How To Spend £1,000,000 On Drugs - Fat Tony - #166

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, my beauties, welcome back. My guest today is none other than DJ Fat Tony. Now, you might have seen a video from MixMag floating around on Facebook or YouTube with millions of views about this DJ fella who came up through London in the 80s and 90s and is the best known DJ you've never heard of and spent a million pounds on drugs and all this sort of stuff. And the documentary is phenomenal. It's linked in the show notes below, and you should check it out after you've listened to this episode. But today we get to sit down with one of the most fascinating stories behind a DJ career that I've ever heard. And we get to go through everything. So from being one of the biggest DJs in London's house music scene to running some of the best known events in the UK, group sex with Freddie Mercury, pills in Hong Kong and birthdays on Concord. I probably could have got like 10 episodes out with him, but I absolutely loved this. It is such a wonderful insight into a golden era of clubbing in the UK and also a really nice story of redemption and finding what true happiness means in a life that's been beset with a lot of sort of hedonic pleasure. It's really, really good. And I love Tony. He's just such a great dude. Yeah, this episode's fantastic. I really hope that you enjoy it. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Fat Tony.
DJ Fat Tony in the building. How are you, man?

**Fat Tony** (1:46)
I'm okay, I'm good. I've been, yeah, I might feel right today. I've been ill for the last few weeks, but I'm okay, I'm good now.

**Chris Williamson** (1:54)
You had the rona?

**Fat Tony** (1:55)
Yeah, I did, yeah. I kind of was like, I went for a whole week of thinking, oh, this is all right, I can do this. It was kind of a mild flu, bad chest, but I was wise enough to ask my, well, my doctor decided he wanted to put me on steroids for my chest, because I have a bad chest anyway. So thankfully I took the steroids. Then it went away on the first day, and I thought, yeah, I feel really good. Friday night, boom, temperature in the 40s, for four days and four nights. The worst fever, it went into my chest, I was breathless.

**Chris Williamson** (2:33)
It was awful.

**Fat Tony** (2:34)
Yeah, it was really awful.

**Chris Williamson** (2:36)
Feeling good now, feeling...

**Fat Tony** (2:37)
Yeah, I'm okay. I'm just taking it easy. I'm in no rush to go anywhere. So it's not a problem. But yeah, thank God I had it mild.

**Chris Williamson** (2:46)
Yeah, I guess so. So my first question is, why are you called Fat Tony when you're not fat?

**Fat Tony** (2:52)
That old, tired old question. When I was a kid, I was a fat kid. I got fat about the age of 14 to 16
It was a coping mechanism for what I was going through. So I put on loads of weight as a barrier between other people and me, because I went through a lot of sexual abuse at an earlier age. So I just got fat as a protection. So it was one of those names that people whispered behind your back. So I just kept it. I lost all my weight at 16 and that was it.

**Chris Williamson** (3:29)
It's interesting that two years of being fat, like ages ago, has branded you for the rest of your life.

**Fat Tony** (3:37)
Yeah, it's one of those things people go, you should change your name. And it's like, why would I change my name? It's taken me around the world seven times. Do you know what I mean? I've made a career out of that name. I'm not going to change it. I think there was a year and a half in the 80s where I changed it to Fat PHT, PH80.
Well, I went all hip hop for a week, but yeah, no.

**Chris Williamson** (4:01)
So I first heard of you as some of the people listening may have done through this recent MixMag documentary, which has come out, which is absolutely phenomenal.

**Fat Tony** (4:10)
Have you been living under a stone in Newcastle with no Wi-Fi?

**Chris Williamson** (4:16)
We are currently in the 1800s and we're hoping to get the wheel and fire and operating running water soon. But I mean, in my defense, they referred to you, this is MixMag referred to you as the most famous DJ you've never heard of. Yeah.