Since Kate Middleton married Prince William, their life has become full of annoying restrictions, aristocratic formalities and putting duty to the Crown before their own needs.

But just like most couples in their early 20s, they wanted to blow off some steam by doing some travelling and partying – before they settled down, got married and had children.

And there is perhaps no place better to go for a big boozy bash than the Spanish party island of Ibiza.

So when Kate’s ‘bad boy’ uncle Gary Goldsmith invited her and William, alongside her sister Pippa, brother James, Prince Harry and some friends to his £3.6million villa in 2006, she obviously said yes.

‘Uncle G’ as he was known to the Middleton children, had just made a reported £17million in 2005 after he sold his shares in his recruitment business – and he was using his cash to have fun.

He had just bought the villa, which included an infinity swimming pool and tennis court, but it quickly became known as ‘La Maison de Bang Bang’ – crude French slang for the house of sex – because of his penchant for wild parties.

On the perimeter of the walled property, a 6ft high quote of ‘It’s Gary’s world, you just live in it’ was emblazoned there for years.

Gary, now 59, was known to party well into the night and was caught on camera in 2009 snorting cocaine while advising an undercover reporter how to meet Brazilian prostitutes.

But when Kate and William’s gang arrived at Gary’s private villa in August 2006, they made sure to enjoy themselves in a more responsible way.

According to royal author Katie Nicholl, the pair managed to fit the vacation into one of the gaps in William’s Sandhurst training.

In her 2013 book, Kate: The Future Queen, she wrote the couple had a ‘ball’ in the ‘fortress-turned-party-palace’.

The author added: ‘Gary, who knew the island well, chartered a yacht so that they could sail across the sea to nearby Formentera.

‘Tanned and toned in their matching white bikinis, Kate and Pippa performed expert backflips into the azure waters.

‘Surprisingly for such a popular vacation destination, William and Kate were able to explore the island in relative anonymity and spent the night at the Pacha nightclub without being recognised.’

According to royal experts, the 2006 trip was one of just a handful where William, then 24, felt able to really let his hair down.

It was reported that Kate, then also 24, even had to tell William off for his behaviour at one point during the trip after he and his friend Guy Pelly were driving mopeds in front of the house.

Although the private holiday was understandably kept secret by the royals, details emerged when Gary was caught in a sting by journalists from the now-defunct Sunday tabloid The News of the World.

Goldsmith was covertly filmed cutting up what appeared to be cocaine with a 100 Euro note on the kitchen worktop and gave a wrap of the substance to the reporters as well as a handful of pills, believed to be Ecstasy.

The portly man revealed his larger-than-life character to the reporters by loudly bragging about William’s visit to Ibiza, describing him as ‘lovely’ and talking about his group of ‘MI6 bodyguards’.

‘My first words to Prince William were, ‘Oi, you f****r! Did you break my glass pyramids? He and a pal had been throwing balls around and broke all these ornamental pyramids I had,’ he said.

During another exchange, he told how William was made to pay a forfeit – wearing a napkin on his head – after talking about Kate’s figure.

He said: ‘They were talking about boobs at the time, around the table at my sister’s house. William said that more than a handful is a waste. He had to wear the hanky of shame [as a forfeit]. I made him put on a napkin!’

‘Uncle G’ also claimed his niece had told him about a shooting trip she went on with the Royal Family at Sandringham, saying: ‘Kate told us that Prince Philip taught her to shoot when William was away one Christmas. She was invited over.’

He then joked that after the couple wed he will have access to Buckingham Palace, saying: ‘I’ve got my own rooms, the Goldsmith Wing! I’m going to be the Duke of Slough!’

However, somewhat ironically, Goldsmith warned the undercover reporter about the media. He said: ‘When the Press get you, they kill you. They don’t know who I am. I’m under the radar.’

Kate and William were planning to stay at La Maison de Bang Bang again in 2009, but after the expose was published they decided they could never return.

More details of the couple’s trip were revealed on the ITV show The Day Will and Kate Got Married, where Gary admitted: ‘They were out on boats. They’d been to beach bars. They had the full Ibiza experience and they had a really good time.’

He also described how William learned to DJ, saying: ‘My friend was there and helping them set up the outdoor DJ and he was teaching William about the beats and how to drop a track.

‘He said, “the most important thing William is that you do have a shout-out and you need something that you say when you drop a really good track”.’

The future monarch is said to have suggested: ‘The King is in the house!’, to which Gary responded that he ‘kinda loved’ it when William said that.

The royal group spent hours playing backgammon in the villa’s games room, which also has a pool table, table tennis, Wii and Space Invaders, housed outdoors in a Moroccan tent.

‘It is one of the best things I bought,’ Gary told the Daily Mail in 2015.

‘Carole and Mike had a table taken out to eat here when they were playing games. We used to have the biggest telly in the world there so we could play the Wii but we left it out over the winter and it exploded.’

More details about the royals’ trip to Gary’s Ibiza party pad were revealed in 2013, when he spoke about the then Duchess of Cambridge in an interview with Hello! Magazine.

He shed light on the ‘The Kate I Know’ and the early days of her relationship with William in a deal negotiated by Goldsmith’s agent, with the interview and photoshoot taking place at his Ibiza villa.

Over 16 pages, he told how the young couple enjoyed mud baths on the island, and how Kate had revisited the villa in 2007 during her and William’s brief break-up, where she spent a lot of time pacing around the pools making calls.

He said William ‘absolutely loved’ the villa and even credited the villa for bringing the royal couple back together.

‘It’s a nice place and it has a very nice vibe and you can hear the sea at night,’ he explained.

Nevertheless, despite his wild partying ways, and spilling the beans about William and Kate’s Ibiza trip, Gary was still invited to the royal wedding in 2011 and to Pippa’s wedding in 2017.

Gary’s most shameful public episode was when he was found guilty of assaulting his wife by knocking her to the ground after she accused him of taking drugs during a drunken fight outside their home in 2017.

However, his most recent stint in the public eye came when he took part in the 2024 season of Celebrity Big Brother – which reportedly left his family ‘infuriated’.

Although he was the first contestant to be evicted, he kept the spilling of Middleton secrets to a minimum, making no further mention of Kate and William’s wild Ibiza holiday.

As the future King and Queen look forward to a life raising their children and representing the country, they won’t mention the Ibiza holiday either – but they will always remember it.