The English DJ Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim) has spent 40 years studying strangers' faces and trying to figure out where he can take the crowd with music.
"Do they want to take a risk? Where shall we go – up, down or sideways?"
Saturday Morning's Kim Hill, having never been to a rave, tells Cook she is apprehensive about attending one of his upcoming outdoor shows. But that's before he makes her a promise...
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"When you come to the shows I'll make sure I put you in a place where you have the night of your life. I want to put a smile on your face like I do with everyone else.
"I want to see the look on your face when I lead you into it and you go 'Ooh, this is really fun'. You'll look at me and go 'Norman, I think I'm getting this'."
Fatboy Slim will play in Christchurch, Napier, Auckland, Wellington, Queenstown and Taupō this January and February. Details here.
In July this year, Cook DJed a concert in his hometown of Brighton - 20 years after the legendary Brighton Beach gig of 2002 when a quarter of a million people swarmed the beach.
"It felt like a gathering of all the tribes of dance music. But also a celebration of my relationship with the city that I live in."
Yet Cook didn't want to play in Brighton again till he could work out how to do it safely: "It's my own home city, I don't want to destroy it."
Growing up on the English coast, he says it was American singer Donny Osmond who made being famous look fun.
"Donny Osmond was on the news and he had a piano with lightbulbs on it that lit up when he played it and he had a leather jacket with his name in studs on the back of it. And I was like 'I want to be like that'."
Coming of age in the late 1970s. when punk rock was rallying for freedom and rebellion, the music Cook listened to at home was blues, soul and especially funk.
"I was always into funk but the thing is funk was made by black people and I was white … you had to try and pretend to be black or put on an accent.
"There wasn't really a way for white kids to make funk music until they invented the drum machine and the sampler."
Cook's focus is no longer on making music. It was not being able to get out and share other peoples' music that had him "climbing up the walls" during lockdown.
He says he came out of the pandemic with a greater appreciation for his job and the ability to help people come together "to unwind, to feel connected" on the dance floor.
"It's quite a primeval thing in humans, getting together to dance and celebrate, whether it's in a religious way or just a raving way. We like to get together and celebrate our togetherness."
To be a successful DJ you have to know what music is good, it's equally as important that you can be - as Cook has been described - "a shepherd of moments".
"You have to have an ear for a good tune and also an instinct for reading the room and leading it in an appropriate direction. You're just sort of shepherding people on their night out… it's sort of leading them down different paths.
"DJs are a bit like wandering minstrels who would travel round from city to city and they would take stories from one city to another and they would remember them in song … that pre-internet was how cultural information was distributed.
"I sort of travel the world telling these stories and spreading tales of abandon and community and hedonism and connection just by using songs."
Drugs can enhance DJing for some people, Cook says, but many others, like him, choose to stay straight.
"I have been doing this completely sober for nearly 14 years and I still thoroughly enjoy it and I'm still in the midst of it.
"DJing is about changing moods. And mood enhancers enhance changing mood but you can certainly do it without them."
Cook's two kids have both been seen on the decks already - his 12-year-old daughter Nelly DJed in a viral video and 21-year-old Woody has become a full-time DJ with a taste for drum and bass.
"He's clever enough to know he can't just live in my shadow and he's got to find his own path."
Cook says he's met three people so inspiring he felt the cool of their shadow.
The first, his school friend and bandmate in the 1980s rock group Housemartins - singer-songwriter Paul Heaton - is an extremely witty and clever man.
"After being in a band with him I always felt like I was living in his shadow. And then when I went out on my own… my wife always used to say 'I can see you thinking what would Paul do?'"
Cook says he's been in awe of musician and composer David Byrne, who he worked with on the 2010 rock musical Here Lies Love, and film director Spike Jonze, the "genius" friend who danced in the video for his 1999 hit Praise You.
"If you think about Paul and David and Spike, they're all people who like to provoke people, gently do things that are a little bit wonky and a little bit wrong."
Elusive New Zealand musician Connan Mockasin is of the same ilk, it could be said, and his aunt happened to be Cook's live-in nanny.
Mockasin came to stay with the family many times, he says, and Cook produced some of his early demos.
"He's a properly odd, twisted genius. He does things with the guitar that I've never heard before and his voice, as well."
Although Cook has lost the passion for making music himself, he says his love of DJing is as strong as ever.
''If your job is just to listen to music all day and travel round the world playing it to others and helping them have a good night out, it's a beautiful job."
A couple of beloved Fatboy Slim tracks:
'Right Here, Right Now' (1999)
This is one Fatboy Slim tune that Cook never tires of.
"It's quite good 'cause it's like a sort of meme that means everything and nothing. It's sort of a one-size-fits-all."
'Praise You' (1999)
"This video was a reaction to all those glossy MTV videos with her very expensive dance routines and very beautiful people."
