After being issued with a strict set of guidelines before flying out to Marbella to film the summer special of The Only Way Is Essex, the twenty TOWIE cast members abroad have sent bosses of the show into panic by defying most of the rules before the plane even took off from Britain!

The Essex reality stars, which include Sam and Billi Faiers, Joey Essex, Jessica Wright and James Argent, were warned by show execs before leaving that the cast were banned from drinking, fighting and doing drugs the night before filming, but while the cat is away (or more to the point, when the fat cats stay at home) the mice will play!

The gang, who have flown to the Spanish holiday resort of Marbella, made famous on the show, to film a summer special of the hit ITV2 reality show, started breaking the rules before they had even left the country, and weren’t too bothered about who knew it.

Billi Faiers took to social networking site, Twitter, to announce to fans:  “Ohh noooo… We are already tipsy and not even on the plane yet!! Let the fun and games begin!!!”

If that wasn’t bad enough, as soon as they arrived at their destination, they descended on popular night club Pangea in Puerto Banus where they smoked shisha pipes as well as necking drinks, despite having filming planned for the next day.

The next morning they were all obviously suffering from the previous nights antics, which included sniffing helium balloons, which Sam Faiers confirmed when she took to Twitter to tell followers: “bathing, filming and hanging Haha”.

Despite the rules being set and broken, a show insider has insisted to The Sun newspaper that they are happy for the group to party, as long as they don’t trash any hotel rooms, or go AWOL, whilst adding that there will be hell to pay if any of them do not turn up for filming, but confirming: “No one turned up late…as yet.”

Watch Sam Faiers talking about the  Marbella summer special in the clip below:

The Only Way Is Essex summer Marbella special will be on our screens later in the year.