The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
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out of water, and savaged by insects. Branson bought the island in 1979, aged 28, enticed by the “virgin” in Virgin Islands, despite not knowing where said islands were. He paid $180,000 (£130,000), claiming he bought it to impress Joan, whom he married there 11 years later.
The government’s condition was that he develop a resort on Necker, which he duly did; albeit it is a resort of the most rarefied sort, each guest personally okayed by “King Richard” (Roman Abramovich is said to have been rejected). It took three years and $10million to transform his private paradise into one of the world’s most prestigious tourist spots, frequented by film stars, rock royalty, and indeed, actual royalty.
Chief among this pantheon looms Kate Winslet, who notoriously rescued Branson’s mother, Eve, from the island’s fire in 2011, a story made more brilliant by Eve claiming otherwise. Fellow wayfarers include Robert De Niro, Eddie Murphy, Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg, assorted Rolling
Stones, Phil Collins, George Michael, Mariah Carey, Kate Moss, Harry Styles, Diana, Princess of Wales, and a postpresidential Barack Obama, giving Michelle the “very nice vacation” he had promised.
Tales of louche luxury abound: all-night carousing, sushi consumed off bikinied bodies, and “relations” between guests and staff. As the backdrop to such decadence, readers should summon chic villas, staggering sea views, dizzying private pools, snowy beaches, rivers of booze, and an infinite number of sporting opportunities. The cost is $105,000 per night for up to 40 guests (or $5,150 per room, per night, during certain weeks). Necker is now rumoured to be worth £90million and has won every award possible.
Still, can I be alone in hearing the words “tropical island paradise” and thinking “Not for me”? So often the phrase translates as “sunburnt louts”, however ritzy those louts. It’s possible that I’m too painfully middle class for lotus-eating. I like to look at things on holiday (archaeology, art), have my brain expanded, not fester on a sun lounger, or repress thought with banal games. Or – if I flop – I want nothingness, a void, not the dreaded “activities” for which Necker is famed.
The island’s frenetic entz sound a tad forced fun/posh Butlins. One man’s paradise is another woman’s hell hole. And the nirvana of an extrovert, rock-loving, super-fit, attention-deficit-disordered, eco-enthusiast billionaire might not have much in common with an introverted, seven-years-sober bluestocking of 50 years’ inactivity.
After staggering off a minuscule private plane from Barbados, we get off to a rollicking start aboard Samsam, a blingtastic speedboat, named after Branson’s son. Our posse knocks back Necker-branded champagne while musak throbs, and we zoom past the neighbouring island owned by Google’s Larry Page. So far, the Necker of legend.
However, on disembarking, it is immediately clear that the mood is more tropical country-house weekend than shagtastic love-in. The real glamour is how deserted Necker is, its only sound lapping waves.
Privacy is the priority, with staff obsessively reluctant to confirm or deny celebrities who have visited, even where stars have outed themselves on Instagram. As one guest whispers: “A band played the night I last left and it was Florence and the Machine, but you won’t hear anyone talk about it. What goes on Necker stays on Necker and that’s just how the ultra-rich like it.”
The rebuilt Great House remains the island’s HQ, complete with 11 guest rooms, the disco ball that survived the fire, and a rather charred giant tortoise. However, our arrival is celebrated with cocktails about the pool of the all-new, post-hurricane complex that fuses three Balinese-style mini-houses. These luxury maisonettes are so stupendously beautiful that I become weepy when informed I will be staying in Bali Cliff, with its plunge pool, Atlantic views, interior and exterior bathrooms.
The look is effortless elegance – all local wood and moody chunks of coral – rather than the excruciating overdesign favoured by lesser hotspots. Unlike the rest of the island, Bali Cliff boasts door locks, albeit no one uses them. It also has a minibar, unlike the Great House rooms, where guests help themselves to the main bar as at home. Caps, bags, flip flops, coffee, lip balm, sunblock and bug repellent are all laid on in eco-friendly guise, ditto the island’s face masks. Only you don’t have to wear them, obviously, this being your personal idyll. The sewing kit is charmingly Branson: needles, thread, electrolyte powders for hangover purposes, and two different varieties of condom.
Reconstruction has seen more than 1,200 solar panels installed, and three new wind turbines, meaning the island now runs on up to 100 per cent renewable energy. While visitor needs are all, oligarchal demands of the “fly X to my yacht” variety will be gracefully rebuffed. I put this to the test when informed that the only non-alcohol beer is the undrinkable Beck’s Blue. I later find my fridge filled with ginger beer, fresh green juice, and – most delightfully – the staff ’s home-brewed kombucha. Another guest confesses to a penchant for the watermelon electrolyte powder only to discover 100 sachets in her room.
Similarly, the food – broadly Gallic with Caribbean influences – is largely locally sourced, with new chef Guillaume Galvez maintaining a WhatsApp group of local fishermen, while plotting an epic kitchen garden. Galvez’s addictive breads apart, menus are modishly light, with health rather than gluttony in mind, be it lobster, beef, okra stuffed with local cheese, fermented peppers, or terrific caramelised banana and ginger crumbles, sprinkled with foraged herbs.
On my first night, I sleep superbly – rare in a new bed – but, then, the sea is a hypnotic sound effect, the sheets sublime, the lavatory paper bunny soft. Typically, I can’t speak until noon, yet breaker at the Great House is not merely tolerable, but actively enjoyable. The food is terrific, staff members milling about to see whether we might like yoga, a massage, tennis, cycling, kite surfing, beach olympics, a cross-island scavenger hunt, or for them to desist.
At the helm is events coordinator Kamie Sword, accompanied by Bento the pup, with the staff to guest ratio such that there is never not someone to buggy you about the island, or fix you a piña colada. “What needs have I?” one is encouraged to ponder. “Are these needs being met? And what needs have I not yet conjured?”
Newcomers are given a tour by conservation manager Vaman Ramlall, whose job it is to preserve some species, while eliminating others. Accordingly, there are no mosquitos on Necker Island. I repeat: no mosquitos (something that will presumably also apply to soon-to-launch Moskito Island). Rats and cats are also banned. Lemurs, iguanas, turtles, and giant tortoises the same vintage as our patron are encouraged, as are his beloved flamingos. The tortoises he can keep, but the flamingos are fabulously ridiculous, lending the air of a New Romantic video.
On a sail about the island, I run across my old mucker, three-times Kitesurf World Champ Kirsty Jones. I haven’t seen Kirst in 15 years, but where else do world champion watersports types wind up than on Necker? Avoiding all such activity, I head to the spa, a twowoman operation run by Jessica McDonald. It is everything you could want: no fannying about with brochures, excellent Aromatherapy Associates products, and world-class massage. I slip into a (barely) mobile coma, skip that night’s barbecue, and sleep for 13 hours.
Three times next morning I am mistaken for a corpse (a passing cleaner kindly checking my pulse). I manage to summon a buggy to the pool in which the island’s signature sushi kayak will take to the water. I have dreaded this event, it sounding like the kind of senselessly naff escapade from which I run a mile. Well, more fool me, because it’s a hoot. I find myself bobbing about enjoying a hot tub for the first time in 50 years. “Can I get you anything?” a waiter asks. “A cup of tea?” I bleat Englishly. “If it’s not a pain in the arse?” “You’re on Necker Island,” he beams. “Nothing is a pain.”
The trauma of Hurricane Irma is never far. The chap who delivers my breakfast tells me that this (highest) category 5 storm registered 7 on the Richter scale, rescue workers flying in 10,000 body bags, imagining no survivors. The Bransons bunkered down with staff in the wine cellar, the contents of which became useful once the extent of the devastation became clear. On visiting nearby Tortola, Britain’s then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson said he was reminded of photos of Hiro
Tales of louche luxury abound ... but the real glamour of Necker is how deserted it is
shima after it had been bombed. Four years on, Necker is at the heart of 30 charitable projects rebuilding schools and the environment, while attending to mental health.
By day three, my hair has normalised and so have I. Rejecting Kirsty’s offer of body dragging (supported kite surfing),
I gather shells on an empty beach, have lunch with a handful of new best friends, then spend the afternoon in my plunge pool counting shades of blue.
At sunset, the preposterous flamingos swoop home, and I find I am all those things one is supposed to be on holiday that I never quite manage: in the moment, at once with nature, happy. That evening, I am even at one with the bangin’ beats, begging DJ (James) Sweeney for a playlist. The theme is “White Nights”, and I am even OK with that, albeit the Americans obey the dress code, while the Brits don’t. There is the requisite dancing on tables, and I laugh so much my diaphragm aches. Guest guru Michelle Antat looks benevolently on, having seen it all before. “I see women arrive dripping in jewels and designer labels and think: ‘We’ll break them’. By the end they’ve got no make-up, hair done up in a scrunchie. The island got to them.” It got to me, four nights feeling like forever – in the best of all possible ways.
However coruscating a trip, I have never not felt happy to be back in my home, in my city. This time, non-island life feels noisy, cramped, squalid. That afternoon, Richard Branson blasts into space like the brilliant Boomer flamingo he is. “Good on him,” I think. “Here is a man who knows how to live.”
‘At sunset the flamingos swoop home and I find that I am at one with nature, happy’