Gordon in the morning: Slim majority

Tomorrow, Fatboy Slim is, for the Last Night A DJ Saved My Life charity, playing a DJ set in the Houses Of Parliament. Gordon has scratched his head to think of something to say about this:

It’s just as well Fatboy – real name NORMAN COOK – is off the sauce these days. He’d have do ne some serious damage to the Government’s booze supplies back in the day.

What? "Yeah, if it had been a few years back he'd have drunk some of the alcohol". Righto.

"It's fortunate he doesn't have an insatiable desire to consume potato products, which would mean he'd have depleted the government supply of crisps."

"It's lucky he's not made entirely out of blood plasma, as he'd have made a terrible stain on the government carpet if he'd leaked."

The really frustrating thing is that Parliament isn't the government, and Cook is playing at the former, not the latter. So even if he had been unable to control a desire to smash plates, it would be Parliament's crockery that took a hit. Not the government's.

Old Jokes' Home

Perhaps he should be a bit more careful with them, then?

Downloadable: Byrne, Boy and Santigold

It feels a bit like turning up late at a meeting - you hear that the first fruits of that David Byrne and Fatboy Slim concept album about Imelda Marcos is available for sampling, and just nod and go "of course - the Marcos concept album. Of course."

Here's that sample:

They didn't call it Shoegazing, which is a disappointment.

[via @warriorgrrl]

Norman gives first refusal to New Years' fans

It's an excellent move by Norman Cook to reward those who made it through the grim, rain-lashed New Years Eve Brighton Beach Party first refusal for this year's late summer beach show:

"I want to say thank you to everyone who made it such a success in spite of everything the weather threw against us."

He suffered a series of electric shocks as strong winds drove the rain onto his record decks.

He said: "It was chaos but I had a lovely warm feeling from the crowd. It was like a Dunkirk spirit - "we will brave the elements and we will have fun."

Perhaps the comparison of a windswept beach party with the conditions during the evacuation of Dunkirk might be a little tactless while the event is still comfortably within living memory, mind, but it's encouraging that the Fatboy Slim beach parties seem to have now become a regular event in the Brighton calendar, given its difficult start.

Darkness at 3AM: Facing up to Norman Cook

They really do have trouble making 3AM work online, don't they? They've had a bit of a shuffle around again this morning, but it still doesn't quite work - some of the stories now have teasers, but others are still just a linked headline - Linds Lured, anyone?

The column marks the 25th anniversary of Mixmag with, erm, an anecdote:

Fatboy Slim certainly won't forget the day his head was on the front cover - superimposed on another man's buff body. An insider said: "His missus Zoe's gay mates all thought he was gay... He looked so fit!"

What sort of quote is that? It implies that Zoe Ball has gay friends but Norman Cook doesn't, for a start. Or perhaps it just means that only Zoe's gay friends are incapable of spotting a playful bit of photoshopping. And why would a gay man assume a person is gay because he's had his face photoshopped onto someone else's body? Do the 3AM Girls really think there are gay men who are that dim?

Fatboy goes down to the sea again

Norman Cook is going to have another one of his Brighton Beach parties. Two, in fact, on September 26th and 27th; like the New Years Eve event, it's going to be all ticket.

Fatboy whim: Norman Cook to tweak the music industry's tail

Emboldened by Radiohead, Norman Cook is drawing inspiration for his next record. He doesn't, however, quite say what he intends to do:

"Artists are beginning to realise they don't need record companies any more, before we were their bitches and they got the lion's share of the money.

“It might be the death toll for traditional record companies as we know them, but I'm not shedding a tear."

Cook knows a thing or two about shabby treatment from record labels - not least the shabby and pointless welding together of the Housemartins back catalogue with stuff from the Beautiful South to create a tenuously connected best-of.

Norman Cook's skate friends make a movie

The skaters who use the Hove Lagoon park which giving, and then withdrawing, money to and from got Norman Cook all flustered back at the start of summer have decided to reach out to the local community.

By, erm, making a film about themselves and putting it on the internet.

That'll work. If there are elderly people alarmed by the noise and - quite unintentionally unsettling - presence of young people on their doorstep, we're sure they'll Google 'hove lagoon skaters AND video' to reassure themselves, rather than just pulling the sofa in front of the door.

The skaters might find that helping with shopping and gardening might be a bit more effective than vanity videos.

Norman Cook welcomes Falmer decision

The long-awaited (second) official go-ahead for Brighton and Hove Albion to build a new stadium next to a University campus and a main road (after someone realised that it wasn't actually download) has been given a cheer by Norman Cook:

What a relief. I am glad common sense has prevailed.

"The team have a real chance of success and it is a real plus for the city."

That's probably over stating the case, the success bit, but at least watching the team crash and burn will be slightly more comfortable.

Slim skates sideways

It makes you wonder why anybody would bother trying to help out their fellow man, doesn't it? Fatboy Slim made a generous payment to try and help bring a skateboard park to Hove Lagoon.

The residents got worried. Skateboards? Aren't they full of drug addicts on drugs, drugs bought by the proceeds of stealing old ladies' handbags?

Norman tried to persuade the company managing the project, Skate Expectations (a company name that sounds like the sort the lost-in-suits of The Apprentice might come up with) to meet up and talk through the resident's concerns. But they wouldn't.

So Slim asked that the money go to a different good cause instead. Great Expecskateions just sent the money back, and now skateboarders are turning their ire, in turn, on the dj.

Norman Cook sighs:

I tried to get Skate Expectations to meet up with the residents and they refused.

"They didn't seem to be listening to the local community.

"I was going down there with my son and people were saying things like 'you're not really welcome here'. I just didn't want to be associated with something people didn't want."

The skateboard lobby is being represented by Outreach worker Graeme Reece, who isn't exactly reaching out to Fatboy:

The 34-year-old said Mr Cook was 'two-faced' because his own events have encouraged hedonistic behaviour.

He said: "I attended his party on the beach where there were lots of people drinking and taking drugs. In fact at most of his gigs you would expect to find people doing all kinds of illicit drugs."

So... people take drugs at music events, so, erm, musicians shouldn't worry if they're funding an organisation incapable of communicating with its neighbours? And isn't his role more to point out that it's a bit of a lazy stereotype to suggest that skateboarders are going to be eating heroin and mugging, rather than nodding and saying "yeah, but what about people who take drugs in nightclubs>, eh?"

Reece then starts to rave about the Man:

He said residents might feel threatened by a sudden influx of young people to the skate park, but their fears did not necessarily reflect reality, and said hiring security guards to police the area was not a good idea.

He said: "Any young person who skates is likely to be a bit rebellious and they will not react well to a man in a uniform telling them what to do. It would be more effective to employ an adult skateboarder - someone straight-talking who they'd respect and listen to."

But surely the point of having a bloke in a cap is more to reassure residents that the Hove Lagoon hasn't suddenly turned into a hellmouth; and, if we were fifteen, we'd have had more respect for a security guard, however cheap his nylon uniform might have been, than some middle-aged bozo who thought they spoke our language because "I'm a skatie too, check?"

Kylie tries to move in; house prices rocket; whole area could blow sky-high

Kylie Minogue is, apparently, thinking of following in Julie Burchill's shoes. No, no, not Tony Parsons. Moving to Brighton, along the seafront. Shoreham, actually. Quite near Zoe Ball and Norman Cook, in fact, and the recently vacated home of Heather Mills.

Sadly, it's also near a proposed store for chemical fertilizers, like the ones they were going to use to blow all symbols of the louche Western sin-society up with the other year.

Kirstie and Phil would suggest this an excellent bargaining chip to get some movement on the price. If you don't mind the risk of dock worker body parts raining down on your exclusive sun terrace at some point in the future.

Having been born in Brighton, I still can't quite get used to the idea of Shoreham being talked about as a cool, groovy, property hotspot. Good for second hand car parts and chips, yes, but home to genuine pop royalty? Isn't that Kemp Town's job?

Kylie-thin skeleton news service

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