Fatboy Slim: Getting sober was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done
Celebrity DJ Fatboy Slim has called his alcohol addiction a “parasite” and said getting sober was “probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done”.
The musician, 62, also opened up about struggling with anxiety after going to rehab, and said he was “paralysed” and “rigid with fear” when he returned to performing after going to rehab.
Fatboy Slim, real name Norman Quentin Cook, checked into a rehab facility in 2009 as he was battling alcoholism and has since been sober for almost 15 years.
Speaking on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs with Lauren Laverne, Cook told of how he was prompted to address his alcoholism after his wife at the time radio DJ Zoe Ball said she would leave him if he did not stop drinking.
He said: “That was my wake-up moment. There had been tons of people shouting at me before, but it was whispered very quietly in the end.
“Addiction is such a weird disease and it’s like a parasite, it protects its own. It knows that if you quit, it won’t have anywhere to live anymore, so it will do things to you to keep you.
“Probably the last year of my drinking, I wasn’t really enjoying it, and things were starting to fall off in my life.”
He added that while in rehab, he realised he sought help for his addiction “just in time”.
When asked whether it was easy to become sober, the DJ said: “No, absolutely not. Probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I couldn’t have done it without going to rehab.
“I needed someone to bash into my head for a month. You know, ‘you’ll die, and you’ll be in misery if you don’t stop doing this’.”
The musician also admitted he suffered from anxiety when returning to the stage, saying it “took about five shows” to adapt to performing sober.
Cook said: “For the first five shows, I was so paralysed and rigid with fear, I couldn’t dance, and I couldn’t enjoy it.
“I was thinking, what are you actually doing? Why are you going to play that record next? And why are they going to react to it?”
He said a “beautiful night in Japan” helped him to overcome his fears as the crowd were “just really excitable”, making him realise that his job is about making the crowd happy.
“Everything sort of fitted into place,” Cook added.
Cook also spoke about attending school with Sir Keir Starmer and being in the same form as him for five years before watching his rise on TV from director of public prosecutions to the UK Prime Minister.
During those school days, the DJ went by the name of Quentin. However, he said he received a lot of flack for the unusual name and decided to “reinvent” himself when he started out as an artist, opting for Norman instead.
He said: “You have to understand that before Quentin Tarantino in the late 60s and the early 70s, the only Quentin in people’s consciousness was England’s most celebrated homosexual, Quentin Crisp. So having the same name as him going through school was, you know, I got a lot of flack.
“My nan still couldn’t spell it to her dying day, she couldn’t spell it or pronounce it, and it was just a weird name, and it was a stupid name, and so when I joined a band, then you get a chance to reinvent yourself.
“So it’s like the first thing I’m going to do is change my name. I’d grown up with a flamboyant, unusual name, and I just wanted a really normal name. So Normal Norman just had a good ring to it.”
Cook rose to prominence in the 90s after releasing a string of club hits including Praise You, The Rockafeller Skank and Right Here Right Now.
He has since received six Grammy nominations and won the 2002 Best Music Video award for Weapon Of Choice which stars Hollywood actor Christopher Walken as he dances through a deserted hotel lobby.
The full Desert Island Discs episode can be listened to on BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 4 from Sunday at 10am.
Published: by Radio NewsHub