Heart of darkness: The Secret DJ on touring

The isolation of living in hotels is another aspect. Hotels are microcosms of the world, and just like everything else in the world, you get what you pay for. Hotel staff will literally deal with anything if it’s worth their while – but riding an incontinent goat down to reception is kind of uncool and inappropriate in a Swansea Travelodge. No-one there is paid enough – and certainly not enough by you – to deal with a wobbly wanker and goat shit when they arrive at work first thing. Some places offer shitty indoor goat rides (or whatever) as complementary, because not only are the staff all paid very well, more than likely it will be you paying them very well both before and after anyway. The difference between being a cunt and a rogue is that rogues tip well.

In the end it all boils down to plain rotten behaviour. Once you start abusing groupies, kicking people out of cars in the middle of the Ibiza heat or, most heinous sin of all, wearing sunglasses while you play… well. You’ve gone over to the dark side, never to return. It’s a small business, is the business of show, and everyone knows about you.

Of course, this doesn’t prevent bookings. No-one ever stops booking someone who sells tickets, no matter what they’ve done (Ten Walls aside). But when your star starts to fade, and you need a bit of good karma or good relationships until you come back into fashion again: that’s when bad behaviour comes back to kick you in the teeth.

One of the reasons DJs (and other public figures) lose the plot is that it starts to become less a job of work, and more an extended celebration of themselves. They start to party to the sound of their own fabulousness. They see each gig as a daily birthday party. It’s weird and lonely and unnatural, so what the hell? You may as well go cloven-hooved, great steaming googly-moogly on it all. Then one day it’s a job again, and people need you to do things that frankly aren’t nearly as awesome as making little food sculptures out of room service leftovers, and they’re all so boooooring, and suddenly you’ve forgotten what it is that you do. You are supposed to make other people happy. Not yourself.

Lying on his deathbed in a Paris hotel, Oscar Wilde is said to have looked around at the frightful decorations and said, “Either the wallpaper goes or I do”. He promptly died. That nasty paisley is probably still there, and it’s a lesson to every insane DJ, forever.