Pete Tong gets an Ibiza edition of Real or No Real
Radio 1’s Ibiza weekend meant an afternoon dominated by dance music, but Pete Tong joined Scott and Chris for a special edition of Real or No Real built entirely around his own life. Scott introduced him as a legend and immediately had to withdraw the word because Pete disliked anything that made him sound old. “The godfather of dance” was not much better.
Pete had been part of every Radio 1 Ibiza weekend. He remembered the earliest broadcasts from the back of Café del Mar, where so many people crowded into the small indoor space that the windows cracked. The parties had become larger and more organised since then, while the behaviour of the DJs had, in Pete’s diplomatic assessment, improved.
A Smurf, a rider and some missing DJs
The quiz mixed genuine Ibiza history with stories designed to sound just plausible enough. Danny Howard had not chained Pete to a Smurf during the 2007 trip, although the image fitted the programme’s idea of what a Radio 1 weekend might involve. Pete’s actual rider was far more restrained, with red wine waiting in the dressing room rather than costumed characters.
He admitted that DJs had occasionally disappeared for long enough to worry their colleagues. Scott and Chris kept trying to turn those half-finished memories into detailed stories, but Pete knew where to stop. The programme could establish that unusual things had happened without creating a formal record of all of them.
Pete confirms the Vanessa Feltz story
The final claim was already familiar to regular listeners: as a 12-year-old, Pete had given Vanessa Feltz her first childhood kiss. He initially answered like a politician and said nobody could prove it, then supplied the full story himself.
They had met during a family holiday in Majorca and continued writing to one another as pen pals. Pete’s mother later took him to a London station for a reunion with Vanessa. At the time, he had no way of knowing that the girl from his holiday would grow up to become one of Britain’s best-known broadcasters.
The revelation gave Scott an unexpected connection with Pete, because he too had kissed Vanessa, albeit much more recently and for charity. Radio 1 then returned to Ibiza, with Pete, Annie Mac, B.Traits and Danny Howard among the presenters broadcasting from the island.
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