In 1986, when I was 11 years old, I was sat on the bus on the way to school. One of my friends was playing a mixtape, although I can’t remember who made it. It could’ve been a Mastermix, it could’ve been a DMC tape, but it got me hooked, as the transitions between each track seemed seamless. This is what got my juices flowing and got me interested in music.

Prior to this, I was already watching Top Of The Pops, where the likes of Madonna, Lionel Richie, Whitney Houston and Genesis – to name just a few – were appearing. It was the year of the ‘C’ car registration and I remember looking out the bus window and spotting my very first Escort XR3 in white with the prefix ‘C’. It was also the year that Suzuki released their second variant of the GSXR slabside 750, my favourite bike, which I admire so much that I’ve ended up owning quite a few over the years and I still have five of them in the garage, in various forms of disrepair.

Yes, you could say that I’m an 80s child. My first ever single that I remember owning was Wham’s Wham Rap!, their debut single, which was released on June 11, 1982. Believe it or not, this was actually on a packet of Kellogg’s Cornflakes and we had to cut the vinyl from the packet. It was actually glued to the side! I’m still trying to get my head around that!

This was the beginning of a phase of me collecting music, and although I wasn’t allowed to go to discos until I was at least 12, I remember the first event I went to. It was an under 16s Friday disco in a hall in Bracknell, Berkshire. The DJ had light screens and an all-in-one console, which (if I remember right) was a Thames II with Citronic Mixer and Citronic CL 12 D belt drive decks. I was always infatuated with the way that the songs blended from one to the other.

By the age of 14, I was doing a paper round and I got more interested in getting into music so I managed to cobble together a pair of stereo hi-fi record decks. One was a Bush, the other was an Amstrad. These lasted for about six months and, if I remember rightly, I used to scout car boot fairs and I was lucky enough to acquire one Technics SL 23 record deck which was actually a wooden boxed belt driven with variable 33 and 45rpm with an on and off switch toggle next to the pitch. I think I paid around £10 for it, which was a lot of money back then.

I was also fortunate enough to find a thrift shop in Hastings, where I lived, that had an identical deck so, as you can imagine, at the age of 14, I had a pair of Technics SL 23 and I matched these to a Realistic Mixer which I’d bought from Tandy. (Believe it or not, it had a 9V battery in it.)

I started buying vinyl from a record store in St Andrew’s Square, Hastings, and became friends with the man who ran it, Alan Whitfield. He invited me to come and work with him so, for a while, I was a roadie. I got introduced to Terry at PSL Hastings, and Bob Faulkner, who owned many venues in the area.
I even got to work in Alan’s shop where I met DJs Colin Russell, John Digweed and Danny Howells, to name just a few.

My first ever gig was through Alan. It was a young farmers’ summer event and I was about 15 or 16. Alan dropped me off at the venue. I had my record decks in a home-made coffin-style box, my small collection of vinyl, and I had borrowed some of Alan’s light panels and boxes, some old Fuzz Lights, Fal light boxes (the ones with the chrome front), an amplifier and a set of home-made speakers which Alan had built. I was full of nerves leading up to this event, and my stomach was churning as I set up the system whilst being watched by the half-cut young farmers. Then, Alan patted me on my shoulder and said “best of luck, I’ll see you at 11”. I played my first track and started to settle in, but then some drunk members of the audience started jumping around, causing my records to bounce and cause feedback through the speakers. Everyone was happy, singing and dancing, but for me it was hell. Not ideal as my first ever solo gig. But I pulled through and, bang on 11, Alan appeared and we packed down and went home.

This event really taught me to stand on my own feet; I adopted some of Alan’s ‘tricks’ but mostly learned from the experience and improved my performance for my next event. This was a 13th birthday party in a social club. I was playing chart current music, and it all ran smoothly. I got paid (£75, I think) and this gave me the hunger for more events and, of course, that very expensive hobby of collecting equipment.

Now, at that age, I couldn’t afford all the latest lighting and effects. Alan used to make his light boxes and speaker cabinets in his workshop, so on a Sunday I was often round his, helping where I could. Alan taught me sound to light control, wiring an eight-pin Bulgin plug with trailer cable, mounting bayonet holders to a box, cutting the white opaque sheet and carpeting the boxes. We used to build shows with these, as did many others. By the age of 16, I had made enough equipment to offer a ‘roadshow’ complete with obligatory rope light and, from then on, I was covering regular events in Hastings.

My first big break was when I was at Hastings College, studying catering. I was asked to DJ at a house party for friends one summer, so I brought along my decks. I remember being shut down at 1 o’clock in the morning by the police, who threatened to confiscate my equipment. But I made quite a few friends at the party and I then got invited to DJ an 18th at the legendary Saturdays nightclub, at the age of 17.
I remember that night well. It was a Thursday and I had brought along a couple of friends to help. I remember playing bass bumpers at 9pm and watching people coming in and heading straight to the dancefloor! Now, bear in mind I had been mixing since I was 16, so I had a year’s experience of mixing at home. Here, I was using the club system, which was the SL 1210s and, if I remember rightly, they had an MRT 60 mixer. It was a professional system on a very professional PA system. It was loud, I remember that! But the night was filled with all the dance music we had, and we had such a great time.

There was never a moment the floor was empty. The club manager, Greg, asked if I could start doing warm-ups at the club, and this opened the door to so many possibilities.

The club was owned by Bob Faulkner, who owned half of the nightclubs in the area, so I cut my teeth on the Hastings club/bar circuit. I did a couple of nights a month at Rockwells, a couple of nights in Yates (it’s still there, 30 years later), in addition to being the warm-up to John Digweed when he was the Saturday night resident. Bob also owned a club called Shunters in Bexhill so I DJ’d a few nights there, as well. When Bob Faulkner retired, everything got sold off, so I ended up working a few gigs for Terry at PSL Hastings under his Music People brand, before moving on. I became a resident at Bugatti’s in Crowborough through one of my contacts in Hastings (Monkey Puzzle DJs), and ended up forming a very close relationship with Chris Huggett, the owner at the time. Chris eventually sold the club to a couple (Sally and Jeremy) who were from a Bristol-based events company. We started up the ‘old school disco’ nights where customers would dress up. We had Vicars and Nuns Naughties Nights (2002) which were very popular and great fun.
I met my first wife at a local bar called the Crowborough Cross, where Andrew Wilson and I would cover the Sunday nights.

Those were truly crazy, especially the Bank Holiday Sundays. I have vivid memories of people dancing on the tables and chairs! It was a tiny pub with 200-300 people in there, so you couldn’t move. I used to have to climb out the window and run round the outside to get back in to use the loo!
Sadly, the landlord passed away and I moved on from there. I got married in 2004 and I had, at this point, started covering mobile events with some local multi-ops (Dean Walker, Double Decks, the Just So Bar, Uckfield) and working at various venues from Brighton up to South London.

In 2006, I started a five-year break from DJing when my son Joe was born. I had qualified as an electrician by this point, and made it my career. I kept my 1210s and vinyls/CDs but moved everything else on.

Then, in 2012, I took a call from a friend who was having a birthday party in a local hall. He had been let down and couldn’t find a replacement DJ, so I agreed and went along with what equipment I still had. Oh my god! I had missed this! I was soon checking the Friday ads, looking for equipment. Within no time at all I had built up a reasonable show and I was back in the fold! In 2018, I joined the South Eastern Discotheque Association (SEDA) after a very good friend, Bradley Penhallow, introduced me to the committee. I ran the SEDA shop and quality seconds table at the Village Hotel Maidstone on a Sunday evening. I remember doing the member show where the new members would bring their set-up for all the others to see. By that time I had a bloody great big booth that I had bought from Shane Watson, which was 10 foot wide!

Last year I became the chairman of SEDA, which is a huge honour because 2024 was the 50th anniversary of the association. Networking with other people in the industry has helped me to focus on my game and learn from others. This has also provided me an opening for my new company, Cosmopod UK. I’ve always been a minimalistic kind of guy so I devised a system that would allow me to turn up at events, set up quickly and still provide the service of a bigger show. When I first introduced the idea of a minimal disco it wasn’t received well because everyone was set in their ways with what equipment was available at the time.

In 2020, Covid landed and we were all stuck at home. I was working on National Grid substations as a high-voltage electrical test engineer. We managed to work halfway into the first Covid lockdown but then we got to the point where nobody was doing anything and everything had shut.

Nobody was going out so, like many others, I had my decks in the conservatory. Music was an escape. SEDA managed to carry out Zoom meetings and I think at one point we had 75 people on one meeting, which was pretty impressive. We tried to keep engaged with members and friends through social media.

One of those engagements was putting music on the social media platforms with guys showcasing their mixing skills. This was very short-lived, by the way, as Facebook licensing came into play and shut everyone down within seconds, but it was fun while it lasted! I was one of those people in my conservatory, at the deck, set up with my mixer and everything else, but it all looked untidy.

So I decided to build a unit that would house my decks and I set it on top of an eight-cube storage unit which housed my vinyl. I took pictures of it and stuck it on the internet. Within a week I had people messaging me asking where I had bought it, how did I make it and how much it had cost.

There were lots of guys that had their equipment stuffed away in cupboards, garages and lofts that hadn’t been used in years. The Covid lockdowns brought a lot of these people together when their gear got brought out and set up as an escape. Within three months, I was taking orders for home studios. I designed and started hand-building units using very basic tools. My garage became my workshop, so I had to remove all of my motorbikes and store them in the garden! The decision was made to make this new venture work and I ended up not returning to National Grid as an electrician. The orders were flowing in fast, with lots of enquiries coming from abroad. I had certainly found a gap in the market. Each unit was bespoke as no two clients had the same equipment set-up. But these products needed an identity. Using my middle name, Cosmo, and the word ‘podium’, Cosmopod was born.

I prefer to take my own product with me to events because it’s unique, versatile and everything I need has been built-in, so I can walk into a venue with my booth and everything needed in it in one trip; literally, two bags and I have it set up in five minutes.

I now offer these products via my website, www.cosmopod.co.uk, and my Facebook page, Cosmopod by Cosmo DJ. I’ve now become dependent on this business as well as my DJ work. I network with clients and members of SEDA, as well as being a member of NADJ, and several social media groups that love to share tips and ideas, as well as work! I’m always looking for ways to improve not just my appearance but the overall front of house.

I look forward to 2025 as I have some big things planned for Cosmopod UK, with some great new designs which would enhance the disco experience. I also build a range of products for the photo booth industry and have my own designs, which I use with my events. I try to keep myself unique from my competitors because there’s no fun in copying somebody else but the key to a great business is strategy and networking. It’s not always about the price. Cosmo the DJ over and out.