Most people who travel to Ibiza admit that what goes on in Sky One's Uncovered series is true. The sex, the drugs, the non-stop partying, the throbbing music and the general hedonistic attitude is all part of the lure for the thousands who come to the small island each year.
The clubbing Balearic island is now in high season, and a health warning last week to young British holidaymakers, advising against unprotected sex and drug over-indulgence, pointed up the risks associated with some visitors' behaviour. For one or two weeks they drench their bodies with alcohol and drugs, they grab a few hours sleep between Ibiza's wild clubs and bars and they dance until their bodies almost give out. Not all will partake of the sex and the drugs, but the trip is often exhausting enough for many to want a month off to recover when they get home. But they love it all the same, the Irish no less than other young Europeans.
Last year 129,000 Irish people went to the Balearic Islands - Majorca, Minorca and Ibiza - and a Budget Holiday survey shows that almost 40 per cent of their clients were aged between 18 and 29. FM 104 DJ, Adrian Kennedy, broadcast his show live from Ibiza last week for the second year running.
The longest stint of non-stop partying this week for Justin Stringer from Tyrone was 48 hours: this took him from the world's biggest club, Manumission, until 6 a.m. one morning, then to another club, Space, and then on to Cafe Mambo for a live radio show. Did he sleep for a week after that? "Not at all. I had about four or five hours' sleep and then out again," he says.
The choice of great clubs, world-renowned DJs and the music they bring is what sets Ibiza apart from other resorts. "It's the best place on earth if you love clubbing," says Dublin DJ and clubber Ian Clarke, who has been to Ibiza already this year and will be going back in September. He goes to Privilege, where Manumission is staged, and thinks its white interior, the pool and the plants of Es Paradis make it "the most beautiful place I've ever seen".
Clarke was at the opening in June of Space, where 4,000 people were crammed under one roof. The night was made, he says, when a giant white sheet floated down on to the crowd as sparks flew over the heads of revellers from angle-grinders at either side of the stage.
Others who have been to Ibiza rave about Pacha, made to look like a Tunisian temple with tiered sandstone terraces, which was frequented in the 1970s and 1980s by the rich and beautiful, such as Roman Polanski, Ursula Andress and Grace Jones.
Drugs are plentiful, but many say the dance scene in Ibiza doesn't necessarily imply people will be taking drugs. Certainly, the increasing mass appeal of dance music has loosened the association between the music and the ecstasy tablet and many people choose Red Bull and vodka as opposed to drugs to help them keep the pace in Ibiza's all-night clubs.
But there can be no denying the antics that go on at the clubs. Transvestites in leather thongs, people in Wonder Woman costumes and witch-doctors are the kind of club-goers you can expect to bump into in the toilets, probably all touching up their make-up . . . and let's not forget the live sex shows.
So what is it that makes 18-30-year-olds shed their inhibitions and their clothes, and indulge in a holiday of hedonism each year? Medieval carnivalism is what Andrew Lovatt, who observed the island antics as a research fellow at the Manchester Institute for Popular Studies and who now advises those in the cultural industry says is behind the annual pursuit of today's youth. He says industrialised society has regulated our lives and stopped the festivals and carnivals our ancestors once used to get drunk, dance and have a good time for a week or two on end.
Young people have substituted places like Ibiza where they can go to switch off their minds, put their bodies through a gruelling party experience and have a good time.
"It's primal human habit. It's about not putting up with everything all the time," he says. The fact that young people have more money and fewer responsibilities facilitates this throwback to medieval traditions, says Lovatt. Weekend party culture, where people down-tools on Friday evening and spend the entire weekend clubbing, says Lovatt, is an extension of the Ibiza scene.
Ibiza is the natural place to go for those seeking the carnival atmosphere and this is due in part to its own history. Its goddess, Tanit, a symbol of love and fertility, seems to have been an appropriate gift from the Phoenicians who came to the island in the 9th century B.C. and the long history of colonisation by the Romans, Byzantines and Turks perhaps is the reason behind its tolerance of the invasion of young people during the summer. Tolerance also to homosexuality and chic living during this century is what gives Ibiza its cosmopolitan vibe.
In the 1960s Ibiza was a haven for hippies and artists but complaints about drug-use and even naked black Masses caused about 100 free-loving types to be escorted off the island in 1971.
Then in the 1970s came the international jet-setters with their glamorous lifestyles and wild parties. The 1980s saw the beginning of what continues today with the dance scene and the drugs associated with it.
There is no doubt the mass appeal of dance music and the "uncovering" of Ibiza on television shows has created a huge consumerist element which makes every young person want to hop on a plane and head to the island. Ibiza has a year-round population of 80,000, which swells to 1.5 million people, about half of them British visitors, during the summer. Other Europeans, particularly Germans, Spanish and Irish, make up the rest.
Mike McGrath (22) from Galway, felt the scene in Ibiza had gone somewhat flat when he was there last year. "I think it's past its sell-by-date. Regular holiday-goers are trying to get a taste of it but they're not bringing anything of their own," he says.
His girlfriend Natalie Hession, also from Galway, agrees, saying the people she saw in Ibiza were "lots of girls with little white dresses with white knee-high boots and guys in string vests". Indeed club-goers, DJs and the exportable British nightclubs are now looking for a new haven for summer parties. Many are pointing to Ayia Napa in Cyprus as the next place for the summer hedonist scene to move to and some of the bigname DJs are starting to play there.
But one wonders if the locals in Cyprus will be as tolerant of the demands of the European youth who for four months of the year may turn their home into a seething mass of alcohol-swilling escapists who live by the beat of a dance tune for 24 hours a day. If not, they can always go back to Ibiza.