British DJ Fatboy Slim, real name Norman Quentin Cook, shared his struggle with alcohol addiction and the anxiety he faced when performing sober for the first time after rehabilitation.
In a BBC Radio 4 interview broadcast on Saturday, June 27, 2026, the 62-year-old musician said he felt paralyzed with fear during his initial sober shows.
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Cook credited his former wife, broadcaster Zoe Ball, for providing the motivation to seek treatment in 2009.
“That was my wake-up moment.
There had been tonnes of people shouting at me before, but it was whispered very quietly in the end,” he told Lauren Laverne on Desert Island Discs.
The electronic music producer described addiction as a “weird disease” that fights to survive.
“It knows that if you quit, it won't have anywhere to live anymore, so it will do things to you to keep you,” he said.
Cook noted that his personal life began to deteriorate before entering rehab nearly 15 years ago.
“Probably the last year of my drinking, I wasn't really enjoying it, and things were starting to fall off in my life,” he said.
He emphasized that maintaining sobriety was the hardest thing he has ever done and required intensive professional intervention.
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“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',” he recalled.
