza being a holiday rep. I later realized that they decided which resort

they sent you to and what type of rep they thought you‟d be suited as, and not what we thought we would be good at. Obviously I knew Ibiza was the only place I wanted to be, and being a rep on the 18-30 type holidays. The presentation was going well; luckily I had people laughing and well up for it. I was getting them excited about a holiday and excursions that weren‟t actually taking place. I guess really I have the rep in Ibiza to thank for that presentation, as I probably wouldn‟t have come across so knowledgeable without copying their pitch. I think I perhaps put a few people off the idea of becoming a rep as well in the process. After I had finished, I remember one of the managers called Steve saying “Thanks Stuart, now if you wouldn‟t mind waiting outside, I‟ll be back in a minute”, “Here we go”, I thought this was a bad sign “I‟ve screwed this up good and proper, oh well never mind”, to my surprise, he came back out and told me a letter would be in the post in the next week or so inviting me to training in a month or so. Yes I had done it; I was going to be a rep. Bargain! I‟d passed the first hurdle with ease. The letter did duly arrive and invited me for a week‟s training in Grays, Essex for rep training. All expenses paid. Well at the very worst I was thinking it‟s a week away, drinking and meeting some hot women. The letter said to meet at the companies London Headquarters at 6.45am. “6.45am are you kidding” I thought. “How the hell am I going to be there for that time of the morning?” I wasn‟t going to waste money and stay in a hotel in the London for the night, besides in those days I didn‟t have lots of money knocking around my wallet. So I did the alternative and got the early train from Cardiff to London. I somehow managed to make it for the proposed 6.45am departure outside their head office. A coach parked outside the Headquarters

would transfer us to Essex for the training. The coach was one of those big American types with all the gadgets, “Nice one” I thought, and as I had left Cardiff so early, I was pretty knackered. I‟d got into London around 5.30am, which wasn‟t particularly nice, as walking through the underground reminded me of the film “An American Werewolf in London”, so periodically I‟d be glancing over my shoulder expecting some hairy homeless person or killer Werewolf to scare the life out of me. I was primed and ready to leg it should the need arise. Good job nobody asked me the time or anything, or I‟d have taken off and probably left them bemused. Almost immediately after dumping my bags off on the side of the pavement next to the coach, ready for the driver to load onto the bus, I was sat on the coach ready to fall asleep and catch up on the winks I‟d missed through travelling overnight. When, someone decided to give the sales pitch of their life on the microphone, telling us all about how we had made the right choice to be a rep, and with this company, and how he‟d been there and done that. “Oh, please shut up” I thought, I‟m so knackered. If this bloke carries on much longer in his camp kind of voice, then I won‟t be best pleased much longer. It wasn‟t all bad, as a rather hot blonde sat opposite me, throwing me a smile as she took her seat. “God damn” I thought, “She‟s lovely”. Training was at the Moat House Hotel in Grays, Essex, which was quite a nice hotel as they go, about an hour and a half from where we currently were, so not too far a drive away and the reps seemed quite a nice lot too. Some had travelled from as far afield as Glasgow in Scotland, and were totally knackered, so most slept to Essex. I got talking to the lovely blonde girl sat opposite, she was from Newcastle. She had this really soulful kind of voice, like one of those American soul singers, with the obvious twang of „Alreet

like‟ Geordie twang. Whether true or not, I still don‟t know to this day, but I‟d like to believe so, she told me her uncle was the lead singer of the rock band AC/DC. I always thought they were American, but hey I guess they might be Geordies? Once we arrived at the hotel en-masse, there were obviously queues at the check-in desk as reps signed in and picked up their keys and stuff, I was paired in a room with an older guy; I remember he was rather strange to say the least, so I avoided him as best I could for the entire training week. Training was all about customer service this, customer service that, and lots of classroom activities split between 3 or 4 fairly large sized rooms. It was prepare a presentation for this, one for that. To be honest I was sick of all the classroom type activities already. I just wanted to get out there and start partying; I had no reason to believe it would involve writing up this report, preparing that pitch. In hindsight a lot of the stuff we got taught was really useful. During one of the classroom sessions, they dropped a bombshell, it was said that in order to become a rep in the 18-30 age group, you needed to be a rep for at least two seasons because of the intensity of it. “Oh no” I thought, “I don‟t want to be a normal rep, kids and families and old people, no chance, I want to have fun”. I was truly panicked, I‟d just given up my job at the newspaper to become a rep, now I‟d be lumbered with being a family rep having to smile and say hello to people all day long, or dressed as a crocodile or something for the kids. I acted my normal self at the time, which is usually an excuse to wind someone up at every opportunity, until they told me that perhaps I was too wild to be a representative for their company, and unless I could calm down and prove I wouldn‟t be a liability, training would be the end of the road for me. From that point on, I

had to pull out an Oscar winning performance in order to show them I could do this. I must have been quite good at acting, because they actually started liking me from that point on, though secretly I would always have a laugh, and drop in jokes during my presentations, much to the amusement of the rest of the group, who seemed to be on the same wave length as me. After training in the evenings, we‟d converge on the hotel bar after dinner, often keeping the night porter busy until 3 or 4am. You‟d see who stayed up the latest by seeing whose eyes were the reddest when giving presentations the following morning (well a few hours later). I made some really good friends during training week, we had some really good laughs, I had some really good nights in the hotel bar, and a few people had some stories to tell no doubt, from visiting each other‟s room late at night. On the final day of training the trainers said they would tell us who passed, and who hasn‟t, I believe everybody did and we were told a letter would be posted to us, telling us which resort we had got, and what brand of the company we‟d end up working under, which meant either the 18-30‟s age group, families or the elderly. One of the managers had pulled me aside and told me I had got what I wanted, and it would be in Ibiza, mainly as he said they couldn‟t risk putting me anywhere else! That was the greatest news I could have wished for. I still wanted to see it in black and white in the letter before I‟d be 100% happy. All I hoped was the wait for that letter wasn‟t too long. The letter did arrive a few days later, and there it was in black and white and for all the world to see, congratulations Stuart, we would like to offer you the position of a representative in Ibiza working on our young person‟s holiday programme. Yes! Yes! Yes! I was off to Ibiza.