Quentin Cook (or “Norman”, to his friends) is an odd chap. Better Living Through Chemistry was Norman Cook’s first essay on the big beat phenomenon, followed by the hugely successful “You’ve Come a Long Way Baby” – it’s fair to say that if big beat is your game, these pieces should get close to full marks. Norman Cook, a.k.a. Fatboy Slim, certainly did his research on this one. Obvious influences include the Chemical Brothers, whose “Exit Planet Dust” was clearly on heavy rotation in the studio CD player while this album was being recorded. In fact, Mr. Slim has admitted several times to almost outright plagiarism: “if you can’t beat ‘em…”

And can we blame him? I’d argue that we shouldn’t. Norman Cook has paid his dues to the dance music community. Mr. Cook stormed into the charts (and Top 40 compilations worldwide) with Beats International’s “Dub Be Good To Me”, simultaneously giving the breakbeat community another acapella to play with, and launching Lindy Layton’s solo career.

Norman Cook once boasted a record collection comprising over 8,000 records, largely thanks to a keen trainspotting eye for samples and ready access to local car boot sales (to which most trainspotters are addicts). And it shows; Cook’s subsequent projects included the Bassbin Twins, the Mighty Dub Cats and Pizzaman (whose ‘Trippin’ on Sunshine’ and ‘Sex on the Streets' are club classics), projecting a musical landscape of substantial variety.

This record collection has allowed Norman to let his creative juices to run riot on hundreds of bootlegs and white labels that feature prominently in his DJ sets. Want an example? Have a listen to his “Live on the Bouncy Hour” set: I defy you to put a name to every track in the mix. It’s no surprise, then, that his remix skills are in such high demand. Artists such as Madonna, U2 and (supposedly) Cliff Richard have petitioned Mr. Slim for a remix, and more often than not he has declined. A selective nature has meant that he has picked eclectic originals (such as Cornershop’s Brimful of Asha”, which he incidentally did for free), while leaving alone offers to remix classic dance tracks (Young MC’s “Know How” and CLS’ “Can You Feel It?” among them). You can probably join the dots here: Fatboy Slim remix skills are in demand long after the musical community had tired of others such as Jason Nevins or Mark Kinchen (MK).

But Norman’s a bit of a prankster. He knows how to have a giggle, at himself, other artists, the music-buying public – in short, just about everybody. His tongue in cheek bootleg of his own project with Bootsy Collins set mouths talking and dancefloors pumping: Bootsy originally approached Mr. Slim for production assistance on his funk monster, “Party Lickables”, who liked the tune so much that he subsequently re-released it sans vocals as “Comma” under the “Son of a Cheeky Boy” moniker. Globally, dancefloors were grateful..

And it doesn’t look like Fatboy Slim will be leaving our CD players and radio stations any time soon. His new album, “Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars” is due later this year. I’ll reserve my judgement on this piece until I’ve heard more of it. I will bet, though, that if the album doesn’t do as well as Fatboy Slim had hoped, we may say goodbye to Fatboy Slim, but merely au revoir to Norman Cook.

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