Piers Morgan on Sandbanks

My kind of place: Piers Morgan on Sandbanks, the little sand dune which is one of the most expensive neighbourhoods in the world

Piers Morgan on Sandbanks

Here's a question for you: where is the fourth most expensive place to live on the planet? Barbados perhaps? Or Beverly Hills? Nope, they don't even come close.

It's actually a tiny little sand dune on the Dorset coast called Sandbanks.

But this is no ordinary dune. On it, and around it, lie stunning golden sands, clear turquoise ocean water, luxury yachts, vintage champagne spilling out of every well-heeled resident's mouth, and houses that are currently going for an absurd £10million apiece.

I immersed myself on this strange, spectacular mile-square expanse of sand for this summer while making a three-part ITV1 series, which airs next week.

Nestled between Poole Harbour and Bournemouth, some say it is Britain's Monte Carlo, and certainly that old property chestnut "location, location, location" has never seemed more starkly pertinent.

Because there can't be many more wonderfully exclusive and exotic "locations" than this anywhere in Britain.

But as with any garden of Eden, paradise has brought an ever-increasing abundance of those seven deadly sins: pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth.

As I dug journalistically beneath the gorgeous Sandbanks veneer, I unearthed a varied gallery of characters who have turned the area into a hotbed of gossip and intrigue.

The common denominator is money. So much money, in fact, that they hardly know what to do with it all.

This place makes the American gold rush of the 17th century look like an oasis of calm, measured prudence.

Virtually everyone I met in Sandbanks is cashing in on the property price explosion, without a single thought for what might happen if, or rather when, the bubble bursts.

Or, perhaps more worryingly, when Sandbanks sinks, which some oceanic experts believe is inevitable.

The phenomenon started in 2001, when a canny local estate agent called Tom Doyle sold a 1,200 square foot flat on the Sandbanks peninsular for £1 million.

He worked out that this made it the fourth most expensive home per square foot in the world after Hong Kong, Tokyo and Belgravia, and got it formally ranked as such on influential property listings.

The Sandbanks legend was born, and property prices rocketed.

Which is why Tom Doyle now owns matching powder blue Bentleys and wears an indelible perma-tanned grin on his face.

Doyle is an entertaining, gregarious, utterly shameless individual who happily admits to being the puppetmaster behind it all.

When I met him, he had just returned from a scouting trip to Russia.

"It's taking time to lure them down here," he smirked. "But they're beginning to bite."

It's a move that will hardly serve to maintain the cosy community spirit.

But scruples would not be a word familiar to Mr Doyle.

"Is there anyone you wouldn't sell a house here to?" I asked him.

"Like who?" "Well, OK, how about Osama Bin Laden?" He looked around for several seconds, mulling it over.

"I think I'd probably draw the line there...but on the other hand, I'd have to take my client's instructions."

He showed me a perfectly nice house on the most coveted part of Sandbanks - the peninsula tip.

The 12 houses along this stretch of water are worth a collective total of £75 million.

"We'll get £8 million for this one," said Doyle proudly.

When I asked him how he could possibly justify this absurd price, he laughed and said simply: "The view. Six million of that price is for the view."

Assuming he was doing that normal estate agent's trick of over-exaggeration, I went and had a cup of tea with the most famous resident of Sandbanks, Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp - who owns a similar large house three doors down, though he's rumoured to be eyeing up a transfer to Newcastle.

"I get people knocking on my door every month asking to buy this place, for up to £10 million," he admitted.

"But I'd never sell it, this is just paradise to me.'"

"Never?" I replied. "Never," said Harry firmly. "What if I offered you £15 million?" Pause.

"You've got a deal!" Everyone, I discovered, has their price in Sandbanks.

Well, almost everyone. Right next to the most expensive (£12 million) house on Sandbanks lives a former Dambuster war veteran called Jack Holsgrove.

He bought his home for £60,000, 40 years ago, and has no intention of ever cashing in.

"I get all these agents coming up and offering me millions," he chuckled, "but why would I want to move? Where else will I find a home like this?"

We sat in his deckchairs watching the waves crash gently onto the golden sands. And you know what? I agreed with him.

And unlike Harry, Jack had no price. "£20 million?" I suggested.

"No, certainly not," he snorted.

It wasn't the big houses in the best part of town that made my eyes water, though.

It was the rundown, ramshackle fourbedroom property by the harbour waterfront that I was taken to one afternoon.

From the outside, it looked as rough as a badger's backside.

And inside wasn't much better, with creaking floorboards, peeling walls, old broken furniture and a wafting scent of rotting food.

A similar waterside house in my local town of Brighton would command a fee of about £500,000.

"How much?" I asked.

"£5 million," came the deadpan reply.

"How?" I gasped, incredulously.

"Follow me," said the agent. And he steered me to the back of the house, where a glass-fronted living room peered straight onto the beach, two feet away.

But that wasn't all. He then took me to the front of the house, and there I stood looking out over the second largest natural harbour in the world after Sydney.

The agent caught my awestruck expression and laughed.

"That's how. You are not going to find any house in Britain with views like that.

And the annoying thing is he's right. It's not worth £6million.

But it's definitely got special views, and how much a view's worth is down to an individual and their wallet.

Sandbanks used to be a sleepy conservative place, but since Tom Doyle created the myth it's seen an invasion of, how can I put this delicately, rather less "conservative" types.

Ian Davies, for instance, who once adorned the front page of the Daily Mail as "Britain's richest football hooligan", now runs the local wine bar, after winning it, he says, in a bet.

He's brash, cocky, rich for reasons he has never fully explained, but which appear to be linked to "powerful mates in Chechnya", and claims to be totally unimpressed by Sandbanks.

"It's all a complete con!" he shouted, as he drove me round Sandbanks in his new Bentley.

"Just a conspiracy drummed up by the estate agents to make money.

"The truth is that there are some nice places on the beach, but all the stuff inside Sandbanks is tat."

He had a point. Venture inside the labyrinth of roads inside the square mile "dune" and you'll find a lot of decrepit old properties from the Thirties.

"Rubbish!" declared Davies. "Complete and utter rubbish! Any one who says this is like Monte Carlo is on drugs."

I found him entertaining company, but Mr Davies is definitely an acquired taste.

"Some people would say you're the kind of person that Sandbanks doesn't need," I put to him.

"It's not me they want to worry about, it's the developers!" he snapped back.

Ah, yes, the developers. Where there is a property boom, there is always an unscrupulous collection of evil developers making a mint out of it.

The alleged Mr Nasty of the property game down here is Richard Carr.

He's big, imposing, employs 1,000 workers, and is responsible for the majority of flat developments in the area.

His critics say he has single-handedly wrecked the look and fabric of Sandbanks, and turned the place into a noisy, dirty building site.

He says he has provided affordable housing to thousands of people who wouldn't otherwise be able to buy a place.

But Carr, who owns a yacht called Agent Provocateur, doesn't really give a fig what people think of him: "I don't do anything illegal, and people who object to what I do are the kind of people who always object to progress."

It's an opinion shared by another controversial developer, Eddie Mitchell, a former Barnado's boy who designs futuristic houses with exotic names like Thunderbird and Bowie.

You find his developments dotted all over the place, and they stand out like gold bars on an icecap - bright, flash, expensive and completely out of place.

His next venture is to build a restaurant in the sky, a creation that resembles a Star Wars version of the Eiffel Tower, and stick it right bang in the middle of the Sandbanks Beach car park at a cost of £10 million.

The oblong pod will move constantly up and down while you eat. It made me feel nauseous just hearing about it.

And Eddie, a softly-spoken maverick nutcase, conceded there were a "few issues to resolve yet."

One of which is the local residents association chief, a wonderful old stick-in-the-mud called Terry Stewart.

He outlined to me the problems that have come with Sandbanks' increased popularity: the terrible traffic, the stench from overused sewage works, the "undesirable elements" coming to live here, and the likes of Richard Carr and Eddie Mitchell.

The problem is that everyone's doing rather well out of it all, and there is a seemingly limitless supply of money wanting to join in the action from all over the country.

Like Mark and Jackie Rowlands, who have plenty of money and are desperate to be part of the Sandbanks jetset.

We met in what used to be the local greasy spoon cafÈ, but which has been transformed into a swanky, new restaurant called CafÈ Shore - selling foie gras and bottles of Chateau Petrus at a whopping £400 a pop.

I could almost lick the ambition off their starry-eyed foreheads as Jackie and Mark drove me in their inevitable

Bentley to their new home, a pleasant but small semidetached house on the "cheap seats" side of Sandbanks road.

In other words, no view of the beach.

"Do you dream of one day being able to live over there?" I ask, pointing to the £8million beachside properties.

"No," said Mark. "I'm happy to be here, with my budget."

"Well I do," said Jackie. "I want to be over the road."

Paul Naden personified the type of character flooding to Sandbanks.

Still in his 30s, he sold his business for £30million, and now likes to spend his money on cars, holidays, luxury homes and partying.

We toured a few properties in his Lamborghini, tastefully emblazoned with a reclining naked woman motif.

"If I see something I want, I buy it," said Naden.

An attitude in kilter with the new Sandbanks. This is a place where the hair salon has a doorman-and even the windsurfers own Porsches.

It's all superficially wonderful. But nothing lasts for ever.

For the last word, I tracked down a coastal geomorphologist called Dr Coombe, or "Dr Doom" as I renamed him, due to his apocalyptic views on the future of Sandbanks.

As we trudged through the Harbour one evening, he proclaimed that the whole area would be engulfed by water by the end of the century, and some homes within 25 years.

He stood, slowly shaking his head, and observed: "I keep trying to tell them, but nobody wants to hear that Sandbanks will be gone soon.

"Not good for business, I suppose?" No, Dr Doom, I suppose not.

But the good news is that until it does all sink, you don't have to pay £10 million to experience the Sandbanks millionaire lifestyle.

My advice if you want to join the Sandbanks set? You can park your car in the car park, pay £1.50, and enjoy one of the great views in Britain for next-to-nothing.

By PIERS MORGAN

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