Ibiza Workers: 7 DJs tell us how they spent their summers before they were famous

Employment History: PR Manager at Café Mambo & Savannah / Remembering the Summer of: 2003

Me and my two best mates decided to buy a one way flight to Ibiza. All of our mates thought we'd be home in two weeks: sunburnt, broken and eating our words, but we ended up lasting three months.

I remember our first flat; we had a pretty unsavoury drug dealer as a neighbour who liked to come round and steal kitchen utensils from one of my hapless mates. This same friend woke me up abruptly one morning to tell me that said neighbour was at our door, asking to borrow his driving licence so he could drive to Morocco. As you'd imagine, I told him it was probably a bad idea. He disappeared soon after that thankfully.

Ibiza was essentially an extension of university, but with lots of rave and sunshine. We survived mainly on a baguette and bottle of water a day. Money was tight, but we were having the time of our lives. Some of my friends went from job to job, but I was lucky to work for the Mambo guys for the whole time I was there.

After one month, I had my vinyl flown out and we started putting on our own workers party, which culminated in me DJing with Louie Vega and Kenny Dope in a 60-capacity venue at the back of Savannah. It was a pretty memorable experience.

Employment History: Flyering for Privilege / Remembering the Summer of: 2005

I worked in Ibiza solely to earn money to buy vinyl so that I could record mix CDs and hand them out to promoters on the island. Eventually, after three seasons, Privilege gave me the chance to play a warm-up set, but someone broke into my house and stole my entire record collection, my turntables and my mixer – they took everything.

However, a lot of famous DJs heard the story; the first time M.A.N.D.Y. played at Cocoon they handed me their entire back catalogue! My friends also held a party to raise money and I went back to Phonica Records in London with a list to try and buy new copies of the records I lost.

The problem was I had so much old-skool stuff and I couldn't remember the names of some of the tracks that'd been stolen. Take 'Quetzal' by Los Hermanos on Underground Resistance, for example; it's one of my favourite songs, but the vinyl is long gone. At the time, we held a lot of parties in our house and I guess someone knew exactly what kind of music they were looking for. The robbery was devastating, but in the end I was offered a job at Phonica in London, which was a dream job!