Norman Cook – aka Fatboy Slim – has revealed how his thought process has changed in his sobriety journey as the iconic DJ headlines an impressive BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend set
Fatboy Slim AKA Norman Cook says he was honoured to play BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend after more than three decades in the industry. “I feel like the uncle who comes back at Christmas to see how his nieces and nephews have grown,” he jokes. “It’s fabulous to be invited after all these years. I have been around for a while.” The DJ, 62, joined fellow headliners Zara Larsson and Olivia Dean at the festival in Sunderland’s Herrington Country Park this weekend.
“What I’ve discovered is that if you stay around long enough the cycle turns,” Cook exclusively told us before his epic set. “A bit like fashion. People who were brought up with my music are now coming to the shows with their kids.
“It’s the same way I grew up loving The Beatles because my parents played them. We’re in this sweet spot now where the parents are still just young enough to go out raving with their kids.”
His Friday night set was packed with classic hits including Praise You and The Rockafeller Skank, but offstage the musician’s gigs are looking very different these days. After becoming a regular fixture on the 90s party scene, Fatboy Slim has now been sober for 17 years. Nights out no longer end at sunrise, though he says adjusting to performing without alcohol took time, and it was one thing about sobriety that terrified him.
“The thought of DJing sober just absolutely petrified me. The first few shows I couldn’t dance, my hips locked up and I’m thinking what are you doing here? You’re a middle-aged man playing scratching noises to young people who are waving their arms about and you’re waving your arms about. After a while I realised it’s really just about people coming together to the sounds of a kick drum to trigger this communal thing.
“When I’m on stage, I still feel a little intoxicated,” he says. “That’s where I get my kicks now.
“I do things in a different way. When the show ends, I have a cup of tea and I go to bed – which I never used to – and I live to fight another day. And that’s very important.
“And there’s a routine just before I go on, which is I put on the Hawaiian shirt, I take off the shoes and then Alan, my tour manager, slaps me really hard around the face just to get the adrenaline going,” he jokes.
The DJ headlined the Friday night of Radio 1’s annual festival after being locked into dad-mode, helping daughter Nelly 16, who he shares with ex wife Zoe Ball, prep for her GCSE exams.
“I’ve been off the road for three weeks so I’m like a caged tiger, ready to play. After weeks of revision I need to get out and kick off some cobwebs.”
While Nelly is busy studying, son Woody, 25, is off touring the UK with his own DJ sets this summer – something Norman and Zoe, who split in 2016 after 18 years of marriage, would never have imagined.
“Me and Zoe kind of had the idea that he was going to be like Saffy in Absolutely Fabulous and he would just look at our behaviour and go, ’I don’t want it. I’m going to be a librarian’, you know, but he didn’t turn out like that. The apple apparently doesn’t fall far from the tree.
“Nelly’s showing the same tendencies too,” he says. “When both your parents work in showbiz, entertaining people just becomes normal.”
Woody’s first taste of DJing came from accompanying his dad on trips to Ibiza and joining him at famous San Antonio night-spot Cafe Mambo.
“We would take him down when he was really young but he was quite a little bit hot and bothered so the only safe place was in the DJ booth. So he would sit playing with his Lego at my feet while I was DJing.
“And so that’s how steeped he is, you know. He thought that was normal. And then at some point when he was like six or seven, when he could see over the top of the decks, one night we were on the way home and he said, ‘Dad I can see why you like your job.’
“‘Why’s that?’ I asked him and he said: “It’s really exciting. The music’s really loud and everyone’s shouting at you and getting over excited.’ So he literally has been brought up like that from day one.”
“He’s doing really well,” he says. “I tell him to follow his heart. He’s DJing and he is just starting doing more TV stuff with his mum, because he is just half me and half Zoe, so he could be a TV presenter as well, and he just entertains people and he’s so intelligent and kind and beautiful and funny.
“It’s quite a funny thing when he started DJing and I would try and give him tips and little dos and don’ts until he stopped me. ‘I appreciate you trying to help’, he said, ‘but it’s coming out of the same mouth that told me to eat my broccoli.’ He said, ‘I know you’re trying to help me, but sometimes you don’t have to sound like my dad.’”
Since leaving her Radio 2 Breakfast Show job in December 2024, Zoe, 55, moved out of London and now lives close to Norman, in Sussex.
“Yeah it’s great, I mean Woody lives in Bristol now so I don’t see him as much but Zoe lives up the road and we’re still really good friends and co-parents. We’ve just been getting Nelly through her exams at the moment.”
As for whether his daughter is joining him at festivals this summer? “She’s at a festival in Sussex tonight,” he laughs. “She doesn’t want to hang out with her dad on a night out.”
Catch all the action from Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Sunderland across BBC TV, radio and online.
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