Norman Cook lays it all bare… [October 1995]

Just months before the launch of his first record as Fatboy Slim, Better Living Through Chemistry, Norman Cook spoke to MUZIK magazine about his Pizzaman side project alongside Tim Jeffrey and JC Reid.

While much of the discussion revolved around the forthcoming Pizzamania album, which spawned singles such as Happiness and Trippin on Sunshine, the interview is perhaps more notable for Cook’s revelations on how he caught the house music bug, and the various drugs that accompanied this journey.

“I didn’t really like house music at first,” he told interviewer Muff Fitzgerald. “I’d always been into black music and the funk scene, but when house came out it was all that piano-based, poppy stuff. I didn’t go for it much, so I didn’t want to make house records.

“Then, just through going out with my mates and caning lots of drugs, I got exposed to it. Two years later, I found I was really into it. It was basically all down to making a switch from certain drugs to certain other drugs.”

Later in the interview, the former Housemartin discusses legalisation, run ins with the local constabulary in Norway and Northern Ireland, and snorting lines of cocaine from a railway track (seriously).