The series was filmed across Ibiza in 1997 and I was on the Island at the time, shooting some film for a travel company (click between image and writing buttons, above)

Ibiza Uncovered in many ways led the way for cheap, fly-on-the-wall television and was a precursor for bottom-of-the-barrel 'reality' television shows like Big brother. The fact it is still being shown eleven years after it was made shows that, with reruns, the 15 minutes of fame that got people in front of a lens and made the original series possible, can be strung out ad infinitum.

Of course Ibiza wasn't totally uncovered because the series makers kept their eye on mainstream music, vomit and blind hedonism, and left the interesting stuff alone; like the age-old culture of baksheesh, for example, in which travel companies use their paying customers as pawns and attempt to make money on every drink they buy in pretty much every bar and club they are herded into. The commercial blueprint is to fly the punters out cheap, then make money by pressuring this captive audience into buying tickets for daily and nightly excursions, for which the mark-up is far higher. At the time, I thought it strange that a bus bus load of impressionable young Brits were taken go-carting after getting blind drunk on a wine-tasting expedition they'd been sold. But when an ex-rep told me that the culture of backhanders even extends to some companies taking a cut of the medical insurance payouts, from a preferred list of emergency Doctors, it made a perverse kind of commercial sense.
Some days into my stay, I was so riled by the cynicism of those higher up the Rep-chain, and the way the company pushed the new reps like Chinese slaves (under European law), I realised I didn't want to make this company look at all good. So I went off and did my own thing, shooting the good Ibiza clubbing images in my own time and for myself.

For some of those featured in the Ibiza Uncovered series, the 15 minutes of fame they enjoyed back in the day will have turned into a nightmare on a loop, as their year of living dangerously keeps coming back to haunt them in never ending repeats. But the majority, who've long been back in the humdrum world of 9 to 5, will no doubt be happy for one more opportunity to tell it like it was to the guys on the shop floor, at their A.A. meeting, or the other mums on the school run.
With so many cable channels with schedules to fill, the format has been cloned this year by Living TV's Ibiza 2008, which is pretty much the same-old same-old. However, one Ibiza veteran's blind vanity rises above the whiff of rotting sensuality, which often accompanies those who can't escape the hedonism of their youth, and the spectacle has made 15 minutes of great television for all the wrong reasons. And as the Manumission boys in the first series proved, if you give vanity enough lens, it'll willingly hang itself for all to see.

Ibiza Uncovered reaffirmed this summer what I felt then: that Ibiza, like sunshine resorts the world over, is a magnet for sharks, who ruthlessly exploit paying punters and the escapist dreams of those who arrive at the airport with little more than the clothes they wear. And the people who shine through the whole grubby mess aren't the idiotic and vain promoters, the thieving local employers, nor the self-regarding DJ's. Those who come out of the series best are all the gullible first year reps, as well as the young clubbers and holiday makers: unlike the professional manipulators, their behaviour isn't pre-meditated and their excesses have an air of youthful innocence.

Humanly speaking, Ibiza Uncovered chooses not to dig deeply into the bigger story, of how the Ibiza dream quickly becomes the nightmare, and for every person who flew out that (and every) year, for a summer of love on a decent wage, there are dozens who ended up PRing pizza's for peanuts and flogging E's with their fliers. A far more interesting television series could've been made from the series out-takes, or if those featured in the original series had been revisited, to see how their lives had changed in the ten years since they got their television fifteen minutes. But this might've delivered too much reality for mainstream television to swallow.

The series was filmed across Ibiza in 1997 and I was on the Island at the time, shooting some film for a travel company (click between image and writing buttons, above)

Ibiza Uncovered in many ways led the way for cheap, fly-on-the-wall television and was a precursor for bottom-of-the-barrel 'reality' television shows like Big brother. The fact it is still being shown eleven years after it was made shows that, with reruns, the 15 minutes of fame that got people in front of a lens and made the original series possible, can be strung out ad infinitum.

Of course Ibiza wasn't totally uncovered because the series makers kept their eye on mainstream music, vomit and blind hedonism, and left the interesting stuff alone; like the age-old culture of baksheesh, for example, in which travel companies use their paying customers as pawns and attempt to make money on every drink they buy in pretty much every bar and club they are herded into. The commercial blueprint is to fly the punters out cheap, then make money by pressuring this captive audience into buying tickets for daily and nightly excursions, for which the mark-up is far higher. At the time, I thought it strange that a bus bus load of impressionable young Brits were taken go-carting after getting blind drunk on a wine-tasting expedition they'd been sold. But when an ex-rep told me that the culture of backhanders even extends to some companies taking a cut of the medical insurance payouts, from a preferred list of emergency Doctors, it made a perverse kind of commercial sense.
Some days into my stay, I was so riled by the cynicism of those higher up the Rep-chain, and the way the company pushed the new reps like Chinese slaves (under European law), I realised I didn't want to make this company look at all good. So I went off and did my own thing, shooting the good Ibiza clubbing images in my own time and for myself.

For some of those featured in the Ibiza Uncovered series, the 15 minutes of fame they enjoyed back in the day will have turned into a nightmare on a loop, as their year of living dangerously keeps coming back to haunt them in never ending repeats. But the majority, who've long been back in the humdrum world of 9 to 5, will no doubt be happy for one more opportunity to tell it like it was to the guys on the shop floor, at their A.A. meeting, or the other mums on the school run.
With so many cable channels with schedules to fill, the format has been cloned this year by Living TV's Ibiza 2008, which is pretty much the same-old same-old. However, one Ibiza veteran's blind vanity rises above the whiff of rotting sensuality, which often accompanies those who can't escape the hedonism of their youth, and the spectacle has made 15 minutes of great television for all the wrong reasons. And as the Manumission boys in the first series proved, if you give vanity enough lens, it'll willingly hang itself for all to see.

Ibiza Uncovered reaffirmed this summer what I felt then: that Ibiza, like sunshine resorts the world over, is a magnet for sharks, who ruthlessly exploit paying punters and the escapist dreams of those who arrive at the airport with little more than the clothes they wear. And the people who shine through the whole grubby mess aren't the idiotic and vain promoters, the thieving local employers, nor the self-regarding DJ's. Those who come out of the series best are all the gullible first year reps, as well as the young clubbers and holiday makers: unlike the professional manipulators, their behaviour isn't pre-meditated and their excesses have an air of youthful innocence.

Humanly speaking, Ibiza Uncovered chooses not to dig deeply into the bigger story, of how the Ibiza dream quickly becomes the nightmare, and for every person who flew out that (and every) year, for a summer of love on a decent wage, there are dozens who ended up PRing pizza's for peanuts and flogging E's with their fliers. A far more interesting television series could've been made from the series out-takes, or if those featured in the original series had been revisited, to see how their lives had changed in the ten years since they got their television fifteen minutes. But this might've delivered too much reality for mainstream television to swallow.