A Londoner's Diary

hichever way you look at it, Ibiza is fast turning into Notting Hill.

Walking around the Old Town or loping along Benirras beach is no different from parading down Westbourne Grove on a Saturday afternoon, and Planet Organic and Agent Provocateur have got nothing on San Rafael's El Clodenis (still the trendiest restaurant on the island). Here you'll find film producers, stylists, publicists, supermodels, pop stars, DJs and hacks. And that was just our table.

After three abortive late-night sorties into the Ibizan urban wilderness (where, thankfully, we always seemed to be about 20 minutes behind Sean Puffy Combs), we decided to spend the rest of the time entertaining at home home being a Gothic monument to kitsch complete with 48-track recording studio, DVD porn den, snooker room, indoor pool, outdoor pool, honeymoon suite, a walk-in wardrobe full of lap-dancing wigs, a wigwam (obviously), two miniature lakes and a sculpture garden. It's good to know there are still people who can spend a million pounds in Woolworths.

With crime, it's all about figures, usually conflicting ones. According to the Home Office, while you're 14 per cent less likely to be the victim than you were ten years ago, violent crime actually rose by 12 per cent. And although the government has already met a third of its target to cut crime by 15 per cent by 2007 (it dropped another 5 per cent in the last quarter), crimes in London have only fallen by 2.5 per cent. However, our perception of the police is, like our perception of the health service, built on anecdotal evidence and firsthand experience. My family and I have just moved from stucco-fronted Sussex Gardens to a modern terraced house just off Marble Arch; it was built in 1966 in one of the final flourishes of postwar redevelopment.

It backs on to a communal garden shared by 15 other houses and, because our security isn't very stringent, we've recently had a Frenchman sleeping rough there. A neighbour caught him a few months ago, and was attacked with a plastic knife for his troubles. So Monsieur Vagabond spent a night in the cells at Paddington Green. My wife and I heard him a few weeks ago as we were watching Johnny Depp pretending to be Keith Richards in Pirates of the Caribbean; and having chased him (Frenchie, not Johnny) off the premises this sounds braver than it was: he started running when he saw me I called the Marylebone branch of the Met.

Approximately eight minutes later two of them were outside my door. Five minutes later they had caught him and sent him packing, apologising for being unable to lock him up.

And they called me 'Sir'! It's not exactly 'Man Bites Dog' I know, although you get my gist.

Next Tuesday, GQ hosts its annual Men of the Year Awards at the Opera House in Covent Garden, an event we've been having for some seven years. I would just like to take this opportunity to ask those of you who are not invited to STOP CALLING THE OFFICE! I have recently suffered short-term memory loss, and if you call me asking for a ticket, claiming to be a friend, I will deny having ever met you. I haven't, have I?

One of the highlights of my summer was a dinner party we threw in honour of the Osbournes, principally Ozzy, Sharon and Jack. It was a thank you as much as anything, as they had just been the subject of a GQ fashion story, shot by Guzman and our fashion director, Jo Levin. We'd invited along Elton John and David Furnish, Peter Mandelson, James and Sonia Nesbitt, Lord and Lady Saatchi, Lulu, Patrick Cox and a host of other luminaries. Like a fool, the event coincided with the Euro 2004 England/Croatia game (I was imagining the Bateman-like headlines: 'The Men's Magazine Editor Who Hosted A Dinner Party On The Night Of English Football's Most Important European Encounter'), so I had to organise a TV for the evening. But the dinner was being held in the private room at Cipriani, which was two months ago the hottest new restaurant in town (it isn't any more), and was so new at the time it wasn't TV-wired. So, for our sins, we had to buy a portable telly, the sort with the handheld aerial that only works if you're standing on one leg with a hanky on your head.

Anyway, the TV turned out to be the icebreaker du jour, and my abiding image of the night is Jay Jopling holding the aerial aloft with Elton shouting, 'There. No. Just there. That's it. Don't move!' Jay didn't have a hanky on his head, but you can't have everything.

just seen an ad on the internet.

'IBIZA HOUSE FOR RENT: Gingerbread style, 12 bedrooms, gym, Jacuzzi, petting zoo, indoor ice rink, popular with adult film makers.' Sounds right up my street.

Dylan Jones is editor of GQ magazine

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