"The greatest thing about living in New York was having access to really cheap disco records..."

At the end of the book you touch on the impending impact of technology and obviously over the last 10 years we've seen a lot of change as a result of technology. How do you feel about the way that technology has changed the way we enjoy music?

Like any change, there are elements that are very liberating and amazing, and at the same time things that are constraining and less good. I think it's great that we've suddenly got access to the whole world's music at our fingertips- it's amazing. You can be a 22 year-old kid now and know as much as I do about music, simply because you've got the internet. Y'know it took me 35 years to accumulate all that knowledge and you could cram in 5 years- probably- just by stuffing your head full of music on the internet every day. But having all of that access is not necessarily a good thing from a DJ point of view because the whole point of a DJ is to filter- so your job is to filter out all of the shite that you've listened to and present all of the good things. The idea of the DJ is still relevant but the access of music is too easy and produces either lazy or unfocussed DJing. There is something to be said for that apprenticeship you used to serve where you learnt about music by studying record sleeves and stuff like that. I do still feel a certain compulsion to go out and buy records.

What would you describe as being lazy DJing?

Giving the crowd what they want all the time. Not going out and looking for interesting music. Only downloading mp3s....there's a whole range of reasons really [laughs]. There's a lot more music available but it means you have to search much harder to find things other people aren't playing. For me you have to work twice as hard now to find things other people aren't playing. When I get new music I'm really looking for things that everyone else has missed that I can concentrate on and play. So if I find something that people have overlooked it means I'll latch onto it and then I'll kind of hammer the hell out of it for the next six months to a year, and then when I'm satisfied that everyone's caught up I'll ditch it and try and go find some more things like that.

You're going to hate this question, but who out of the last 20 years of DJ culture has been your biggest inspiration?

That is a tricky question...I'd say that Danny Tenaglia has had the biggest impact on me. I was friends with him in New York and he was trying to win a residency at a club in New York. So he was very driven, and me and Frank and some others were his cheerleaders- so if he had a gig in New York we'd come and stand at the front of the booth and dance and make sure that everyone else got dancing. But also he taught me a lot about how much effort he put into DJing. If you went to a record store with him he'd look through every record, irrespective of what it said on the bins. The fact that he didn't play drum n bass didn't matter- he'd look through things to find little bits he could nick, or he'd find a techno record but he'd only like 8 bars of it, so he'd edit those 8 bars into a track, that he'd then play at minus 8. I learnt a lot from him. He just really really put a lot of work into being a DJ.

The greatest thing about living in New York was having access to really cheap disco records. I moved to New York with a box of 55 records and when I moved back 2 years later I had 2,500 records that I had to ship back by sea. They arrived 8 weeks later!

What's been the most exciting part of your career so far?

Yeah....the week between the [laughs] 23rd of October and 31st of October 1999. On the 23rd of October Fabric opened and I started a residency there. The same night I met my wife in the club and the following Thursday was the launch party for 'Last Night....'. So in that week I met my future partner, had a residency that had a huge impact on my career, and then the following week 'Last Night....' came out.

So that was your Carlsberg week?

It was definitely my Carlsberg week, yeah yeah [laughs].

Are you still handy in the kitchen?

|'m still handy in the kitchen, yeah.

What's your signature dish?

Well, I just sort of cook classic French food- that's what I was trained to do and can do all that in my sleep. I guess my favourite dish is Ossobucco with saffron rice...you've probably never heard of it- it's shin of veal, which you braise in the oven with tomatoes, celery, garlic and carrots and bay leaves, with white wine...it's incredible.