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Not so sweet 16 … Jonze and his mates in Ibiza. Composite: Guardian Design; Courtesy of Tim Jonze

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Not so sweet 16 … Jonze and his mates in Ibiza. Composite: Guardian Design; Courtesy of Tim Jonze

My holiday from hell Life and style

My holiday from hell: I went to Ibiza at 16 – and am still haunted by what I saw in a bathroom sink

I didn’t see being a couple of years away from technically qualifying for an 18-30s jaunt to be a problem. But the booze, humiliation and a ‘mystery pooer’ made me rethink my entire life

Tim Jonze

Thu 9 Jul 2026 00.00 EDT Last modified on Thu 9 Jul 2026 02.00 EDT

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‘First the bad news,” yelled our lairy Irish club rep as the coach drove us from Ibiza airport to our hotel. “All the great clubs: Amnesia, Space, Pacha … they’re CLOSED!”

A confused silence descended. “But the good news?” he yelled. “We’re gonna have a fucking amazing time anyway!!!”

Cheers erupted from the lads and ladettes onboard, most of whom probably weren’t planning on checking out the elite superclubs anyway. As for my group … well, I’m not sure we even had a plan.

The four of us – me, Wes, Marc and Gav – were taking our first ever holiday without parents and didn’t have a clue what we were doing. The Easter package deal we had been talked into was with a company called 2wentys, whose tagline could have been: “For those who find Club 18-30 a little too refined.” None of us were in our 20s. In fact, we had all recently turned 16 – I in particular looked as if I was barely on nodding terms with puberty. Still, the travel agent didn’t seem fussed as she took our cash, so off we flew.

BANG! BANG! BANG BANG BANG!!! It was painfully early on our first morning in Ibiza and someone was pounding on mine and Wes’s hotel room door.

“You did this didn’t you!” Marc and Gav were both screaming. “Don’t lie to us! It was you!”

We didn’t have a clue what they were on about. They dragged us into their room: oh God. The smell had me retching. It turned out that, overnight, some absolute grotter had broken into their room and pooed in their sink. Even today, the slightest whiff of Lynx Africa – deployed by my friends in industrial quantities to try to cover things up – takes me back there. The hotel would have nothing to do with it. “Clean it up, clean it up!” they yelled. And so Marc and Gav were forced to do exactly that.

Unwanted bodily matter swiftly became a theme. On day two, the girls in the room above us decided it would be amusing to “break the ice” in a unique way – lobbing their used sanitary products down on to our balcony.

There was no escape. I’d assumed we’d be able to do our own thing on this holiday, but the club reps quickly press-ganged everyone into signing up for their militarily strict “party” schedule. This cost a fortune and consisted of little else but constant drinking and the frequent opportunity to expose one’s genitals to the general public. Yet my mates were giddily keen to go along with it – and so I did, too.

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Constant drinking … Jonze and friends in Ibiza. Photograph: Courtesy of Tim Jonze

It was a terrible decision. Every morning we were forced out of bed at the crack of dawn and whisked off to some grim pool or beach location to start downing lager and play “games”. This might involve, say, a random guy being called forward to stand on a diving board while pissed women tried yanking down his shorts with their teeth. I formulated an emergency plan: if I was singled out to participate I would turn and just run.

Time passed torturously slowly. On day four, I vividly remember passing a tourist shop and seeing a postcard featuring some wildly transgressive character wearing a red PVC devil outfit and breathing fire. The caption read: “If you’re tired of Ibiza, you’re tired of life.” Oh God, I thought, that’s me. I’m 16 years old and I’m tired of life. I felt like a total failure.

What I wish I’d known then is that one day I would be back in Ibiza, dancing on podiums and partying on the beach until dawn after Manumission and Space and all the rest of it. I wasn’t tired of life at all, I was just a terrified kid making terrible life choices, relieved to be boarding a plane and getting the hell out of there.

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