Wild secrets of Ibiza’s Pikes Hotel where coke was served on cornflakes & owner bedded 3,000 women…including Bond star
It’s the wild resort that helped cement singer George Michael’s stardom, where cocaine was allegedly sprinkled on guests’ cornflakes, and whose owner was dubbed the ‘real Hugh Heffner’ by Boy George.
Pikes Hotel, the Balearic Island getaway set up by British-born Australian Anthony ‘Tony’ Pike in 1978, is set to be featured in a new film by Football Factory legend Tamer Hassan, and will shine a light on the hedonistic residence.
As revealed by The Sun this week, the new project will focus on the outrageous goings-on at Pikes Hotel during the Eighties and Nineties.
Run by Tony, who passed away in 2019 after suffering from prostate and skin cancer, the resort remains a jewel in Ibiza’s crown and its colourful past is as shocking now as it was decades ago.
Pikes Hotel, which is now known as Pikes Ibiza, also boasts what the Guinness Book of Records says is the “world’s biggest nightclub”, and was a hot favourite with the likes of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, Hollywood star Tony Curtis, party-mad model Kate Moss, fashion icon Grace Jones and now modern celebrities such as Jade Jagger.
The club, currently branded UNVRS before its previous incarnations as Ku Club and Privilege Ibiza, and its flamboyant owner first rose to prominence when the newest darlings of British pop, Wham!, rolled into town to film their 1983 hit Club Tropicana.
Wham! co-founder George Michael got on so well with Tony that the hotel owner was persuaded to take a small role in the video, appearing as a straw-hated barman during one pool scene.
Tony would later boast of bedding Michael the night before shooting the video, revealing in his 2017 memoir Mr Pikes: The Story Behind The Ibiza Legend that the pair made “tender and passionate” love, leaving the owner “surprised… because I’m not gay”.
He recalled: “He was such a good-looking c***.
“I said to him that he must pull so many women. He told me he was gay. ‘What a f***ing waste!’ I exclaimed. George roared with laughter.
“He’d probably heard that one a few times before, although his sexuality was a closely-guarded secret at that stage of his career.”
Cementing how close the pair were, Tony was one of the first people the singer, who passed away in 2016, came out to.
Three day party
The video’s success, which would help Club Tropicana reach number four in the UK charts, put Pikes Hotel firmly at the centre of the entertainment industry and soon the world’s most recognisable faces descended on the Ibiza resort.
Among the most mind-bending parties across the decades included Queen frontman Freddie Mercury’s, who marked his 41st birthday at Pikes Hotel – and where the guestlist was as striking as the bar bill.
The party, which was held just after Freddie’s AIDs diagnosis in 1987, saw 700 of entertainment’s biggest names join the celebrations, with Bon Jovi, Tony Curtis, Naomi Campbell and Spandau Ballet marking the milestone.
But the glamour didn’t stop there.
According to a People magazine report in 1996, for three days, busy staff inflated thousands of gold and black helium balloons in preparation for the party.
During the bash, 350 bottles of lavish champagne was sunk by guests, a firework display so big it could be seen from the neighbouring island of Majorca 160 miles away was witnessed and the festivities were topped off with a two-metre long sponge cake with the notes of Mercury’s song Barcelona on it – after the original desert in the shape of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia Cathedral collapsed.
In the aftermath of the three-day spectacle, carnage ensued as the front of the hotel caught fire and a wall collapsed.
Within the chaos, Tony once found himself playing tennis with “Freddie, Kenny Everett and the chairman of Colchester United”, he recalled during an interview with Shortlist in 2017.
Tony said “money was no object” for Freddie and that singer “sought sanctuary in the hotel and wanted a party to remember”.
The hotel owner added: “When I asked him about the budget he laughed and said there was none.
“We could freeze the pool and have skating elephants if we wanted. He just wanted it to be wild.”
Following the party, a bill – which included a receipt for 232 broken glasses – was presented to Queen’s manager, Jim Beach.
Spoonfuls of cocaine
Tony’s friendship with Freddie would endure and the singer would often summon the hotel owner to his room, debating the meaning of life as spoonfuls of cocaine were lined up on the hotel’s laminated menus to be consumed.
Tony recalled: “We would often lie in bed for hours, talking, doing lines. Freddie’s cocaine intake was off the scale at times.
“I don’t think he even thought about how much he was taking half the time. He’d say, ‘Tony, would you mind racking up again, please?’”
Addiction plagued Tony’s ownership of the resort and more and more wild claims would surface, including how cocaine was served up on guests’ breakfast cereal – though Tony would later say: “Coke on cornflakes? What a waste.”
Sex was also a huge part of Pikes Hotel life, and Tony would more than regularly indulge with guests.
Tony, who was married five times and had four children, once reflected how he was a “sex addict… I fully admit it. And I’d rather be a sex addict than a drug addict or a f***ing drunk”.
Despite claiming to have bedded more than 3,000 women, there was one who stood out – model and Eighties pin-up Grace Jones.
Grace, who became a household name during the decade by appearing in the 1895 James Bond film A View to a Kill, had a 15-month fling with Tony after meeting at an orgy.
He remembered: “It was total darkness. All I could hear was music playing and the smell of sex and marijuana.
“Big candles had burnt down to give a dark loom of light . . . bodies were everywhere on the floor.”
Their relationship did not start off on the best footing though, as Tony’s furious girlfriend at the time chased Grace around the pool with a carving knife while he continued to serve breakfast to guests.
Tony would describe having the best sex he ever had with Grace, remembering how “she had this thing that she must have sex just before she went on stage.”
He said in his memoir: “Grace Jones was one tough cookie, but also could be wonderful and entertaining and warm.”
He added: “We’d walk in somewhere and the whole place would stop and just stare at her. She had such an incredible allure.”
It was total darkness. All I could hear was music playing and the smell of sex and marijuana
Tony Pikes on the night he met Grace Jones
Meanwhile Grace would write in her 2015 autobiography I’ll Never Write My Memoirs that Tony “did have an enormous penis and I was happy to take care of it”.
Their bond would remain strong and was underscored when Grace rejected Academy Award-winning director Roman Polanski’s advances after he had asked Tony to “fix him up” with her.
Tony added: “I said I was her lover. He said, ‘But I’m famous!’ But she chose me. She was wonderful, she had an aura like a rainbow.”
Celebrity saviour
As Pikes Hotel’s reputation continued to skyrocket, its presence became more of a concern for the local authorities.
Fearing a fallout with the police, Tony turned to a surprising ally who helped thaw the tension – Julio Iglesias.
The star, who has sold more than 150 million records across the globe, told Tony to invite the local police chief to the hotel and leave the rest to him.
Tony said: “We were standing by the pool bar next to each other and Julio put his arms around our necks and pulled us together in a headlock.
“Julio said, as he held us in the same position, ‘Now, I want you to be friends. You two are very important people on the island. If you fight, it will be disastrous for Ibiza.’
“I was left alone after that, so thank you, Julio.”
Soon Ibiza commercialised and in the Noughties the Ku Club added a roof and became Privilege, hosting the likes of Pete Tong, Paul Oakenfold, and Roger Sanchez.
Despite being in his sixties, Tony continued to live it up – from fighting over a girl with Mike Oldfield, being on a boat with Kylie Minogue and sharing a shower with Brigitte Nielsen.
At its peak, Tony would handle the pressure by dipping in and out of his guests’ benders, before rising early and throwing himself immediately into the pool.
He told Shortlist in 2017: “There were times when I was on another planet… but you can hide anything behind sunglasses.”
Since the late Nineties, Tony had been looking to sell the resort and had provisionally agreed to sell it to Italian TV producer Enrico Forti, but the pact would end in heartbreak.
Tony’s son Anthony flew to Miami with Forti as his father was unable to travel after being diagnosed with AIDS-related dementia.
Anthony was killed on February 15, 1998, when he suffered two shots to the head and was dumped in a secluded forest at Virginia Key beach.
In June 2000, Forti was convicted of murdering Anthony and, though in Italy the verdict was seen as a miscarriage of justice due to lack of valid motive, he remains serving a lifetime prison sentence at the Everglades Correctional Institution in Florida.
However, by 2008, Ibiza Rocks purchased the hotel and was relaunched three years later under the mantra: “After sex and drugs, comes rock and roll.”
Tony became the hotel’s first full-time resident in 2011, sharing the resort with the likes of Liam Gallagher, Mark Ronson and Ed Sheeran, and lived in room 25 permanently until his death at the age of 85.
Best restaurant
“Every year I take my parents to a new restaurant.
“For the views, Casa Maca has a really good vibe and the food is phenomenal. You have to book a month in advance though.
Best club
“Every night is different so this is a tricky one. But I’d probably say DC10 is still my favourite.
“It has two good nights I love – Paradise and Circoloco – and the music there is amazing.”
Best beach bars
“Experimental Beach Ibiza is my favourite by far. It’s a place for the sunset with a really good vibe – a lot of hippies and everyone plays the bongos as sun goes down.”
Best beach
“There are a lot of coves that people don’t realise.
“There is Cala Salada where you have to go over rocks to get to it – it’s hard to get to but the water is Maldives-crystal clear.
“There is one beach restaurant on it but it’s not good so you take your own lunch.
“Another nice one is Cala Comte which again has really clear water, and there is a really nice restaurant on it called Cotton Beach Club. “