‘It was not a nice situation’

The celebrity DJ Fat Tony is a welcoming host when HELLO! arrives at his beautiful garden flat in London’s Pimlico on a rainy spring morning.

Tony is fresh from a gym workout, and his husband, the creative director Stavros Agapiou, is off to the dog groomers with their beloved pooches: Reenie Taylor and Raf.

We’re here to chat about Tony’s new self-help book, Recover Me: A User’s Guide to Overcoming Addiction and Insanity, which is a follow-up to his 2022 autobiography, I Don’t Take Requests. It details his recovery from drug, alcohol and sex addiction, and sees Tony recount a long feud with his father during the years of his self-confessed life of extremes. 

“I didn’t talk to my own father for 30 years… it was a deflection of my own stuff onto him and it was far easier for me to hate on him because I was hating on myself,” Tony admits. 

“I regret that more than anything in the world, but I made my peace with him.”

Beckham family feud

He refers to this experience when discussing his friend Brooklyn Peltz Beckham, who is estranged from his parents, Sir David and Lady Beckham.

In January, Brooklyn posted a lengthy statement on Instagram, saying: “I do not want to reconcile with my family.” Brooklyn added that when he and Nicola married in 2022, his mother had “danced very inappropriately on me in front of everyone”. Tony had been DJ at the wedding and, following Brooklyn’s posts, appeared on ITV’s This Morning to discuss the controversy.

Tony says: “It’s always sad when there’s a rift in any family. It just so happened that I got dragged into one. I went on [This Morning] to change a narrative of the word ‘inappropriate’ and where it was going for Victoria, where it was going for Brooklyn. It was not a nice situation. 

“[The Beckham family] are incredible and [David and Victoria] brought up those kids impeccably.”

Speaking about his friendship now with Victoria, Tony says: “They are who they are; they’re an amazing PR machine, they do wonderful things and I’ve just gone in a different direction. I love Brooklyn, I love Nicola. I see Romeo all the time, he’s always around. He’s doing incredibly. He’s just dropped his new clothing range, so it’s amazing. They’re all doing well, and Cruz.”

Facing the past

In his book, Tony confronts his past, including childhood sexual abuse, with the help of a therapist.

“I wanted to do a self-help book because it’s really important that people who have read the first book understand what recovery is about,” he says. “That book changed my life – for the first time in my life, I got really honest. All of that shame that I wrote about, I’d never dealt with.”

He says that while beating his drink and drug addictions was huge for him – he’s been sober for nearly two decades – dealing with his sex addiction was the toughest journey.

“Going to trauma therapy and working through that stuff was really important.”

Circle of famous friends

He has DJed for Michael Jackson and Madonna and his A-list friends include Kate Moss, Boy George and Sir Elton John. Yet he’s less fussed about playing for celebrities these days, preferring large gigs in Ibiza or at festivals.

“They’re just normal people at the end of the day,” he says of big stars. “Obviously Michael Jackson was Michael Jackson. For me now, DJing to celebrities, I still do that, but it’s not where I want to be.”

House move

A house move may be on the cards for Tony and Stavros, who married in spring last year. They fancy a “semi-move” to the south coast, keeping a London base for work.

“We think we’ve found one in Margate,” he tells us, revealing that his good friend, the artist Dame Tracey Emin, who lives there, introduced them to an “incredible” property. “We need a big marital home.”

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Recover Me: A User’s Guide to Overcoming Addiction by DJ Fat Tony is out now (published by Little Brown)