I am no stranger to the burdens of fame. Once, attending a film premiere, I was mistaken for a celebrity. 'Oi!' shouted an excited voice in the waiting crowd. 'It's that bloke from that coffee advert.' It may not have been 15 minutes, but for a good 15 seconds I felt the intense glare of stardom: the savage exposure of the flashgun, the cruelty of the camera, the insatiable demands of the public - to give, give, give. Oh yes, I know all about the pressures of fame. Of its pleasures, however, I have for too long lived in ignorance. Until, that is, I visited Parrot Cay.
This is where the very famous and the very rich go to relax: names like Sir Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Barbra Streisand - the kind of people who set your neck muscles twisting involuntarily. Parrot Cay (pronounced 'key'), according to fashionable opinion, is the last outpost of style in the Caribbean. Forget Mustique and Sandy Lane in Barbados; leave them to Michael Winner and Joan Collins. If you want to mix with a more exclusive and more taste-sensitive crowd, then this tiny, lagoon-encircled resort, hidden away in the Turks and Caicos Islands, is the place to avoid the paparazzi.
I shared the half-hour boat ride from Providenciales, the Turks and Caicos capital and airport island, with a middle-aged Englishman called Stewart who looked as if he'd stepped out of the pages of a Graham Greene novel. Pink and perspiring, he told me he was a travel rep visiting for a quick business lunch, gave me his card, and recounted his punishing itinerary, which involved a complex series of flights to most parts of the globe crammed into the following 36 hours. Just listening to him, I felt the need to lie down with an iced cocktail.
We were met at the hotel launch by Harry Apostilides, the managing director and general manager of Parrot Cay. An engagingly informal host, yet diligent to a fault, Harry greeted me with the news that I would be staying in a three-bedroom villa with its own swimming pool. And butler.
As I said my goodbyes to Stewart outside my villa, he looked a broken man. I could imagine the poor soul contorting his exhausted body into yet another economy airline seat, and - more gratifying still (for what is the point of luxury without suffering?) - I could imagine Stewart imagining it.
On the surface, 'restrained' may not seem the most appropriate word to describe a three-bedroom villa with swimming pool and butler, yet I can think of none better. The rooms were airy and uncluttered with whitewashed clapboard walls and dark hardwood floors. Furniture was kept to the bare essentials - widescreen TV, vast white sofa, white linen four-poster beds and a couple of discreet writing tables. Beyond the sliding screen doors was an expansive deck and a generous pool, leading down to a cream beach and the transparent, aquamarine sea. It looked like a David Hockney painting by Paul Gauguin.
This is the best villa on Parrot Cay, the one that Bruce (that's Willis) likes to rent when he's here, which is often. So often, in fact, that he's building his own place on the other side of the island. I could see the appeal, even at £2,500 a night in high season.
I confess that, while I have prodigious talent for indolence, the thought of a butler seemed a trifle unnecessary, not to say ideologically dubious. Alas, my Balinese manservant didn't see things that way. His name was Vivid, which ill-suited his ability to fade into the background whenever he was not required, and appear the very instant an onerous task - uncorking a champagne bottle and that sort of thing - called for his delicate expertise. God knows I tried to be the egalitarian, and insisted that he call me 'Andy', but Vivid took great pride in his service and, indeed, those he served.
One day, at my suggestion, he brought his guitar round and played the theme from The Godfather as I lay in a hammock contemplating how I was ever going to readjust to real life. 'You play that very well,' I said, immobilised with contentment.
'Thank you,' he replied, 'Mr De Niro said the same thing.'
De Niro, of course, would have recognised the music - he was in The Godfather II . The staff are told not to mention the celebrity guests, and on the whole they are remarkably discreet. There are rumours that Streisand demanded that the beautiful infinity pool at the heart of the resort be emptied and refilled with unchlorinated water, and that the gym be emptied of people - but no one will confirm the stories. All Harry would say was that the hotel's policy was to oblige - if at all possible - every request, however unusual.
Parrot Cay is owned by the Ong family, the same people who are behind London celebrity hang-out, the Metropolitan Hotel. It was originally a colonial-style hotel owned by the Kuwaiti royal family, but the Gulf War left it in limbo. The Ongs' daughter, Melissa, visited the island and saw its potential, and her mother, Christina, soon set to work on fashioning a tropical idyll. To the original hotel she added a series of beach villas, and transformed the scrubland that makes up the 1,000-acre island into gardens of bougainvillea and palm trees.
An emphasis on healthy living is apparent in the food, blending local sea produce with oriental and Mediterranean influences to exquisite effect; and especially in the Shambhala spa, located on a hill overlooking the channel that separates the island from north Caicos. Here you can be massaged and manipulated by a variety of international therapists in the blissed-out atmosphere of what I suppose a monastery would feel like, if it were five-star.
Standing around in a fluffy bathrobe talking about aromatherapy oils is not my thing, but I'd recommend the Indian head massage for its sublime purity.
That's all very well, you might say, but what about the celebrities? Truth be told, I did not spot one while I was there. Or at least none that I recognised. I did see a bloke who I thought may have been Burt Bacharach, but I suspect he was more likely a well-tanned owner of a car dealership in Santa Barbara.
Had I come the previous week, things would have been different. Then it was celebrity central. This is always the way with me. I am some sort of anti-stalker, always not there when the stars come out.
The day before I arrived at Parrot Cay, Sol Campbell, the recently departed captain of Tottenham Hotspur, the team I've supported since I was child, left, two days prematurely. He'd come, on the advice of Roberto Di Matteo, the Chelsea player, to get away from it all while he decided what he was going to do about signing a new contract for Spurs or making a new career elsewhere.
Harry tortured me with this information one night as we drank perfect vodka martinis, by telling me how Sol had come alone, had dined alone and had been welcoming of conversation. I just knew that, had I the opportunity to talk to him, I could have persuaded him to stay and lead Spurs back to the glory days. Instead, he returned to London and announced that he was leaving the club he'd been with since he was a small boy. To join - and even now it pains me to write the word - Arsenal.
Ah, Sol. To my mind, you made an incomprehensible mistake. Leaving Spurs is one thing. But leaving Parrot Cay two days early, that's something I'll never understand.
Getting there
Andrew Anthony travelled with Caribtours (020 7751 0660). A week's stay at Parrot Cay in August costs from £1,662 per person based on two sharing a Garden View Room and is inclusive of return flights, transfers and breakfast.
Flights are with British Airways (0845 77 333 77) which has started a weekly Gatwick-Providenciales service via Nassau.
For further information www.parrot-cay.com or Lonely Planet Bahamas, Turks and Caicos (£12.99).
