It was a humbling read and an apologetic one too for those that knew Tony and had been on the receiving end of his out of control days . Drawing a vivid portrait of Britain’s street culture from the 1980’s to the noughties, House music legend Fat Tony describes his childhood on a London estate where he honed his petty criminality, was abused by an older man, and became best friends with Boy George. I Don't Take Requests is Fat Tony's breathtakingly candid and outrageous memoir of a life of extremes. his journey from villain to real life hero is one of the most beautiful examples of humanity I have ever witnessed. And I’d helped her go and see her children and that, and he told me to wait, and he got me a mobile phone.

I have been very vocal about members of my community going to Qatar and promoting it with everything that’s going on in the world and the human rights atrocities. I used to think, oh I’m not getting on with them because they’re not like me, but thank God there’s no more people like me! A man who would prefer to reject than be rejected and a fragility which had, in the end, contributed to a downward spiral into addiction. I mainly enjoyed the backdrop of an 80s and 90s central London music scene, from the New Romantics to early house to hard house and the evolution of the superclub and superstar DJ. Harrowing, honest, and funny, I Don’t Take Requests is the candid and outrageous memoir of a life of extremes.

At one point he claims he became ‘so psychotic’ that he believed there were creatures living inside his gums and attempted to remove them using household DIY tools. It was one of those scenarios where I thought there was no way I’d know his girlfriend but it turns out I was in rehab with her. Pinch yourself moments such as Brooklyn's Miami nuptials still come thick and fast, he says, particularly for a man whose life was so de-railed by his addiction that he ended up homeless, and with a HIV diagnosis that he lived with unknowingly for up to 15 years because 'addiction ruled everything'. but Tony says his career derailed just after his 39th birthday, when he a five-day bender left him on the edge of death.

It's fascinating to hear the story of a life woven around so many familiar names (people and places) and getting a new insight into them. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to be accepted for a lifetime of complete and utter chaos and recognised for a future of redemption. Around a third of the way through I was losing interest in his hedonistic stories which all started to sound similar. Now in recovery, this something he is looking back on and talking about in detail to show the grim reality of what can look like such a glam and hedonistic life to those on the outside looking in.Here he tells the most extraordinary stories of depravity and hedonism, of week-long benders and extreme self-destruction - and of recovery, redemption, friendship and the joy of a good tune.

Tony is open about the fact that he nearly didn't make it, that when in the throws of addiction, there's usually no clear escape route.To this day, Siouxsie Sioux is the only person to have ever had the balls to slap me right across the face. We were at the start of the Britpop era, and all of these British designers would get sent over to New York and in London we were on the tail end of the new romantics, all of that had just died. When the DJ's former partner found him in the back room of a London club that night, he was, he says, 'a zombie, the lights were out and I was rocking back and forth, wringing my hands and chewing my gums. The flamboyant DJ, who grew up on an estate in Battersea - and was given his first line of coke by Freddie Mercury at the age of 15 - first found fame as a drag artist in the 80s before turning to the decks in the 90s, and becoming part of a party set that included Tracey Emin, Kate Moss and Madonna.

In the pandemic, we were pumped with fear from the minute we opened our eyes to the minute we closed them. They’re there to laugh at how ridiculous life is, and how ridiculously serious some people take themselves.

He knows he was often awful, hard work and self-centred, a ‘nightmare’ in his own words – but he was an addict at the time and just didn’t care what people thought of his behaviour. Few people have crammed so many lives into one: when your first line of cocaine is aged 16 with Freddie Mercury, where do you go from there? Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item.