People have long dreamt of living in paradise.
But for most, it's somewhere just out of reach.
I think we're all searching for paradise, our little Garden of Eden.
Billionaire Sir Richard Branson has tried to do the impossible
and create Utopia on his 74-acre private island
called Necker in the middle of the Caribbean Sea.
It's just a place of absolute beauty. It's really lovely.
We didn't even like speak to one another for like an hour.
We were just, like, in awe.
Enjoying this Garden of Eden comes at a price.
One week's stay costs over £280,000.
They want to know what Patch's business is - what do you do?
How do you make your money?
This is the story of the guests who come to stay on Necker Island
and those who serve them,
working tirelessly to sell the Caribbean dream.
Sometimes they're good and bad.
We get some real messy ones.
Really, really messy.
Some groups are really demanding.
All day, they will ask for food and food.
They have to battle to keep nature at bay.
They're just wasting their time. That sand is fine where it is.
And attend to the guests' every whim.
We once had a new management team and they brought in two rules.
The first, that staff cannot drink with the guests,
and staff may not have relationships with the guests.
It's not the way this island would work or run very well.
200 miles north-west of Antigua lies Necker.
It's one of the smallest of the British Virgin Islands,
but its reputation stretches far and wide.
It's attracted everyone from Nelson Mandela and Princess Diana
to Kate Moss and One Direction's Harry Styles.
All stations, all stations.
Just to let you know, a helicopter is arriving in ten minutes.
House manager Cat grew up in Oxfordshire.
She was 16 before she'd had the chance to travel abroad.
My family holidays were very much a caravan in a nice beach location
in the UK, so this is, yeah, a dream.
We are about to go and meet Kerry and Patch,
who are some good friends of ours.
They've stayed here on Necker many times.
Because of its remote location, getting to the island isn't easy.
After flying to the Caribbean,
guests make the rest of the journey either by boat or,
if they can afford it, by helicopter.
Hiya!
Birmingham couple Kerry and Patch are frequent visitors.
The first time we came here was for our honeymoon, so back in 2005.
I've been here nine times.
And I've been eight.
I love seeing guests coming back for the tenth time,
for the 21st time, and just still having that absolute sense
of elation, joy and just getting away from the rest of the world.
Necker caters for just 30 people in 15 rooms.
Usually, the whole island is hired out, costing over £40,000 per night.
But, for a few weeks a year,
guests don't have to book the entire island.
Rooms are rented out individually.
Patch and Kerry are staying in the master suite
that costs a mere £30,000 a week.
Oh, it's absolutely massive.
Massive! Wow!
It's much higher than the old room.
The vibe of it is homely. When you come in, you're immediately relaxed.
It is homely because there's no pretence when you get here.
You're straight into your flip-flops.
You're straight into relaxed mode.
You do get some guests when they get here they're a little bit,
kind of, we were expecting it to be the Savoy or something and it isn't.
Still with the outdoor bath tub.
Yes. Outdoor shower and, of course, the Jacuzzi.
It's the most romantic place in the world.
It is the most romantic place in the world. Yes.
You get your formal hotels. This is beyond that, really.
It's in a different kind of marketplace altogether.
It's kind of... It's what I've said before about the other places
that we've been to, and you've got that pomposity,
and I hate that - you have to wear the right things, the right clothes.
Everything's got to be formal at dinner.
Here, it doesn't matter that you're in flip-flops and your hair's wet.
Oh, that's Richard kiting.
Oh, right. Impressive stuff.
It's looking good, hey?
We'll get you out there this week, Patch.
THEY LAUGH
To run the island requires 100 members of staff.
At least three for every guest.
The majority live on a neighbouring island, Virgin Gorda,
which is a ten-minute commute by boat.
That's the Necker bed.
You can't just come in and do it like that.
You have to practise until you get perfect.
Patsy and Agatha have been cleaning up after guests for nearly a decade.
I worked in some of the biggest hotels in the Caribbean,
but actually Necker Island,
I've never seen nothing like Necker Island before.
All the rich and famous come here, yeah, and that is so true.
I've seen lots of rich and famous people here.
Sometimes they're good, and bad.
Yeah, we get some real messy ones.
We get some real messy ones.
But we're accustomed to it, you know.
That's our job, to clean up after the guests.
So we don't have a problem with that.
I love Sex And The City, but I can't remember which one of them was here.
I can't remember her name at all,
because that's my favourite show,
but we try not to discuss what happens at Necker.
What happens at Necker stays at Necker.
Necker has been Richard Branson's home for over three decades,
but he's still inspired by its beauty.
I've always got up early, but particularly here.
It's just...look at that.
Oh, look, here we go. Just coming in now.
Look at that.
I get excited every time.
We'll be in the middle of a conference here,
and I'll go, "Flamingos!".
Richard runs his Virgin empire from a poolside office on the island.
Every morning, he meets with his two personal assistants,
Helen and Jo, who help him with his e-mails.
I'm still old-fashioned.
I dictate 90% of them,
so it's great that they know everything that's going on
so that I know what's going on.
Otherwise, I wouldn't know what the hell's going on.
We may be floating Virgin Money in the next couple of weeks.
Virgin America, we may be floating in the next couple of weeks,
which is an airline in the States.
So, you know, from here we sort of, you know,
keep a watchful eye on everything.
These two lovely ladies, who I've worked with for a while,
Helen for the longest, she was a stewardess once as well.
I was.
So a lot of our time is just spent, when we're not on Necker,
on the road and...
There's no job like this. There literally is no job like this.
Every e-mail you send is completely different.
Every bit of correspondence with people is completely different.
So nothing is ever the same ever. Every single day is different.
It's so varied. It's great. You never know what you're going to get.
No. You never know, literally.
We were having a meeting here once and somebody ran into the meeting
who'd actually swum from another island
to come to see me with a proposition.
I think his idea was gyms on trains, which wasn't a bad idea, actually,
but it's just sadly, trains need all the space they can get
just to transport people.
And there are people who will rent the island to come to pitch.
Yes!
Richard bought the island in 1978 for £180,000.
He was 28 years old, and his company Virgin Records
was just starting to have hit albums.
When I saw this magical island from the air,
I just had never seen anything more perfect,
except my beautiful lady I was wooing,
who was also in the helicopter with me.
So I saw the two most perfect things in the world all at the same time,
and I was determined to try to capture them both.
It took me a while to persuade her, but I finally got there,
and it took me a while to persuade the owners to sell it to me.
And I had to then go and work really hard to try to make some money
to actually do something here,
and fortunately, our record company started becoming successful.
In time, we were able to turn it into something really special.
Richard is the founder of the Virgin Group,
which employs over 50,000 people worldwide.
But Necker has always been the home he could escape to,
where he raised his children and married his wife Joan.
'Jack, Jack. Kezia.'
Hi, Kez, go ahead.
'Hey, Jack, we have some guests down at the hot tub
'that are requesting you make some pina coladas for them.
'They've also requested that you could do it shirtless
'if that's possible.'
Anything's possible on Necker.
Groundsmen Brian and Ornette have been working for Richard
for decades.
When they first arrived,
Necker wasn't the manicured island it is today.
Kenny grew up in Wales and came to the island
as a water sports instructor ten years ago.
Today, he's the general manager.
I'm the boss on Necker.
I manage it, along with my wife Leesa.
I kind of fell into tourism and holidays,
and fell in love with the industry, and ended up here.
Ended up teaching kite surfing here.
I really enjoyed it.
I realised that there was good opportunity if you work hard,
and ended up becoming the general manager and, you know,
I've really, really loved it.
I don't think... I never thought that would happen.
I'd never even heard of Necker Island.
But, yeah, that's where it ended up.
The island is a multi-million pound business,
and Kenny employs half a dozen people to take care of its accounts.
Millie is head of finance.
She moved to the Caribbean with her husband and son
two-and-a-half years ago.
If you have to have an office job,
I mean, this is the place to have an office job.
We spend a lot of time in the office,
but we do get out and meet the guests,
and hang out and do casino and whatever.
But I do tend to get quite busy and focused.
But I try and get out there once a week, once every couple of weeks.
They always bring me out, or I volunteer, to do the casino night,
because I can count.
So that's always good.
I'll croupier black jack or something like that for them
and hang out with the guests,
and then I'll normally just sleep over and have a good time.
I love that I get asked to do things like that,
because when you're an accountant,
you're not always able to bring your personality to work.
You're not always able to be exactly as freaky as you really are,
whereas here, you're very much encouraged to be who you are.
We work really, really hard,
but we're also encouraged to play hard.
Like, Friday, it was a guest's birthday.
They were looking for something a little bit different,
and one of the guest services people would come up with,
they're having a sushi night, what's a bit different?
I think I'd mentioned a couple of months ago,
that it's cool to eat sushi off a hot girl.
Not, you know, not trying to say I'll be the hot girl
that you get to eat sushi off of, but it was great.
I came in and did my day's work,
and then got a boat over to Mosquito,
and it was a bit different here because it's really hot
and the sushi got really, really quite warm and stuck to me,
so that was interesting, but it was fun.
I love that I get to be an accountant and do this stuff
and then go lay on a table and have people suck, you know,
soy sauce out of my belly button in the evening. It's brilliant.
Who else gets to do that?
Not all sushi at Necker is eaten off hot girls.
Today, it will be served on a kayak in the pool.
Ha-ha! Yes, of course.
Originally from France, head chef Clement arrived last year,
after previously working at the Ritz in London.
The sushi with the sushi boat with this lovely food,
yeah, you have to make sure that the guy who delivers the food
is the same as the food really.
Sexy.
About ten minutes before the guests come,
we fill the kayak with ice,
palms and flowers, chopsticks,
and then we add the sushi to it,
and then off onto the water, float about,
and people will jump in the pool and have fun, have drinks,
and eat the sushi.
I might have a cocktail or two, sneaky ones as well.
Have some fun. Yeah.
I can't believe you're getting paid to do that.
It's insane, it's insane.
Necker may be one of the most expensive holiday destinations
in the world but, once here, everything is included,
from meals, to scuba diving and champagne.
This means Clement and his staff of 12 are on call 24 hours a day
to meet the guests' every whim.
Some groups are really demanding.
Like, all day they will ask for food.
There again, like, we always adapt ourselves to after the first day,
we pretty much get the shape of the group,
and we pretty much find out how it's going to be in the next few days.
So yeah, if we need to change the planning
and stay longer just to deliver what we have to deliver...
I remember the worst was one day, it was Bank Holiday actually,
and one of the guests really wanted some caviar,
and we had to get some from Saint Thomas, I believe,
to bring to Necker Island on the Bank Holiday.
That was a challenge.
With my sous chef, we started calling at eight in the morning
and we just received the caviar at 6:30pm, 7pm at night,
just ready to serve for the aperitif really.
That was a nightmare.
We get a lot of people coming here who are in the public eye
and therefore if they go to a hotel,
they can't completely switch off,
and when you go on holiday you want to 100% switch off,
so Necker's a place where people can literally draw up the drawbridge
and let their hair down and relax.
It's just a lovely letter that Diana sent.
She used to come with her children when they were very young,
just to get away from the press,
and she was one of the nicest people I've ever spent time knowing,
and she was always incredibly polite,
and always wrote the most beautiful thank-you letters.
So, yeah, it was a nice touch and she had a magical time.
You know, she came with family and friends and, you know,
it was a place where the kids could also let their hair down
and holiday and frolic without being in the public eye.
So, it was perfect.
This is the main house.
This is the dining room table where we normally have big dinners
and there's lots of people.
There's a gong somewhere that gets gonged once you start dinner.
Penny is one of Necker's most frequent visitors
and considers the island her second home.
I've been coming to Necker for ten years.
About twice a year. Two to three times a year.
This is my 21st time on Necker.
It's just a place of absolute beauty. It's really lovely.
I was born in the north of England
and I've lived in New York for over 15 years.
Penny and her friends often hire the entire island exclusively,
but this week she's arrived with just one of her girlfriends.
It's a busy New York life. I'm a real estate developer.
Pushing yourself up. There we go.
And this is a complete stress-buster.
You know, it's everything that you look forward to
when you're having a busy, stressful day,
is coming here and just letting go and just relaxing.
Gently back up to the top. Reaching tall.
The staff are an inherent part of your vacation.
It's very fun and they're here to make the vacation that you want.
Scooping through the hands again to an upward dog.
And none of them are bad on the eyes.
They're all pretty good looking, yeah.
We have some favourites.
Conditions for kite surfing and wind and water sports are great.
I come to work every day with five things, basically.
A T-shirt, board shorts, radio, phone and sunnies.
That's everything.
Elliott left school just as the recession hit his native Spain
and had to look abroad for a job.
I was working in London in a sailing/diving shop.
One day, we got a massive delivery of kite surfing stuff
and it had a label "Richard Branson".
So I asked who was this customer, how are we selling all this stuff,
and they said, "Don't you know who Richard Branson is?". I had no idea.
So I Googled it, and the first thing that came up
was this picture of Richard kiting with this naked girl on his back.
I thought, "Hold on, what's going on here?"
So I just wrote a letter, five lines, just asking for advice.
So they answered me back, they said "Well, Richard's pretty busy,
"he couldn't read your letter, but he wishes you the best.
"Tell me about yourself."
After a few e-mails, they told me that he had this island
in the Caribbean and had water sports.
They asked for my CV, and they asked me to come to give them a hand
for a week - I worked really hard for those days, those ten days,
and they offered me the full-time job, so I said "Yeah, definitely!
"Yeah, absolutely!". And here I am.
You don't see money here.
You don't talk about money.
You don't talk about the economy.
You don't talk about politics.
It really helps you appreciate what you really have,
which is not money, which is not what you really need in life.
This is literally priceless.
The eight members of the water sports team
usually work six days a week.
But the end of their shift does come with a few perks.
It was a really special end of the day the other day.
We got this call from one of the guys from water sports
coming back from the airport, saying that they just saw
a really big group of dolphins swimming around.
Look at them!
I believe there's a special connection
between dolphins and humans.
It doesn't happen really often,
but when it does, it just makes your day, your week, your month.
It's really, really special.
It was beautiful.
I mean, being in the water with those animals
is just something really special.
It makes your day. It was magical. It was really great.
Oh, yes!
It's the sickest place in the world to be.
It's unreal. It's paradise for sure.
You can't beat it.
While most leave the island at the end of their shift,
there are 20 staff that live on Necker all year round.
It's considered a privilege.
You need some people to live here.
Like, you need your chief engineer to live here if the power goes out,
the water, or if there's problems with the rooms, that kind of stuff.
It drives Adam mad - he gets called in the middle of the night.
And then Helen's here because Richard sometimes needs to do stuff.
Chefs Joe and Gaz, so obviously you get food requests at night.
Good evening.
How are you doing?
Carla said you finished at six.
Yeah. Two hours later?
You're on time?
I think it was the best day of your life. I think it was.
Really? Well, yeah!
Oh, I got it. Nice.
Forget about it. OK.
Do you want a drink? Yeah.
What would you like? No, two drinks.
A swig of the beer before it goes up the chicken's bum.
Here, George, you have that one.
The idea is that the beer boils up inside the chicken
and it keeps the chicken really moist,
and it helps to stand it up on the barbecue.
He's not even a chef!
There you go.
That's text book beer can chicken.
Living on an island, it is a really intense environment.
You've got to know when to take yourself out of it,
and when to just say, right, I need to have a night off island,
two nights off island, because otherwise it does get too much.
There you go. What do you think about this, Chef?
Everyone's got to learn to be really good at being able to work together,
having a very, very professional work relationship,
but then also being able to go into a social circle together,
and being able to pretty much drop all of that structure
that you have at work,
and just become much more on a sort of even level, an even basis.
Yeah. Whatever's happened at work stays at work.
It's a matter of survival really.
If you can't go and socialise with people,
it would become a really, really lonely place.
It's our home as well,
so, yes, it's the island that we're running
to give guests the unique experience that they have.
But it's also our home, and so the 20 people that live here
need to be able to go home and switch off and relax.
Can I just pull this beer can out of this chicken?
One thing at a time! Right, go.
Many staff on Necker are single and under 30 when they arrive.
But working in such close proximity
means relationships inevitably develop.
When you are in remote locations, there are definitely romances
and it certainly helps when you've had a tough day
to go home and have that person give you a kiss on the head,
put their arm around you and say everything's going to be OK.
Not far away is a very different world.
Neighbouring island Virgin Gorda.
Home to over half of Necker's employees.
With a population of just 5,000, it's a tightly knit community,
many of whom are dependent on the tourist industry.
Every morning, the workers' daily commute begins at 6am
when the staff bus collects them to catch the ferry to work.
You haven't beaten me this morning, then?
You get up at 4:30am to get ready.
Get the kids' breakfast ready.
Get myself ready for the bus at 6:15am.
Good morning.
Housekeeper Agatha is used to the early starts.
I have two girls and five boys, aged from 34 to eight years.
The youngest one is eight years.
What's the best part of this job?
Oh, when you're going home.
When you're going home in the afternoon.
And what's the worst part of this job?
Coming to work early.
Sometimes, we come to reach here for 5:30am.
When the guests are leaving early, we reach here for 5:30am.
What are you going to do when you finish working here?
Maybe do something on my own.
Open my little business.
I want to open a clothes store,
selling clothes.
Hi, Nat.
I've got a couple here wondering if they could do a couples massage
on the floating trampoline off Turtle Beach?
'No problem, Christine.
'Would they like Champagne and strawberries with the massage?'
That would be great. Thanks, Nat.
I try not to think about how much it costs.
It's that...
It's definitely...
For me, it's if I've got the money, I'm going to spend it on me.
I know that's quite selfish, but to us, this is an extravagance,
but back at home we don't live in a particularly big, extravagant house.
We just live in a nice terraced street.
It's just a nice area.
There's nothing extravagant about the way we live or our lifestyle,
so this, to us, is our one little extravagance
that we do for ourselves.
Yeah, so it's...
I don't think we have too much of a stressful life but...
We don't have a stressful life.
We have a great life.
I only have a part-time job these days as a bicycle mechanic.
I think the assumption, just purely from just looking at us
because you're older than me...
They would assume that I was some successful businessman,
I would assume. Yeah.
A lot of the men especially on the island will go and talk to Patch,
and they don't really speak to me particularly.
When they're introduced,
they all want to know what Patch's business is, what do you do?
How do you make your money?
You have great pleasure in saying that you're a bike mechanic,
and then leave it a couple of days,
and then I think your best line was,
"What makes you assume that I've got the money?"
And then just stood up and walked off.
And next thing, he's all, "Hi, Kerry, how are you?"
You're like, "Oh, now you want to know me! Oh, I see."
It's very much about who's got what, who's...
Who's got the most, who does what for a living.
He must be dying in that suit.
You can do it, hon!
Kerry came into an inheritance when she was 21,
which allows her and Patch to regularly visit the island.
We don't openly promote where we go on holiday.
We say we come to the Caribbean.
We don't necessarily say that we're coming onto Necker.
We'll be busted when this comes out, though. Oh, yeah!
I have to hit him with the golf ball.
But these are actually fish food, all right?
They're not real golf balls,
in case you were worrying where they went to. They dissolve.
Being an exclusive private island in the middle of the Caribbean Sea
comes with some unique challenges.
To get the simplest products delivered is difficult enough,
but guests here expect only the best.
Hey, young man, are you all right?
As the nearest airport is over an hour away,
almost everything must be brought in by boat.
This means that head chef Clement
is heavily reliant on weekly shipments.
I like to say this is the most difficult part of the job,
to be honest.
It's a challenge really,
and obviously because the supplier is not at the dock,
so you just receive it and there's no way back, to be honest.
If the fish is not right, we take pictures straight away,
and we send by e-mail to the supplier,
so it's a big fight after on the phone.
Yeah, are you good?
It's in the fish fridge.
Right, that's it.
That's one of the big ones weekly.
Today, we're pretty lucky, it's sunny.
It happens a few times that we get the rain
and, honestly, it's a nightmare.
It's a nasty one, yeah.
Everything's cool, thanks.
But not all the kitchen's needs are met
by the local weekly food shipment.
On occasion, special ingredients like truffles and rare cheeses
are flown in from some of the best markets in the world.
This one is from Paris. Yeah, this one.
So, the French cheese and meat we just received.
Oh, yeah, that's a good example, because we need some Parmesan now
and it just arrived, like, ten minutes ago,
so it's always like this on Necker.
Right here, what we're doing now,
we're getting some wood for a bonfire tonight
on Bali Hai beach. It will be lovely tonight.
One of the benefits of being on a Caribbean island
is that breakfast, lunch and dinner can all be served al fresco.
Something Richard particularly enjoys.
One of the jobs of Necker is to entertain Richard.
He's like any other guest that comes here.
He works incredibly hard,
and then when he's not working, he likes to enjoy himself.
So, when he's here,
we'll try and make sure we do his favourite dinner locations.
So yeah, it is to entertain him.
What did you do this afternoon?
Were you working?
We hung out on the beach. Oh, just chilling.
Oh, actually, yeah, you sent my wife back very wrecked.
I'm good at that.
She was seriously wrecked. I mean, she was seriously wrecked.
Was she that happy?
She hasn't wanted to jump on top of me for a long time!
You should say thank you!
Oh, that's great.
I'll have to send her to lunch with you more often.
Yeah. We make really good drinking buddies, actually.
Where have you been hiding?
We've been scuba diving.
Scuba diving. Oh, nice.
The first time in my life. Oh, really? Oh, great.
Cheers. Cheers!
And then I've got a butterfly leg of lamb in a honey marinade.
It's Robbie and girlfriend Rachael's first time on Necker.
He bid £16,000 in a charity auction
for the chance to spend a week on the island.
We sell elevators. It's a family business.
So, you know, I'm not a record executive, Virgin Records.
It's not like, you know, I own an airline or anything.
I'm just a guy in Ohio that sells elevators.
But, yeah, Richard's inspired me, certainly,
and that's a big reason and so it was very spur of the moment.
After, you know, following him for a while, reading his books,
to see Necker Island pop up on an option for a charity item.
It was like, OK, yep, that's happening.
For guests like Robbie, the chance to have a meal and chat with Richard
is one of Necker's main attractions.
We walked up to lunch this morning and Richard's just sitting there
at the table, you know, eating a burger.
You know, he's just like, "Hey!"
I still need to hit him up more. I haven't gotten enough face time.
I'm hoping to have a conversation with him here tonight at dinner too.
One of the island's biggest challenges is the weather.
The hurricane season between September and October
brings the threat of torrential rain and thunderstorms.
Three years ago, nature dealt the island a devastating blow
when the Great House was hit by a bolt of lightning.
At about four in the morning, my son, I suddenly heard him
screaming, "Fire at the Great House, fire at the Great House!".
I jumped out of bed stark naked, looked up at the Great House,
there were 300-foot flames coming out of the house.
I just ran, you know, straight for the main house with my son.
We had my mother, and all my nephews, nieces, Holly my daughter
and, you know, various other people in the Great House,
and at that stage didn't know whether they'd all got out.
I ran straight into a cacti,
which is not a good idea when you're stark naked, but didn't feel a thing
because I was just more worried about just getting there.
Fortunately, one person woke up, my nephew Jack,
and he managed to get everybody out,
and Kate famously carried my mum out.
People were thinking, "Right, what do we do now?".
Because, going through the house you've got your rooms,
there's the living space,
but there's also all the infrastructure
that it takes to run this place.
So, you know, all of that absolutely key stuff is gone
and you're sort of left with the one surviving laptop
and a cellphone with marginal reception on it,
thinking, "OK, how do we kind of build back up from here?".
While that's happening, Richard, of course, calls and says,
"What architect are we going to use? Let's get them down here."
It was just straight into the new planning stage.
And it also meant that as a business,
we were able to recover very quickly.
So we didn't have to make people redundant and it was, you know,
tough in one sense because we did lose a lot of business.
But we all just got on and rebuilt.
The new Great House is now twice the size of the original family home
and the fire appears to have made Necker more popular than ever.
You don't want everybody coming.
You could be touching on a little bit of overdevelopment
if you weren't careful, I think,
because nine years ago, there was nowhere near as many buildings here
as there are now. No.
And they've appeared while we've been coming, haven't they? Yeah.
I do slightly wonder whether you can actually support
many more buildings on here really before it's a bit...
When we've come before, you knew, even at maximum capacity,
it was still going to be quite a small, intimate group.
You really get to know each other and it's a nice bond.
If it gets too big,
you might as well have just gone to one of the big resorts.
This exclusivity is part of the allure.
The chance not only to meet Richard Branson,
but potentially do business with him
and other like-minded wealthy people.
This morning, the team are organising a guest breakfast
on Richard's other island.
In 2007, he took the opportunity to buy neighbouring Mosquito Island
for £10 million.
For the past year, he's been selling plots of land on Mosquito
to anyone that might have several million pounds to spare.
This is kind of the waiting game, where sometimes we just finish
as the guests are pulling up to the beach,
because they're really on time - they were at water sports at 9am,
and they sail down here in a second
and other times they're paddle-boarding and kayaking,
and we have a bit more time to finish up
and get everything ready for them.
Perfect. I think we're all set.
Hello. How was the sail?
Kezia was raised in the British Virgin Islands.
It's her job to get the party started,
and at Necker, that means cocktails for breakfast.
Can I get you something to drink?
I will have actually a mimosa please.
A mimosa? Yes. Absolutely.
Two mimosas? Sure.
You're definitely setting the standard, Robbie,
for how late everyone's got to stay up,
and how hard they've got to party.
How are you?
Two beers too many again.
As always. It means we've done our job properly. You've done great.
You don't want a hair of the dog yet?
I'll ask you in a few hours.
I don't know how I'm going to go home.
Just stay.
The party atmosphere isn't just for the guests on Necker.
During rare down time,
staff like Junior are allowed to enjoy the island themselves.
We do an induction with our managers
and you go around and you do a day's work, or a half day's work,
with the different teams.
You just kind of get to know what it's like to do that job.
I remember doing the grounds one and, I mean,
those guys work seriously hard.
I got to 11 o'clock in the morning and the shift goes till 12pm,
and we still had to move another table and another set of chairs,
and I'm just thinking, can't we just sit down right now?
I'm dripping in sweat. I'm really, really thirsty.
So, yeah, those boys are hard workers.
There's no two ways about it.
So, tonight is disco night for the guests,
so we invite them up for the usual cocktails and dinner
and then we give them an invite and encourage them to dress up
for disco night with some of our accessories.
We do a lot of fancy dress here on Necker.
Richard wants Necker to be a place where people can come and relax
and have fun, enjoy themselves,
and doing something like this, it's just in your everyday life,
it's not usually something that you'd be doing,
and it kind of lets people make fun of themselves a little bit.
A lot of the times, we do definitely try and be the instigators
for a good party, because we like one ourselves too.
We once had a new management team that came
and they brought in two rules.
The first, the staff cannot drink with the guests,
and staff may not have relationships with the guests.
That management company lasted one weekend.
It's not the way this island would work or run very well.
Richard is a matchmaker.
So, for some of the girls here who are gorgeous, who are single,
then Richard does make it a bit of a mission
to make sure that they're well looked after.
We're all definitely social people.
If the guests ask us to have a drink with them,
then, yeah, maybe we'll have one.
I mean, most people here, we're all pretty fun anyways,
so it doesn't take much for us to just kind of get into that mood.
You might have someone teaching you kite surfing during the day,
and then in the evening you've got them making your shots
and, you know, your drinks.
You've got, you know, the wives that love the boys,
and love to flirt with them.
Because we have a bit more people contact,
we're just able to be a bit more friendly.
Keeping the guests happy
isn't as simple as just serving them cocktails.
General manager Kenny faces a constant battle with Mother Nature.
It's a problem all over the Caribbean at the moment.
The beaches kind of balance out with the swell and the winds.
So the swell goes that way and the wind goes that way,
and there hasn't been much swell for the last year and a half,
so the beach is the wrong end
and we're just putting some back up there before we start losing it.
They're just wasting their time. That sand is fine where it is.
They need to know. Knock this down a couple of feet.
The idea is, that half of the beach we leave,
and this half of the beach we pick all of this sand up,
put it in the back of the truck and take it up to the top.
Are you with me?
Right, if you chat to him about that, I'm just going to...
Change of plan, man.
Politics in this place.
They want you to start taking the stuff out of the sea...
into your T-Rex, and then over to the beach.
Have you got the picture on you? Yes. Can we just have a look at it?
Because we've had wind going that way and no swell,
or very little swell, the beach, which is normally there, is there.
So we're just picking up this sand on the shore side
and moving it up to this end of the beach.
At the moment, the dock is preventing it going round.
But it's now got to such a size that if all this sand goes there,
it's going to go round the dock
and then we're going to start losing it.
Getting heavy machinery shipped in isn't cheap.
Kenny has only three days
to reshape the most popular beach on the island.
1,000 a day. Don't let them stop moving.
It can be a really, really big challenge,
and there's always a bunch of different elements
going on on the island at the same time,
and because we operate all the time,
you do have to work out how you can do all the back-of-house stuff
that's essential, whilst at the same time,
have the guests on the island
and make sure that that experience is maintained throughout.
So, yeah, choreographing stuff is really, really key.
Hey, mister. Hi.
Have you got your socks on?
Kenny met his wife Leesa on Necker when she came to set up the spa,
and he was teaching Richard to kite surf.
They're the longest-serving ex-pats on the island.
So, what are you up to at school today?
Their children, Theo and Zara, are the only kids that live on Necker.
Come on, then.
As the workers arrive in the morning Kenny and Leesa take the boat
back to Virgin Gorda to do the school run.
Morning! Good morning.
Morning. How are you?
Right, peeps, come and take your seats.
Have we got anyone else who's married who lives on the island?
No. No, just us.
Just us. Yeah, just us.
Yeah.
It's pretty cool.
The kids get on really well with everyone
and they go and socialise with all the guys.
Like, Theo joining in with all the water sports crew.
He loves doing that, and it's really good for him as well.
They go to a school which is not totally different
to a school you'd go to in England.
They go to the park, which is the same as what you go to in England.
You know, they get homework.
They do maths, they do English,
they go to their friends' houses.
When you're in this kind of job,
you do tend to put a time on how long you're going to be somewhere,
but for the first time ever, I think we very much feel it's home.
I think, with the children being the age they are and being happy,
you stop thinking it's two, three years,
and so you can't really put a time length on how long we'll be here,
because right now it's fantastic.
We're really, really happy and we love it.
The biggest thing you miss being here is your family.
So that's the biggest compromise you make being here,
is not being near brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents,
and all of those people.
So, yeah, it would be great to have more of that,
but I guess it's just a decision you take with the lifestyle,
and with the job, and you make the most of it when you do get it.
While Kenny and Leesa are able to take their children to school,
workers like Agatha begin the day long before the school run.
I have to pay my bills.
I have to do what I have to do, so it's good.
This is a private resort,
so a little different to the other resorts.
So there's a lot of difference here.
What's the biggest difference?
It's expensive.
It's really expensive.
What do you think you would do with that kind of money?
You could build a house.
I would build my own house.
Where do you live now, then?
In a rented apartment.
How many bedrooms have you got in your apartment?
Two. The smallest, the younger one sleeps with me.
So, if you had lots and lots of money, you'd build a house?
Yeah, a big one.
The master bedroom could be upstairs.
Downstairs, the family room.
But my bedroom would be upstairs.
Away from all the children? Yep.
Do you think money can buy you happiness?
Sometimes, yep.
If you have what you need, you'll be happy.
So it can buy happiness, yeah.
OK, if I have my house, I'll be happy, so money will give me that.
So, yeah.
Not all the staff see the Caribbean
as a place where they could settle down and raise a family.
It looks like paradise.
The sun, the sea all year long.
For me, it's more like a holiday destination
where you really enjoy a holiday,
and I definitely miss the seasons in France.
I love to be cold in the winter.
I love when the first sunny day comes in the summer,
or you're just so excited and happy to just have a drink on the terrace.
Here, at some point, you just forget about all these little things
and it's just hot all the time,
and you're complaining all the time because you're sweating.
Yeah, how many do you want? Just one. Just one.
Would you like it any deeper at all?
You could go a little deeper on the legs.
It's Robbie and Rachael's last day on the island.
They're having one final visit to the spa
before they head back to Ohio.
The staff here, I think one of the biggest worries about coming back
is what if they're not all here?
They really do make it...
..better than any just luxurious place could be.
They add to the experience,
and everybody just gets along really well,
and if feels like you're on vacation with all your friends,
and, like, they're just part of your group of friends.
So, that's been above...
That's exceeded expectations.
The casual environment is just so cool.
I mean, Richard's been...
He's just sitting at lunch, you know.
You walk up to the picnic table on the beach,
and he's just sitting there eating lunch with his wife Joan,
and they're just so friendly.
I basically pitched the idea that because I sell elevators or lifts,
I pitched to him basically having a lift on the island.
The saying in America is the "elevator pitch",
so you've got to do your business idea...
You should be able to sum it up in about 90 seconds to two minutes.
And he said, "What if we do a lift here,
"and anybody that wants to pitch me on something
"has to jump in the lift and ride it down, and in 90 seconds,
"if they can't sell me on it in that amount of time,
"then that's their only chance."
We've had such a great week here,
and had such a fab time with the staff,
and it's been an absolutely amazing time,
and we've left and I have actually cried on Red Dock, leaving,
because you're thinking, "I don't know when I'm going to come back.".
Have a good journey, guys.
Take care!
Hope to see you really soon!
See you later.
Bye, guys!
Most of us ex-pats that live here,
we've left our families behind and so we're, you know,
we're each other's family and we're just closer, more open.
There's more people that maybe wouldn't fit in in normal societies.
You know, they're a bit different -
there's a lot of us here that are a bit different,
so it's interesting - you know, anything goes.
I don't like using the word paradise
because it seems like it's the best place,
and I haven't been around that much.
I would like to explore much more.
Paradise?
I'd say maybe a good job and a house in the Cotswolds in England.
Necker provides a little bit of a bubble around you,
so it must be difficult to move on from this.
I think you definitely need to have a transition period
to get back into reality, normal life, whatever that is.
We'll definitely live the rest of our lives on Necker
and our next lives too, if we have a choice.
I hate leaving Necker,
but I'm back in two days' time,
so not gone for long.
My life, it is unreal.
I'm going to wake up from the most wonderful dream one day
and think, "Oh, what a pity. I wish I'd had that life."
# We'll meet again
# Don't know where
# Don't know when
# But I know we'll meet again
# Some sunny day
# Keep smiling through
# Just like you always do... #