Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2015 | Page 34

INTERVIEW
Southampton’s iconic Rhino Club around
the age of 17 – and he still remembers
the excitement of it to this day.
Then it was off to uni in south London,
where he got engrossed in rave and
jungle music, and started DJ-ing around
the clubs as often as he could. Big
chunks of his student loan went on
records and decks, but he was having the
time of his life.
His plan was to go into journalism – and
it’s hardly surprising that he found a way
to harness his passion, by working as a
music journalist for seven years.
“I was DJ-ing at the same time though”
he says, “so it was a case of always
juggling lots of stuff. There were raves,
nightclubs, illegal raves … I guess I was
always living for the weekend”.
Working as a music journalist gave him
the chance to meet and write about lots
of artists – and whilst he didn’t realise
it at the time, these contacts were to
become invaluable later down the line
when he launched out into the festival
business.
He says people such as Norman ‘Fatboy’
Slim showed faith in him when he was
starting out.
His ‘Sunday Best’ venture - from which
Bestival and all the other event offshoots
were to grow – started out in the mid90’s as a pioneering type of club night,
the brainchild of Rob and his wife Josie.

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At the time, she was working part-time
as a waitress and he as a barman, in the
Student Union bar.
“Bar culture as we know it know didn’t
exist then” he says. “We set the template

for fun and good music with a Sunday
night event in a Battersea tea room.
People could chill out, read the papers,
play board games and see big DJ’s
playing alternative sets”