If you came to Dubai a few years ago you'd have got this sand and loads of it an amazing thing happened fantasy became reality in the space of just 20 years Dubai turned from desert into a jaw-dropping oasis of stone marble concrete glass and roar excitement but a bolder and wacky of the idea the more likely it was to be accepted giant Islands the shape of Palms that could be seen from space and soon to be the world's tallest skyscraper - a modern-day Tower of Babel that slices through the clouds almost a kilometer above the ground. Dubai has become the center of a modern-day Gold Rush but the big question for Dubai is whether this great global credit crunch is going to bite here and whether that will term if you buy dream into a nightmare.
Dubai is one of the seven states that make up the United Arab Emirates under the rule of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Its reputation as a tax-free haven and land of opportunity has attracted a hundred and twenty thousand bricks all chasing the Dubai dream you have both completely lost your marbles I mean you have paid 50 million dollars for a load of sack a dream where your position in society can be elevated overnight vast riches are there for the taking it's not a journey and even a secretary or an officer to a stake to this clogging 17,000,000 path apart as in Dubai in a country where Sharia Bayes law is dished out on crop top wearing party goers what's it really like to live here mixing with the locals I talk tactics with the man that bought Man City there's the Burj Al Arab and what about the world's financial meltdown are they feeling the heat you say critic
crumbs people think whoa whoa there's no credit crunch in Dubai it's not coming it's the it's here but lurking in the background behind all of this is the fact that in just 10 years time Dubai's oil will run out the race is on if you'd invested in poverty out here over the past six years I'd give your financial advisor a raise because you'll easily have troubled your money but it wasn't for the faint-hearted four
miles out to sea is probably the craziest property investment on the planet for sale 300 Islands the scene from above replicate the countries of the world this is absolutely ridiculous I've heard about this place I've seen the pictures I know all the facts until you actually come out here like this and experience it for yourself you have no idea of the sheer scale of it 320 million cubic meters of redistributed seabed later do buyers
not just put itself on the map but put the map on itself I'm heading for Britain gentlemen permission to come ashore permission granted thank you very much welcome aboard is a United Kingdom or thank you very much let's head over to London final eggs Londoners Safiye karashi and Mustafa nari moved to Dubai four years ago between them they've just bought England dare I ask how much you pay for it topping over 250 million dollars
you have both completely lost your marbles I mean you have paid 50 million dollars for a load of sand yeah it's one view tell me some other stuff you're gonna do here the idea very much is to have some luxury accommodation wait where you can bring your boat pocket right outside your villa swimming pools sparse how many we talking about you're talking in and around 100 mark right 100 bill is over here so you're
living in your own private villa surrounded by you know absolutely amazing shorelines beaches I mean you say this so you're actually surrounded by the French over there and the Germans over there I mean they are worrying me clothes on like that you know they have got closer but luckily there's still a bit of sea between us I'm imagining now these luxury villas here and even if they went just for five million dollars each
I've just worked out you'll make a profit of 450 million dollars what do you have for during the course of construction which is still working on that one yeah well we're still making what I think they call in Balham a nice little earner right yeah I guess I guess you could say we maybe I mean that's a great story absolutely ballon boy buys Britain yeah it's not bad is it Saffy is a perfect
example of a Dubai dream four years ago he arrived his skint having lost everything in a failed internet firm now thanks to a series of shrewd property deals he's the king of England and looking to invade France but how did this little-known desert outpost become such a magnet for investors and those in search of a better life in the Sun defy I've done an incredibly good job and marketing itself largely through what at
the outset appear to be utterly ludicrous projects they can buy and you think glamour well and a rich hedonistic playground hardly surprising them but back in Britt cracked on the red tape trapped under the dark grey skies so many down some wannabes think this place is utterly irresistible although Dubai is twice the size of London the main action takes place in a frenzy 20 miles stripping on the clothes the legendary Dubai Gold Rush
can be traced back to 2001 when the law was changed to enable foreign nationals to own property it coincided with the launch of the most famous of devised artificial island projects the Palm Jumeirah which because it's connected to the mainland lured investors by the truckload my first impression is its massively bigger and it seems from the sky only 4,000 properties were sold in the first 72 hours for the project being announced for a brick
have been laid the weirdest thing about Palm Island is that five years ago I'd have drowned by that because this was all water nothing quite prepares you for the sheer scale of their ideas Palm Jumeirah is so huge its central trunk supports two six Lane motorways at the tip three miles out since Dubai's latest five-star hotel the Atlantis complete with an underwater lost city in a fish tank the Beckham's are quite a place
here when Ashley Cole and Michael Owen followed suit creating a middle-eastern waxy man it may look like Brookside on the beach for having a Palmer dress as the ultimate status symbol and living the dream on frond D is Neil Pech Neil came out here 14 years ago and now publishes the Dubai version of GQ magazine judging by his cars and Bentley a vintage Jaguar on a Ferrari life is good throwing a Russian model wife
and her glamorous friends and I'd say Palme living is very good how much of the property's been going up by a value well about four villas on either side of me no one lives there people had them as an investment and they're going up at such a rate that they don't actually need to rent it I wish I were in that person making balls that one at the start for example what would
you pay well that was probably about seven hundred thousand pounds 2.6 million dirhams in our currency would it be working out 15 something like that so around 6 times what you paid for it exactly so it's been an amazing investment for people yeah it makes you question your own job when you're earning a lot less than your house is that blessing there and is there like in any developer like this is there a
bit of no keeping up with the Joneses absolutely I mean I've had to upgrade my barbecue several times do buyers learnt a very British lesson we do like to be beside the seaside waterfront property commands a premium and building out into the sea will add three hundred miles to their coastline but when we struggle to build something as simple as a Millennium Bridge how do you create an entire city in just 20 years I
have some deers when I see you this is crazy I put the New Zealand fuck it up and when you built it how'd you make sure the ridge come flocking this is ridiculous I mean how many towels are there why would you need a hundred towers and at the world's only seven star hotel I sample the Dubai dream for myself there are times when we build things so astounding they become Testaments to human ingenuity
the pyramids of Egypt the Great Wall of China and now Dubai extravagance and Dubai go hand in hand but this really does take the gold-plated biscuit it's Ruby this seven star hotel cost so much to build and run that it will never make a profit that's not the point the Burj Al Arab is Dubai's eiffel tower part of rulers Sheikh Mohammed's vision to put this place on the global map the best rooms here will
set you back 12 grand a night they come complete with one of the hotels 16 white Rolls Royces and your own personal manservant they boast that they cater for every whim at the Burj Al Arab and that's certainly the case with me because I spent my entire life waiting for a bed but I could go to sleep look at it myself I'm here to meet builder Eddie Mitchell I last met at the
height of the UK's property boom in sandbanks Dorset Eddie was quoting futuristic properties inspired by this hotel he's been coming here on business for five years and is now a gold star guest affording him extra special treatment watching you coming in it was like watching a visit by the Queen you know there's like a cast of thousands offering you tea and dates and yeah and lotion is the same every time i but that about
to six years he meets us every time we come here whatever time of day he's at the door it's like coming home so Eddie last time we met was in sandbanks yeah where the funny thing was there is that you produced properties like this which are it by any normal standard in Britain completely barking mad futuristic emporiums of glass and concrete any else out here you're known as mr. boring cuz I mean
that is not even first base is it not really no yes I mean you must love it it's like permanent building site yes but probably the biggest field site in the world and after 30 years of building I'll just love it you're like a pig in a sty aren't you a for those who bought at the start in the palm or the world or the Burj Dubai how much money are people making
I'm sure people are making many millions I'm gonna heard of one Chelsea footballer who had a place on the palm that he's never actually lived in he paid four hundred thousand pounds for it and he's just sold it for three and a half million yeah that's what he would have paid six years ago and he would now make three and a half million definitely without setting foot in the place yeah have I missed
out on this again mister came here six years ago but you always need to pop up in these places at the right time I went to Sam Mason right of the peak I've come to Dubai right at the P what I need to do with you Eddie is stick with you in the down times well you come on-site and be a builder if you want the great thing about des buyers is always
a stunning new location to practice your dog but you wouldn't have thought you could practice your skiing as well this is Ski Dubai it's 45 degrees centigrade out there and in here minus four in fact it's absolutely bloody freezing think about Dubai is that the crazier the idea the more like it is to be accepting there are many extraordinary feats of construction underway and Dubai at the moment a few more remarkable than this it's
gonna be the biggest theme park in the world it's gonna be a hundred and seven square miles or to give you some idea of perspective bigger than Birmingham but even more extraordinary is the fact that they boasted for the catchy name Dubai Land will be finished in two seven years achieve that in the current economic climate and I leave my sunglasses this is a model of what the theme part will look like
and quite frankly it's one of the most breathtaking things I've seen in my entire life there are going to be life-size replicas of the Taj Mahal the Eiffel Tower the Egyptian pyramids even Big Ben in the houses of parliament there's a Las Vegas style strip only it's four times as big as Vegas study one word for this bonkers but in Dubai biggest is best this humongous fish tank is built inside the world's biggest shopping
center next to yes you're way ahead of me the world's biggest building I've been to lots of tall places in my life the Empire State Building Eiffel Tower onward to Canary Wharf for ten years but I've never ever seen anything quite like this the Burj Dubai is already 720 meters tall making it the highest building in the world but the really scary thing is it's still growing probably the most unnecessary sign at all time
please don't lean on the door the sheer bravado of this structure beggars belief they're even adding a new story every three days it's another part of Sheikh Mohammed's plan to make sure Dubai stands out the final height is still top secret but the ambition is to be almost double the height of the next tallest building on earth yes Spanish little being designed in one line anywhere mr. Ali Al Abbar the fifth most powerful
man in Dubai is chairman of email the government-backed construction company building the tower so we're right in the middle here on floor 160 with 611 meters up there still as I can see I mean there are 20 30 floors more already under construction does he wobble this I mean does it move around well this is what much do you know how far I think of it moves maximums probably more but this much who's
gonna be here then who will be on these for the indeed these are obvious flaws people have bought private apartments it's here right right what was the most expensive one you know I hold for all could probably cost you about forty five million dollars a hotel not bargain yes a bargain compared to London press you know Sheikh Mohammed better than many people how would you describe him I've been within 15 years and there
are times when his energy is so unbelievable this building here the first time we've designed it was 90 story and the meeting was one minute and His Highness said no I said okay so I did they think about hundred and twenty I said no so I just brought the chart of all the tall buildings in the world and I put in this building and said okay how how much taller than the
policy I said well we have a 40% taller is it good you go forty years ago Debye was nothing more than a dusty fishing village but then rulers sheikh rashid had a vision to transform it into a hub for the world as a port as a tax-free business center it was an extraordinary and bold move the philosophy was simple build it and they will come and come they have now under the rule of
his son Sheikh Mohammed the vision continues Dubai often feels more like a corporation than a state that's because just three things matter here business finance and success unlike in Britain where huge developments can get bogged down for years in red tape and bureaucracy over here they can go up in months and the reason is quite simple Sheikh Mohammed whatever the Sheikh wants gets done and fast of course being able to use millions of cheap
workers from southern Asia has made a little possible in 2007 accusations are made of slave labor conditions so Sheikh Mohammed set up a confidential free hotline the construction workers report any abuse as a result conditions are certainly improved but each year you a workers send home an estimated four billion pounds in wages so a recession in Dubai would have serious global implications and trying to get anyone to actually talk about the possibility of economic downturn
here in Dubai was like trying to get blood out of a stone I turned in Michele Knuth a billionaire businessman from the ninth richest Arab family in the world are you totally sold into this vision or are they going to be problems do you think well now there's going to be a lot of economic upheaval globally and I supposed to come and affect us you know one mentions like here I know say
critic Ron's people look like whoa there's no credit crunch in Dubai in the agriculture to say something if you say it out loud there's a perception that it'll happen so we don't even call cancer cancer we call it that the disease that can't be mentioned it's the same mentality is you're a credit crunch coming in divided it's not coming it's here it already exists now for people to come and say you know
this is the end and death of this area it's not gonna be the death of this area what's gonna be is a natural time out if you want allow things to come back to its normal position and then move forward the why I think is a good place to be if you're looking at 15 20 years down the road because if you're looking at two years down the road god knows what's gonna
happen the next two years in terms of global financed during the boom times to buy was the hottest property market in the world the carrot that had expats scurrying here faster than a bleach-blonde of a footballer Alan Tatem is typical of those that came chasing the Dubai dream she landed here four years ago and owns did buy luxury homes one of the most successful estate agents in town today she showed me a flat
aim very much of the not so poor amazing views vast enough room how big is this it's thirteen thousand four hundred square feet the master suite takes at least a third of the apartment that's all about the bedrooms out here is it exactly and what would it costs if you wanted to buy this seventeen million pounds who would buy a place like so who's living in this block yeah I mean discretion is the
word but I mean we've got sporting personalities we've got presidents of countries 15 times the size of the average house in the UK who said size doesn't matter I mean it's just humongous this is not even a palmer is too loose a word well it'll be this old me that goes oh he's unbelievable I mean look at it it's not a kitchen it's it's a restaurant that's the children's bed cool so did
I'll say the old me here's the bathroom this is ridiculous I mean how many towels are there there must be a hundred towels in here why would you need a hundred hours I mean it is just opulence on an almost regal scale isn't it it is it's a staggering apartment perfect your average multi-millionaire it's crazy amazing good but maybe not so good for a billionaire which is why the next phase I have its
own a heliport on the roof that is gonna be just going for a high level all together that's going for billionaires rather than just the millionaires and it's gonna have its own helipad and that you know they're working on their own immigration so that you can just jet in and well this is it's a Russian oligarch this land on the roof and out come immigration officials yeah crud another what's a nice girl like
you doing logging seventeen million pound apartments in Dubai I don't know it just happened four years ago set up my own real estate company and done what were you doing back in Broome I worked on the country estate it's been doing what doing what and as the estate secretary you're a secretary estates it that's basic reduce our own diminish your robe I mean it's quite a journey from the Secretary on an officer of state to
this and you're nothing glimmering in diamonds and Rolex isn't lab it's a nice thing good for you right huh yeah has and that's not the half of it Helen our own polo team with eight Argentinian ponies and a full-time professional trainer certainly beats typing Friday is polo day here at Arabian Ranches it's a bit of a fix to of the expat community a chance to revel in the good life whilst catching a chucker and slithering
up the social ladder Becky from Bingley West Yorkshire and here you are at polo yeah I'm at the Polo Bingley girls are not really used to doing this sort of thing I must be honest no I came over here and I launched a magazine for another company and I've just launched this magazine and I'm 28 years old I would not get that knee okay sadly for a girl from Bingley of it hi
happy it's easy to get drawn into the good life in Dubai at the buildings that are going up somehow I hear your expectations are well just higher but to live up to those expectations you're gonna have to have deep pockets especially be fancy a personalized number plate I have there 93 how much was that two million two million dollars and I'll find out what it's like to live where hedonistic Western playgrounds exist in
a country governed by strict Muslim values and what happens when you cross the line do you live in permanent fear that a wrong word could see you on the next plane back to Britain deported I wanted Lee get narrow perspective on Dubai fortunately the man that bought Manchester City of the Solomon al Fame as a house here he's been a fortune in property and as the Allen sugar of Arabia with his own
apprentice style TV show and even his own catchphrase impress me when he said he's show me around the city I didn't realize he meant in his own private jet he impressed me it's incredible to think of only 30 years ago most of that would have been desert right 20 years ago at this spot the Vilas listen there's the Burj Al Arab it's become the symbol of Dubai I mean how much of this is
ego and are you all quiet you know competitive people is it like you built the biggest Tower I'm gonna go and build a bigger one it's not about the egos about to show that capability we want to show a royal family that we can do it and what they're looking for is to build something unique something extraordinary and with this kind of weather we attract foreigners I mean how much money is there down
there now would you guess the last number announced recently was around 300 billion dollar 300 billion u.s. dollars just swimming around the Louis I was told your very first major project here you made a hundred and fifty million US dollars on that deal is that right yeah that's right and you cleaned up I mean you made 150 billion bucks the good thing was they came with their allowed to smile when I say that
figure by the way I know to you it's not much money to me I mean this is like unbelievable what's it like being a billionaire you don't like you have a lot of fun you're always smiling unity enjoyed that for us we don't really enjoy with money and cash you really enjoy with family it's a lot more cultural and friendship between the family relationship and the frivolous now that's a family I'd like to
get into what do we have these single female relatives so we've seen the city from the air now it was time to see it at ground level the world's only Versace Lamborghini Murcielago dr. Suliman paid six hundred thousand dollars more than the standard car for this designer model to ensure he cuts a dash on Dubai's highways the big thing in Dubai is about number plays is that your number plays a very important your
one is 737 another valuable one but the two digits more important I have the 93 93 I bought because that's the year of graduation of my life how much was rock today it was two million two million dollars yes for 93 somebody would pay you two million dollars on amazing thank goodness his wife didn't graduate in 83 even he might have struggled to paper that one with such mind-boggling spending power on - it'll come
as no surprise that all pockets are catered for shopping here one of devised super malls is a bit like being back at home to be honest Harvey Nicks behind me Ella costs over there Starbucks Zara any difference here is you've always got to look out for that unexpected visit by the billionaire Arab sheikh so how about a mobile phone what do they cost this will be 100 dude awesome 10 power yes thousand five
hundred ten thousand I say and this one it's just 100 thousand okay so that's a bit more of a bargain yes do you actually sell these folks except older watch pictures Fortuna fucks around shake came past your shop and bought four of these for half a million pounds yes blimey one earth to do when you want an upgrade it's also easy to get sucked into the affluent lifestyle in Dubai please just drip success
most expats here enjoy quality of life they only have dreamt about back in Britain fast villas spalling staircases giant swimming pools and personal maze I spend their days enjoying the leisure at 5-star hotels like this and their nights at parties covered by society pages of Hello magazine it small wonder then there's so many start to feel well a little bit grand after all back in Britain they were minnows here in Dubai everyone's a whale
tonight's the hot 100 party an annual event with a local version of Hello magazine chose up a chart of all the movers and shakers in town in the main - likes of spa managers and boutique owners that make it but it's taken very seriously if you're in you're in and if you're out you may as well be in goodbye magazine you've made it you have well thanks meow meow I've just been speaking
to the editor is this whole sort of strata something that you get into when you get into the 100 I mean it's quite cool to be considered like hot apparently none hotter than yours truly things like that at the aplans Hot 100 party is mr. Piers Morgan welcome hello expat life here revolves around the 50 or so five-star hotels that's because once inside you never need know you're in a country where alcohol is
frowned on it's illegal to kiss in public or be gay or share a flat with your girlfriend Dubai knows it needs Westerners to succeed and so the Liberty turns a blind eye to goings-on providing they go on on the private property of the hotel's a kind of expat bubble where life is good and intoxicating the brass tea borrows a regular expat haunt it's not far from where a couple of Brits were recently arrested
by having sex on the beach and I believe that might be illegal back home as well enjoying the selves in a slightly more legal way it's 46 year old mother of two from Birmingham Karren Brady just two kills and I can always always this your nightly just a dark generally general areas see less is more less is more less is definitely more and what's it like even the nightlife here every single night
you can party without fail come on here party party it's like non-stop constable you get drunk a frequently are you making loads of money absolutely loads millions those have been money and the parties absolutely yes and what would well first money then the party and what's the fuss the man seen like you I'm not looking for the man I'm just here enjoying myself I've been married all my life and I'm not doing that
anymore but you go on dates era star sometimes yeah I like to have dinner with intellectual men but I generally don't fancy them right we should get dinner in the last year 230 Brits have ended up in Dubai's prisons for range of offenses from the normal light drink-driving to the abnormal like bouncing a check if you aren't going to come out here make sure you learn the law for example sex outside of marriage
can get you a year in jail possession of over-the-counter drugs it contain codeine for years even Harry Potter books were recently found from schools because witchcraft is strictly illegal in Dubai it's a difficult society to get your head around on the one hand a traditional autocratic leader uses strict Sharia based law to rule with a rod of iron on the other hand and the 5-star hotels you can forget you're even in the Middle East
but the two cultures exist side-by-side in parallel universes and except for the shopping malls rarely mix consequently the expats live in fear of making a silly mistake or inadvertently breaking a law that could with a swipe of the pen see them deported I drove into the desert with blogger and ex journalist Alexander McNab he's been living out here for almost 20 years and has first-hand experience of what happens when the two cultures clash
it is something on the moon isn't it amazing when I first moved here that was in the early 90s I came out here running a magazine which was shut down because I criticized the wrong guys computer it was a computer review mag and the computer didn't work and so we said the computer doesn't work um which in retrospect was probably naive of me or the telfa true to tell the truth um but it
offended the man who happened to be related to a man and do in a position to do something about it so my office was sealed by the Ministry of Information now the great thing about Dubai today is that actually probably can't happen is it relaxing the censorship is it getting easier yes it is if you can stand up a good story where a government department is behaved deporting Lee I think you've got
a chance of running that story when I first came out here you have done so you're now seeing allegations being made against some quite big figures in government and corruption investigations going on that were unthinkable here it's a process of change if you're in the media right here as you I do live in permanent fear that a wrong word could see you on the next plane back to Britain deported are you worried about
what you're telling me for example no I don't think I have that fear um I might be horribly wrong but I don't think I have that feel I don't live in fear I don't live in fear of saying what I think I worry about has seen two quad bites with a couple of government officials sitting over that June is either after they've been listening everything part of the problem lies in the fact
that the shake can change laws virtually overnight sherry ban would be while we were filming in an attempt to stop overcrowding amongst unskilled workers it was decreed illegal to share property with anyone except close family if you're thinking of coming out here make sure you do your homework I'm off to meet an old friend patty Parfitt she moved out here with her son Harry after separating from her wayward husband Rick guitarist a status quo she
went out here on a holiday I thought you'd be the ideal place to change the status quo a mend a broken heart a year on however and the Dubai dream is turning sour I'm good thank you are lovely to see how are you last time I saw you was on the status-quo tour bus don't talk about welcome to my hair so this is your lovely piece of Dubai paradise this is this
is our little la a little la Hacienda so this is the lounge yeah this four-bedroom house is typical of the expat family lifestyle out here inside landscape gated communities and miles from anywhere so this is the kitchen thankfully for the neighbors it's detached so punny you're in a very nice place here but it's half an hour inland what would you pay here for your rent what are you oh you're gonna die 32,000 pounds for the
year and you have to pay out front in Dubai so that you had to write a check for 32,000 pounds for years rent in advance yeah so that strikes me is pretty expensive it is I mean it's ridiculous during your rental is up for renewal what are you gonna do I'm taking it for six months and then I'll just see here I go there what are they charge you for that uh 27,000
pounds what in one year they nearly doubled it yeah so be warned if your employer is not subsidizing your rent you'll be in front asti shocked it's terribly expensive in Dubai yes I knew this is wonderful tax-free Haven yeah everything's dirt cheap there's not really like that no and you know I don't want to spoil anybody's holiday or dream to move to Dubai but you really got to look at it because it's not
all it's cracked up to be people are watching it's gonna be thinking I quite fancy coming to Dubai yeah and yet you seem to have fallen slightly out of love with the dream yes I have have a lion gone where do I go now um I do miss my friends I do miss my family and it is difficult to meet people over here because everybody's basically it's family and when I go out I
am a threat I bet you are oh no you 57 I mean that is amazing yeah recently divorced your up long bombshell it used to be with a rock star you are public enemy number one to these women fantastic as rock'n'roll so what does the future hold for Dubai I'll be looking at the changing face of society here as it opens its doors wider to Western values could their secret defense against the credit
crunch come down to a few familiar faces joy some of these go lustrous and just how much they prepared to spend to make sure divide does become the greatest city in the world Pilate will be getting millions multi-million multi-millions in the UK we've taken thousands of years to develop our laws and customs whereas Dubai has had just a couple of decades try and find common ground so the 205 nationalities can happily coexist consider this just
1.3 million people live here of those 200,000 our Western expats 900,000 or Asians mainly workers and that leaves just 200 thousand local Emiratis to put that in perspective imagine living in Britain where five out of six people or foreigners when you to give it like that you kind of begin to work out that Dubai is actually quite a tolerant place it's a sign of Dubai's willingness to welcome foreigners into its midst to keep
moving forward and someone take you full advantage of that acceptance it's Derek Carr it's very good Derek a former fashion stylist at pop stars like salt and pepper and Snoop Dogg it's a day better known as annex jewel thief what happened I am very stupidly i porn jewels and of course pawning you don't porn what is not yours and I dug myself into a nightmarish hole I would have to go take one piece
of jewelry yet lied basically to get another piece and which I pawned and it became a circle and your present yes I did he served two years in a New York jail for his crimes was kicked out of the u.s. I settled here in Dubai you reinventing himself as get this a jewelry designer there you are a convicted thief felons or for want of a better phrase you kicked out of America and then
Dubai where you would imagine they're quite strict about that kind of thing they welcome you in here I was accepted into Dubai because I think I was very straight filed with what I had done I was very straightforward and who I am and and the kind of saw what I can do also fairly UNITA when there aren't many Derrick's in Dubai that I've met this look the whole thing you know well you'd
be surprised to buy it's just that you know there are more of you ever hi kind of I hope not but in giving a little the exactly that's what I hear everywhere is if you do this you're out if you do that you'll be deported so what I haven't found there's any real evidence they actually do this I mean do people get chucked out of Dubai well of course they do I'm not
people you've been deported well no I don't right I mean I don't know anyone have been deported but you know that this is to be a collective fear of being deported when you see any evidence we whenever is well listen the collective fear works because guess what I can open my car and I've especially from New York City I could never dare leave my computer in the car I do it all the
time I leave my doors unlocked at home you think that the the rules are a small price to pay ready for oh what a very small price to pay you know it gives you that sense of security and I couldn't be happier here right beautiful beautify lovely if Dubai is going to succeed now more than ever it needs people it has to be seen as he in place some of you can't afford
not to be so when Dubai can't build it Dubai buys it spending millions on celebrity names and crucially brands Gary rose to the latest big name lured into town will be in good company Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White are already here and raking it in oh yeah very good thing much good you too you came just at the right time joy some of these that is a little salmon fish cake with a
lemon hollandaise godless disgust me funny my laughs I'm it's actually delicious but just to see what your faded like it's delicious tell me God you've flown all the way to Dubai yeah and you've flown all the food out here as well oh yes wanting to stay in England oh yes what what is 36 degrees outside and it's snowing in the UK where would you choose you know it's I just saw it no
you know I want to spread the word about British cooking but beyond this game would you be out here if there wasn't a whacking great big Arabic checking it oh my gosh s right I'm not you all like your money hang well where's that contract to mine yeah no it's it's not a question of that is it it's only oh that's always because I mean find a lot of brand names like you're
such high commodities out here they will pay whatever it takes to gig well I think you know if I start cooking for money Loveleen cooking for I really believe in I'd rather give it up so there you have it the definitive answer with hollandaise sauce oh how are you hello pays every year decision and up on the 44th floor another bought in brand name mark fuller will be opening a version of London's embassy Club
here next year no offense to you mark but you and Gary roads and not exactly you know the beckons and yet you're getting a lot of money thrown at you to come here what's in it for them to get you someone was saying to me today that it's all very well opening a hotel but you've got to entice people into it it's like all over the world the difference is is they're
buying in name brands because it's a new country I mean is it rude of me to push you on just how many millions they pays you to come and now I won't I won't say that it wasn't it wasn't millions but it was quite an acceptable figure what about Tiger Woods and people like that oh you see there Tiger Woods you know Christina Aguilera's those sort of people Kylie's will be getting millions multi-million multi
millions is that because the people of Dubai the rulers here realize celebrities of that power are a PR magnet for here I think without a doubt in the end this was a piece of desert this was a piece of sand they've built a city out of nothing how do you attract everybody they want to be number one they don't want to be number two number three number four they want to be Miami
they want to beat Miami they want to be New York they want to beat York you know so the only answer is bring it in Kylie calms Beyonce comes I mean even I'm maiden have played it it is almost surreal here it's the land of maple leaf it certainly is more like the land of unbelievable because of the world is rocked to the core by the credit crunch to by rock to
the sound of Kylie at the world's most expensive party the Atlantis Hotel was launched with a massive 7 million pound extravaganza looks like an awful lot of that went up in smoke let's face it for the ordinary Brits living here as long as you toe the line life's pretty good for the investor though even ultra rifle and Dubai is fragile it doesn't manufacture anything of value oil now accounts for just six percent of its income
and even though even wealthy neighbor Abu Dhabi cut 9 billion pounds into its economy back in October Dubai remains exposed three big government backed construction companies are already laying off hundreds of employees Dubai relies on foreign investors to make it work and without them Dubai's dream of becoming the greatest city on earth they have to wait I came to Dubai to find out if it really is all is cracked up to be and the
answer if you like Sun and fun glitz and glamour is resounding yes as for the credit crunch everyone I've met here says the same thing Dubai won't just survive it will thrive and that's because it's bursting with ambition and drive all led by one man's extraordinary vision and an utter determination to turn this place into the biggest and most successful city in the world that's for my part I think I borrow the favorite
phrase of the British Builder it'll be all right when it's finished you
crumbs people think whoa whoa there's no credit crunch in Dubai it's not coming it's the it's here but lurking in the background behind all of this is the fact that in just 10 years time Dubai's oil will run out the race is on if you'd invested in poverty out here over the past six years I'd give your financial advisor a raise because you'll easily have troubled your money but it wasn't for the faint-hearted four
miles out to sea is probably the craziest property investment on the planet for sale 300 Islands the scene from above replicate the countries of the world this is absolutely ridiculous I've heard about this place I've seen the pictures I know all the facts until you actually come out here like this and experience it for yourself you have no idea of the sheer scale of it 320 million cubic meters of redistributed seabed later do buyers
not just put itself on the map but put the map on itself I'm heading for Britain gentlemen permission to come ashore permission granted thank you very much welcome aboard is a United Kingdom or thank you very much let's head over to London final eggs Londoners Safiye karashi and Mustafa nari moved to Dubai four years ago between them they've just bought England dare I ask how much you pay for it topping over 250 million dollars
you have both completely lost your marbles I mean you have paid 50 million dollars for a load of sand yeah it's one view tell me some other stuff you're gonna do here the idea very much is to have some luxury accommodation wait where you can bring your boat pocket right outside your villa swimming pools sparse how many we talking about you're talking in and around 100 mark right 100 bill is over here so you're
living in your own private villa surrounded by you know absolutely amazing shorelines beaches I mean you say this so you're actually surrounded by the French over there and the Germans over there I mean they are worrying me clothes on like that you know they have got closer but luckily there's still a bit of sea between us I'm imagining now these luxury villas here and even if they went just for five million dollars each
I've just worked out you'll make a profit of 450 million dollars what do you have for during the course of construction which is still working on that one yeah well we're still making what I think they call in Balham a nice little earner right yeah I guess I guess you could say we maybe I mean that's a great story absolutely ballon boy buys Britain yeah it's not bad is it Saffy is a perfect
example of a Dubai dream four years ago he arrived his skint having lost everything in a failed internet firm now thanks to a series of shrewd property deals he's the king of England and looking to invade France but how did this little-known desert outpost become such a magnet for investors and those in search of a better life in the Sun defy I've done an incredibly good job and marketing itself largely through what at
the outset appear to be utterly ludicrous projects they can buy and you think glamour well and a rich hedonistic playground hardly surprising them but back in Britt cracked on the red tape trapped under the dark grey skies so many down some wannabes think this place is utterly irresistible although Dubai is twice the size of London the main action takes place in a frenzy 20 miles stripping on the clothes the legendary Dubai Gold Rush
can be traced back to 2001 when the law was changed to enable foreign nationals to own property it coincided with the launch of the most famous of devised artificial island projects the Palm Jumeirah which because it's connected to the mainland lured investors by the truckload my first impression is its massively bigger and it seems from the sky only 4,000 properties were sold in the first 72 hours for the project being announced for a brick
have been laid the weirdest thing about Palm Island is that five years ago I'd have drowned by that because this was all water nothing quite prepares you for the sheer scale of their ideas Palm Jumeirah is so huge its central trunk supports two six Lane motorways at the tip three miles out since Dubai's latest five-star hotel the Atlantis complete with an underwater lost city in a fish tank the Beckham's are quite a place
here when Ashley Cole and Michael Owen followed suit creating a middle-eastern waxy man it may look like Brookside on the beach for having a Palmer dress as the ultimate status symbol and living the dream on frond D is Neil Pech Neil came out here 14 years ago and now publishes the Dubai version of GQ magazine judging by his cars and Bentley a vintage Jaguar on a Ferrari life is good throwing a Russian model wife
and her glamorous friends and I'd say Palme living is very good how much of the property's been going up by a value well about four villas on either side of me no one lives there people had them as an investment and they're going up at such a rate that they don't actually need to rent it I wish I were in that person making balls that one at the start for example what would
you pay well that was probably about seven hundred thousand pounds 2.6 million dirhams in our currency would it be working out 15 something like that so around 6 times what you paid for it exactly so it's been an amazing investment for people yeah it makes you question your own job when you're earning a lot less than your house is that blessing there and is there like in any developer like this is there a
bit of no keeping up with the Joneses absolutely I mean I've had to upgrade my barbecue several times do buyers learnt a very British lesson we do like to be beside the seaside waterfront property commands a premium and building out into the sea will add three hundred miles to their coastline but when we struggle to build something as simple as a Millennium Bridge how do you create an entire city in just 20 years I
have some deers when I see you this is crazy I put the New Zealand fuck it up and when you built it how'd you make sure the ridge come flocking this is ridiculous I mean how many towels are there why would you need a hundred towers and at the world's only seven star hotel I sample the Dubai dream for myself there are times when we build things so astounding they become Testaments to human ingenuity
the pyramids of Egypt the Great Wall of China and now Dubai extravagance and Dubai go hand in hand but this really does take the gold-plated biscuit it's Ruby this seven star hotel cost so much to build and run that it will never make a profit that's not the point the Burj Al Arab is Dubai's eiffel tower part of rulers Sheikh Mohammed's vision to put this place on the global map the best rooms here will
set you back 12 grand a night they come complete with one of the hotels 16 white Rolls Royces and your own personal manservant they boast that they cater for every whim at the Burj Al Arab and that's certainly the case with me because I spent my entire life waiting for a bed but I could go to sleep look at it myself I'm here to meet builder Eddie Mitchell I last met at the
height of the UK's property boom in sandbanks Dorset Eddie was quoting futuristic properties inspired by this hotel he's been coming here on business for five years and is now a gold star guest affording him extra special treatment watching you coming in it was like watching a visit by the Queen you know there's like a cast of thousands offering you tea and dates and yeah and lotion is the same every time i but that about
to six years he meets us every time we come here whatever time of day he's at the door it's like coming home so Eddie last time we met was in sandbanks yeah where the funny thing was there is that you produced properties like this which are it by any normal standard in Britain completely barking mad futuristic emporiums of glass and concrete any else out here you're known as mr. boring cuz I mean
that is not even first base is it not really no yes I mean you must love it it's like permanent building site yes but probably the biggest field site in the world and after 30 years of building I'll just love it you're like a pig in a sty aren't you a for those who bought at the start in the palm or the world or the Burj Dubai how much money are people making
I'm sure people are making many millions I'm gonna heard of one Chelsea footballer who had a place on the palm that he's never actually lived in he paid four hundred thousand pounds for it and he's just sold it for three and a half million yeah that's what he would have paid six years ago and he would now make three and a half million definitely without setting foot in the place yeah have I missed
out on this again mister came here six years ago but you always need to pop up in these places at the right time I went to Sam Mason right of the peak I've come to Dubai right at the P what I need to do with you Eddie is stick with you in the down times well you come on-site and be a builder if you want the great thing about des buyers is always
a stunning new location to practice your dog but you wouldn't have thought you could practice your skiing as well this is Ski Dubai it's 45 degrees centigrade out there and in here minus four in fact it's absolutely bloody freezing think about Dubai is that the crazier the idea the more like it is to be accepting there are many extraordinary feats of construction underway and Dubai at the moment a few more remarkable than this it's
gonna be the biggest theme park in the world it's gonna be a hundred and seven square miles or to give you some idea of perspective bigger than Birmingham but even more extraordinary is the fact that they boasted for the catchy name Dubai Land will be finished in two seven years achieve that in the current economic climate and I leave my sunglasses this is a model of what the theme part will look like
and quite frankly it's one of the most breathtaking things I've seen in my entire life there are going to be life-size replicas of the Taj Mahal the Eiffel Tower the Egyptian pyramids even Big Ben in the houses of parliament there's a Las Vegas style strip only it's four times as big as Vegas study one word for this bonkers but in Dubai biggest is best this humongous fish tank is built inside the world's biggest shopping
center next to yes you're way ahead of me the world's biggest building I've been to lots of tall places in my life the Empire State Building Eiffel Tower onward to Canary Wharf for ten years but I've never ever seen anything quite like this the Burj Dubai is already 720 meters tall making it the highest building in the world but the really scary thing is it's still growing probably the most unnecessary sign at all time
please don't lean on the door the sheer bravado of this structure beggars belief they're even adding a new story every three days it's another part of Sheikh Mohammed's plan to make sure Dubai stands out the final height is still top secret but the ambition is to be almost double the height of the next tallest building on earth yes Spanish little being designed in one line anywhere mr. Ali Al Abbar the fifth most powerful
man in Dubai is chairman of email the government-backed construction company building the tower so we're right in the middle here on floor 160 with 611 meters up there still as I can see I mean there are 20 30 floors more already under construction does he wobble this I mean does it move around well this is what much do you know how far I think of it moves maximums probably more but this much who's
gonna be here then who will be on these for the indeed these are obvious flaws people have bought private apartments it's here right right what was the most expensive one you know I hold for all could probably cost you about forty five million dollars a hotel not bargain yes a bargain compared to London press you know Sheikh Mohammed better than many people how would you describe him I've been within 15 years and there
are times when his energy is so unbelievable this building here the first time we've designed it was 90 story and the meeting was one minute and His Highness said no I said okay so I did they think about hundred and twenty I said no so I just brought the chart of all the tall buildings in the world and I put in this building and said okay how how much taller than the
policy I said well we have a 40% taller is it good you go forty years ago Debye was nothing more than a dusty fishing village but then rulers sheikh rashid had a vision to transform it into a hub for the world as a port as a tax-free business center it was an extraordinary and bold move the philosophy was simple build it and they will come and come they have now under the rule of
his son Sheikh Mohammed the vision continues Dubai often feels more like a corporation than a state that's because just three things matter here business finance and success unlike in Britain where huge developments can get bogged down for years in red tape and bureaucracy over here they can go up in months and the reason is quite simple Sheikh Mohammed whatever the Sheikh wants gets done and fast of course being able to use millions of cheap
workers from southern Asia has made a little possible in 2007 accusations are made of slave labor conditions so Sheikh Mohammed set up a confidential free hotline the construction workers report any abuse as a result conditions are certainly improved but each year you a workers send home an estimated four billion pounds in wages so a recession in Dubai would have serious global implications and trying to get anyone to actually talk about the possibility of economic downturn
here in Dubai was like trying to get blood out of a stone I turned in Michele Knuth a billionaire businessman from the ninth richest Arab family in the world are you totally sold into this vision or are they going to be problems do you think well now there's going to be a lot of economic upheaval globally and I supposed to come and affect us you know one mentions like here I know say
critic Ron's people look like whoa there's no credit crunch in Dubai in the agriculture to say something if you say it out loud there's a perception that it'll happen so we don't even call cancer cancer we call it that the disease that can't be mentioned it's the same mentality is you're a credit crunch coming in divided it's not coming it's here it already exists now for people to come and say you know
this is the end and death of this area it's not gonna be the death of this area what's gonna be is a natural time out if you want allow things to come back to its normal position and then move forward the why I think is a good place to be if you're looking at 15 20 years down the road because if you're looking at two years down the road god knows what's gonna
happen the next two years in terms of global financed during the boom times to buy was the hottest property market in the world the carrot that had expats scurrying here faster than a bleach-blonde of a footballer Alan Tatem is typical of those that came chasing the Dubai dream she landed here four years ago and owns did buy luxury homes one of the most successful estate agents in town today she showed me a flat
aim very much of the not so poor amazing views vast enough room how big is this it's thirteen thousand four hundred square feet the master suite takes at least a third of the apartment that's all about the bedrooms out here is it exactly and what would it costs if you wanted to buy this seventeen million pounds who would buy a place like so who's living in this block yeah I mean discretion is the
word but I mean we've got sporting personalities we've got presidents of countries 15 times the size of the average house in the UK who said size doesn't matter I mean it's just humongous this is not even a palmer is too loose a word well it'll be this old me that goes oh he's unbelievable I mean look at it it's not a kitchen it's it's a restaurant that's the children's bed cool so did
I'll say the old me here's the bathroom this is ridiculous I mean how many towels are there there must be a hundred towels in here why would you need a hundred hours I mean it is just opulence on an almost regal scale isn't it it is it's a staggering apartment perfect your average multi-millionaire it's crazy amazing good but maybe not so good for a billionaire which is why the next phase I have its
own a heliport on the roof that is gonna be just going for a high level all together that's going for billionaires rather than just the millionaires and it's gonna have its own helipad and that you know they're working on their own immigration so that you can just jet in and well this is it's a Russian oligarch this land on the roof and out come immigration officials yeah crud another what's a nice girl like
you doing logging seventeen million pound apartments in Dubai I don't know it just happened four years ago set up my own real estate company and done what were you doing back in Broome I worked on the country estate it's been doing what doing what and as the estate secretary you're a secretary estates it that's basic reduce our own diminish your robe I mean it's quite a journey from the Secretary on an officer of state to
this and you're nothing glimmering in diamonds and Rolex isn't lab it's a nice thing good for you right huh yeah has and that's not the half of it Helen our own polo team with eight Argentinian ponies and a full-time professional trainer certainly beats typing Friday is polo day here at Arabian Ranches it's a bit of a fix to of the expat community a chance to revel in the good life whilst catching a chucker and slithering
up the social ladder Becky from Bingley West Yorkshire and here you are at polo yeah I'm at the Polo Bingley girls are not really used to doing this sort of thing I must be honest no I came over here and I launched a magazine for another company and I've just launched this magazine and I'm 28 years old I would not get that knee okay sadly for a girl from Bingley of it hi
happy it's easy to get drawn into the good life in Dubai at the buildings that are going up somehow I hear your expectations are well just higher but to live up to those expectations you're gonna have to have deep pockets especially be fancy a personalized number plate I have there 93 how much was that two million two million dollars and I'll find out what it's like to live where hedonistic Western playgrounds exist in
a country governed by strict Muslim values and what happens when you cross the line do you live in permanent fear that a wrong word could see you on the next plane back to Britain deported I wanted Lee get narrow perspective on Dubai fortunately the man that bought Manchester City of the Solomon al Fame as a house here he's been a fortune in property and as the Allen sugar of Arabia with his own
apprentice style TV show and even his own catchphrase impress me when he said he's show me around the city I didn't realize he meant in his own private jet he impressed me it's incredible to think of only 30 years ago most of that would have been desert right 20 years ago at this spot the Vilas listen there's the Burj Al Arab it's become the symbol of Dubai I mean how much of this is
ego and are you all quiet you know competitive people is it like you built the biggest Tower I'm gonna go and build a bigger one it's not about the egos about to show that capability we want to show a royal family that we can do it and what they're looking for is to build something unique something extraordinary and with this kind of weather we attract foreigners I mean how much money is there down
there now would you guess the last number announced recently was around 300 billion dollar 300 billion u.s. dollars just swimming around the Louis I was told your very first major project here you made a hundred and fifty million US dollars on that deal is that right yeah that's right and you cleaned up I mean you made 150 billion bucks the good thing was they came with their allowed to smile when I say that
figure by the way I know to you it's not much money to me I mean this is like unbelievable what's it like being a billionaire you don't like you have a lot of fun you're always smiling unity enjoyed that for us we don't really enjoy with money and cash you really enjoy with family it's a lot more cultural and friendship between the family relationship and the frivolous now that's a family I'd like to
get into what do we have these single female relatives so we've seen the city from the air now it was time to see it at ground level the world's only Versace Lamborghini Murcielago dr. Suliman paid six hundred thousand dollars more than the standard car for this designer model to ensure he cuts a dash on Dubai's highways the big thing in Dubai is about number plays is that your number plays a very important your
one is 737 another valuable one but the two digits more important I have the 93 93 I bought because that's the year of graduation of my life how much was rock today it was two million two million dollars yes for 93 somebody would pay you two million dollars on amazing thank goodness his wife didn't graduate in 83 even he might have struggled to paper that one with such mind-boggling spending power on - it'll come
as no surprise that all pockets are catered for shopping here one of devised super malls is a bit like being back at home to be honest Harvey Nicks behind me Ella costs over there Starbucks Zara any difference here is you've always got to look out for that unexpected visit by the billionaire Arab sheikh so how about a mobile phone what do they cost this will be 100 dude awesome 10 power yes thousand five
hundred ten thousand I say and this one it's just 100 thousand okay so that's a bit more of a bargain yes do you actually sell these folks except older watch pictures Fortuna fucks around shake came past your shop and bought four of these for half a million pounds yes blimey one earth to do when you want an upgrade it's also easy to get sucked into the affluent lifestyle in Dubai please just drip success
most expats here enjoy quality of life they only have dreamt about back in Britain fast villas spalling staircases giant swimming pools and personal maze I spend their days enjoying the leisure at 5-star hotels like this and their nights at parties covered by society pages of Hello magazine it small wonder then there's so many start to feel well a little bit grand after all back in Britain they were minnows here in Dubai everyone's a whale
tonight's the hot 100 party an annual event with a local version of Hello magazine chose up a chart of all the movers and shakers in town in the main - likes of spa managers and boutique owners that make it but it's taken very seriously if you're in you're in and if you're out you may as well be in goodbye magazine you've made it you have well thanks meow meow I've just been speaking
to the editor is this whole sort of strata something that you get into when you get into the 100 I mean it's quite cool to be considered like hot apparently none hotter than yours truly things like that at the aplans Hot 100 party is mr. Piers Morgan welcome hello expat life here revolves around the 50 or so five-star hotels that's because once inside you never need know you're in a country where alcohol is
frowned on it's illegal to kiss in public or be gay or share a flat with your girlfriend Dubai knows it needs Westerners to succeed and so the Liberty turns a blind eye to goings-on providing they go on on the private property of the hotel's a kind of expat bubble where life is good and intoxicating the brass tea borrows a regular expat haunt it's not far from where a couple of Brits were recently arrested
by having sex on the beach and I believe that might be illegal back home as well enjoying the selves in a slightly more legal way it's 46 year old mother of two from Birmingham Karren Brady just two kills and I can always always this your nightly just a dark generally general areas see less is more less is more less is definitely more and what's it like even the nightlife here every single night
you can party without fail come on here party party it's like non-stop constable you get drunk a frequently are you making loads of money absolutely loads millions those have been money and the parties absolutely yes and what would well first money then the party and what's the fuss the man seen like you I'm not looking for the man I'm just here enjoying myself I've been married all my life and I'm not doing that
anymore but you go on dates era star sometimes yeah I like to have dinner with intellectual men but I generally don't fancy them right we should get dinner in the last year 230 Brits have ended up in Dubai's prisons for range of offenses from the normal light drink-driving to the abnormal like bouncing a check if you aren't going to come out here make sure you learn the law for example sex outside of marriage
can get you a year in jail possession of over-the-counter drugs it contain codeine for years even Harry Potter books were recently found from schools because witchcraft is strictly illegal in Dubai it's a difficult society to get your head around on the one hand a traditional autocratic leader uses strict Sharia based law to rule with a rod of iron on the other hand and the 5-star hotels you can forget you're even in the Middle East
but the two cultures exist side-by-side in parallel universes and except for the shopping malls rarely mix consequently the expats live in fear of making a silly mistake or inadvertently breaking a law that could with a swipe of the pen see them deported I drove into the desert with blogger and ex journalist Alexander McNab he's been living out here for almost 20 years and has first-hand experience of what happens when the two cultures clash
it is something on the moon isn't it amazing when I first moved here that was in the early 90s I came out here running a magazine which was shut down because I criticized the wrong guys computer it was a computer review mag and the computer didn't work and so we said the computer doesn't work um which in retrospect was probably naive of me or the telfa true to tell the truth um but it
offended the man who happened to be related to a man and do in a position to do something about it so my office was sealed by the Ministry of Information now the great thing about Dubai today is that actually probably can't happen is it relaxing the censorship is it getting easier yes it is if you can stand up a good story where a government department is behaved deporting Lee I think you've got
a chance of running that story when I first came out here you have done so you're now seeing allegations being made against some quite big figures in government and corruption investigations going on that were unthinkable here it's a process of change if you're in the media right here as you I do live in permanent fear that a wrong word could see you on the next plane back to Britain deported are you worried about
what you're telling me for example no I don't think I have that fear um I might be horribly wrong but I don't think I have that feel I don't live in fear I don't live in fear of saying what I think I worry about has seen two quad bites with a couple of government officials sitting over that June is either after they've been listening everything part of the problem lies in the fact
that the shake can change laws virtually overnight sherry ban would be while we were filming in an attempt to stop overcrowding amongst unskilled workers it was decreed illegal to share property with anyone except close family if you're thinking of coming out here make sure you do your homework I'm off to meet an old friend patty Parfitt she moved out here with her son Harry after separating from her wayward husband Rick guitarist a status quo she
went out here on a holiday I thought you'd be the ideal place to change the status quo a mend a broken heart a year on however and the Dubai dream is turning sour I'm good thank you are lovely to see how are you last time I saw you was on the status-quo tour bus don't talk about welcome to my hair so this is your lovely piece of Dubai paradise this is this
is our little la a little la Hacienda so this is the lounge yeah this four-bedroom house is typical of the expat family lifestyle out here inside landscape gated communities and miles from anywhere so this is the kitchen thankfully for the neighbors it's detached so punny you're in a very nice place here but it's half an hour inland what would you pay here for your rent what are you oh you're gonna die 32,000 pounds for the
year and you have to pay out front in Dubai so that you had to write a check for 32,000 pounds for years rent in advance yeah so that strikes me is pretty expensive it is I mean it's ridiculous during your rental is up for renewal what are you gonna do I'm taking it for six months and then I'll just see here I go there what are they charge you for that uh 27,000
pounds what in one year they nearly doubled it yeah so be warned if your employer is not subsidizing your rent you'll be in front asti shocked it's terribly expensive in Dubai yes I knew this is wonderful tax-free Haven yeah everything's dirt cheap there's not really like that no and you know I don't want to spoil anybody's holiday or dream to move to Dubai but you really got to look at it because it's not
all it's cracked up to be people are watching it's gonna be thinking I quite fancy coming to Dubai yeah and yet you seem to have fallen slightly out of love with the dream yes I have have a lion gone where do I go now um I do miss my friends I do miss my family and it is difficult to meet people over here because everybody's basically it's family and when I go out I
am a threat I bet you are oh no you 57 I mean that is amazing yeah recently divorced your up long bombshell it used to be with a rock star you are public enemy number one to these women fantastic as rock'n'roll so what does the future hold for Dubai I'll be looking at the changing face of society here as it opens its doors wider to Western values could their secret defense against the credit
crunch come down to a few familiar faces joy some of these go lustrous and just how much they prepared to spend to make sure divide does become the greatest city in the world Pilate will be getting millions multi-million multi-millions in the UK we've taken thousands of years to develop our laws and customs whereas Dubai has had just a couple of decades try and find common ground so the 205 nationalities can happily coexist consider this just
1.3 million people live here of those 200,000 our Western expats 900,000 or Asians mainly workers and that leaves just 200 thousand local Emiratis to put that in perspective imagine living in Britain where five out of six people or foreigners when you to give it like that you kind of begin to work out that Dubai is actually quite a tolerant place it's a sign of Dubai's willingness to welcome foreigners into its midst to keep
moving forward and someone take you full advantage of that acceptance it's Derek Carr it's very good Derek a former fashion stylist at pop stars like salt and pepper and Snoop Dogg it's a day better known as annex jewel thief what happened I am very stupidly i porn jewels and of course pawning you don't porn what is not yours and I dug myself into a nightmarish hole I would have to go take one piece
of jewelry yet lied basically to get another piece and which I pawned and it became a circle and your present yes I did he served two years in a New York jail for his crimes was kicked out of the u.s. I settled here in Dubai you reinventing himself as get this a jewelry designer there you are a convicted thief felons or for want of a better phrase you kicked out of America and then
Dubai where you would imagine they're quite strict about that kind of thing they welcome you in here I was accepted into Dubai because I think I was very straight filed with what I had done I was very straightforward and who I am and and the kind of saw what I can do also fairly UNITA when there aren't many Derrick's in Dubai that I've met this look the whole thing you know well you'd
be surprised to buy it's just that you know there are more of you ever hi kind of I hope not but in giving a little the exactly that's what I hear everywhere is if you do this you're out if you do that you'll be deported so what I haven't found there's any real evidence they actually do this I mean do people get chucked out of Dubai well of course they do I'm not
people you've been deported well no I don't right I mean I don't know anyone have been deported but you know that this is to be a collective fear of being deported when you see any evidence we whenever is well listen the collective fear works because guess what I can open my car and I've especially from New York City I could never dare leave my computer in the car I do it all the
time I leave my doors unlocked at home you think that the the rules are a small price to pay ready for oh what a very small price to pay you know it gives you that sense of security and I couldn't be happier here right beautiful beautify lovely if Dubai is going to succeed now more than ever it needs people it has to be seen as he in place some of you can't afford
not to be so when Dubai can't build it Dubai buys it spending millions on celebrity names and crucially brands Gary rose to the latest big name lured into town will be in good company Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White are already here and raking it in oh yeah very good thing much good you too you came just at the right time joy some of these that is a little salmon fish cake with a
lemon hollandaise godless disgust me funny my laughs I'm it's actually delicious but just to see what your faded like it's delicious tell me God you've flown all the way to Dubai yeah and you've flown all the food out here as well oh yes wanting to stay in England oh yes what what is 36 degrees outside and it's snowing in the UK where would you choose you know it's I just saw it no
you know I want to spread the word about British cooking but beyond this game would you be out here if there wasn't a whacking great big Arabic checking it oh my gosh s right I'm not you all like your money hang well where's that contract to mine yeah no it's it's not a question of that is it it's only oh that's always because I mean find a lot of brand names like you're
such high commodities out here they will pay whatever it takes to gig well I think you know if I start cooking for money Loveleen cooking for I really believe in I'd rather give it up so there you have it the definitive answer with hollandaise sauce oh how are you hello pays every year decision and up on the 44th floor another bought in brand name mark fuller will be opening a version of London's embassy Club
here next year no offense to you mark but you and Gary roads and not exactly you know the beckons and yet you're getting a lot of money thrown at you to come here what's in it for them to get you someone was saying to me today that it's all very well opening a hotel but you've got to entice people into it it's like all over the world the difference is is they're
buying in name brands because it's a new country I mean is it rude of me to push you on just how many millions they pays you to come and now I won't I won't say that it wasn't it wasn't millions but it was quite an acceptable figure what about Tiger Woods and people like that oh you see there Tiger Woods you know Christina Aguilera's those sort of people Kylie's will be getting millions multi-million multi
millions is that because the people of Dubai the rulers here realize celebrities of that power are a PR magnet for here I think without a doubt in the end this was a piece of desert this was a piece of sand they've built a city out of nothing how do you attract everybody they want to be number one they don't want to be number two number three number four they want to be Miami
they want to beat Miami they want to be New York they want to beat York you know so the only answer is bring it in Kylie calms Beyonce comes I mean even I'm maiden have played it it is almost surreal here it's the land of maple leaf it certainly is more like the land of unbelievable because of the world is rocked to the core by the credit crunch to by rock to
the sound of Kylie at the world's most expensive party the Atlantis Hotel was launched with a massive 7 million pound extravaganza looks like an awful lot of that went up in smoke let's face it for the ordinary Brits living here as long as you toe the line life's pretty good for the investor though even ultra rifle and Dubai is fragile it doesn't manufacture anything of value oil now accounts for just six percent of its income
and even though even wealthy neighbor Abu Dhabi cut 9 billion pounds into its economy back in October Dubai remains exposed three big government backed construction companies are already laying off hundreds of employees Dubai relies on foreign investors to make it work and without them Dubai's dream of becoming the greatest city on earth they have to wait I came to Dubai to find out if it really is all is cracked up to be and the
answer if you like Sun and fun glitz and glamour is resounding yes as for the credit crunch everyone I've met here says the same thing Dubai won't just survive it will thrive and that's because it's bursting with ambition and drive all led by one man's extraordinary vision and an utter determination to turn this place into the biggest and most successful city in the world that's for my part I think I borrow the favorite
phrase of the British Builder it'll be all right when it's finished you
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