Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor)
APOLOGIES for being away for a while, but, the sun lover that I am, I found it impossible to leave my new summer office (a laptop-sized space at the beach club halfway between the San Miguel-stocked fridge and the Hawaiian Tropic boutique).
But having shaken the sand out of the iMac and returned the sunbed to the upright position I am raring to go.
Armed with my morning dose of tequila and grapefruit juice (just to steady the hands, you understand) and my rather fetching Dolce & Banana thong (don’t worry I’ve spared you the photo) I have unearthed a few nuggets on the latest coastal comings and goings.
Summer marks the end of the football season, and, like a band of blinged-up lemmings, many of the Premiership’s finest make a headlong charge to the costas. David Bentley (who owns the Buddha Beach club), Ryan Giggs, Shay Given, Aaron Lennon, Carlton Cole and Jermaine Jenas have all been spotted in and around Marbella over the last fortnight.
“Armed with my morning dose of tequila and grapefruit juice (just to steady the hands, you understand) and my rather fetching Dolce & Banana thong”.
And, of course, wherever you’ll find footballers, you’ll find the WAGs (wives and girlfriends), alongside those busty, slingback-wearing, dyed blonde, tabloid kiss-and-tell specialists (or KTSs).
They are not known for their intellectual capacity. One of the rumours that was circulating at the beginning of the summer was that the entire Chelsea squad were having a boys’ weekend in Puerto Banus.
And one of Slitherer’s colleagues, a paparazzi of some repute, spotted a KT enjoying a little, ahem, offshore “Dirty Dorsal Dancing” in the Mediterranean with an athletic tattooed male type.
When my camera-carrying friend asked the dizzy blonde what she’d been up to, she giggled and said she’d been “’avin a bit of fun with one of the Chelsea second team”. My friend then had to inform her of the fact that:
A) Chelsea, were, in fact, in Las Vegas and,
B) Chelsea don’t have a second team….
Summer also tends to bring television crews down to southern Spain all eager to get a slice of the action.
Now we’ve had some really appalling TV shows about Marbella – Costa del Dosh and the Marbella Belles spring most readily to mind – and they all seem to show that people gain ten pounds and lose 1000 points of IQ when a camera crew shows up.
The latest to visit was ex-Mirror editor, Britain’s Got Talent judge Piers Morgan. Being one of the most recognisable lounge lizards on the coast (normally spotted snoozing on the Chesterfield sofa by the empty ice bucket) Slitherer was approached by the production crew, who explained that, as in previous shows where Piers visited Monte Carlo and Dubai, he wanted to go behind the lager lout stereotypes and find the real stories of people who lived on the coast.
This all sounded refreshing and I put them in touch with several people and businesses that fitted the bill.
Fast forward to the week that he actually arrived and there had obviously been a change of angle.
Appointments were missed, due to Piers’ “illness” (perhaps caused by the night before) or filming was arranged only to be cancelled 20 minutes before schedule – a tad annoying for restaurants that had closed off sections to ensure that “el Morgan” could conduct his interviews.
One Marbella real estate legend was repeatedly questioned about prostitutes as she was showing Piers around a million pound mansion, while both Sir Alan Sugar and David Bentley, who presumably have run into
Piers before, flatly refused to be interviewed, knowing that they were likely to get stitched up.
So who did Piers interview for a real taste of Marbella? None other than my very great friends Michel and Steven Euesden (they of the upmarket coastal oracle the Euro Weekly News) as well as Wayne Lineker, disgraced brother of England footballer Gary, in his bar Lineker’s, a favourite of the stag and hen night crowd in Puerto Banus. Classy, insightful stuff!
Next up it was a day at Nikki Beach’s champagne spraying party, the favoured hangout of the rich and vacuous, Here, he interviewed Z-list celebrity and ‘glamour model’ Bianca Gascoigne, daughter of Gazza, who, last time Slitherer checked, didn’t own property here, so was hardly qualified to talk about anything, apart from her latest boob job.
Slitherer will probably watch “Piers Morgan on Marbella” in much the same way as he did Doctor Who when a small lizard. From behind the sofa with his fingers in his ears…
Marbella. Yawn.
I had a similar experience with the foriegn correspondent of a well-known tabloid. He had been sent to write an article about the plight of Costa del Sol pensioners who were thought to be returning to the UK in droves. After almost a week of research he found it almost impossible to find one case, but struck lucky on the final day with ONE hard luck story.
This must be the face of modern journalism – go somewhere with a shed load of preconceptions and proceed to dig desperately until one’s ideas (however inaccurate) have been met.
With all the tourists around and the high temperatures, many locals avoid places like Banus or Nikki at this time of year. The strip of land where you can still breathe becomes very narrow, because that remote charming restaurant in the mountains is now even hotter than it is at home. The questions about prositutes are good. Banus is getting worse and worse in summer. I have been told some fashion shops will leave. But also the sign in the Sinatra bar that after 10 pm people who are not decently dressed will not be served anymore is a sign especially because bars make money out of selling drinks. Still the reporters do a bad job, more and more are copy and paste journalists rather the inquisitive writers. And if they are they often like to exagerrate rather than be factual. Truth is that there still are many nice places to hide from the tourists but I would be a fool to mention them for that same reason.
Now…how strange that a certain ‘lovely’ couple managed to worm — sorry slither — their way into an interview with PM….class will out, obviously!
Nice one, Tricia! I couldn’t agree more!