Planes, Trains & Amphetamines – a laugh-a-minute memoir
Fed up with package holidays offering nothing better than pub crawls, Kirk Field went from arranging rave events to setting up the world’s first holiday company aimed at clubbers and partygoers. His story of fun in the sun, from Ibiza to Miami, mixing with everyone from Quentin Crisp to Ed Sheeran, to simply getting everyone on the bus in the morning, is a hugely funny look at life.
Field in Ibiza, having broken his nose walking into at glass door at the epic Eden nightclub
Field has also worked in the Austrian Alps, setting up shows at the liftside Hotel Strass for its rocking, rolling boss Erich Roscher in the ski town of Mayrhofen. One of the book’s funniest tales is when in 2011 Field was working at the town’s Snowbombing music festival and was offered a young Brit for no fee and he turned up with acoustic guitar but was turned down for three free shows because he might be jeered at by the largely dance music crowd. Still, it didn’t dishearten Ed Sheeran who was playing Wembley several years later!
A fresh-faced Field on the Penken slopes above Austria’s Mayrhofen
Field’s book might reference dance and club culture but it’s about the wild-eyed chaos of young (well, youngish) people on holiday, not least his early days of organising ski trips for the Essex FM radio station listeners. Another job saw him transatlantic on the QE2, bumping into the aforementioned Mr Crisp in New York, before hopping on Concorde home. Then there was the spell arranging clubbing weekenders on DFDS cross channel ferries – wild dancing and North Sea waves don’t mix. But the big business was package holidays to the clubs of Ayia Napa in Cyprus… and Ibiza, the latter having been the recipient of 10,000 guests courtesy of Field’s company Radical Escapes.
With Eddie the Eagle in Mayrhofen
Skiing, however, comes a close second with Field having been part of Snowbombing, the world’s leading dance music event on snow for 20 years… and tales of a handbags-at-dawn feud between Liam Gallagher and Idris Elba (who’d have thought an award-winning actor could be so precious about having his red bobble hat knocked off), and babysitting Eddie the Eagle, all appearing at the festival, are priceless.
Field today, having survived the wild years
Field’s earlier book, Rave New World, was an award-winning – and equally funny – look at dance culture, both the dancefloor and the frenetic government and police response to hundreds of people dancing in fields.
But here we have something about the wilder side of holidays, all in good humour and something all of us probably recognise one way or another. Headaches, heartaches and a hell of a good time – what young people really get up to on holidays. What a carry on!
£20.99 (signed, limited edition hardback), £15.99 (paperback), Velocity Press https://velocitypress.uk/product/rave-new-world-2-book/
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