Fatboy Slim, aka Norman Cook, has been obsessed with music since he was a teenager, having falling in love with The Rolling Stones at age 13 via their 1976 album Black And Blue.
Before becoming a global superstar DJ with over 10 million album sales to his name, Cook had already scored UK number one singles with his first two bands, Hull indie-pop quartet The Housemartins, and Brighton-based hip-hop collective Beats International, demonstrating the range and depth of his encyclopedic music knowledge. But no-one comes out of the womb as a music geek, and in a recent appearance on long-running and hugely popular BBC Radio 4 show Desert Island Discs, Cook confessed that, as a kid, he believed that his uncle was a member of The Beatles.
In the late ’60s, Dennis Cook actually played in a band called The Fables, who would rehearse in the living room of his mother’s house in New Cross, London. When the young Norman Cook visited his nan, he would be allowed to watch The Fables practise – “for me, the most exciting thing ever” – and he recalled sitting in the room one afternoon as the group repeatedly rehearsed covers of Beatles classics Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, and Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.
“A couple of days later, I hear Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da on the radio,” Cook tells Desert Island Discs presenter Lauren Laverne, “and I went, Oh, that’s my uncle’s band! And [friends] said, ‘Your uncle’s in The Beatles?’ I said, Yeah, they rehearse at my nan’s house!’ I wasn’t aware of the concept of a cover version! [Laughs].”
Later in life, Cook would have a genuine connection to The Beatles, when In an unforeseen twist of fate, Paul McCartney became his next-door neighbours in Brighton.
“That was quite bizarre,” Cook admits, “He was lovely, but you just can’t get over the fact that that’s Paul McCartney. It was quite surreal, because we live on the beach, and he would just stroll into my kitchen wearing Speedos. Every time I talked to him I would be humming a Beatles tune in my head, and going, Don’t do it out loud!'”
On the show, Cook chose Beatles songs Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End from 1969’s Abbey Road as one of his eight permitted Desert Island Discs. He also selected songs by The Clash, Underworld, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Donna Summer, Taj Mahal, Bobby Charles and The Muppets to soundtrack his stay on this imaginary island.
UK residents can hear the full Desert Island Discs programme here.
