Find a job you love doing, the adage goes, and you’ll never work another day in your life. By that reckoning Norman Cook, better known as Fatboy Slim, hasn’t worked a day in the past two and a half decades.
Because, let’s be clear about this, he absolutely bloody loves doing what he does. His fellow late-90s musical juggernaut Noel Gallagher uses the expression “having it right off” to signify going out and having a rollicking good time and for two hours on a spring Friday night in Cardiff a patterned-shirted (what else?) Cook led thousands of people in very much having it right off – almost taking the roof of Cardiff International Arena off in the process.
Everything is good – from an invigorating opening with a sample of Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now to a drop of the Bee Gees and a bum-bouncing blast of Los Del Rio (you know every beat - Google it).
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If there’s a downer then it’s concretely not Fatboy’s fault – he’s capable of many things but he’s not culpable for the faults of mankind. But why, still, do we live in a world where women are hassled by men in situations like this to the point they have no choice but to move to carry on their evening? The tall guy in the tight green jacket two-thirds back on the left – here’s looking at you. It wouldn’t be impolite to hope you spontaneously combust.
Back on the stage, though, there’s an exceptional tribute to the late Maxi Jazz that has the whole room throwing shapes and a crashing crescendo of classics that frankly is more than one man should be responsible for. Fatboy Slim, as a bastardised version of his adage would contrast, is funking in Cardiff and he is absolutely ripping the place to bits.
I look around a lot, from start to end, and everyone is on their feet throughout. It’s the happiest version of bedlam imaginable (green-jacket man and his ilk aside).
Cook might recently have turned 60, and has even previously said he’s a shy character who relies on his Fatboy Slim persona to come to life on stage, but when he’s playing records and people are partying it’s clear there’s no place he’d rather be. Plenty of established acts might endlessly tour to keep their already bloated bank balances topped up or to varnish their equally inflated egos. Here, though, one feels there’s a man just having it right off in perpetuity. Eat, sleep, rave, repeat. Happy 60th Birthday Norman Cook. Long live Fatboy Slim.
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