The whole family was strictly vegetarian until I was seven, so I consumed a huge amount of cheese, milk and nut roasts in Reigate. Mum and Dad belonged to a devout religion quite like the Quakers who were against eating animals on moral grounds. Then they lapsed and so we all did.

Mum worked at a school for severely maladjusted children and Dad in the glass industry. He launched bottle banks in England and got an MBE for it. Leaving the house to attend promo events he’d have his face painted and be dressed as Ally Jam-Jar, a character he’d invented, which was a constant embarrassment to me. He’s now retired and an armchair recycling campaigner, writing letters – like to Guinness, to tell them the colour of their bottles is wrong because brown glass isn’t easily recycled and that if they used green glass instead it would both be better for the environment and fit their Irish theme.

I’d try to hide or dispose of vegetables so I didn’t have to eat them, because we weren’t allowed to leave the table unless we’d finished. I remember sitting for hours, seeing who’d break first, and slipping the runner beans Dad grew in the garden onto my siblings’ plates while they weren’t looking. Food in our house was never meant to be a pleasure. It was about thrift, health and recycling. Mum and Dad considered any waste obscene. What we didn’t eat would be served again the next day in slightly different form. This had been in their heads since war and rationing and it continues in my head. I’ve spent 17 years pestering Zoë [Ball, his wife] to improve her fridge management – keeping older food at the front and newer at the back. My idea of eat-by dates is three or four days later than hers.

I was a vinyl junkie at 15 and would get invited to parties simply because I had records to play, but by the end of the party they’d be covered in fag ash, drink, food and vomit. Sugar in drink will get right in the groove of a record; it will be playable if you clean it but never sound as good. I learnt to brush away people holding glasses, to keep my vodka under the desk or way to the side and I’ve never snacked while on the turntables. (Nowadays I play time-coded digital sound files on disks with videos burnt into them and the dangers are extreme heat and liquid. A bit of damp will only give me 110 volt shocks – which is like being punched – but spill a drink over my mixer and I’m fucked and will leave the stage.)

Throughout my clubbing years I’d go to the all-night Market Diner in Brighton, where truck drivers would be joined, between 2am and 4am, by all us drunks. It’s there they served The Gutbuster – everything on the menu on one plate, an idiots’ rite of passage. I never had one myself but egged a lot of gullible people to.

Hunger is good on stage. But for many years I had little interest in food generally; it was merely functional. Once we did four days at Glastonbury without any food passing our lips. It was partly a scientific experiment, to see if we could avoid using toilets. The roof of my mouth hurts after I don’t eat for more than 24 hours – it becomes very sensitive. Nowadays I’ll make sure to insert food and sleep somewhere into my schedule, although I won’t eat in the five hours before a gig, or afterwards, unless there’s a banana in the bedroom, or my stand-by pork pies, before I get into bed.

Me starting to cook happened a week before our son was born. Zoë was unable to bend over to open a cupboard door and her dad and mum were coming for Sunday lunch. Zoë said, “You’ve got to cook, Norman”, and I said, “You know I don’t”, and she said, ‘“Here’s the recipe, the ingredients and Jamie Oliver’s phone number, in case you get stuck.” I cooked a fantastic fish pie and Zoe’s dad had four helpings.

Jamie’s great to have as a friend – I once contacted him in Australia to check exactly how much a glug of oil is.

My friend Ken Friedman decided to get out of music and open a restaurant in New York and asked me to co-back it. We spent many afternoons talking food, looking for premises, deciding its USP … Luckily, The Spotted Pig was a resounding success and I was intoxicated by the whole idea. Now I’m a partner in the hippest restaurant in NY, with a Michelin star to our name and I can reserve my favourite table there, like Goodfellas, despite them taking no bookings. The chef would let me have a go in the kitchen occasionally, but since we got the Michelin star I’m not allowed anywhere near.

People were eating, drinking and talking their tits off while I was DJing my, er, unique brand of acid house at a Vanity Fair post-Oscar party. Stella McCartney, Kate Hudson and Zoë tried to get some dancing going but no one took to it. Then John Cleese came up into the DJ booth and said, “I know what you’re trying to do, dear boy – but it’s not really working.” DJing to people having a formal sit-down meal is especially difficult. You have to pitch it on a level at which people won’t get indigestion or abandon their meals for a jig but has them tapping their feet under the tables.

With no idea whether bringing cooked meat into the country was allowed, one time I took the opportunity to bring a big pata negra home on a late-night private jet with no customs on arrival. I’ve also flown home with kobe beef. If you’re really careful you can keep it frozen the whole way from Japan.

During one alcohol rehab I did, I was cooking for myself in shared accommodation and kitchen, like a student house. Everyone else was a junkie and was confused by how excited I’d get about preparing asparagus. I’m afraid I went a bit middle-class, trying to introduce gastronomic ideas to people going through hell. I haven’t drunk for eight years now, although I’m allowed it in cooking because the alcohol is burnt off.

I drank through most of my DJing career and vodka made it better – it brought me up – and I always said: “It would be unprofessional to go on stage sober, because everyone in the crowd has had a drink.” But after 30 years I should know their wavelength instinctually and I’ll get intoxicated by the atmosphere.

I got so into sous-vide recently, to the extent that when I asked Zoë what she wanted to eat she replied, “Just anything that’s been burnt for a change.”

I’m over-stocked on cookbooks. It’s one downside of developing a passion – come birthday or Christmas everyone thinks “I know what, I’ll get Cook a cookbook”. I gave up buying any for myself 10 years ago when I realised I’d been given every decent one ever published. And please, no more gadgets. I’ve got enough weird garlic crushers, fish descalers and crab tongues to last two lifetimes.

I could show off and mention that my six-year-old daughter has loved sushi since she was four. Although she’s happy with a macaroni cheese from the freezer, she enjoys the look on peoples’ faces when she orders sushi. She also likes her peppers roasted black and preferably blow-torched, but won’t eat anything she thinks has a trace of black pepper in. She loves putting herbs up chickens’ bums. As soon as we get a chicken she asks, “Can I put herbs up its bum, please?”

I cherry-pick gigs nowadays by using my Five Fs criteria and only doing those which score three Fs or more. The Five Fs are whether it will be Financially rewarding, Fun, a First for me, a Favour for a friend, or getting me near great Food. I played two gigs in Copenhagen to secure a table at Noma. The gigs were good but even if they’d been rubbish it would have been worth it for the food.

Fatboy Slim plays Creamfields on 28 August, Glasgow Hydro on 9 December and London 02 on 17 December