Caribbean > British Virgin Islands > Virgin Gorda > Necker Island > Island > Articles > A Guide to Private Islands

Private islands are not for everyone. An English couple who bought an island off the west coast of Scotland spent their evenings gazing wistfully at the lights on the mainland. Most mornings the husband would say: “I’m just going out in the boat,” and he would head off to spend his lunchtimes in one of the dreariest pubs in the Highlands.

They, like most people, suffered from the delusion that there is a great party going on somewhere nearby and they haven’t been invited. Successful owners of private islands are very different. They believe that any party they haven’t been invited to isn’t worth going to. That, too, is a delusion.

They are also, for the most part, barking mad. Typical owners include Dr Moreau who sought total privacy in the South Seas to conduct his beastly genetic experiments, Dr No who sought total privacy in the West Indies to plot world domination, Calypso and Circe in the Odyssey ― who welcomed strangers to their alder-fringed islands in the Mediterranean, so long as they didn’t make any plans to leave ― Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man who offered rather too warm a welcome, and Count Zaroff in the classic 1932 film The Most Dangerous Game, who was the perfect host until after dinner when he would amuse himself by setting his hounds on the guests. And then there is Richard Branson.

Branson spends three months of the year on Necker, keeping open house for his friends, and considers it his home. When he isn’t there, the island is available to rent to the rich and famous — the usual suspects — with the odd $46,000 a day to spare on a holiday. The clear message is that not only is he incredibly rich (although there must have been times over the past 25 years when things were a bit rocky) but also socially responsible in not wanting to leave the island empty and unused.

Not that Necker was anything special as West Indian islands go when he bought it. About three-quarters of a mile long and half a mile wide with a hill some 100ft high running down the middle, it had two good beaches but no buildings, no fresh water and very few trees. The only previous known residents had been the journalist Andrew Alexander and the photographer Don McCullin who were landed there in 1968 to write an article for the Weekend Telegraph on what it was really like to be marooned on a desert island. And a miserable time they had of it.

It is now more comfortable. The houses have been built in traditional Balinese style with no obvious expense spared. The timber and the dark stone for the walls were brought from Brazil, the honey-coloured floor stone from Yorkshire. The statues, furniture and fabrics came from Indonesia. The goats who roamed the island were “persuaded to leave”.

Ignore people who say that it is a bit over the top, or in doubtful taste. That is what private islands are for, an opportunity to indulge your private fantasies. If you like Bali but are fed up with the journey, the climate or possibly the government, you can create your own Balinese island in the West Indies. And if you want to call one of the buildings Bali Hi and another Bali Lo, no one is going to stop you. Necker is actually more a cross between Bali and a 1920s stockbroker-suburban house party, with a slightly more competitive edge – a kind of ‘Everyone for tennis!’

You arrive at Necker from Tortola at 50 miles an hour in an enormous white speedboat, the kind usually sat in by Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, and which that the talented Mr Ripley would certainly have envied. A dozen or so staff live on the island, all young, fair-haired and bronzed. The women look like Greta Scacchi circa 1985, and - even stranger - the men are like younger, better-looking versions of Branson himself. The resident staff tend to the guests, teach tennis and sailing and drive the speedboat on sunset cruises. They seem disconcertingly like the Midwich Cuckoos come of age, but they are more than happy to treat you, me and “Richard” as their equals. The cleaning and general maintenance is performed by a further staff of 20, none of them blonde and blue eyed, who are brought in for the day from Tortola, but not in the speedboat.

The buildings are, by any standards, spectacular. The house on the hill has views of the sea on all sides, and a breeze blows through every room and corridor. Plants grow in the hall, almost a jungle in the main lounge. Most of the bathrooms are open-sided, and you can watch the ocean while standing in the shower or sitting on the lavatory. (The last time I was in a bathroom with a wall missing was in a squat in Clapham, but it wasn’t the same - the view only went as far as the tumble-down house next door.) Some of the lavatories are covered in Balinese mosaic, the shower walls built from coral and driftwood.

The rest of the island is proving more intractable to Balinisation. Hundreds of trees have been planted as well as cactus and frangipani, but the strong winds, fierce sun and poor soil cause problems, and the shade is insufficient to sustain the ornamental gingers, ferns and orchids that define a Balinese landscape. Most of the colour comes from tecomas, oleander, hibiscus and too much purple bougainvillea.

The island is not yet full of sounds and sweet airs - unless you count David Gray and early Bob Dylan - and half way between the quay and the main house a strong smell wafts from what I was told is the “organic wildlife pond”. When you own a private island, a malfunctioning sewage plant can become an organic wildlife pond any time you want.

When they were here, Alexander and McCullin lived on a dismal diet of what few fish they could catch, stale coconut, sea grapes and prickly pears, spending hours trying to remove the fine prickles from their mouths. Sitting at the long dining table on the veranda, I could look down to the beach where they lived, and I often thought of them as I ate quails eggs stuffed with caviar and drank Chateau Lynch-Bages (perhaps a little too young) or the Necker-branded champagne.

The food on the island is an elaborate concoction of sculpted vegetables artistically arranged, open ravioli of lobster and fennel, duck and foie gras, chargrilled snapper and tempura prawns, and strange stick-like objects tied up with seaweed which you don’t know whether to eat or use as cutlery. Differently-coloured sauces are dripped elegantly around the plate like a painting by Jackson Pollock. It is all rather in the style of Raymond Blanc of whom Private Eye once said: “Surely this man would eat his own toes if the right recipe occurred to him.”

In the long term, this diet is unlikely to do you any more good than Alexander and McCullin’s, although if you wanted something simpler, you would certainly get it. You could even have beans on toast, but it would probably come in a perfect pyramid topped with a sprig of dill.

Alexander and McCullin slept on the beach, soaked by the rain and eaten by mosquitoes. McCullin counted 51 bites on the back of one hand, and on the first night, his last words were: “I do not much like what I see.” As I lay in my large comfortable bed under the mosquito net, listening to the roar of the surf and watching the intense blue of the Caribbean night sky, the thin white curtains blowing in the breeze, I rather liked what I saw.

Alexander and McCullin were desperate with thirst for most of their stay, never able to collect enough rainwater. Had they been here now, they would only have had to stroll a few yards through the bushes to find an open-sided pagoda where there would have been an ample supply of clean towels, sun-tan oil, snorkelling gear and a fridge full of cold water, cans of beer and bottles of champagne.

They had probably intended to stay for months, but after a fortnight they gave up, each having lost about two stone. Were they staying here now, a fortnight’s stay would set them back $644,000 - an awful lot of money for a holiday, but the island is booked up far in advance and many guests come back regularly. Necker can house 24 visitors, which cuts down the cost per head, although hardly to a bargain price. Often, couples rent the island just for themselves, moving from room to room as the fancy takes them.

Unlike a hotel, none of the rooms have keys, nor do they need them. You can eat and drink what you want, whenever you want, and do pretty much as you please, without any fear of running into strangers or paparazzi, not that I’ve ever found paparazzi to be a problem.

If you can’t face the 200-yard walk from the beach to the house, a phone is always near at hand for you to call a car. If you find the sea just a little bit too warm, the temperature in one of the nearby pools is kept a few degrees colder. When bored with tennis, snooker, backgammon, chess, sailing, snorkelling, windsurfing and the inflatable banana, you can visit the nearby love temple for a quiet bonk (or even a noisy one). It consists of a very large bed on stilts.

But there are limits to the luxury. The staff talked proudly of how, at the last minute, they had been able to “source” a bottle of Chateau Haut-Brion 1978 for an earlier guest, but sadly my request for Iranian Sultanie vodka went unanswered.

It is an absurd life, one far removed from the problems of commuting on a Virgin train, but one you get used to rather easily, and you find yourself frowning when you notice that one of yesterday’s champagne corks has not yet been removed from the beach.

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