I Don't Take Requests: WINNER OF THE ATTITUDE AWARD 'If you want to change your life...read this book.' TRACEY EMIN

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So, I’d like to end this piece by saying thank you, Tony, for trusting me with your story and giving me this opportunity. I have been waiting for clearance from the Qatar government, for me and my boyfriend, who are both HIV positive, to go to a country where it is illegal to be HIV positive,” he said. To sit and listen to other people's problems and to open up and identify that something is going on, sitting and listening has taught me a lot. Tony Marnoch, aka Fat Tony, grew up on an estate in Battersea where he made friends with Boy George, and DJed to the stars before spiralling into serious drug addiction.

The biggest thing I learned while I was in prison was being honest; the fact that I said that I was in recovery meant that I was able to get a mobile phone. He now compartmentalises his career into 'before' and 'after' his recovery, saying he was only getting bookings at the height of his addiction 'out of loyalty'. He loves a good meme and crops up in posts from lots of people I follow in music and fashion circles.Most memoirs are commissioned by a publishing house, who first sign the talent and then commission a nameless ‘ghost’ – the person who actually puts pen to paper. I Don't Take Requests is Fat Tony's breathtakingly candid and outrageous memoir of a life of extremes. Such was the chat over lunch with Fat Tony (aka Tony Marnach) three years ago that culminated with his memoir, I Don’t Take Requests, out this week.

Having discovered drugs when he was 18 and convinced he couldn’t perform his craft unless he was high, Fat Tony would go four or five nights straight without sleeping, affecting his perception of reality.Now, he is 14 years sober and, alongside working to help others overcome addiction, DJing for everyone from Elton John to Louis Vuitton and the Beckhams – and running one of lockdown’s most popular Instagram accounts with its wickedly funny memes. I went over the pandemic as well, I went when dancing wasn’t allowed on the Island and all the clubs were closed. Sharing memes throughout lockdown, his Instagram account has quickly become a saving grace for his 263k followers.

Loves long walks along the beach, holding hands and romantic 80's power ballads, partial to electronic music and likes to make the odd mix or two. I love myself for the majority of the day - I still have self-loathing moments because that's the way I'm wired. I have been very vocal about members of my community going to Qatar and promoting it with everything that’s going on in the world and the human rights atrocities. Tony's antics are the kind that were really only possible in the era just preceding omnipresent social media. As one of club culture’s most notorious – and best loved – figures, Tony is a complete force of nature.Tony is open about the fact that he nearly didn't make it, that when in the throws of addiction, there's usually no clear escape route. From working as a prostitute's receptionist straight out of school to clubbing with Leigh Bowery in the 80s and caught in the wrath of serious drug addiction problems in the 90s, all the good, the bad and the downright ugly is promised in what's cracked up to be 'one of the most talked-about memoirs of the year'. Never one to submit to life's airs and graces, the memoir, written with Sunday Times Style's Michael Hennegan, promises to offer an unpolished - at times, heartbreaking - account of the DJ's life over the years. It was a rock bottom moment that would eventually put him on the path to recovery, and start 15 years of sobriety that have seen his career soar since - and his celebrity friendship circle blossom. Some chapters I found the timelines abit off and in some bits did repeat itself quite a-bit in some paragraphs , but despite those small things you really get the sense that this is Tony writing this and no one else .