I saw Fatboy Slim at an intimate Newcastle venue and it was the night of my year so far
The build up for the Brit Awards started in style on Thursday night as Fatboy Slim performed for a sold out North East audience.
The torch of live music events was spiritually handed from Tyneside to Manchester this week - and there was a major party to celebrate.
In 2025 Newcastle hosted the MOBO Awards and the Mercury Prize while the build up to the Brit Awards also kicked off in the city thanks to Fatboy Slim.
The Brit Awards are far more than just the televised awards ceremony, which is due to take place at the end of this month. During the build up some of the biggest artists in the country perform at much smaller venues than usual to raise money for War Child, a chairty supporting young people in war torn regions across the world including Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine.
Over £8 million has been raised by these smaller shows in the past.
This year will see sets from the likes of Robbie Williams and Olivia Dean, while Fatboy Slim got festivities underway at the 1,000 capacity Boiler Shop venue in Newcastle, and we went along to enjoy the set.
After a fantastic warmup set from Middlesbrough based DJ Max Jones, Fatboy Slim - also known as Norman Cook, ran the crowd through some of the best dance tracks to come from the UK over the last 40 years in a sweeping, comprahensive two hour long set, running his time from 9pm right up until the 11pm curfew.
Alongside the length of the setit was clear - and hugely impressive - how clear it was that Cook still loves what he does. This year marks 30 years since his first album under the stage name and the 62 year old is still as energetic on stage as he was during his early Big Beach Boutique shows in Brighton.
It would be easy to turn up and run through a shorter set and know audiences will still be reletively happy with the experience, but that isn’t enough for the man who performed multiple sets over Glastonbury Festival in 2025, one of which was his 100th show at he iconic event.
Instead hekept the energy of someone years younger, constantly looking for one-to-one moments with those towards the front of the crowd, climbing on the barricade on multiple occasions and clearly loving the experience of performing at the smaller industrial style venue.
As some who has kept Fatboy Slim on my ‘must see’ list for years and missed each of his sets at Glastonbury over the summer, I was left in owe and I’d expect every person in the sold our crowd felt the same.