Practically a national institution at this point – remember the rave octopus at the 2012 Olympic closing ceremony? – Norman Cook still isn’t showing any sign of slowing his dancing days down. Or at least, his more commonly-known persona isn’t. Back in Cardiff again for the second time in three years for his latest UK tour, Fatboy Slim lets Carl Marsh in on what keeps him going.

“Sorry I’m late! I had one o’clock down on my phone and I hadn’t checked the new Zoom link time. So sorry! I’m here now.” After some weeks attempting to pin down Norman Cook, who’s spent most of the last 30 years and change being a very busy bee indeed, I’ve been starting to think this chat is not meant to be. Staring at a blank screen – the common malaise of the 2020s interviewer – up pops Cook. Time, then, to get chatting to this permanent A-lister of British dance music, specifically in his best-known guise of Fatboy Slim, which he debuted in the mid-90s and guided to immense chart success.

This month will see Fatboy Slim touring the UK, including a return to Cardiff International Arena (he took the roof off there as recently as November 2021) for one of the largest shows on the stint, and a Friday night special to boot. Serenading big crowds is Cook’s bread and butter, of course, but a recent documentary has had people – including the man himself – reminiscing about one of the largest and hairiest seas of ravers he’s ever entertained. Fatboy Slim: Right Here Right Now, which is currently on Sky Documentaries and NOW TV, concerns the Big Beach Boutique II: Cook’s free entry party on Brighton Beach, which inadvertently doubled Brighton’s population for one weekend of 2002. He and his co-organisers expected somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 people to hit the shore: in the event, over 250,000 turned up.

That it passed without major catastrophe, Cook tells me now, “was only because of the goodwill of the people of Brighton, and the good behaviour. Obviously, there were a lot of people who were very, very drunk; there were lots of people taking an awful amount of drugs. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t love your neighbour, not respect your neighbour… you know, not do anything stupid that will hurt other people.

“I’m very, very proud of every single person who was there and the role they played in it, because it could have been…” He pauses. “I remember just before going on, the police safety guy – who’d been briefing me all day – said, if we get this wrong, you could have two Hillsboroughs on your hands. So I’m walking on stage, trying to work out what 96 times two is. It was a disaster averted by the loved-up nature of ravers.”

It’s quite an eye-opening documentary, that also discusses the issues Cook had with funding that weekend. “We had a sponsor – a certain vodka company that I won’t name. It would embarrass them. They pulled out with about two months to go, and we were looking at a bill of half a million to put it on, so it was like, we either cancel it or find something else.

“That week, I got offered a corporate gig… I normally don’t do corporate gigs, because they’re just soul-destroying, but it was half a million dollars, which is pretty much what we were short for. I thought if I just prostituted myself, it felt like a kind of wealth redistribution [laughs]. I take money off of New York hedgefund bods who wanted to show off, you know, wave their dicks around, and I’ll take the money off them and put on a free show for everyone at the party. So yeah, you could say I paid for it. Or got some New York hedgefund fratboys to pay for it.”

We all know that Fatboy Slim knows how to put on a party – and that’s what’s coming to Wales on Fri 24 Mar. Rather better organised than Brighton Beach 2002, mercifully for all involved, the CIA will still be rammed to the hilt. The Welsh capital is somewhere Cook’s played many times over the years: “I’m quite aware that the Welsh crowd are not shy. That’s my overriding image, you know… very friendly and quite exuberant, shall we say? Which is my favourite kind of audience. I like people who misbehave!

“The whole point of doing this is that I’m not out on tour to promote a new record or to make money. I’m out on tour to share this experience of togetherness and release with everyone. So what I want is for people to come and let off steam. I want them to misbehave; I want them to do things they don’t normally do.

“That’s the whole point of dance music. It’s to free yourself from the shackles of the banal norm – you know, your normal life – and, just for a few hours, you escape into this kind of fantasy world of nonsense, and a large amount of misbehaviour is encouraged. As long you’re not hurting other people, obviously. But that’s the great thing about the crowds, that feeling of community and togetherness.

“I just watched the Big Beach documentary again last night, and the overriding thing that came out of it is that it could have been an absolute disaster if everybody wasn’t so well-behaved and loved up and cared about. That quote about, “if this had been an Oasis gig, we would have been fucked…” [laughter] So yeah, communal love and misbehaviour is the name of the game, without any atmosphere of malice or violence, and the Welsh seem to be very good at that.”

It’s hard to fathom that the person behind Fatboy Slim is going to be 60 this year, though either way, it seems reasonable to wish him the luxury of a birthday party without 250,000 uninvited gatecrashers. This sort of life milestone can be sobering, and perhaps explains why he maintains a certain distinction between his dance alter ego and himself: Norman Cook is the one about to hit his seventh decade, not Fatboy Slim. As he tells me, “Fatboy Slim kind of exists outside the age barrier. He’s still got the mental age of about 15. And so Fatboy Slim is not turning 60! It’s only Norman. I’m not doing anything for the public. I’m going to have a party for my friends.”

When it comes down to it, the entity – the phenomenon – that is Fatboy Slim has an ageless quality. Additionally, as Cook notes to me during our video chat, people always conveniently ignore his age because he himself doesn’t act it. (A fine rule to live by in this interviewer’s opinion, too.) it’d be nice to think there is a little bit of Fatboy Slim in all of us: have fun, enjoy the music, love thy neighbour…

“There’s no way I’m having a 60th birthday party for Fatboy Slim!” Norman Cook concludes. “And anyway, technically, he’s only 26 because that’s when he was born.”

Fatboy Slim, Cardiff International Arena, Fri 24 Mar.

Tickets: from £39.50. Info: here

words CARL MARSH