Cyprus is the coolest place to be in summer

By LENA CORNER

On the west coast of Cyprus, Britain's teenagers have transformed a sleepy resort into Europe's most happening holiday destination. Forget Ibiza: for those in pursuit of the cool, Ayia Napa's Nissi Bay is absolutely the place to be.

Ayia Napa is a well-dressed scene. In the Nissi beach bar, DJs and club promoters in Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana sip on soft drinks while, outside, a steady flow of bikini-clad PR girls work their way around the bay, promoting the latest fashionable club. Though the bathers are wearing only the skimpiest of beachwear, hair is still immaculate, manicures intact. Mobile phones trill incessantly.

The punters may be British and they may be here for sun, sex and dance music, but Ayia Napa is a long way from the drug-fuelled, hands-in-the-air hedonism of Ibiza.

Instead, this is style-conscious urban London decamped to the eastern Mediterranean. It's a predominantly black crowd, and so represents perhaps the broadest racial mix you'll find on any beach in Europe.

Welcome to the world of UK Garage - a soulful form of uptempo dance music - which has been shaking up the British club scene for the past five years. What was once a deeply underground, late-night scene based around a few south London pubs has exploded into the mainstream. It's got its own major league DJs, it's own million-selling chart toppers in the shape of The Artful Dodger and Craig David. And now it has its own holiday destination.

If any further endorsement was needed, Radio One has shipped a group of DJs out to broadcast their weekend shows direct from the beach.

"Ayia Napa is a London thing: R'n'B and garage is hot right now and this is THE destination," says Radio One's Trevor Nelson.

It's not just Radio One that wants a slice of the action. Hot on their heels came the inevitable array of film crews. MTV, UK Play and BBC2's youth-music strand, Ozone. The Ministry of Sound threw two big parties here to promote Ayia Napa - The Album, one of a stream of UK Garage compilations clogging the record racks.

Ayia Napa is booked to the rafters. Two and a half million visitors are expected - double the numbers of a decade ago. Hotel space is notoriously difficult to find and those who can't find room have been checking into Nicosia and splashing out on cabs to take them to the Ayia Napan clubs 90km away.

But the exposure has brought problems, too. Last year Channel 4 filmed a six-part series here, dubbing it Fantasy Island. As a result, this season the resort has been deluged with thrill-seekers, out for a classic fix of sex and sun.

This sits uneasily beside the chic burgeoning UK garage scene, and many feel that this type of publicity will kill their musical hideaway in its infancy.

"This year the crowd is so much younger," complains Lily, a club promoter. "A lot of people are just here for Fantasy Island - here for the sex. Last year, it was so much more chilled but now it's getting too much. I give it five more years: the crowd will get younger and more rampant and then fizzle out."

From her marble municipal headquarters, the Mayor of Ayia Napa, Barbara Pericleous, isn't happy either. "Channel 4 are a disgrace," she thunders. "They came and they set all those things up. They showed people having sex and taking their clothes off. They made the people who come here look like animals."

It's hard to believe now that just 25 years ago Ayia Napa was a fishing village with only around 100 inhabitants.

After the Turkish invasion of 1974, the government compensated some of those who had lost their homes and livelihoods with sections of land in Ayia Napa. The displaced Cypriots had to eke out a living somehow and the obvious solution was to turn their new-found home into a tourist destination.

Quite how the UK Garage scene first found its way here remains something of a mystery, though like most things in Ayia Napa it can be traced back to three colourful brothers - Linos, Finos and George Melas. Together they opened their first club, the Black and White, way back in 1985.

Back then, the clubs were playing cheesy 70s disco hits and and shut at 2 am. Then, a couple of years ago, Linos heard about what was happening on the London club scene, that the garage clubs there were pulling in huge crowds and, what's more, these were people with taste, style and plenty of cash.

So Linos secured a deal with Pure Silk, who in 1998 became the first UK garage club to venture out to Ayia Napa. They played in Pzazz, a 2000-capacity Melas-owned venue and the biggest in the resort.

A year later, Linos struck a deal with Twice as Nice and they too started doing nights at Pzazz. Linos had bagged both of London's premier UK garage nights and Pzazz is now considered Ayia Napa's top venue.

- INDEPENDENT