The aim was to preserve its nature, and to let other people understand the effect an island can have on their spirit and relationships.” As Nadim says, he was “beguiled by the spirit of the place, I’m passionate about islands, and entranced by my own. Now, the international shift is in another, ‘Small is Beautiful’ direction, to the west of Ireland, Co Mayo, Atlantic coastline, in the beguiling shape and setting of Inishturkbeg. That international marketing entity employed thousands of people, worldwide, and business travel around the globe to far-flung offices was a weekly ritual for the 40-something consumer psychologist, who stepped back from that daily titled CEO/Global Leader grind and has now slowed down just a whit to island life pace and a new, self-referential title of ‘Chief Islander’. Sadek subsequently studied psychology in TCD, went into business and made – one can safely assume – a small but perfectly-formed fortune when his company, the qualitative research (marketing) firm Sadek Wynberg was taken over in 2003 by WPP, later co-branding with Millward Brown. His Egyptian father, an epidemiologist with the World Health Organisation (WHO), went where need was greatest, and by the time young Nadim was 12, his father and his Limerick-born mother decided to quarantine him more safely in a boarding school in Dublin, St Columba’s in Rathfarnham. Sandra has Westport family roots, but probably not as far back as the middle ages, when Grace O’Malley, Granuaile, was the pirate queen of the day, on nearby Clare Island.įetching up on bracing Inishturkbeg Island, with its ‘a lungful of life’ slogan as healthily voiced by Nadim Sadek, is possibly ironic, as he had in fact spent a childhood travelling to some of the world’s unhealthiest spots.

In 2003, the very grounded London-based, but Irish-rooted and half Irish/half Egyptian Nadim Sadek, with his wife Sandra O’Malley, bought ‘their’ island, Inishturkbeg, which hit some headlines in the early 2000s back when singer Ronan Keating was briefly linked with a move to buy its scenic 63 acres. The Clew Bay selection has previously attracted a mix of island devotees: Louis Walsh owns one, and John Lennon bought one of Clew Bay’s islands, Dorinish, back in 1967, and more recently another, Inishraher, was set to become a ‘Maharishi (Mahesh Yogi) Capital of the Global Country of World Peace’! But there’s plenty of genuine, enervating islands to go around, one for each of a very wide and individual audience of owners, in fact.

The Mayo shoreline and its part-sheltered inlets here is said, in a certain exaggeration, to be home to 365 islands, one for each day in the year… counted no doubt at low tide.

Super clew land