Fatboy finds his feet

Not for the first time in the past few years, Norman Cook looks nervous. The 41-year-old, aka Fatboy Slim, the most groundbreaking British DJ of his generation, fiddles with a roll of black gaffer tape, keeping his hands busy now that he's given up smoking, and glances restlessly around the balcony of his seafront home in Brighton. When Cook first moved here in 1998, this was his sanctuary: a spacious retreat with a private stretch of beach. Almost two years ago, however, it became a prison. After the news broke that Cook and wife Zoë Ball had split, tabloid photographers dug themselves into the beach and hired boats in a bid to get a fresh snap.

'I can't really moan because it was our fault,' declares Cook, trying to be breezy. 'We got ourselves into it. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. We set ourselves up as celebrities. We were the ones that wanted to be famous. We f***ed up in public, so you have to take the flak. But it got quite out of hand.'

It was obvious from the start that Cook was bound for a life in the spotlight. After a stint as bassist in indie band the Housemartins in the mid-Eighties, he scored a No.1 hit with Beats International ('Dub Be Good To Me') in 1989, and soundtracked a Levi's ad with Freakpower ('Turn On, Tune In, Cop Out') in 1995, before concentrating on a DJing career that has seen him bring together the disparate worlds of rock and dance music like no other. His genre-blending You've Come A Long Way, Baby album rocketed electronic music into the mainstream in America, while his live shows merge the sweaty excitement of the moshpit with the cool euphoria of clubland.

Certainly no other DJ would be able to pull off a headline show at Brixton Academy, as Cook will this weekend.

When I last spoke to him in 2001, life was looking rosy. Having met Ball during a Radio 1 special on Ibiza in 1998, the pair married in 1999 and had son Woody at the end of 2000. By the middle of 2002, however, rumours started circulating that the differences in the couple's lifestyles were causing problems (Ball had abandoned her career to raise Woody, while Cook kept on DJing - as he said to me then, 'Monday to Thursday I'm Dad, and weekend I'm a drunken party animal'), and the pair announced their separation in January 2003.

Intense scrutiny followed, heightening when it emerged that Ball had become involved with

another DJ, Dan Peppe. 'It got pretty bad,' nods Cook, grimly. 'I had my phone tapped. They were camped at the end of the road for three months. Every time I went out I had to lose the photographers. They made me paranoid. You feel like a hunted animal. I know how a fox feels when the hounds are bearing down on it. It was quite scary.'

Despite the pressure of constant attention, Cook and Ball managed a reconciliation. 'When we got back together it was worse because they followed us everywhere, trying to get a shot of us having a row. We both agreed not to talk about it, and then things I was saying were ending up in the papers and Zoë was going, "You've done an interview." I said, "Yeah, it was a conversation I had last night on the phone." She said, "You're being paranoid." It was only when she realised that her phone was tapped too...' His voice trails off. 'Things like that don't help when you're trying to work on your relationship.'

How did they get past all that? 'We got the police involved and sorted out the phone business. And then we just buckled down, got our heads down, stopped going out. Because every time we went out it was a stress. So we just sat here, played with Woody, and put it back together.' Were they ever tempted to leave the country? 'We did that a couple of times, but they followed us. Every single holiday we've had, we've been followed and snapped. That's when you feel really hunted, when leaving the country isn't even an option.'

During this time, Cook was also working on his third album, Palookaville. While the previous record Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars saw Cook 'deliberately trying to exorcise the demons of pop stardom, wilfully trying to go back underground', Palookaville is him 'recognising that this is what I do', pumping out the party anthems like the good old days. But if the album's a hit, the tabloids will return. Was he ever tempted to give up releasing records? 'I never thought I won't ever do it again because I don't know how to do anything else. It's what I live for. But I wanted to wait until it had all died down. And wait until I was strong enough. I used to have panic attacks. I had to work on my confidence to be able to sit there and hold my head high and smile. Smile at the f***ers when I really wanted to kill them.'

When did Cook give up smoking? 'October last year. I got hypnotised. When people offer me a cigarette, I don't even say I've given up, I say I don't smoke. Like I never did. In the past few years, I've thought about my responsibilities. I want to be around long enough to watch my son grow up. Turning 40, you realise you can't cane it like you did for ever. I go to the gym now. Before I was, "I'll live forever or die trying." Now I've got to the point where I prefer to live longer.'

As for the future, Cook has his eye set on the beach. In a bid to exorcise the tragedy of his 2002 Brighton Beach party, which drew 250,000 revellers but resulted in the death of a 25-yearold fan, he played to 360,000 people on a beach in Rio in March. 'It was fantastic. We had eight medical centres and only one person was treated for a sprained ankle,' Cook beams. 'Next summer we want to do beach parties. We've been invited to do Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela and Rio again. We're thinking of just touring the beaches of the world.' And for the first time during our time together, those nerves are nowhere to be seen.

Fatboy Slim, Fri 26 Nov, Carling Brixton Academy, 211 Stockwell Road, SW9 (0870 771 2000).