Transcripts - Forever Dreaming

A letter from our Norman...

Sceptics might say of

this informal gathering,

"Why the hell are you doing it again?

Last year was a one-off triumph."

Well, they have a point,

but the reason, of course,

is that I love to party, and the

party we had on the beach last year

was so much fun, so

beautiful and so right,

that it would be criminal

not to try doing it again.

No, I never

thought we made a mistake.

But we were a lot younger then,

and inexperienced, and naive.

And of course, they're like shields

really, because you don't realise

how precarious a situation is!

But that's quite nice,

because it means you go to the edge

and you go a little bit further.

And usually, it's at the edge

where good stuff happens.

# Right here, right now,

right here, right now...

In 2001, we get a phone call

from Channel 4 all about cricket.

They had just bought the franchise

to show Test cricket in England,

and they wanted to celebrate

that by playing it in parks

and outdoor venues throughout the

summer, to get people into the idea

of watching Test cricket

on Channel 4.

They were coming down to Brighton

to show one of the Test matches,

and they had a sound system for

the commentary and a big screen.

They just phoned me up and said,

"As Brighton's

representative of dance music,

"do you wanna DJ an afterparty, free,

"for the people of Brighton to

have a little dance on the beach?"

We lost the cricket on day two, so

no-one came and watched the cricket.

But an awful lot of people

came to the after party.

I think there

were 40,000 people there.

It just, this thing happened.

It was phenomenal.

My first thought

when we finished was,

we have to do this again next year.

We have to own this.

The sun

was shining and it was free.

And who doesn't like a party?

And who doesn't like

a party on a beach?

And who doesn't like a

party on Brighton beach,

with Norman Cook DJing?

I can't see...! It's a-no brainer.

It filtered

in over the years, Brighton.

I'd go down early on

when I'd left drama school,

and there's just something about it.

I don't know what it is.

There's some kind of calm.

It's beautiful.

But it's also got

that city edginess.

It's just a lovely vibe.

I think maybe because there's

loads of students, loads of

artists, loads of musicians,

and things like that.

I came here because of music,

I came here because of gigs.

I came here because

Brighton is beautiful.

Brighton started with the whole

thing of coming here for health.

You came to Brighton to drink the

waters, to bathe in the waters,

and then Prince Regent came

and gave the town a notoriety.

It's cabaret, it's burlesque,

occasionally, it's singalongs.

And the town's always done that.

Sometimes, being a resident in

Brighton, you hand over your town

to visitors, and you accept that.

You live here and you

embrace all of the elements

that the town has to offer.

We welcome those visitors, too.

We want them to enjoy themselves,

to indulge in their

legitimate pleasures,

however odd they may seem to us.

- Were there a lot of them?

- Yes, whole crowd.

You couldn't move, it was jammed,

about 200, I should think.

I went to lock the door

and they pushed me over!

They just left you lying

on the floor, did they?

NO, one of the rockers picked me up,

another rocker at another table.

He was very sweet.

I've been

in Brighton now 22 years.

I paint things on walls for people.

Yeah, this one here, the client

said they wanted something Brighton.

So, I thought, yeah,

what's more Brighton than

Fatboy Slim these days?

So, the connection

with Fatboy Slim goes way back

and a lot of the artists we

work with, as well as a lot of

the local people in Brighton,

have a connection with him.

He's a bit of a gallery favourite.

He has collaborated

with a few of our artists.

One such example would be

this Mark Vessey here,

and he actually approached us and

said, "I love Fatboy Slim's work

"and I want to do

a project with him,"

which culminated in this series.

So, this is actually

Norman Cook's own record collection.

There's a kind of

two-way love affair

between me and the city of Brighton.

But also there's a pride,

I am very proud of this city.

I think it is the

best city in the world.

There's something about its relaxed

attitude, its tolerant attitude,

and its eccentricity

that I just really love.

Brighton is here to be invaded,

for people to have fun.

Here at Brighton,

a seaside town not far from London,

is one of Britain's most

modern universities -

the University of Sussex.

I grew up in Surrey.

My sister went to university in

Brighton, and I used to come down

and stay with her and I just

thought, "This is the place,

"this is where I belong."

So when it came time

for me to go to college,

I just wanted to go to Brighton.

I didn't care what degree I did,

and stayed ever since.

This year, it's

very much The Housemartins

that have been in the news.

We were proud as punch

that they're back in the city today.

I'll be chatting with them

in a few moments time.

Could I help you?

# Hello, hello...

We're The Housemartins!

That's good...

I first got

involved with Norman

as I was the radio plugger

for The Housemartins.

Norman had a nascent,

alternative career as a DJ.

Obviously,

I didn't intend to be a DJ.

I always wanted to be in pop bands,

but I was a record collector.

If you're having a party and you

wanted the best records there,

you had to have somebody who had

a really good record collection.

So, I used to get invited to

parties by people I hardly knew,

just cos they knew I'd

bring my record collection.

But teenage parties

being how they were,

my records started getting covered

in vomit and cigarette butts.

And so, one time, this

girl invited me and said,

"Would you bring your records?"

And I'm like,

"Actually, I'm not to bring my

records, if that's all right?"

And she went, "Oh".

But then, she said,

"What if my dad hires these kind of

double decks, like a DJ console,

"and you're in charge of the records,

then would you bring your records?"

And it sounded like fun,

and something very,

very fundamental happened.

I really, really enjoyed controlling

the dancefloor and the music.

It triggered off a realisation

that my love of music

is heightened by sharing it

with other people.

I started thinking of it

more than just a hobby.

And it was around that time

when I was old enough to start

playing in licenced venues.

And so, mixing became a

really big thing for me -

to learn how to mix, to

afford to buy the turntables

that had varispeed on them

so you could mix.

And that was about the

time I moved to Brighton.

When I moved to Brighton,

they had bars and clubs

that had Technics 1200s. So, I

used to go and work in those places

for free, just so I could

practise on their decks,

and eventually bought my own.

What I'm gonna do,

grab that beat and go...

Finger on that, press down

on the fader. It's easy!

Picture of concentration,

know what I mean?

I'm sorry, Norman.Rubbish!I'll

leave it to the professionals.

When I was in The

Housemartins in the late '80s

and playing white indie pop,

but all the time, that wasn't

the kind of music that I dug.

But then, they invented the

sampler and the drum machine.

All of a sudden, white dudes

like me could make this music

without having to

pretend to be black.

And that just unleashed

a whole new career for me,

and that kind of ended my

relationship with The Housemartins

and that kind of music.

I can't do that any more.

And so, I moved back to

Brighton and went back into DJing.

DJ culture and club culture

was just absolutely exploding.

It had been in this sort of ghetto,

where you had to be over 18

before you ever heard these records,

and you had to go to the cool clubs

to hear the cool records.

But then things started

happening, I think,

when house records started

getting on Top of the Pops.

Kids started hearing them and

they go, "What are these records?

"Where can I hear them?"

A lot of people

were like, "What's happening?

"What's going on? These parties

I can hear that start at 2 o'clock,

"and finish at 8 o'clock in

the morning. Where are they?

"Who are the DJs that

are playing this music?"

All this wonder, which was

making it really exciting.

When I was 16,

we were all going to like Telepathy

and Sunrise and Raindance.

There wasn't hard house

necessarily in the beginning.

It was stuff that came over

from Detroit and Chicago,

and then it started to

get a London feel to it.

And then, Chime by Orbital.

That's what kind of got me

in the back of my mate

Matthew Miller's car,

driving to f*cking Basildon

to meet some dodgy bloke!

Or driving for two hours to

score, like, an eighth of hash...

Like, what?!

Honest to God, it was

just f*cking terrifying,

and frightening, but

exhilarating, and exciting.

Seeing the weirdest f*cking people.

"What the f*ck is this?

Where are we?"

I think the reason

it was such a big culture

at the time, clubbing, let's not

beat around the bush about it.

I think a lot of it

is to do with ecstasy...

I think! I think. And so,

that just changed everything.

It changed football v*olence,

that stopped overnight.

It was the end of the '80s,

everything just changed.

It was suddenly,

this culture of love.

It was just happy times.

It was

the best years of my life.

Even now, there's friends

who I've met raving

who are some of my best friends.

Lots of the big gigs we'd go to,

we'd drive for miles.

I went to a weekender

called Kamikaze Do Or Die.

Quite a few free parties,

you'd just drive along and wait

to find out where

you're going to be going.

You meet up with a few people. There

would be people that you would see

at certain gigs and you'd

just go up and be chatting,

and having a really amazing time.

There was never any grief.

You'd just go there and

literally dance all night.

For five years straight,

I was doing maybe two parties

on a Thursday, two or

three parties on a Friday,

two or three parties on a Saturday,

two parties on a Sunday,

and possibly one party

on a Monday, for five years!

In my car, going up and

down as far as Cornwall,

and as far up as Scotland.

Party, party, party, party, party,

party, party, party, party, party!

Back to Brighton, back out again.

I was like this, shh! Whirlwind,

working my arse off the whole time.

Around that time, my main

job was the band Freak Power.

Like, a traditional line-up band.

And it just became more

and more apparent to me

that nobody really

wanted to see bands any more.

I'd have 10, 12 of us

on the road with Freak Power,

and X amount of people would come.

And if I didn't bring the band

and I just played records,

10 times more people would

come, and there was only me

and a tour manager I had to pay!

So, it became very apparent

that more people wanted to see me DJ

than play bass.

We were having our time, I think.

But the problem was the government

were not happy with the way,

how things were being run,

they wasn't able to control

this society and what was happening.

So, they made up the Criminal

Justice Bill, and basically,

they were saying if you had

five people dancing around a car

with repetitive beats,

you're going to jail!

And the promoters was also the same.

If you're putting on a party

in this way, you're going to jail,

unless you did the events properly.

Licensed events, contracts

for the artists and DJs.

The rave scene as a

whole did get quashed,

but it then re-emerged

into super clubs.

And then, we had the

rise of the superstar DJs.

Norman quietly

became Fatboy Slim,

and then it started

to become something.

This might sound strange, but

I really can't put a date on it.

It was just some time in the past,

but it was an exciting time.

To see Norman DJing

was quite a thing.

It was quite an

unbelievable thing.

It was

a very exciting time.

The Tory government had gone.

Blair was in, and it was...

Yeah, we can do anything.

And I think the industry

was very much like that.

"We can do anything".

Records were selling.

Gigs were kind of selling.

Festivals were getting bigger.

You'd go to work, go to a gig,

you'd go to the after show,

you'd go to bed, you'd go

back to work the next day.

And it was a really exciting time.

I just remember it being

a really, really fertile time,

as well, for creativity.

Spaced was our way of writing

what it was like to be

a 20-something in London

at the turn of the century,

and all the kind of stuff

that we felt was never represented,

like casual dope smoking

or going clubbing, or whatever.

I felt like I really wanted

to write an episode of the show

that reflected the true

experience of going clubbing.

Brighton has always been

a good place to come and party.

There was amazing

clubs down in the arches,

and that was something that Brighton

had in such close proximity as well.

This is Fatboy Slim.

You're at the Big Beat Boutique.

I'm one of the resident DJs

and apparently,

we are the underground

club of the year.

What was going

on at the Boutique was something

he was very much doing naturally

as his own Friday night out.

There was another Gareth

around at that point,

who was running the Boutique,

a local promoter,

and those two cooked

this whole thing up.

Really, what he was doing

musically was mashing stuff up

that nobody else was

even contemplating,

and creating this atmosphere where

people could absolutely freak out.

When I went there,

it was dazzling carnage.

By now, what I'm doing is

just mixing the hooks from pop music,

the anarchic spirit from punk,

the breakbeats from hip-hop

and the acid energy from house music.

And that became what

became known as big beat.

What he did was put UK dance

music on the map in the late '90s,

and exported it to the world.

And it was fun,

energetic, exciting.

And that's what connected

with me as a 14-year-old,

to get into dance music.

Norman put out

Better Living Through Chemistry,

which just had that natural

organic connectivity.

It had a fanbase who were turning up

every Friday to dance along to it.

The big challenge of any new artist

is usually the second album.

But that

first album was a cool record

that tastemakers liked.

It hadn't crossed over in the way

that everything after that did.

Everything basically changed

with Rockafeller Skank.

# Right about now,

the funk soul brother

# Check it out now,

the funk soul brother...

# Right about now,

the funk soul brother

# Check it out now,

the funk soul brother! #

The previous two or

three years of the club,

meeting the Chems and all my other

friends who are doing similar things.

It was all coming into this,

I know what I'm doing here.

And so, the second album

came out really easily.

It was just kind of bottling what

we'd been doing for three years,

and distilling it, and then

opening it with one big pop.

# Right about now,

the funk soul brother...

If you turned on Radio 1

you could hear Norman.

But then, if you turn on commercial

radio, you could hear his songs

being used for adverts as well.

The publishers used to send us faxes

back then, and then we

slowly got onto emails,

where they would ask for permission

for a certain song to be used.

So, the artist had to

kind of give permission.

I remember one time, one came

through and I had to phone Norman.

I said, "Norman, we just

had a sync request through."

And he said, "What's it for?"

I said, "It's for Friends."

And there's a scene in Friends

where Ross is having a party

and you hear Rockafeller Skank.

# Right about now,

the funk soul brother...

We have got to get

out of this business!

We are no good at it,

it does not agree with us.

It was a particular moment

where we were sitting there,

getting daily sales figures.

I remember one day, by lunchtime,

we'd done 35,000 albums.

Most of the projects we were

working on didn't do that

in the whole lifecycle of

the album. So, to do that

in one morning was...

It was quite intoxicating.

You've Come A Long Way Baby

went to No.1.

And that led to the idea that

a DJ could be more than just a DJ,

and you could sell hard tickets,

as we now call it.

So, he was culturally very visible.

He was dating Zoe Ball, so

there was the tabloid interest.

He was basically the world's most

famous and possibly ubiquitous DJ.

When a band breaks, they

transition from pubs to clubs,

to theatres, to

concert halls to arenas.

DJs had never done that.

They'd never done that before.

And the opportunity came

for us to start climbing up

that ladder of progression.

I had a

history in big shows for bands.

I heard a record on the radio

in Los Angeles, Rockafeller Skank,

and I called a guy in London,

David Levy, who's Norman's agent,

unbeknownst to me, and he said,

"Well, he's a DJ and

they play in clubs".

And I said, "Well, one day, maybe

if he plays bigger than clubs,

"I'd really like to be involved".

And it took about six months.

The next thing you know,

we're playing two nights

at Brixton Academy with

Armand Van Helden, which was really

the first big venue gig

for a DJ in the UK.

From Brighton, England.

Right here, right now, Fatboy Slim!

This is where it's

great working with Norman,

he's always up for

trying something different.

We built a boxing ring that rotated

and we set it up as a boxing match.

So, it's Norman versus

Armand Van Helden.

We sold it out, it was amazing.

Norman was very conscious

within the experience of a show

that with a lot of DJs, with all

due respect, it was a bit like

going to see someone

do the washing up.

And we went for lights and

sound and video screens.

To fill those big spaces, you

have to overegg the pudding,

and that's how it escalated.

Red Rocks seats about 8,000,

9,000, and it's gonna sell out.

It's gonna be packed.

I think this techno scene

is more popular than

anybody gives it credit for.

I think it's gonna go

till the city shuts it down.

The shows

got bigger and bigger,

then more production came onboard.

So we got a production team onboard,

the visuals got bigger and

we're doing shows in Europe.

We did snowboarding up on

a mountain, a mountain show.

We've done Red Rocks,

that was like a massive show.

In the summer

of 2001, we had a large number

of really good events in the city.

And one of those was

Channel 4 on the beach, it was

the summer tour for the cricket.

So, it was beautiful.

It was four days of cricket.

The Ashes being shown on Brighton

beach, just near the West Pier.

It was very

much a Brighton thing.

It was very family-oriented.

And then, there was this offer

for Norman to play on the stage

that was already built there.

And I think the numbers

were like 40,000 people.

Everybody came out.

Kids and old people,

just united around our

love of Brighton and music.

It was mainly local people.

The council absolutely loved it

and said, "This is what Brighton's

"all about, doing things

like this". The police loved it,

because they thought it was hilarious

and everyone was really well behaved.

All the local traders loved it

because people spent tonnes of money.

But I do remember, when

I came off-stage so elated,

I just hugged my manager and said,

"My God, it just

doesn't get any better.

"How can we ever top this?"

Careful what you wish for, kids.

# A's for the anchor

that swings at our bow

# B for the bowsprit

through the wild seas do plough

# C for the capstan

we merrily around

# D are the davits

we lower our boats down

# Sing high, sing low,

wherever you go

# Give a sailor his tot and

there's nothing goes wrong. #

Brighton is a

seaside town; it had recently become

a city at that time.

It's a vibrant, colourful place.

From a policing point of view,

anything that you might expect

the police to become involved

with across the country

would happen in Brighton & Hove.

It's a good place to

be involved in policing,

because there's a lot going on.

I think

Brighton was unique at the time.

Post-millennium, there was a lot

of investment from the council

into events, so it was

a really creative city.

I was the assistant events officer

at Brighton & Hove City

Council from 2001 to 2004.

We had a really vibrant

art scene and culture scene.

Loads and loads of DJs,

loads of different club nights.

It wasn't a mainstream city.

We used to have

very regular meetings

with the council's

events planning team.

They used to give us a list of

the events that were coming up,

but sometimes, events would

come up at short notice.

And I can't remember exactly

when I first heard about the event.

That was possibly a couple

of months beforehand.

There was whisperings

that it was going to happen again,

and then you heard it

publicly announced.

So there was a buzz, there

was excitement around it.

But I'm sure there was also

some doubts as to whether

it should be happening.

At the time, there was

a Seafront Traders Association,

where all the shop owners

and bar owners would get together

maybe two or three times a year,

have a discussion about what

should and shouldn't happen

on the seafront. And I remember

some rumblings about the effects

it might have on the town.

The relationship with

the local council was pretty good.

These people universally

loved their city.

They understood it

represented a different ethos

from perhaps other

parts of the country.

It had gone so well in 2001,

that everyone was behind it -

the police, the council,

and the emergency services.

It was very different in 2001 and

2002 to how it is now, 20 years on.

There were... Whilst Brighton & Hove

Council had a really good example

of multi-agency planning, I don't

think the people working on it

were necessarily as

experienced of major events

as people necessarily are now.

So, not always knowing

what we were looking out for.

So during those planning meetings,

we'd often discuss things

like medical provision,

security provision, making sure

that we had the

correct numbers in place.

We were estimating 60,000

people were going to come

and we were planning for 80,000.

The first

multi-agency meeting for this event

was on either the 30th

or the 31st of May that year.

So, it was only a

few weeks before the event.

That already started alarm bells

ringing not just with myself,

but with people

from health and safety

and the council and various others.

This was a large event.

It was going to be on the beach.

Therefore, there was work to

be done and time was short.

We wanted it to be a

free event because you can't expect

people to pay on a beach.

As E4, or Channel 4,

had paid for it previously, we had

no concept of what it would cost

to put on an event for effectively

60,000 people on a beach. Um..

It was quite a lot!

So, this is what it's going to be.

We had to put book police,

we had to book security...

Oh! Stewards, toilets,

sound arrays, crowd control,

merchandise.

So, we all sat down, tried to work

out how we were going to pay for it.

Norman's quite popular

in America, isn't he?

So, Garry spoke to

his live agent and said,

"Norman is willing

to do a corporate gig."

Not the sort of thing he does.

"What can we get for it?"

And he managed to get a gig,

and it was approximately,

like, half a million dollars.

And the money for that

gig was going to pay for

all the infrastructure that

we needed to be able to put on

a show for free in Brighton.

So he flew out, did the gig.

I remember the

feedback at the time...

I think there might have been 150

people there at this corporate gig.

It was dead.

I mean, it's a corporate gig.

A massive DJ playing

for people in suits.

It has been a journey in 2002.

This is a general

synopsis of what's going on.

Show down in Seoul,

England v Sweden...

Building up to that show

was just like any other show.

It's in the cycle of gigs

that we were doing.

It was just another show.

Before Norman did

the show in Brighton,

he was gallivanting around Japan

as the official DJ for

England at the World Cup.

So, leading up to it was

a really, really busy time.

No gig today, so we can

have a wander around.

And right now, we're off to Adidas to

go and meet David Beckham's boots.

Joy! Joy!

OK...

If you ask anyone who was

the biggest DJ or

dance music producer,

you would I reckon nine times out

of 10, people would say Fatboy Slim.

Fatboy Slim.

Fatboy Slim.

What?

What Norman did, he laid the

foundations for stadium dance music.

It was proving that a DJ

could sell out a venue

rather than, say, a rock act.

That was an important thing.

I really like this idea that you

could have a job in dance music.

It could be serious, you can

take your career seriously,

but you didn't have to

take yourself too seriously.

The USP was, let's be

serious about our fun.

In the last

multi-agency planning meeting

in the run-up to the event,

I realised from the network

that I was plugged into, in terms

of the clubbing and dance scene

in Brighton, that we were

getting an awful lot of coverage.

So, I kind of tentatively

raised my hand and I said,

"Look, I think we're going to

have a lot more people coming

"than we're planning for,

because it's getting

"a huge amount of coverage".

And I just so clearly remember

a senior council officer

turning to me and saying,

"Don't be silly, Becky. This

isn't The Beatles. It's just a DJ."

T4 was the show that

talked about the music.

We were the ones that gave our

opinions and we rode that wave.

If the NME was talking about it,

we would talk about it.

So, Norman and that kind of music

was always on our playlist.

And then it was like, "Oh, we're

going to do Big Beach Boutique.

"Do you fancy it?" Yeah! Two-footed

challenge into that, please.

We'd hired all the

front suites of The Grand

for family, friends, DJs. We

drove up on the Friday morning,

so parked the car,

went up to see the room,

had a heart attack because of

course, I organised the rooms.

And oh, my God, the view!

We'd hired a room so

that my parents and my son Woody,

who would have been one,

had somewhere safe to watch.

This is probably just about

the best view of Brighton,

but one that locals

seldom get to see.

Everything was all in place.

So, we went out for dinner

with Garry and family,

as far as I remember.

Then we went over to Norman's

house and Zoe's in Hove.

First time I'd actually

properly met him.

We're all in there, it got to

about midnight and he said,

"Oh, everyone, I want to play

the song that I've remixed

"for the end song."

There's just something a lot more,

like, hands in the air, beautiful.

'I'd done a version of Pure Shores,

which we got pressed up

'on an acetate, which

cost me like 80 quid,

'so I was definitely

going to play that.'

Probably edit their version

down, because it's a bit long.

There's too many gaps in the middle.

Edit it down, and then

just overlay that...

Overlay that all over it.

So definitely, it

needs a bit more thump.

So, I've got it going now at 100 BPM.

I get out the 100 BPM disc,

and then we just got

a whole load of different beats.

You could just end up like that.

Just start with the drum beat

and slowly bring it in.

Yeah, that's doable.

I remember going

to bed on the Friday night,

really in a state of high anxiety,

praying enough people would come.

Because we'd risked

a lot to set this up,

on the assumption it would be bigger

than the previous year in 2001.

And of course, the next

morning was a beautiful day.

But you never know it's going

to work until it's happening.

Sunrise or sunset, you ask me.

As you get pebble

dust between your toes.

I don't know. Both, I lie.

I have never been an early riser.

To let my body wake with

the dawn would be a betrayal

of the dreams that hold me down

until at least 10am.

The sunset is deeper.

The last showdown of sky.

Clint Eastwood firing the

last round from a revolver

before the credits roll.

A wrap party, a swan song.

Do you feel lucky?

I'll never forget it.

I opened the window,

looked outside, and I turned around

to my wife and I said, "f*ck.

"f*ck!" She said, "What's wrong?"

I went, "There's no cloud in

the sky, and there's 30,000 people

"on the beach,

and it's not 9 o'clock".

Come on!

The weekend has landed.

Just, it was just party time.

It was just party time!

Car full of people.

Loads of tunes, windows down.

Banging, weather was great.

Off we went.

Our friends had

been to the first Big Beach.

Some of them turned around to us

saying, "Oh, he's doing another one.

"Do you wanna come

along?" Yeah, why not?

Yeah! We'll see what this is about.

Got nothing else to do.

What's the worst that can happen?

Exactly. So we ended up

tagging along with them,

and heading over to Brighton.

Neither Nick or I

had a car, so we borrowed

this knackered old Ford Sierra

to get down to Brighton!

I don't even know if we were

supposed to drive it, really.

I mean, I'm pretty sure we sorted

out the insurance, etcetera...

I got a call from my wife

at about half 10, 11 o'clock.

She was driving down and she rang to

say that there must be some accident

on the M23, because

there was a traffic jam.

So I said, "Look,

don't worry Gill, just go.

"We know the back roads, just

come off and go the back roads".

Anyway, I got on with

preparing the show,

not realising that the traffic jam

was people coming to the show.

The closer we got, the more people

we could see that were going

and we were passing people

on the motorway and waving.

And there was a lot of music

coming out of different cars.

There's a lot of, "Oi! Oi!"

There was a lot of that.

All ready for our weekend.

I woke up in the morning,

getting all this stuff together

and for some reason, I just

thought I'd do a pregnancy test.

And the pregnancy

test was positive.

I phoned my mom and she's like,

"You're meant to be going out

"this weekend, you're going to

have to change your plans!"

I was like, "Yeah, shit! Yeah,

I'm meant to be going out."

So, that was a massive,

amazing, amazing find,

because I would have

been drinking alcohol.

So, I had to make

sure I didn't do that.

I'd just

started working at Mixmag.

So, this was like the first month

that I was literally in the office,

and left uni about

a month before that.

So, I've moved from Bournemouth

up to London for my big new job

and I got sent down to Brighton

to cover the beach party.

I got the train down on my own from

London to meet my mates in Brighton.

It was me,

my boyfriend at the time Sam,

my best friend there Louise,

and maybe three other folks.

And we're on the train.

And it just felt like this

giant party on the train.

You felt like you were

making friends immediately.

Everybody's sharing their food

and their drinks, and other things.

Lots of music going on the train,

people are dancing on the train,

just riding high, huge

expectation for the day.

It felt like Southern Railway

had got every train in the UK

to just pick people up wherever they

were and drop them off in Brighton.

Honest, I think we did

a couple of links for T4

outside Brighton Station,

and we just couldn't move

for people coming at us. Not

going that way towards the station,

just coming off.

It was insane.

We all lived a

little bit outside of Brighton.

So on the day of the party,

we had no idea how big it was.

So, I drove my car

with four of my mates.

Basically, there was queues

going all along the Downs,

and we couldn't get through,

there was traffic.

It was like, "f*ck this."

We drove on the other side

of the road, all the way through!

I was like, "f*ck it, no cars

are coming the other way.

"We've got to get there.

We have to get there."

We got there early

enough to where we could find

everything we needed.

We actually got food.

We had sunscreen,

we had enough water,

and we just chilled on the beach.

But quickly, that changed.

Within the course of an hour

or two of us arriving there

in the late afternoon, it's like,

"Oh, shit, I'm having trouble

moving through the street.

"We're going to have

to hunt for a bathroom."

There was so

much f*cking traffic.

There was nowhere to park.

And then we went right up

toward Hove, just

keeping on driving.

But everywhere was

just f*cking cars,

like abandoned cars everywhere.

People had just parked

anywhere they could.

We just thought, "f*ck it,

let's just get a ticket!"

So, I think we just left it.

We abandoned it!

We might as well have

just torched it there,

although we needed it to get back.

But we put it on a kerb,

got out of the car and

headed down to the beach.

I remember

getting a call from a friend

who was driving down

from London, saying,

"Becky, you need to shut the road,

you need to shut Brighton.

"We're in a traffic jam. It's going

all the way back past Gatwick,

"and it's crazy".

I was like, "Yeah, I'm not

sure I've got that authority,

"but I'll pass that on!"

I remember arriving into

Brighton and just thinking, wow!

It's like the whole city

had been closed down.

Everybody was hiding in their

houses and it was just a huge rave.

So, it was quite

mind blowing, actually.

It was quite a sight to behold.

# The weekend starts here. #

Lots of police

officers in Brighton & Hove,

as I did, didn't live

in the city at the time,

and we had to travel

into the city.

We were all told to come in

at 4 o'clock for a briefing

by the command team.

Straight away, it was apparent

just driving into the city,

that the estimates of 50,000 people

were going, were not right.

This is not the day we planned for.

It's gone wrong.

Right, you're happy?

Yeah, more than happy.

'During the day, we'd

done some vox pops,

which is the voice of the people.

With vox pops, you always try and be

quite cheeky or irreverent,

and just ask stupid questions.

I've got some very tedious Fatboy

Slim questions to ask you now.

OK. What's Norman Cook's...?

Might want to do that again.

What's Norman Cook's real name?

'The beachfront was packed

and everyone was up for it.

'Everyone just couldn't wait,

because they all knew the music

and there was a huge air of

anticipation for him just dropping,

"Check it out now,

the funk soul brother!"

Yes! I'm checking it out

on the beach!

It was just nuts.

There was a real energy,

a real momentum for people

to have a good time.

And I won't lie.

There was a couple of points

when we were recording

and you get the odd idiot

jump in and grab the mic.

And I'm thinking,

there's a possibility

this could get out of hand.

People just kept

coming and coming and coming.

And things started to

already get quite tense

and stressful down there.

People couldn't get to the toilets.

People couldn't move. The

beach was really, really full

directly in front of the stage,

and it narrows slightly in places.

So, people were

spreading to the east,

but lots of people

were coming from the west

or still coming off the trains from

London and coming straight down,

directly into the main

footprint of the event site.

We were late, as per

usual, I'm always running late.

And it was just mayhem.

But I didn't think it in a

bad way. I really liked it,

I really enjoyed how it felt.

I really loved that

kind of like excitement.

There was an edge, but

it didn't feel dangerous.

We got to the bottom of West Street

just by where the cinema is,

and it was just rammed.

It was chocka all the

way down to the seafront.

There was no way that we

could've got onto the beach.

It was so

packed when we got down there.

Trying to find someone,

and this is pre-smartphones,

you couldn't drop a pin back then.

This was literally me being

on the beach, counting how many

windows across on one of the hotels

I was to say, "Look, I'm six windows

across on the blue building,

"underneath the stones."

I think a lot of people were

doing that around me as well.

So, it was quite a well-trodden

path to not finding your mates.

I had friends

living down here at the time.

So I was looking for them, and of

course, no chance of finding them.

So, we just found a little spot

going down towards the West Pier,

and that was it.

Got ourselves settled,

a few beers, ready for the evening.

When I first arrived in this room,

I was looking out going,

"This is brilliant,

there's so many people!"

And then it went from, it's so many

people to there's SO many people.

And then, the first...

Every hour, I'd be chatting

to people and they're like,

"There's so many people."

15? Right, cool.

'I remember, I was waiting

and him walking in.

'And he looked really agitated,

'Which made me a little nervous

because I'd only been doing telly

'for maybe two or three years.

We both turned around

at the same time,

and I said something along the

lines of, "Wow, look at this."

And we're both kind of like...

We are going to dance tonight.

It's Mr Norman, Fatboy Slim, Cook!

Good evening.

How are you doing, Norman?

I actually feel am scared.Can I just

say, look at what you've created!

I know, it's a monster

that's gone out of control.

I remember

absolutely sh1tting myself

walking out of the briefing.

The briefing was in a small cafe

in arches on the bottom

of the seafront,

and I basically had to fight my way

through to get into the briefing.

On the briefing on the way out

they basically went,

"Right, you're on this point.

Get to it."

Pretty much having to fight

my way through the crowd

to get to the point. And

that was four-and-a-half hours

before the gig was

even due to start.

So I knew at that point,

it was going to be massive.

And it was the first

big gig I'd worked at,

so for me, it was a

real baptism by fire.

We were probably deployed

out into the city in the event area

some time around 6pm.

Almost immediately, our

team's officers were lost.

You couldn't see anyone.

It was difficult to get

hold of people on the radio.

I realised and I spoke to

my sergeants and made sure

they understood that regardless of

the orders we've been given earlier,

it was now about keeping people

safe and keeping ourselves safe.

They had loads of stewards

positioned on the high tide line

of the beach to stop people

going beyond that point,

because we knew the

tide was due to come in.

And I understand that around up to

80 stewards resigned on the spot

who were supposed to be

maintaining the high tide mark.

And I remember control going,

"Where are all the stewards?"

And asking me, "Where have the

stewards gone?" And I'm going,

"I don't know," because he was

asking me to look and spot them,

and I had a bird's eye view and

I couldn't see a single steward

- on the high tide mark.

- We went and stood on

the groyne with Kevin Claxton, who

was the bronze police officer.

And I remember us

looking down the beach

and it was absolutely

full of people.

And we looked at each

other and we were like,

"What are we going to do?"

We had a sort of emergency

meeting with the chief of police,

who was considering

cancelling the event.

Norman was very concerned

about anyone being hurt

or anything going wrong.

He was very conscious of that.

But we were also thinking,

we've spent our whole lives

building up to this moment.

We can't not deliver.

I could see from the

police's faces, they're like,

we are overwhelmed here.

So, I was like, OK.

I've prepared myself mentally that

it's going to be snatched away!

I think they took me into one of

the porta-cabins and they sat me down

and said, "Right, we're going to go

ahead with it, but only..."

And I said, "Only cos it's

more dangerous not to do it?"

Because you've got

all those people there,

and they've all been drinking

all day, and they're happy!

And if you shut the place down,

they'll be unhappy

and it could be ugly.

And they said, "Yeah".

This is a

public safety announcement.

We're sorry to disrupt

your enjoyment of the evening,

but we are endangering the lives

of people at the top of the groyne.

I remember there were

announcements, something like,

"Please relieve the groyne," which

if you don't know what a groyne is,

it's like a thing that

separates the sand on the beach,

everyone's looking at

each other like, "What?"

"Who's groin are

we relieving again?"

..of the police

and the stewards,

and start to pull away

from that groyne area.

We were trying to

stop people getting backstage,

and so we were stood on this

slippery, green, covered-in-seaweed

groyne as the tide went out.

All along the beach, there were

people urinating in the sea,

mostly men, but not all.

And then a yard in front of them,

there were people

swimming in the sea.

And you just think,

"This can't be going on.

"It's not real.

It can't be happening."

They had to get

police in to stand on the groyne

to stop people getting

to the edge and falling off.

And they put on riot gear for

their own safety and protection.

And I was reporting through

things that were going on.

Then suddenly, I turned around

and they'd all disappeared.

I remember going through to control,

"Where have the riot police gone?

"What's happened?" And after a bit

of going on different frequencies,

he came back and said,

apparently they've been told

to withdraw for their own safety.

I'm having

one of them Ibiza moments.

The sun's setting behind us,

everyone's enjoying the atmosphere,

and I've bumped into John Simm,

star of Human Traffic.

Are we having it

large, John, or what?

We're having it big stylee, aren't

we?Oh, yes. Or what, aren't we?

Or what? What do you think of

the whole event and the whole

atmosphere at the moment? it's

pretty mad, innit?Unbelievable.

I've never seen so many

people in my life, folks.

Unbelievable! There's

more people than pebbles.

And what's happening is that

I've not seen any v*olence

and no trouble.

Everyone is up for it

and everyone's here for the music.

That's how it should be. Absolutely.

I have no recollection

of that whatsoever!

This is a

public safety announcement.

The gentlemen climbing lampposts

must return to the ground.

The show will stop

until all the people...

I read various riot acts

about what I could or couldn't do.

And if they told me to switch

off the music, they said,

"You don't argue with us,

you just switch off the music."

Which is not the best

frame of mind to be in!

I sat with

Norman a little bit and we knew

everything was ready to go.

When he wanted to play,

we could go over

the street and play.

I came to the hotel,

I took Norman's record bag.

Norman and the record bags

stayed apart from each other

absolutely the minimal amount

of time. So I came to the hotel,

did one trip with the records,

and then came back.

The walking over the street

came later, because ultimately,

we were like, "How the hell are we

going to get from here to there?"

And it was decided that

the element of surprise

is what would get us

across the road.

But as soon as we walked down

the steps of the hotel,

it was just a mob!

And it took us 15 minutes

to get to the backstage,

which is a two-minute walk.

Looking back, I don't

remember much about the actual gig.

I must have been

completely on autopilot.

But it wasn't the most relaxed

I'd been, because I was aware

that we were potentially,

if anything went wrong,

we could be in a lot

of trouble, safety-wise.

But what I do remember is just

feeding off the energy of the crowd.

Fatboy Slim! Fatboy Slim!

There's one shot where you can see

I'm just looking at the stage,

looking around, and you can

see like the muscles in my neck,

and my cheek twitching

with the stress of it all.

Then, you suddenly see my eyes

light up as I see a friendly face.

This old friend of mine called Al,

and I just go and give him a big kiss

and everything's alright again.

People screaming and

whooping and hollering,

the odd cheeky comment,

which you give a bit of banter,

which is all good fun.

And I just remember thinking,

I can't wait for this to start.

Atmosphere was electric.

It was buzzing.

I don't think I've ever experienced

something like that at all.

It was just, "f*ck,

we're going to do this.

"We're going to do it."

I remember

getting our spot on the beach.

And there'd been a buzz

with anticipation as well,

because being 19 and

not really venturing

too far out of our

comfort zone as well.

Really, I think it was the

first gig we'd really gone to.

And Rich had made a flag.

I'm pretty sure he unveiled it

when we got down there.

Said, "I've just brought this."

He just unveiled this Union Jack

with "Normstock II" written on it.

Tim Deluxe It Just Won't Do

was the song of the

summer at that point.

And for him to open with

that was just like,

"OK, he's not f*cking around here.

This is just going to be a party."

# My eyes, they can look see

# Other guys, that are cuter

# And my ears, they can look hear

# My friends say I should walk away

# But my heart, it won't do, babe

# It won't do, without you

# My doggone heart,

it won't do, babe

# It just won't do without you

# My knees, they don't go weak

# They don't go giddy-up

When you don't call me

# And my head

It doesn't spin

# So don't try me,

with your sweet nothings

# But my heart, it won't do, babe

# It won't do, without you

# My doggone heart,

it won't do, babe

# It just won't do, without you...

I remember just being

caught up in it all a lot,

and trying to enjoy myself

as well as trying to remember

what was happening. This was a

very important moment, and I had

a very important job to do

to try and capture it all,

and remember it all.

# My mind is buggin' out

When you think you're it

# See me run, lickety-split

And my toes, watch them curl

# So don't call me babe,

cos I ain't your little girl

# But my heart, it won't do, babe

# It won't do, without you

# My doggone heart,

it won't do, babe

# It just won't do, without you

# La, la, la, la, la

La, la, la, la, la... #

The toilets that

we had on the Kings Road,

they had people in front of them.

It was probably about 10, 20 deep.

And I saw, there was a guy

dancing on top of the toilet.

One of the

senior council officers said,

"Oh, you need to tell him to

get down!" And at that point,

he just dropped into the loo!

And they said to me, "You

need to go and get him out."

I was like, "That's not happening!"

So, I think that man must've

spent the whole gig in the toilet,

because there was no way

those 20 people in front

were going to get out the way.

We had a boat donated

by a guy called Jack Stewart,

and it was a lovely big fishing boat

and it was put out on the beach.

And he rang me at about

6 or 7 o'clock, saying,

"You've got to get down here and do

something to protect this boat".

I was at the far end of town. There

was billions of people in the way.

I couldn't possibly have got there.

And I spoke to him the next day,

and he said he'd spent

the whole night on the boat

trying to encourage

people not to get on it.

But of course, everyone

was trying to get a view.

And sadly, it did get,

sort of, smashed to bits.

It got really stressful.

There were people who had obviously

consumed lots of alcohol and dr*gs,

and they were not in a good way.

It was relentless. The medics,

there was nothing they could do

and there were just people

coming at them all the time saying,

"Help me, help me!"

And we had nowhere to put them,

because our medics tent had

basically been taken over.

It felt like something

really special was happening.

My friend got punched,

because some guy was like,

"Oi, which way you going?" And

he was like, "Calm it, mate".

The he got punched.

He was like, "All right."

# Oh, I'm wicked and I'm lazy

# Oh, oh, don't you

want to save me? #

To watch a

bloke commanding, like that...

It was monumental.

We couldn't even get...

I was like, a thousand

people at least back.

You couldn't get anywhere near it.

At one point, we

nearly lost the sound desk

because just the weight of people

meant the Heras fencing broke down,

and the people on the sound

desk were coming up to me,

because there were just people

dancing right next to it,

going, "Get them away!" Because

if the sound goes down,

that's it, the gig's over. And I

was frantically radioing through

going, "I need security here,

I need security here.

"We're going to lose

the sound desk".

And control going, "I'm

completely sympathetic to you,

"but we can't get in through the

crowd. The crowd is just too big".

I had quite

a low waist pair of trousers on,

as my G-string...

Popped out the back,

and Graham's brother Neil

lent over and did a little ping!

So I turned around and went,

"Oi, cheeky!" And that was it.

We just started talking.

I'm a shy person

and Karen is very easy to talk to.

And yeah, I was pretty much

grabbed from the start really.

I didn't come down with

very high hopes for the day,

and then I found myself

having this fantastic experience.

Oh. It was magical.

That's all I can say.

And some of the setlist he played,

he plays It Just Won't Do.

He plays 77 Strings, Sexiest

Man in Jamaica, Mint Royale.

But then, he plays Camisra.

Defining moment in

that set for Nick and I

was that he played Camisra,

Let Me Show You.

And that was the track

we used in Spaced.

We and Nick, "We love

this" blah, blah, blah,

and we started jumping up and down

and dancing, and whoever was with us

turned and said,

"He's playing this for you".

I mean, Nick and I couldn't have

been more wreathed in giant smiles.

It was this perfect night.

And everything was perfect,

the vibe and the music.

And then, the superstar DJ on

the stage was playing a track

just for me and Nick

as we were there.

It just doesn't get

much better than that.

Wow, it was amazing.

We were just f*cking thrilled.

And then, that kicked off

just the best night, you know?

I had no way of

conceiving how massive the crowd was

at that point. You're just in your

little space in your little moment.

Sam was over six feet tall, so I'm

like, "Let me get on your shoulders,

"I wanna see what's going on!"

And getting up there, I

couldn't see the end of people.

It's hard to put it into words,

but it felt like you were part of

this giant organism

that is just beyond you,

and you're just this

one little part, you know?

I remember feeling

overwhelmed with joy,

in being able to share

this moment with other people.

The decision was

taken with the event organisers

to finish the event early.

I believe it finished

some time after 10pm.

I was very, very grateful

when I heard Pure Shores coming on.

And I still get

goosebumps when I hear it.

And I just thought, "Oh, thank

God, it's gonna be over now."

# ..searching places to find

# A piece of something to call mine

# A piece of something

to call mine...

I thought

it was just amazing.

Had a good dance. I didn't dance

as much as I would have liked to,

because there wasn't

enough space. But it was just

one of the best evenings.

# ..is the place I can call mine

# Is the place I can call mine

# Coming closer to you

# I'm moving, I'm coming

Can you hear what I hear?

# It's calling you, my dear

Out of reach

# Take me to my beach

# I can hear it calling you

I'm coming, not drowning

# Swimming closer to you

# I'm moving, I'm coming

Can you hear what I hear?

# It's calling you, my dear

Out of reach

# Take me to my beach

# I can hear it calling you

# I'm coming, not drowning

# Swimming closer to you... #

There was a general

consensus that the vibe of the gig

was Fatboy Slim, it

was more chilled out,

meant that a norm developed

where people were more tolerant

and more accepting, and it was a

kind of more convivial atmosphere.

I remember talking to a senior

security person afterwards

and he did say to me, "If

that had been an Oasis gig,

"we would have been f*cked."

I remember it being kind of

chaotic, looking out, thinking,

"Wow, where are all

these people gonna go now?

"How are you getting home?"

Jesus!

And thinking, "I'm so glad I don't

have to try and get back to London."

I know someone

in the group had a plan.

We rushed through the crowd

and ran to the train station.

We were able to get on a train.

When we were waiting

for the train to take off,

there were these hordes

of people that just climbed

on top of the train, because

there was no more space.

And they were prying at the doors,

and they were shaking the train.

And it took forever for staff

to get them off of the train.

It was definitely one of those

scenarios where the potential

for danger was very much present.

But that whole day

just feels like a dream to me.

Like, everything went so well

that I was like, "Oh, we got on the

train and we're safe and we're here.

"We're going to get home!

Ha ha, there's people on the train."

And not really being aware of,

"Oh, shit, this is a shit show!"

Ladies and gentlemen,

fantastic evening.

And now, we want you

to go home safely.

Fantastic evening.

Please leave Brighton

safe with good memories.

Please do not push,

please do not push.

Listen to the police

and the stewards.

By this time,

we were already tired.

It had been a hot,

sticky, difficult evening.

We'd run out of drinking

water a long time ago,

and there's no time

to refresh or whatever.

We had real trouble getting

people safely off the beach.

I saw people slipping and

falling underneath people

and getting trodden on.

..start

making your way home.

But please don't push.

Listen to the police

and the stewards.

Remember having

to walk through the crowd,

holding hands in a chain,

so we didn't lose each other.

Buzzing still!Yeah.

Such a great day.

Yeah, with a suntan as well.

Been on the beach so long!

Yeah, some tan lines.

Just the sea of people...

Trying to get home!

Please take their advice.

There were tens

of thousands of people

moving off the beach into the town.

Lots had come by rail,

and we knew that there weren't

a lot of trains laid on to

take people away afterwards.

And very quickly, the gates

to the railway station

were shut by the railway company.

We tried to get a few trains in

and we did get some trains in.

We had buses laid on to take people

I think at least as far as London.

There was a huge

operation that went on

to try and get people

safely out of the city.

At that point, the last

buses were in the garage by 12:30.

That particular night, there

were no night buses as such.

I think we invented 'em that

night to get them through,

due to the number of people

that were still around.

We got calls out to the drivers

to say, "Those of you that want

"to do extra for us tonight, if you

want to do an extra round trip,

"you'll be paid accordingly

and it'll all be moved on."

From there, we had to make sure

we can get as many people on

as what we could, and try to

ensure that those more vulnerable

were getting on to get home.

I was meant to go back

to London and it was a bit like,

"Wow, I don't think I'm going

to get a train at the moment,

"so we'll just hang out

on the beach."

Damien disappeared off somewhere,

I hung out with Graham and Neil.

We had a couple of beers on

the beach, and then we had

a bit of a wander around.

You couldn't move,

but the buzz was unreal.

The amount of people that

were there, the conversations

taking place, the happiness

and the madness of people.

It was just absolutely mental!

The last time I saw anything like

that was when I went to Wembley

for the Brighton-Man United

cup final. And that's the only time

I've seen that amount of people.

Some drivers had never driven

certain routes before,

because they'd just now appeared

because we got some drivers

to stay on and do extra services.

And we almost came to a

decision that if you don't know

where you're going, effectively

you know your end goal,

get yourself there, and

get back as soon as you can!

Cos I can't see the pavement yet.

There's still that many people!

Thankfully, it was a

brilliant, a peaceful party.

There was no aggravation,

no argument, no trouble.

It was great fun.

It was a massive challenge.

And it still ranks as one of

my highest memories in my job.

Oh, is that a video camera?

It was time, it was starting

to get a little bit lighter.

We walked back up

towards the train station.

Graham and Neil walked back up

with me and, as I was going,

Neil said, "Oh,

can I take your number?"

I owe my brother a lot!

More than I can say.So I quickly

scribbled it down and was like,

"Yeah, be great to hear from you,"

looking at Graham!

And that was it.

I went off into the night,

into the early morning,

got back to West London, showered,

straight back into Central London

and did a day's work at my desk,

going, "Oh, my God, what a night!"

Can't believe you did that.

All of us who started that

evening at sort of four o'clock

the previous afternoon,

didn't generally get off

until five, six, seven

o'clock in the morning.

I decided to try and

drive along the seafront,

which I did with some difficulty,

because of the

rubbish and everything.

The whole beach between the piers

just looked like

some huge refugee camp.

There were

just cars abandoned everywhere.

There were just clothes,

there were shoes.

It was like people had just

disappeared and left everything.

There were bodies of people lying,

just sleeping on the ground.

I ended up not going home,

because I realised my housemates

were having a party and I went to

my mum's instead and hid there,

while trying to work out

what on earth...

I just felt like I'd

destroyed my hometown.

It felt so awful what

happened to the city.

And that was so sad,

because it should have been

such a good thing to celebrate.

I drove along there, and

then ended up back at home.

And I remember standing there,

and then looking down

and realising that I still

had my full uniform on.

I had all my kit on...

Kit that I should have

left at the police station.

And just thinking...

"I don't know what's gone on,

"I just don't know how

we've got through that."

The following morning,

I had my kids with me.

The tidy-up was going on.

We jumped on our bus and we headed

down on holiday for two weeks.

So, the thing I remember most about

that was getting a phone call

from Zoe saying,

"Why aren't you here?

"Why aren't you dealing with this?"

We had no crisis

management strategy.

So, there was an aftermath.

I also had another job,

where I worked out of town

and had to get up early.

I had a pick-up truck at the time,

and I remember driving through

the rubbish along the seafront.

And the rubbish being as high

as the wheels of my truck.

So, woke up the next morning.

I spoke to my boss, and he told me

that a clean-up was starting,

but he told me to stay at home.

So, I didn't need to

come down to work on it.

But I felt incredibly guilty,

because I felt like

I had done this to my town.

So, I did go down later on and

I went and helped pick up rubbish.

Of course, what happened was that

then, the sun didn't stop shining.

So, we could have done

with some rain to wash away

the lovely smell of urine

that was over the whole beach.

So, it absolutely stunk

for about two weeks.

I was mortified. I thought

everyone was going to love me

for what we'd done. And the

idea they would all hate me...

Literally, don't shit

on your own doorstep.

So, I immediately said,

"Just whatever it takes,

"I'll pay for the clean-up."

Broken glass and piss...

The two things you don't want in

your life when you go to the seaside.

This was written

20 years ago this week, I think.

I know we held the magazine back

because we wanted to get this in.

Cos print magazines,

the deadlines are really tight.

And to get something in

that's new is really difficult.

So, we held back this double page

spread to get the story in.

Well, first of all, the headline,

Fatboy Slim Is f*cking In Trouble.

When this was happening,

all the papers, the kind of buzz

and the media around it was

a sort of negative reaction

to what had happened, in a way.

People weren't necessarily

celebrating what had

happened positively.

They were talking about how Fatboy

Slim has to leave the country,

they've caused such a massive mess,

or people have been injured.

We got into the office on

Monday and had a sort of debrief,

and that's when the press

had started to come out

that someone had died

of a heart attack.

There was lots of aggro.

A lot of false reporting,

but we didn't feel euphoric.

We felt broken.

Most people had a good time.

There was a few injuries.

But considering that amount of

people - there were six arrests,

which is apparently

less than there normally is

on a Saturday night in Brighton.

There was a lot of

distress amongst the services,

amongst the police and

amongst the ambulance services,

because they had no

control over the situation.

There was a lot of anxiety there,

and that fed into the media a bit.

They were available to

comment on the event.

They weren't commenting upon it

as a musical experience,

a cultural experience.

They were commenting on it

as an averted disaster, like a

Hillsborough that nearly happened.

An Australian nurse died.

She fell off the escarpment.

She'd been at a

party after the event,

and had an accident

falling off the scarp.

It was a horrible thing,

that someone had to die that night.

And the poor girl, Karen, the nurse.

I managed to get in touch with her

parents, and I spoke to her mum

and I just said, "Look, I'm so

sorry." And she said, "Don't worry.

"It was going to happen.

She phoned me earlier that night

"and said, I'm having

the best night of my life."

And she said, "Thanks for

making the last night of her life

"the best night of her life,"

which really got me.

But yeah...

I still feel, because I was

the reason she was in Brighton

that night, I feel somewhat

responsible for her death,

and that will always haunt me.

The city had to learn

from the events of that evening

that had things gone more wrong,

it might have been that

several people could have

been put more in harm's way.

My own organisation, the police,

we had a big debriefing

where events were openly discussed.

There was a council enquiry

which I went to and spoke at.

The city as a whole,

collectively, came to the view

that an event of that size

needed better planning,

and at that scale, shouldn't be

allowed to happen on the beach.

What happened on that night was a

brilliant event for lots of people,

but it wasn't a great

event for everybody.

And it was a traumatic time.

And I think history

shouldn't lose sight of that.

This kind of thing

of having a big free party

used to be the norm in the UK.

This was part and parcel

of going out at the weekend.

This was the late '80s

and early '90s was about.

A lot of my generation grew up

when we hadn't ever got to

experience the free party scene.

So, we don't know what it's like

to turn up to a free party,

and just dance. So it's kind of

weird in a way, that suddenly,

out of nowhere, there's

this massive free event

that everyone can turn up to,

and it's just liberating

and everyone's having a great time.

And then immediately,

the morning after, you're like,

actually, we're never

going to get to do that ever again.

The problems that

there were on the day,

and there were massive problems,

were to do with infrastructure.

Myself and other people who work

in the field of crowd psychology

use this as an example to show,

yes, this was a near catastrophe,

but the catastrophe was to do with

the infrastructure collapsing.

It was absolutely nothing

to do with crowd behaviour,

and it's a very good example,

I would say, of the crowd

actually preventing disaster,

because there were times

when we had to work with the crowd.

One of the

things that came out

after the Big Beach Boutique concert

was that there were going to be

no more free, unticketed

events in the UK.

We were incredibly lucky that day,

but it was only a short amount of

time that there would have been

another free ticketed

event, where something

could have gone really wrong. So,

I think without Big Beach Boutique

kind of setting the line

and making sure that we...

It really helped the

industry improve dramatically,

and it has meant that

we've gone on in the UK

to have some of the best

and safest events in the world.

I think one of the

nice things I remember was...

Well, the phone didn't stop

ringing from all over the planet.

We started to play

beaches all around the world.

So, Big Beach Boutique happened

in Rio on an even bigger scale.

It happened in Japan.

By then, it was selling tickets

and it was a

different kind of model.

It wasn't the kind of free spirited,

spontaneous, acid house spirit.

It was a bit more organised.

And it just took Norman to

another level internationally.

This party in Brighton

was a milestone in dance music.

It was a change in

how people perceived DJs

and what they could do.

It was not just a turning point

for dance music and DJs, but also

for music culture in general.

I think an acceptance that

dance music is more than just

sweaty nightclubs

or underground raves.

It was something for everybody.

For me, it opened more doors,

just in my relationship

with the city.

I kind of thought there

might be sections of the community

down here who would hate me,

after we almost destroyed the city.

But everyone seemed to love me.

And from then on, everybody

I meet walking down the street,

the first thing they'll say is,

"When are you going to have

"another beach party?"

Fatboy Slim!

Thank you so much, Fatboy Slim!

Fatboy Slim! Yes, man!

# I have to celebrate you, baby

# I have to praise you like I should

# I have to praise you

like I should...

I'm still doing this

because I genuinely love it.

I love hearing tunes,

and just instantly

wanting to share them

with other people.

And something very, very

powerful happens at raves,

and at parties, where it

becomes stronger than the music,

becomes stronger than the

sum of the people who are there.

Something happens where the room

just becomes this one mass of energy,

and that's what gives me my energy.

I kind of feed off that.

It's something that drives me along

and something that I am very grateful

that I've been allowed

to do for so long.

So, I teach event safety and

crowd management at universities.

I often use Big Beach Boutique

as an example of an event

that obviously, where

things kind of did go wrong,

but what we can learn from it and

what we take away from it.

Some of them have never heard

of Big Beach Boutique before.

I tell them about it and

they are always blown away

by the scale of what

happened and the size of it.

# ..I have to praise you

like I should

# I have to praise you...

When you're there in the moment,

you don't always think about it.

But it's only looking back

on it now, you kind of think,

"Wow, that was a huge cultural

milestone in our country,

"in our country's history,"

and I was there.

That for me was the point

in my life where I was like,

"I want to do this,

I've got to get into this.

Goosebumps already, just thinking

about that day, and thinking...

This is just some guy

playing records, you know?

But look how happy. I could

do that... How hard can it be?

I was 30 years of age

and I'd been quite unhappy

for 10 years, really.

Fighting... I was shy,

lonely, and I had depression.

This day has completely

changed my life.

Completely turned it around

from a very, very bad place.

It's hard to put into words. It's

just like pure elation, you know?

It's this full spread

of me on Sam's shoulders.

It was such a beautiful day,

and I felt like that picture

really captured my time that day,

and how a lot of

people must have felt.

From a little thing this big.

Grown up to be this

fantastic, amazing, kind,

generous rugby player.

Yes, he's doing really well now.

He's my little miracle.

I think it's apt that

it took 20 years for the council

to allow us back on the pebbles.

The first rule was

it can't be free any more.

I would love to do this for free,

I don't do this to make money.

I do this because I love this city

and I get so much pride in doing it.

But in order to control it,

you have to fence it in

and have a certain amount of people.

You can't just invite the world.

That was one lesson we learnt.

# I have to praise you

# I have to praise you

# I have to praise you

# I have to praise you...