Mo Chaudry: Farewell to Ibiza's force of nature

This is an epitaph any party organizer would be proud of. As another long standing friend of Mo, Judge Jules, pointed out, living in Ibiza while remaining successful and sane isn’t easy. “It takes a special type of person, full of drive and charisma to win the respect of the locals and act as the driving force behind such giants of global club culture – he will be greatly missed.”

One of Mo’s survival secrets was to refuse to play the status game. Equally at home in a superclub VIP section surrounded by the higher echelon’s of club royalty or sharing a spliff with a penniless artist at a hippie gathering in the hills. Like the island he lit up, Mo was a contradiction; on one hand promoting big name nights in superclubs for the planet’s biggest brands, while at the same time organising parties, with the aim of raising consciousness and spirituality rather than revenue.

Very much an old-skool club promoter (he would often describe himself as a street fighter), Mo preferred to work his magic face-to-face rather than with corporate jargon-infested conference calls and endless round robin emails. His texts reflected a staccato steam-of-consciousness; brief call-to-action cluster bombs of exclamation marks to express his heartfelt conviction in the matter under discussion.

When Mo walked into a room everyone noticed. His entrances were memorable; he wandered in everywhere like he owned the place, halting to slowly survey those present like a fearless Eagle or Eric Cantona after scoring that goal (a comparison he wouldn’t be happy with given the Liverpool Football Club blood running through his veins – sorry Mo). Some mistook this as arrogance. It wasn’t – it was pride.