I’m in a beach bar on the island of Nevis with Britney Spears, the Duchess of York, Michael Douglas, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kickstand, the beach-chair guy. It’s not a dream: everyone except Kickstand is included in the gallery of pictures above the counter, looking blissed out and bleary-eyed.

As the photographs testify, they were all here at Sunshine’s once, no doubt chugging “killer bee” cocktails and marvelling at Kickstand’s tales about his former life as an accountant and how he got his nickname. The latter story is definitely not for duchesses’ ears.

Nevis is a Caribbean island like no other I’ve visited – hospitable, unhurried, a sort of floating Sussex village with Titian skies and a whopping great volcano in the middle of it. On an island barely five miles across, every cab driver and deckchair attendant is a star – everybody knows everyone, they’re all on first-name terms, and it’s fantastically easy for newcomers to “lime” with the locals.

Tourists often experience a “them and us” atmosphere, especially in the Caribbean. But on Nevis, there’s none of that. Just by arriving, you become part of the community.

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I discovered this for myself the morning after I got here, at the market in Charlestown, the bijou Nevisian capital. The market is a homespun affair – a handful of stalls, heavy with muddy root vegetables and bottles of homemade elixir. It’s the last place on earth I would have expected to be recognised. But the young woman on the stall greets me warmly. Apparently, we’re on first-name terms.

“How’s life at the Montpelier Inn, Jonathan?” she wants to know.

She wears a blue summer frock and the kind of toothy smile I’ll see a lot of during my stay. After a lengthy tease, it transpires that her name is Omel and she ticked my papers when I disembarked from the tiny plane that dropped me in from Antigua. It was the only plane at the airport and there were precisely three passengers. Even so, I was impressed that she recognised me.

Charlestown tells you everything you need to know about neighbourly Nevis. It’s a town of not much more than timber homes with corrugated-iron roofs, a few shady squares and stout churches. No cruise ships call here, there are no shopping malls or duty-free zones, no convoys of stay-pressed holidaymakers to give Nevisians a distorted view of street fashion thousands of miles away. Instead, ferry passengers step ashore from sister island St Kitts, just across the channel, to find a family of chickens clucking on the quay.

Charlestown’s stores bear names such as Donnie’s and Poochie’s, and the pavements are more pristine than those in the home counties. I am wandering along when a taxi swings across my path and the driver leans out to shake my hand. It’s Champ. He’d taken me to a restaurant in the hills the previous night. No special reason for the stop, he says – just being civil. He flashes me that toothy grin and is gone.

For all its beaches, and there are some beauties, Nevis’s defining holiday experience lies inland, under the rainforest canopy on the flanks of Nevis Peak. For centuries, the island’s wealth came from sugar, and today its civilised old plantation houses have been converted into hotels.

Mine is the Montpelier Plantation Inn, 20 minutes from Charlestown, once a favourite hideaway of Princess Diana, recently taken over by an American couple, Tim and Meredith Hoffman. Two of the newer villas have all the glossy-brochure essentials: flatscreen TV, plunge pool – that sort of thing. Elsewhere, the look and feel remains distinctly old-school British, and all the better for it.

The Montpelier is not the only hotel on Nevis where the spirit of English gentility endures. The Hermitage Plantation has bergère chairs, cabinets of cut glass, and bone-china tureens. The Golden Rock Plantation is more on the eccentric side: its lookout arbour is popular with locals for Sunday brunch, which is sometimes served by the owner, Pam Barry, while she balances a parrot on her head.

For funkier food, you should swing down to Bananas Bistro, where the cooking is a pan-global mix and the music is more in tune with the MySpace generation. It’s a converted rum joint run by Gillian Smith, another expat with a Nevisian smile, and especially popular with the island’s smartly dressed medical students.

The island offers lots more to explore – and in some rather startling company. TC, a purple-haired lady bus driver originally from Leeds, runs tours to remote lean-to bars where the rum is cheap and the chicken super-spicy. For a more sobering experience, Lynwell’s rainforest tour is fascinating. You’ll penetrate lush tunnels of overhanging vines and giant yuccas while Lynwell points out both the spots he played in as a child and the medicinal plants his mum used to heal his cuts and bruises.

As for beaches, the classics are in the north and west – especially Pinney’s, home to Sunshine’s bar, with its four straight miles of spotless sand. There’s also Herbert’s Beach, ramshackle but romantic, which shares a stretch of marmalade sand with the Nisbet Plantation, a resort with air-conditioned bungalows and a beach bar charging European prices.

My favourite find, though, is Lovers’ Beach, just past the airport. I discover it on a 4WD jaunt around the island, steering off the main road beside a sign that reads “Undertakers Love Overtakers”, and on through the mangrove swamp. Suddenly, I’m there – alone on a charmed crescent of sand, just me and a pelican fishing for brunch.

There’s no debate about the essential place to be at sunset, however: back on Pinney’s at Sunshine’s Beach Bar & Grill. The entrepreneur Sunshine built his original rope-and-plank hang-out right next to the Four Seasons Hotel, further along the beach. But the hotel soon tired of the likes of Britney, Fergie and SJP chillin’ next door, and Sunshine was encouraged to remove his haphazard bar, Elvis CDs, Bob Marley posters and all.

Good for Sunshine. When Hurricane Omar hit in October, it flooded the hotel and would have wiped his joint off the map. He survived at his new location – and so did his picture gallery of celebs knocking back their rum and passion-fruit killer bees.

One last cocktail, and it’s time to go. As I step inside the empty departure lounge, Omel flashes that fabulous Nevisian smile.

“You’ve caught the sun,” she says. “Will you be back?”

“Maybe,” I say. After all, it’s very nice to be noticed.

- Jonathan Futrell travelled as a guest of Virgin Atlantic and the Montpelier Plantation Inn

TRAVEL BRIEF

Getting there: fly to Antigua with Virgin Atlantic (0870 574 7747, www.virginatlantic.com) or British Airways (0844 493 0787, www.ba.com), from about £500, and then connect to Nevis on LIAT airlines (www.liat airlines.com), about £145 return. Where to stay:the Montpelier Plantation Inn (00 1-869 469 3462, www.montpeliernevis.com) has doubles from £150 (£250 high season), B&B and afternoon tea. Or on the beach is the Nisbet Plantation Beach Club (869 469 9325, www.nisbetplantation. com; doubles from £260, full-board). More modest are the Hurricane Cove Bungalows (869 469 9462, www.hurricanecove.com); private wooden chalets with pools and great views from £107, room-only.

Tour operators: Seasons in Style (01244 202000, www.seasonsinstyle.com) has seven nights, B&B, at the Montpelier Plantation Inn from £1,975pp (June to August) or £2,590pp (January to April), with flights and transfers. Or try Harlequin (0845 277 3397, www.harlequin holidays.com) or Tropical Sky (0870 907 9605, www.tropicalsky.co.uk).

CATCH A CARIBBEAN BARGAIN

Now’s a good time to book some Caribbean sun – because nobody else is. With occupancy levels way down on last year, hotels are putting on deals to tempt us back: the savings are offset a little by higher air fares, but you can still find a bargain. Here are some of the best (all include flights).

Grenada: until December 14, ITC Classics (01244 355527, www.itcclassics.co.uk) has a week at the plush four-star Calabash – nice beach, Gary Rhodes restaurant – from £1,270pp, B&B, saving £239.

Antigua: from April 18, Tropic Breeze (01548 831550, www.tropic breeze.co.uk) has seven nights for the price of five at chic, minimalist Carlisle Bay, still the coolest hotel on the island: it’s £1,559pp, B&B and afternoon tea, saving £380.

St Kitts: from January 10 to March 31, British Airways Holidays (0844 493 0758, www.ba.com/holidays) has seven nights in a deluxe cottage at the four-star Rawlins Plantation Inn – built around a 17th-century sugar mill – from £1,099pp, B&B, saving £388.

Jamaica: departing January 27, First Choice (0871 664 9011, www.firstchoice.co.uk ) has 14 nights at the family-friendly Holiday Inn SunSpree from £945pp, all-inclusive, saving £330.

St Lucia: from January 13-31, Virgin Holidays (0871 222 5825, www.virginholidays.co.uk) has a week at Sandals Grande, the brand’s poshest hotel, from £1,499pp, all-inclusive, saving £415.

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