02 May 2024

Barbados

We offer a wide choice of cheap flights to Barbados together with Barbados hotels, tours and self-drive itineraries.

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Join the stars in the sun

On Barbados, it's difficult to resist celebrity - spotting among the sunbeds. And little wonder the big names come back time and time again, as Jill Hartley found out

1 Sandy Lane, Barbados 2 Sandy Lane massage, Barbados 3 Sandy Lane Beach, Barbados

IT'S STRANGE THAT FILM DIRECTOR Michael Winner has become an ambassador for Barbados when he doesn’t even own a house on the island, but the tourist board isn’t complaining. As long as he keeps rolling up at Sandy Lane with his celebrity friends each Christmas, they let him do the PR.

Ask why he loves it so much and he’ll tell you about the glamorous days when he used to walk down the beach on Boxing Day and cast an entire movie. His old mates Michael Caine, Raquel Welch and Joan Collins are not pulling in the major parts like they once did, but they still do the island party circuit.

Winner also told me once that he liked the island because it reminded him of home. He’s right, up to a point, because of its strong British heritage. Sugar was the lure for early British settlers who ruled the island for 300 years. The colonial legacy is fading (the island gained independence in 1966), but it has taken more from England than any other island in the Caribbean.

Afternoon tea is an island institution and there is always a cricket match being played somewhere under the palms.

Sport and celebrity have always gone hand-in-hand on the island. Things are so much more relaxed than in our stuffy sporting institutions. If Sir Garfield Sobers has always been your cricketing hero, then the Kensington Oval, the Barbados cricket ground, is the place to pop over for a chat.

During a recent Test series celebrated knights Mick Jagger and Tim Rice could be seen discussing the score just behind the Barmy Army, England cricket fans who travel overseas to support their team.

Go back to your hotel and there’ll probably be a former star-turned-commentator, such as David Gower or Ian Botham, cooling off with a beer around the pool.

Impossible to be a snob

And it’s not just cricket. The island has regular polo matches and horse racing, which attract the society set. Golf ace Ian Woosnam is also a regular. When he played the Royal Westmoreland course, he liked it so much, he bought a house there. His neighbours include tennis star Virginia Wade and John Lloyd, who has become a property magnate on the island.

It’s impossible to be a ‘snob’ about Barbados. Travel out first class and you are just as likely to be sitting next to a lottery winner, or a builder, than a peer of the realm.

It’s also ‘anything goes’ when it comes to the rich and famous. You never know when you are going to see Mr and Mrs Beckham on the beach, or Sting in the bar. Many were surprised when Luciano Pavarotti accepted an invitation five years ago to sing at the Holders Opera season, held every March.

It was a bit like Tom Hanks agreeing to do amateur dramatics. But the great man loved it and came back the next year for his holidays, staying in the same hotel as former EastEnder Martine McCutcheon.

Famous Celebfest

Christmas is the time for the famous celeb-fest. Gossip columnists used to decamp to Barbados for the entire festive season. As well as Winner and his friends. Sean Lennon was seen at Sandy Lane last year on a sunbed next to John Cleese.

Meanwhile up the road at the more restrained country house-style Cobblers Cove, Delia Smith used to make a regular Christmas booking. So, while she was exhorting us to make her mince pies on Christmas Eve TV, she was actually drinking rum punch and waiting for Santa to deliver her presents on water skis.

Barbados continues to attract the ageing A-List. Raquel, Joanie and Gloria Hunniford keep coming back. Cilla Black owns an apartment and Sir Cliff Richard owns a house in a nouveau riche development at Sugar Hill, which he has loaned to the Blairs for a family holiday.

The island still has some of the world’s most desirable villas, carved out of coralstone. These House and Gardens style homes still attract old double-barrelled, money types who sniff at Sir Cliff’s taste for ruched ‘knicker’ blinds, chandeliers and gold lions, but no one seems to mind (and Cherie appeared to like it).

The young fashion set don’t care. Today you are likely to see Jodie and Jemma Kidd and their supermodel chums drinking champagne in the Lone Star bar, south of Sandy Lane, or actress Minnie Driver and her sister Kate out on the town. Both were brought up on the island and their parents have villas, which they occasionally rent out.

If there is a social divide, it’s a slim one. Home counties land-owners seem to love the swanky Sandy Lane just as much as recent visitors Jeremy Clarkson, Emma Bunton & Simon Cowell.

So whether your taste is Pop Idol or grand opera, you’d be unlucky to visit this popular holiday island without brushing up against a celebrity.

When I was last there I’d just missed Prince Philip and Beyonce. Not at the same event-but a strange coupling even for Barbados.

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