Latest news with #NormanCook
Daily Mail
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Fatboy Slim's Hove beachfront cafe slammed for his 'crazy' prices and 'shocking' waiting times
Fatboy Slim's beachfront café has come under fire for its 'crazy' prices and 'shocking' waiting times - less than a year after it suffered a rodent infestation following it being given a one out of five hygiene rating. The DJ, whose real name is Norman Cook, has owned the lease of the Big Beach The Big Beach Café on Kingsway, in his native Hove, near Brighton, after purchasing it from Sir Paul McCartney 's ex Heather Mills in 2013. However, the megastar, famed for hits such as Right Here, Right Now, faced calls last October to clean up the eatery after a series of stomach-turning images showed rodent droppings and a mouse trap on the surfaces. Despite seemingly giving the place a scrubbing up, evidenced by the most recent hygiene ratings being a much-improved four out of five, many locals and visitors are still not happy at the services being offered to them. Reviewing his experience online, Alwyn Frank said he waited 15 minutes for 'one black Americano' coffee. He continued: '[I] eventually asked where my coffee was and was met with a "Oh, I never got the ticket", from the person who took the order, who was standing next to her. Mr Frank said despite being offered a refund that it was 'genuinely shocking management' and that it was 'the third order that went wrong while waiting there'. He added: 'Any other location would have gone bust a long time ago.' The DJ (above) has owned the lease of the Big Beach The Big Beach Café after purchasing it from Sir Paul McCartney's ex Heather Mills in 2013 Last October the cafe suffered a rodent infestation and was given a one out of five hygiene rating - it has improved now after its latest inspection saw it awarded four out of five Another customer, Elena Spinelli, said she waited 'forty minutes for a burger and bagel', adding that the experience left her feeling 'unimpressed'. The spot has faced many setbacks in the decade since the hitmaker took charge, with instances of vandalism proving to be a setback. Last year's health probe also found that food was being stored at almost double the correct temperature. While health standards have improved in the ten months since, customers have been left fuming at the level of service, which they believe falls short of the mark. A visitor to the café, whose name was listed as Lewis, appeared to criticise the concentration of the establisment's workers who he accused of being distracted instead of making his order. He wrote: 'I understand you need to have some fun at work but do your job at the same time. Twenty minutes waiting for a coffee. Many customers have reviewed their visits to the Big Beach Café - reporting various experiences '[I] could see in everyone's face waiting they had had enough. Sort it out or you'll lose your customers.' Berengere Guery added: 'The prices are crazy, £10.60 for a black coffee and a breakfast bap. 'I wouldn't mind too much if the quality was amazing, but sadly not.' However, not all visitors agree with the scathing verdicts of the Big Beach Café. Evelyn Mathews said: 'Service was friendly, we sat outside in the sun and enjoyed our ice cream.' Agreeing with that sentiment, Jewel Vogel said the shop had 'great music, lovely staff and amazing food', adding: 'I would definitely come back, I would live here if I could.' 'Great cafe in a great location,' another quipped. 'What makes this place so good is the staff and community feel. 'They make you feel so welcome. Would highly recommend!'
BBC News
29-07-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Fatboy Slim: DJ ready for 'madder and noisier' Belfast crowd
Fatboy Slim still vividly remembers finding out Belfast was not a "warzone" on his first visit almost 40 years superstar musician and DJ is set to headline the Emerge Music Festival in Belfast on 23 he first played the city in the mid-1980s as the bassist in The Housemartins, back in the days when he was known as Norman Cook."All I remember is the first time we went to Belfast with The Housemartins in about 1986, we didn't know what to expect," he told BBC News NI."We're thinking: 'Are we going to be playing to a Protestant crowd or a Catholic crowd or whatever?'""There was a little trepidation because I'd grown up my whole life watching the Troubles on the telly, and thinking: 'What are we getting ourselves in for?'"Equal trepidation but also equal interest, just to see." Music 'bringing people together' The DJ said his perception of Northern Ireland had come from TV with a "very British bias"."It was very cathartic I think to actually be there and talk to the people," he added."Because I kind of got the feeling that we'd been fed propaganda about a lot of what went on, and this idea that Belfast was just a warzone and no-one had any fun and no-one was nice to each other." He said the one thing that was clear was that there was more uniting people than dividing them."Music tends to break through those barriers and it tends to connect people and people forget, hopefully, their troubles or the Troubles," he said."Not just in Ireland, worldwide, music does connect people and bring them together." Belfast gears up to Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat That is what he is planning when he plays his Emerge set at Boucher Road Playing has been a fairly regular visitor to Belfast, with his most recent gig in the Telegraph building in the city centre in October 2023."Belfast crowds always take it that bit madder and noisier and more exuberant and I love that," he said. He admits big outdoor shows demand a different approach."The production changes," he said."In the Telegraph building I didn't really bring our production.""When we do the bigger festivals I have my own lighting guy, I have my own visuals guy, we use a live camera so you can see me mugging, you know, right from the back."You also you play the big tunes."There's the tunes that work at big festivals outdoors, and then there's the ones 'these are for the clubs.'" Derry Girls cameo It is obvious he enjoys coming to Northern Ireland, a connection reinforced by Channel 4 sitcom Derry of the show Saoirse-Monica Jackson and Jamie-Lee O'Donnell made a surprise appearance on stage with him during his most recent Belfast also featured in the penultimate episode of the show's final season, something he is still a little amazed by."I've been doing this for 40 years but every now and then a phone call comes along and you're like: 'Oh my lord, really?'" he said."The whole episode revolved around going to my gig."If that wasn't an honour enough then they asked me to be in it." "The only sad thing was I was supposed to actually be there and be playing the show, but because of the pandemic they were filming in a bubble and I wasn't allowed to travel over there so I had to film my bit remotely."So I never got to meet them all and hang out on set."But Derry Girls is such a fabulous series and to be even mentioned in it, let alone be mentioned repeatedly, was a very great honour." Salt, beats? While he will bring what he describes as his "arena show" to Emerge, Fatboy Slim is always on the lookout for unusual venues a recent tour of Australia he played a gig in a chip shop in are plenty of chip shops in Northern Ireland, so any is there chance he could do the same here?"There's always a chance, it's more of a timing thing," he said."Normally I'm in and out." "I'm playing Touquet in France on the Friday night, and then I'm playing Creamfields the night after so there's no real time."The chip shop in Australia was because I had gigs at the weekend and a few days off during the week."I love doing things like that."So a repeat in Belfast is unlikely, but if you call into your local chip shop for a fish supper on 23 August keep an eye - and ear - out just in case.
The Guardian
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I genuinely love this place so much!' Fatboy Slim's 100th Glastonbury set
Irreverent, bouncy and as suitable at 4am in a club as it is at 4pm in a field, the music of Fatboy Slim dovetails perfectly with Glastonbury. And the man himself, Norman Cook, seems to know it. This year's festival marked a big milestone: Cook has now played 100 Glasto sets – or thereabouts – over the years, popping up everywhere from vast stages to tiny tents. To document the occasion, Guardian photographer David Levene bedded in with the DJ for the weekend, while Cook explained why it holds such a special significance for him. Cook tries to find his daughter for Burning Spear at the Pyramid Stage Bumping into Chris Moyles, and right, having his photo taken with Charley and her son Remi, 7 months, from Somerset Cook checks out the scenes outside Lonely Hearts Club stage in Silver Hayes, where he's due to play that evening at 10.30pm Feeling it at his son Woody's DJ set at Scissors Bar Cook's dressing room at Lonely Hearts 'We're not doing a kind of 100th show extravaganza on the grounds that we don't actually really know which would be the 100th. It's not an exact science, it's a guesstimate. Thing is, I play so many shows, and so many of them are just like impromptu that we really don't know. So I think it'd be a bit much to really get the bells and whistles out. We think it's the Block9 show in the afternoon tomorrow – we think! But no candles, sadly. 'I'm very, very proud of my relationship with Glastonbury and my history with it and I'm lucky, because as a DJ, you can play multiple sets. Obviously, there's probably people who've been to more Glastonburys, but they've only played one show per festival – that's not going to get you into big high figures.' Fire it up! Fatboy Slim at Lonely Hearts Club 'My first Glasto show was on the Pyramid stage in 1986 with the Housemartins, and we didn't know anything really about Glastonbury or festivals. We'd never played in daylight before – we only ever played in clubs – and also we thought that Glastonbury was full of bearded hippies who would probably throw mud and bottles of piss out at us. So we went on quite nervous and quite agitated, but that was quite good in the Housemartins, channelling that aggression – we had the nice tunes, but there was a lot of aggression. We made an awful lot of friends, and it changed our view about Glastonbury. The only weird thing was me and Paul [Heaton] have both had fairly successful careers, but neither of us had managed to get back on the Pyramid stage for 38 years. Last year, Paul played the Pyramid stage and he phoned me up and said, 'Will you come on and do a song with us, just to celebrate?'' Fatboy Slim prepares before performing at Lonely Hearts Club stage Dropping bangers at Lonely Hearts Club, with Stella McCartney backstage 'My favourite Glastonbury moment was playing for [Rob da Bank's label] Sunday Best. I was four days in at that point, my mind had been expanded, altered and distorted, as was everybody's around me. So I decided if I played a record backwards, would people dance backwards? And it was a good theory. Obviously with CDJs, you can press reverse, but with the record, you have to physically rewind it. So I played Block Rockin' Beats, by the Chemical Brothers, pretty much at the right speed but backwards. And it worked. Everybody got the joke. It was just after Twin Peaks too, so everybody was like, dancing backwards to the music. What I forgot was that Ed from the Chemical Brothers was in the DJ booth with me, and he went, 'What are you doing?' I'm like, 'I want to see if they can dance backwards.' He's like, 'Oh, great!' That's probably the most out there I've ever been.' Fatboy Slim performs at Lonely Hearts Club stage at Silver Hayes 'I loved the Rabbit Hole. It was never the same [after it closed]. Absolutely anything could happen, and sometimes it did. I much prefer the smaller stages to the big ones, but having said that, when we did the Park the other year, that felt pretty much like the perfect gig. We brought Rita Ora on – I don't normally do showbiz-y things like that. It's probably my favourite set.' Another set, this time at the Genosys stage Tweaking the faders at Genosys 'My son Woody is playing here this year, and it's just fabulous. My daughter's here, my ex wife [Zoe Ball] is here. We're all hanging out. It's beautiful. Woody came to Glastonbury when he was about eight, and it didn't go well for him or for me and Zoe. But when he started coming under his own steam, it's weird, because we didn't teach him anything, he just assimilated himself into the fabric of it and made all these friends the first year he went. He was built for Glastonbury: he's just got that energy, he wants to talk to everybody, he wants to change the world. Everybody keeps telling me how cool my son is or how mental my son is, sometimes both.' The crowd at Genosys, Block9 'As a festival, Glastonbury never sold out to the man. The Eavis family have kept it independent, which means they're in charge of the way it feels and the way it looks, and people respect that. There's nothing corporate that interferes and dictates, you know, and it's not about making money. The music business, especially when money comes in, it distorts your creative ideas and the feel of it and it becomes a money-making machine. But the Eavis family never sold out. They don't do it for money. They do it because they love watching this going on on their farm every year.' Next up: Shangri-La Having his stage wristband put on before performing at Shangri-La, by his video director Bob 'I genuinely love this place so much. I feel proud if I'm promoting the Glastonbury brand, or just being part of the furniture or just wandering around saying hello to everyone. Michael Eavis can't get around so much any more, but I was always so impressed about the fact that he would just spend the whole festival wandering, saying hello to everyone.' Cook bids farewell to the festival for another year at Shangri-La
The Guardian
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I genuinely love this place so much!' Fatboy Slim's 100th Glastonbury set
Irreverent, bouncy and as suitable at 4am in a club as it is at 4pm in a field, the music of Fatboy Slim dovetails perfectly with Glastonbury. And the man himself, Norman Cook, seems to know it. This year's festival marked a big milestone: Cook has now played 100 Glasto sets – or thereabouts – over the years, popping up everywhere from vast stages to tiny tents. To document the occasion, Guardian photographer David Levene bedded in with the DJ for the weekend, while Cook explained why it holds such a special significance for him. Cook tries to find his daughter for Burning Spear at the Pyramid Stage Bumping into Chris Moyles, and right, having his photo taken with Charley and her son Remi, 7 months, from Somerset Cook checks out the scenes outside Lonely Hearts Club stage in Silver Hayes, where he's due to play that evening at 10.30pm Feeling it at his son Woody's DJ set at Scissors Bar Cook's dressing room at Lonely Hearts 'We're not doing a kind of 100th show extravaganza on the grounds that we don't actually really know which would be the 100th. It's not an exact science, it's a guesstimate. Thing is, I play so many shows, and so many of them are just like impromptu that we really don't know. So I think it'd be a bit much to really get the bells and whistles out. We think it's the Block9 show in the afternoon tomorrow – we think! But no candles, sadly. 'I'm very, very proud of my relationship with Glastonbury and my history with it and I'm lucky, because as a DJ, you can play multiple sets. Obviously, there's probably people who've been to more Glastonburys, but they've only played one show per festival – that's not going to get you into big high figures.' Fire it up! Fatboy Slim at Lonely Hearts Club 'My first Glasto show was on the Pyramid stage in 1986 with the Housemartins, and we didn't know anything really about Glastonbury or festivals. We'd never played in daylight before – we only ever played in clubs – and also we thought that Glastonbury was full of bearded hippies who would probably throw mud and bottles of piss out at us. So we went on quite nervous and quite agitated, but that was quite good in the Housemartins, channelling that aggression – we had the nice tunes, but there was a lot of aggression. We made an awful lot of friends, and it changed our view about Glastonbury. The only weird thing was me and Paul [Heaton] have both had fairly successful careers, but neither of us had managed to get back on the Pyramid stage for 38 years. Last year, Paul played the Pyramid stage and he phoned me up and said, 'Will you come on and do a song with us, just to celebrate?'' Fatboy Slim prepares before performing at Lonely Hearts Club stage Dropping bangers at Lonely Hearts Club, with Stella McCartney backstage 'My favourite Glastonbury moment was playing for [Rob da Bank's label] Sunday Best. I was four days in at that point, my mind had been expanded, altered and distorted, as was everybody's around me. So I decided if I played a record backwards, would people dance backwards? And it was a good theory. Obviously with CDJs, you can press reverse, but with the record, you have to physically rewind it. So I played Block Rockin' Beats, by the Chemical Brothers, pretty much at the right speed but backwards. And it worked. Everybody got the joke. It was just after Twin Peaks too, so everybody was like, dancing backwards to the music. What I forgot was that Ed from the Chemical Brothers was in the DJ booth with me, and he went, 'What are you doing?' I'm like, 'I want to see if they can dance backwards.' He's like, 'Oh, great!' That's probably the most out there I've ever been.' Fatboy Slim performs at Lonely Hearts Club stage at Silver Hayes 'I loved the Rabbit Hole. It was never the same [after it closed]. Absolutely anything could happen, and sometimes it did. I much prefer the smaller stages to the big ones, but having said that, when we did the Park the other year, that felt pretty much like the perfect gig. We brought Rita Ora on – I don't normally do showbiz-y things like that. It's probably my favourite set.' Another set, this time at the Genosys stage Tweaking the faders at Genosys 'My son Woody is playing here this year, and it's just fabulous. My daughter's here, my ex wife [Zoe Ball] is here. We're all hanging out. It's beautiful. Woody came to Glastonbury when he was about eight, and it didn't go well for him or for me and Zoe. But when he started coming under his own steam, it's weird, because we didn't teach him anything, he just assimilated himself into the fabric of it and made all these friends the first year he went. He was built for Glastonbury: he's just got that energy, he wants to talk to everybody, he wants to change the world. Everybody keeps telling me how cool my son is or how mental my son is, sometimes both.' The crowd at Genosys, Block9 'As a festival, Glastonbury never sold out to the man. The Eavis family have kept it independent, which means they're in charge of the way it feels and the way it looks, and people respect that. There's nothing corporate that interferes and dictates, you know, and it's not about making money. The music business, especially when money comes in, it distorts your creative ideas and the feel of it and it becomes a money-making machine. But the Eavis family never sold out. They don't do it for money. They do it because they love watching this going on on their farm every year.' Next up: Shangri-La Having his stage wristband put on before performing at Shangri-La, by his video engineer Bob 'I genuinely love this place so much. I feel proud if I'm promoting the Glastonbury brand, or just being part of the furniture or just wandering around saying hello to everyone. Michael Eavis can't get around so much any more, but I was always so impressed about the fact that he would just spend the whole festival wandering, saying hello to everyone.' Cook bids farewell to the festival for another year at Shangri-La
Daily Mail
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Brit DJ surprises Glastonbury crowd as he performs exclusive secret set with his son after playing his 100th show at the festival
A beloved English DJ performed a secret set with his son for an intimate crowd at Glastonbury over the weekend. Fatboy Slim - who played his 100th set at the epic festival just over the weekend - treated lucky fans to a vibrant B2B act. The music legend, 61 - whose real name Norman Cook - was joined by his son Woody, 24. An Instagram clip shared by the BBC Radio official account, captured the veteran dad doing his moves behind the deck while Woody bounced around a platform. The internet star - who the singer shares with Zoe Ball - beamed to the cheering crowd and waved his arms cheerfully. Meanwhile the British DJ celebrated a unique milestone after playing his 100th set at Glastonbury, continuing to stun crowds with his tunes. The electronic legend was seen taking on an energetic set at the Luna stage as he lifted his arms in the air inciting the masses. Earlier in May, Woody insisted he has 'sweated his way through the industry'. He said that while he has followed in his famous parents' footsteps and become a DJ, he still put in the work rather than relying on his parents too much. He told new! magazine: 'I definitely felt that way [pressure] at the beginning, but my parents have been really good at putting me out on my own and letting me do it myself. 'I've sweated my way through the industry, I think people started to see that.' Although the ' nepo baby ' name tag has been thrown around, Woody argued it doesn't bother him, and credited his parents' support for his success rather than their jobs. He explained: 'I don't mind. I can't tell you who I'd be without my parents. They gave me the best education ever from them. The electronic legend was seen taking on an energetic set at the Luna stage as he lifted his arms in the air inciting the masses 'They are the most generous, loving, kind, hard-working people on earth, and that's what they've given me. I feel like I owe it all to that.' Woody previously pointed out it's 'not his job to care' what people think about him or his family ties. He told Bang Showbiz: 'Throughout school I was bullied and stuff, sometimes at parties people would say 'Shut up Fatboy's son'. 'It's opened up more doors, people always remember me. 'I'm quite eclectic, I'm quite weird. I share DNA with my parents. I'm always gonna be a bit like them in the end. 'Genetically I'm mildly similar but it's not my job to care. 'I cater to the people who love my music, they f****** love it. My music speaks for itself and I do not have to prove it to anyone.'
