Jaw-dropping tales of Ibiza’s wildest nightclub… with sex shows & bouncer ‘Johnny the Dwarf’ who kept out Hell’s Angels

IBIZA in the 1990s was one of the wildest places on the planet.

And there was nowhere wilder on the White Isle than Manumission.

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Thousands trooped into the hedonistic club night Manumission during its heyday[/caption]

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The night at Privilege was one of the wildest places in Ibiza in the 1990s[/caption]

The owners of the club often joined in with professional performers for a sex showRex Features

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Manumission did not need superstar DJs to draw in huge crowds like other clubs[/caption]

It was the drug and sex-fuelled club night that made its way from small beginnings in Manchester’s gay village to take over the biggest club in Ibiza, Privilege.

And with Privilege set to reopen next year to become the world’s biggest super-club with space for 15,000 ravers, there is no better time to look back at its hedonistic heyday.

Celebrities flocked to Privilege, with the likes of Kylie Minogue, Freddie Mercury, Madonna and Tina Turner all making the pilgrimage to party at the famous club.

But it was the Manumission nights which were to make it infamous, change the face of clubbing and earn Privilege its legendary place in nightclub history.

The iconic night was the brainchild of brothers Mike and Andy McKay and their partners Claire Davies and Dawn Hindle.

The word ‘Manumission’ means ‘freedom from slavery’ and the ethos of the club was that everyone was welcome and were free to do whatever they wanted to do.

And that meant anything and everything.

X-rated shows

As gang culture in Manchester halted their nights, the two couples moved to Ibiza and relocated Manumission to Monday nights in the Coco Loco bar of Privilege, or Ku as it was then known.

And as the night’s legend grew, they went from having a few hundred clubbers to thousands clamouring to come, so they soon took over the whole club.

Forget the industrial sweat-pit of the Hacienda or warehouse raves of the late 80s and early 90s, where music and drugs were the drivers of club culture. Manumission became a theatrical show that didn’t need superstar DJs to draw in the crowds.

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Scantly clad partygoers would troop into the club for a ‘surreal’ experience[/caption]

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Manumission’s aim was to create a space where people could party and be as wild as they wanted[/caption]

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Manumission girls at the club’s 10 year anniversary in Ibiza[/caption]

It was like nothing clubbers had ever seen before with a huge swimming pool in the middle, a DJ box suspended above it, acrobats, circus performers, pyrotechnics, elaborate stage sets, trapeze artists and of course Manumission’s infamous sex show starring founders Mike and Claire.

The couple would take to the stage to join in with the X-rated show with professional performers they had flown in from Amsterdam.

With Mike and Claire fully involved in the ‘performance’ side of things, Andy and Dawn focussed on the business and no idea was off limits.

“The Independent said it was ‘surreal clubbing for the previously disenchanted’,” Dawn told Loaded.

“And it really was. Mike and Claire were very much into the big statement, girls and sex, but me and Andy did the rest of the entertainment.

“We’d do things like putting name badges on people, contacting people like Kellogg’s cornflakes and saying ‘can we give everyone cornflakes for breakfast at the end of the night?”

Former pyrotechnic troubleshooter and ops manager Elliot Cox added: “In the early days the entertainers used to get body painted like green elves, some would go round shining shoes.

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Mike and Claire were heavily involved in the performance aspect of the club’s operations[/caption]

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People dressed as mythical creatures would hand clubgoers the keys to a ‘special door’[/caption]

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After partying, drunk tourists would go around trying to open doors[/caption]

“One I loved was we’d get people dressed up like some random mystical, mythical character, and they would grab people who were off their heads and give them a key and say ‘here is the key to the special door.

“If you can find the door, behind the door is a special VIP lounge with free drinks and free food’. We got the keys in a local DIY store – they didn’t fit anything.

“By the end of the night we’d given out a hundreds of keys to a hundred w***ered tourists who were going round trying to open every single door. 

“There was a guy who used to dress up as a television set and another guy that dressed up as a suitcase. He fell in the swimming pool once and nearly drowned.”

Infamous motel

Not content with having a huge club where anything goes, the Manumission team decided to open their own motel to continue the hedonistic party round the clock.

They bought a disused brothel on the edge of Ibiza Town, kept the brothel’s waterbeds, stationed a dwarf on the door and had a team of New York strippers as residents. 

Drug smuggler Howard Marks, Jade Jagger and Shaun Ryder were regulars, while Kate Moss, Zoe Ball and Fat Boy Slim all partied there.

And Radio One DJ Lisa I’Anson famously missed her breakfast show after joining the party.

With celebrity guests and parties that never stopped, security was key – and that was the realm of Johnny the Dwarf.

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The owners of Manumission bought a disused brothel and turned it into a motel[/caption]

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The motel meant that Manumission’s parties kept going non-stop[/caption]

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The wild partying at the clubs was replicated at the motel[/caption]

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Johnny the Dwarf, seen here with Howard Marks was the motel’s doorman[/caption]

Claire Davies told DJ magazine: “Johnny The Dwarf’ was the doorman. He’s Irish, he’d grown up in the East End [of London] and he’s really tough. He’d taken a lot of s*** and as a result he wouldn’t take any.

“One of my favourite stories about Johnny was that he turned the Hells Angels away, literally hardcore, mean Hells Angels. Johnny just wasn’t letting them in.

“The funny thing is that there was a rumour on the island that Johnny had a sawn-off shotgun behind the door, was a kung-fu expert and some kind of porn star.

“Nothing of this [was true], but it was the legend that grew because nobody could understand how he could control the door so well.”

End of the party

The Motel only lasted six debauched months before it closed down, its regulars surely exhausted from the round-the-clock hedonism.

And the end of Manumission was to follow.

A dispute with the owners of Privilege led to the club night being locked out of the premises on the night of a party in 2008.

Manumission briefly moved to another nightclub, Amnesia, but closed its doors for good shortly afterwards.

Dawn Hindle and her ex-husband and business partner Andy went on to buy the iconic Pikes Hotel – the party palace where Wham! filmed their Club Tropicana video – as well as launching the Ibiza Rocks group.

And they have recently resurrected the Manumission nights at Pikes as a trip down memory lane for the middle-aged clubbers who remember its Privilege glory days.

Privilege is currently being refurbished by its new owners, who also relaunched the legendary Space nightclub in Playa D’en Bossa as Hi! Ibiza, which was recently named the best club in the world.

It is due to reopen in 2025, but with Ibiza’s club scene now flooded with VIP tables, champagne sprays and celebrity culture, it is doubtful that the free spirit and free love of Manumission will ever  be recreated.

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Zoe Ball threw then-husband Fatboy Slim a surprise party at the club[/caption]

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Although the owners tried to move the party to another club, the success could not be repeated[/caption]

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Manumission is due to be reopened once again in 2025[/caption]