 I'm good, thank you Chris, how are you? Absolutely delighted to have you on the show. Thank you mate. When I open my eyes at four o'clock this morning, rather than put my trainers on and jog around the block, which is my usual routine, I had a green smoothie, then I made a cup of tea, and then I went back to bed with this one. Brilliant mate, thank you. And I think if anyone wants to live, all those of us that used to shake a mean hoof back in the 90s and still do to this day, and who wondered what's it like to be the guy in the booth, and what sort of challenges we face, because obviously we only see the glamorous side in the clubs and the raves and this sort of stuff. This is the book folks, there'll be a link for it below. It's life remixed. And yes, so I'm absolutely delighted to welcome Mark Wilkinson, hello Mark. Hi mate, thanks for that. That was a really lovely intro and review, I really appreciate it. There were some amazing times, I tell you that, there were some incredible times. Yes, we'll come on and talk about that, but just some admin stuff. Did you have a DJ name or you would just Mark Wilkinson, weren't you? I'm Mark Wilkinson under my own name, but I was in a couple of production outfits, one called Problem Kids, one called Kids Stuff and then Dab Hands. And yeah, I mean, I had a various different labels, record labels, I worked with Junior Boys Own, paper recordings in Manchester, and started my own kidology record label as well. So lots of names, lots of monikers, but Mark Wilkinson was my, obviously is my name and was the name that I went under as a DJ. Interestingly enough, there's another guy called Mark Wilkinson who came after me and he actually didn't go with Mark, he actually just calls himself Wilkinson and he's had some great success in the EDM world as well, but he didn't, because I went first, he didn't use his own name bless him, so I love that. Yes, it's why I wrote all my memoirs under my own name because I think Chris Thrall, Chris Thrall, it just sounds like a good orphan name. Yeah, solid. It's like those two short blocks that look good on the front of a novel or whatever. So, yes, you touch there on back in the day. We're gonna expand upon that. I'm feeling good now for all the people that are watching that know exactly what we mean when we said back in the day. It was incredible times for many of us. It was certainly one phase in what I would call my enlightenment, most definitely. And of course, you know, enlightenment comes with a bit of pain and a few mishaps and times when it doesn't always go right and when parties go wrong, they can go seriously wrong because I've had the misfortune to find out. But back to you, Mark. Shall we start at the beginning? How did you become an international house DJ? Thank you for asking, mate. Yeah, I mean, look, it was music that first sort of grabbed my soul when I was like six years old. I remember walking down into my mum's front room and she was listening to Elvis and the Beatles and an old record player or whatever. And I was just like, I was like, what is this? Just giving this feeling, goose bumps up my spine. And I was like, wow. And it was never the little ballads. It was always the big songs, the uplifting songs. I was always like, this is amazing. And I just got into, you know, I remember any time I got a bit of money off my paper around or anything else that I did, I'd go and buy vinyl and I'd bring it home and listen to it on a record player. I remember mum buying me my first record player for my own room upstairs. So it was like, you know, all these things and music was just something that just spoke to me. I tried playing the piano for a while and I gave it up and my mum said, you'll regret that. And she was right. Then also I played the trumpet for a while. I played various different musical instruments but I never really stuck at it. But I was musical and I loved music and I left school at 16 with a couple of qualifications because I was a bit of a tear away. I never really concentrated very much. All the school reports said, Mark's an intelligent boy but he gets easily distracted and never amounts to much and all that stuff. But the bottom line is that I just followed my dream. I went with music. I went through a couple of odd jobs as you read in Life-Free Mixed. But somehow I just found myself in the middle of 1988, 18 years of age, standing in the middle of a dance floor in central London as Danny Ramplin and the rest of the guys brought house music back to the UK and I was right in the thick of it. And the next thing you know, I just continued on and on and on. I got a job in, well, I learned to mix records and I ended up with a job in flying records in Kensington after two or three years of knocking around the clubs and stuff like that. I got this job and I just became a DJ. I used to give out mixed tapes and people would book me to play at their clubs and their after parties and all this stuff. And it just took on a life of its own. It just developed over 20 whatever years in the end but travelling to 65 countries, having a record in the top 10, doing all this incredible stuff, Chris, it was beautiful. It was an amazing young man's journey in many ways. I'm just gonna expand upon that mark if I may for our friends at home that were never into the dance scene and who may not, well, who won't understand why it was so special to many of us. House, the house was a night, and Mark's gonna come in and correct me on this, but my understanding was the house was a nightclub in Chicago and it was a place where the black kids and the white kids could come together and dance without fear of prejudice because it was all about the music. House became this beautiful mix of piano riffs. I don't know if that's the right musical term. And black, sensuous women's vocals, that's what it is for me. And any time I hear it, even at 51 years old and when I heard it for the first time almost 25 years ago I have to dance, right? I say that because a lot of people say, oh, you need to take drugs to appreciate that mute and it's like, no, you don't, if that's what you, yes, lots of substances were taken, but it didn't, the love of the music that brought so many people together didn't just hinge on the hedonistic sort of behavior. No, I think it helped a little bit, let's be honest. It was certainly a culture around that that allowed people to dance from 9 p.m. till 9 a.m. or whatever. There was some help in there, some chemical help in there, but you're quite right, I'll just correct you teeny tiny bit. The warehouse was the name of the club in Chicago and it was Frankie Knuckles who was basically, he was in New York and he was like a second fiddle to a few of the DJs in New York and he got the opportunity to go to Chicago and start this club and work in this club as the resident DJ at the warehouse. And it actually became, it was just the music that Frankie Knuckles was playing, they just shouldn't actually be, rather the warehouse music. They just called it house music. And that literally is how it goes. Some fascinating documentaries around YouTube about this kind of progression and when house took over the world. And it started, it started in this little club in Chicago. I'm getting little goosebumps talking about it now. I never went there or anything. Obviously, I was too young for that. But Frankie Knuckles was the founder. I mean, the fact that when he passed a few years ago that the Channel 4 news and the ITV news and the BBC One news actually ran articles around Frankie Knuckles, the founder of house music when he passed. Incredible, to get that kind of coverage. And for me, the music, you're right. Yes, big pianos, yes, big soulful vocals, definitely. But the real thing that held all house music together was the four to the floor drum beat. One, two, three, four, the drum beat. And that's the bit that gets you dancing. That's the bit you can dance to in any way, shape or form, right? And am I right in saying it made it, I'm thinking back to my short spell as a DJ. It made it easier to mix, didn't it? The ones easy to record. If you go back to, if you can count to four, or budding DJs, if you can count to four, you can mix records, right? But one of the things that the disco before, it was all made with live drums. So all the disco from the 70s, even in the early 80s, it was all made with live drums. And then drum machines started to come in and then it became easier to then actually make a tempo. And then, yeah, just literally just flow records together. And that's what happened. So rather than a DJ talking in the sort of cheesy nightclubs and everything, I never spoke on a microphone in a 25-year DJ career because I literally just, all at my job was just to mix records together seamlessly, play sound effects, get people whipped up into a frenzy, you know? That was what I did. And I was pretty good at it. Yes. I should explain, Mike, if you see me looking away, it's because I'm putting stuff up on the screen for our friends at home and I'm looking over there at my search engine. So I've just put a picture of Frankie up. Yeah. And it was that thing, wasn't it, that... One of these kind of elite, let's call it a bit snobby things, but the new wave of DJs who didn't want to be associated with the kind of Butlins red coat, you know? Hands in the air and the bloody, what's it? Were you the conger, isn't it? Come on and do it. No, it's none of that kind of thing. Yeah, so it was kind of the thing that DJs didn't want to speak on the mic, they very, very rarely. And in those cases, an MC would come in, wouldn't they? If they... Yeah, I mean, we were too cool for school, right? I mean, we were too cool for school. We were like, you know, rejecting all the stuff that went previously. I mean, obviously, you know, Rare Groove music was really popular in the 80s in London. You had all the new rarantics. You know, you had a lot of interesting music, electro, all this kind of stuff, all in this kind of melting pot. But basically, when house music came from Frankie Knuckles and then acid house music obviously started with lots of bleeps and techno-y sounds and stuff like that, it just grew and grew and grew to such an extent. And it was a joy. I was 18 years old. It was a joy to be there in the middle of all of that fun, if you like. But the bit that really got me was my addictions got out of control in that particular period of my life. And it didn't always lead to joy and happiness, despite the fact that dance floors were filled with joy and happiness. Of course, you know, we loved it while we were there. Yes, I try and describe it in my life as there were those of us that would take the party home. I mean, generally you did take the party home for a, you know, for an after party, but there were those of us that just, we couldn't help just continuing it. Anything that was still in your pocket, just that's, and then you'd be on the phone trying to get some more. It's the nature of addiction, isn't it, Mark? When addiction gets hold of you and you're not able to control it or you haven't got the skills to be able to control it, it can really drag you down. Yes, yes, we'll come on to that, but I don't wanna go to sort of doom and gloom at this stage, because one thing I really try to impress upon people, and this is a common misnomer in societies, drugs cannot cause addiction. It's like saying that having a nice sports car makes you have speeding tickets, right? There's a big disconnect there. It's not... I've written, sorry, Chris, I've written in the book, it's the drugs, the drugs are not necessarily a problem. It's the people's addictive personalities and addictive issues, right? We've got to deal with the addictions, the mental health issues, all the other things that go around it. If we deal with that, then the drugs aren't the issue. Yeah, can I ask you one thing we're quite hot on on this show, and I think we're the only people that talk about it, is we make the link between childhood trauma and what happens in later life, whether that be a military service person who's battling PTSD, you know, with suicidal thoughts or all this horrible stuff that's going on at the moment, or whether it's somebody like myself that after I left the force, I went to Hong Kong to run what was a very successful business at the time, albeit short-lived. It's where I met Brandon Block, funnily, you know? And that's when my demons hit home, Mark. You know, that's when I had to pay the piper. It was a tough childhood caught up with me. And I didn't realise when I'm taking these substances, which make you feel great, that what I was actually doing was masking the underlying symptoms of trauma, you know, from it. I mean, I was masking my subconscious conditioning from when I was a child. Yes, there we go. I think we probably live with sort of a low-level sense of anxiety, Mark, people like us. We don't realise it because we just think we're like everybody else. But then when you take a substance which gets rid of that and you kind of feel like normal for the first time, it's so tempting to keep chasing that behaviour, isn't it? What I've learnt, yes, what I've learnt is over the life experience that I've had, and that's what I've shared, obviously, in Life Remixed, the book. Thank you, mate. What I've learnt is that I can actually feel as good as I would like to, or as I choose to feel through study, you know, dealing with anxiety, overcoming fear, moving outside of comfort zones, doing great things, being successful. I get the same buzz almost as good as what I did when I just took that little pill and went onto the dance floor and danced the night away. So the point is that I've dealt with my subconscious conditioning and I know you have in many ways as well, but I've dealt with that subconscious conditioning, which means I no longer have the addictive behaviour. But when you're, someone said to me once, when you're the goldfish in the bowl, the last thing you know about is water. And it's true. When we were on the, it felt like everyone was doing it. There was hundreds of thousands of kids all out part in all 18 to 25, 30, you know, and we're all out there. And it felt like everyone was doing it. And so it felt safe. And it was like how we all connected with each other and partied and everything else. That's not to say there was lots of people that were just enjoying themselves without, you know, drinking drugs or anything like that. But for me, the addictions, you know, as I say, they did take hold and they didn't serve me that well in the end, to be honest, you know. Yes, let's, I'm just showing some of your Instagram. I won't, I won't ask you about it. We'll just keep interrupting the conversation. That's fine, I love it. I love looking back at those old photos. It's incredible. Yes. Drinking cocktails in the bath, mate. That's that. That was a photo shoot for my huge gay fan base that I had at that time. Hey, work it, work it. I was working, I was actually working in quite a lot of gay clubs and I remember one of the guys saying to me, he said, yeah, but you're not gay, Mark. And I was like, well, yeah, but I just play great music and everyone dances. Is that, is that not okay? And they said, yeah, well, we need a photo shoot in one of my girlfriends at the time. So why don't we do a few photos? And one of them was me sitting in a bath with a cocktail. It was hilarious. So yeah. Yeah, it's funny. House music was massive on the gay scene, wasn't it? It came from the gay scene, as you rightly put it. You know, it came out, it came from Frankie Knuckles, who was a gay black man in America playing this music. And it attracted a lot of gay people to the clubs. And if you go to New York, even I'm not so sure exactly what it's like now, haven't been for a while, but when you go to New York, certainly previously, if you said you're into house music, everyone just assumed you were gay. And it was like, well, actually no, it's just me and my straight, slightly overweight mates all going to this nightclub and it's full of these beautiful gaming or dancing. But for us, house music is one beat, one thing, you know, one love for everybody. And honestly, it's beautiful to see when it, when you see a house music nightclub, wherever you are in the world, in New York, Miami, across Europe, into Russia and into Asia, wherever you are, it unifies and it brings people together. And that in itself is powerful as you say. Yes. The gayers love me, mate, I'll tell ya. Seriously, I've had my bum pinch more times than I am, than I'm going to tell you. I did get proposed a couple of times and I was a bit like, I'm not going, but you know, but it was great. The atmosphere, the atmosphere in gay clubs, when gay people enjoy music, it's phenomenal, I love it. It's because we're gorgeous, mate, you know, some... Well, but of course. Some blokes have got it and, you know, most haven't, unfortunately, but... Okay, yeah. I'm so glad you touched on that because... I noticed a big disconnect with me and my mates who got into their music, but they got into it 10 years after I did, so they were all kind of your stone roses crew, right? And the Manchester, Bob Hare, you know, Gobi about taking that kind of, you know, Oasis stone roses sort of scene. And don't get me wrong, absolutely incredible, wonderful music and I completely get it, but the difference was if you went up to one of them and went to give them a hug, they'd be like, whoa, whoa! And it's like they just, they didn't get it, Mark, right? And they didn't get that, no, mate, we're all the same. You haven't worked it out yet because you haven't been through this amazing experience that many of us did, where you sit on the floor of a grungy club, rolling a joint with, you know, this guy could be the, I'm sorry to use cliches and I mean no offence, but this guy could be the dustbin man that your parents warned you you don't wanna become. And then you realise actually, like he's just like me and he's a really nice guy and all this prejudice and class system is all completely made up to control us. Well, we had pop stars, we had football hooligans, we had clubbers, we had people who worked in banks, we had the dustbin men, as you say, we had everyone. And it was literally, it was just a great leveler. It was just Friday night, Saturday night, sometimes all day, Sunday as well as Sunday night, but it was just that great leveler. We were all just one, you know, and even at 18, you know, I was quite full of anxiety, I was drinking, I'd experimented with a lot of soft drugs and stuff like that. And when I had this moment and I was just in this club and I'd describe it in chapter two of Life Remixed, which is called Good Times chapter two because they were good times and we have to admit it and there was, you know, good moments that we all enjoyed. But that moment of just that uplift and you describe it actually quite well, it's almost like, you know, becoming like normal, you know, or becoming, you know, whatever you think normal is and feeling good about yourself. I was transformed from a very nervy, kind of like self-conscious kind of teenager to someone who was just like prepared to dance all night with springs in his feet and party around and chat up women and enjoy myself and have a good time. And, you know, that was quite a transformation but it was a leveler, you know, Margaret Thatcher often took the credit for stopping football hooliganism and there's a whole other debate about whether or not acid house in 1988 and everyone, you know, suddenly you had Millwall and Chelsea fans and they're all together, all like cuddling on dance floors, going, we'll go out for a drink in a week, you know. Yeah. It was a big game changer. Yes, you can understand, I don't want to get off top of here because I know that you know about it but you can understand why it's used for medicinal, for, sorry, therapeutic purposes. Well, if you were to sort of, I'm not suggesting people do, I suggest people live their lives, I'll live mine and I'm like quite happy about that. I'm not telling you what to do and you don't tell me what to do, right? But if they were to, you know, neck quarter of a pinger, they soon realized all this hate and phobia and prejudice and it... I think you're right. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, one of the things I put in chapter three is that at the moment, the US FDA, Food and Drug Agency in the US, they're carrying out tests on MDMA to see if it helps with PTSD, to see if it helps people that are suffering with severe anxiety or severe mental health issues and stuff like that, which in itself is very, very interesting. And I believe someone told me earlier that it was used in the 1950s for relationship counseling to help people with relationships, and it was actually prescribed. So things change throughout the world. And yes, did we abuse it? And yeah, of course. And there was moments that addiction really, really kicked in and took control. But the thing about it is that if perceptions change, look at cannabis oil now and stuff like that. People are taking cannabis oil because they believe it's therapeutic for the body because it can take away chronic pain and stuff like that. There's so many things. One of the things I do, Chris, right, and I've learned this, you know, some would say the hard way, but I've learned this and I've put it in this book, is observation is power and judgment is weakness. So I observe everything that's going on around me and I have no judgments whatsoever of any individual, nobody, I just observe, I see what's going on. I'm not emotionally involved in anything that's not gonna serve me in a good way. And I just observe and it's a much, much, much better place to be. We should point out you've got a lot of broken servicemen now that are going down to Central America and they're doing the ayahuasca experience. And I'm not saying it works for everybody and I've never taken ayahuasca. But I do know people that just say it just changed their lives. And if I can just chip in here, because we've been so indoctrinated and brainwashed by what are called the sociopaths, either people that just control the whole show in life, they control the government, they own all the corporations, they control all the secret societies, they, you know, they've got their mitts on everything. And the biggest thing that people don't understand, they control the money system and the byproduct of the money system is putting us all into slavery and fear. That's a slight aside, but one of the things they want you to do is to think of a substance as an evil. And what Mark and I are talking about is not the substance per se, it's the fact that it gives you an experience or us that allowed us to step out of the matrix and then view ourselves objectively and view life objectively, that. And I'm not gonna, I've gotta be careful what I say on YouTube, so I'm, but following on from that, it's a real shame that in this society, we always look at addiction as a negative thing because to me, it's the best thing that ever happened to me. And when I look at my life now, it's- Yeah, talk me some valuable lessons, Chris. And I think you're very, very good point about fear and control, very good point. Yeah, the issue is, is that sadly, and we've got to separate here, people overdosing, that's not about addiction, that's about the potency of a chemical or that maybe, whatever, maybe it's been met or somebody who's tolerance is lowered and they've gone back and hit it heavy and bang, they go over, that's not addiction, right? But when that happens, of course, that's incredibly sad. So what I'm saying is, is that there are people that won't make it through this tunnel called addiction. There are people that will hurt their family, damage their children, hurt themselves. And what I'm trying to say is it's a fucking tightrope, right? It's a road that if you, well, I had no choice but I don't think you choose to go down it. You find yourself in it. And I've known people, you know, I've watched mates die. I've buried two mates in the last two years from addiction and the point I'm getting to is I don't wanna dismiss that. It's horrible, it's a shame, it's a tragedy and I completely get it. But it's also society's not set up to manage when this thing called addiction happens to people. They find themselves in it and to support them through it. And hopefully if there was a better way and a safer way and a more practical way of quickly dealing with that childhood trauma in the most pragmatic, you're never gonna get rid of it. It's always gonna be there but you can learn to manage it and learn and get yourself esteemed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And just the last thing I wanted to say, sorry, I'm talking a lot but obviously I'm passionate about enlightening people in this area is you know, I wouldn't, if you look at my life now, I'm the luckiest man on the planet. I genuinely am the luckiest man. I've got, you just look at my son, you understand why. And to think that people think I've lived my life in like any kind of wrong way, they're absolutely mistaken. I've made all the right decisions at the right times. Yeah, as it affected my, yeah, probably taking 10 years off my life and 20, I might die tomorrow. Who cares, I'm not bothered about that. But what the point is is like I live in paradise and so why are we still looking at people with mental, who have mental as a negative thing? You know, I mean obviously as an example, it can be catastrophic, not saying that's not, and having a permanent mental illness that plagues you or comes and goes, that is terribly, terribly sad, there's a... Those are the extremes you're describing there, of course. Yeah, there's lots of people that are not that in that far extreme. But one of the things I wrote down in Life Remix towards the end of the book when I got married, you know, I managed to finally have a successful relationship and everything, which was a joy after so many unsuccessful attempts. But the remedy to addiction is connection. But you have to start with yourself. Always, always, always start with yourself. So you have to find that connection within yourself. And you mention about luck. Now, to me, I don't necessarily believe in luck. For me, it's about the law of attraction and what you learn about yourself and then put out into the world is what comes back to you. So people might look at you and go, well, that's really lucky, you've got a beautiful life, a home life, a son and everything else. But actually, you attracted that into your life in a good way for you to keep learning, keep growing. And every day is a school day. We're all here to learn, to grow, to get really, really to a great place. And one of my mentors, Bob Protoss, is that many people are just creeping through life, hoping they get safely to death. And that's not being alive, right? That's not really being alive and experiencing some of the things that we're talking about here and then being able to learn from them and grow them and coach with other people. And the last thing I wanted to say as well is that there's a great quote from The Sure Shank Redemption, which I'm sure you know is a wonderful film. He says, get busy living or get busy dying. And that's a beautiful quote, you know. I'm here with you, Chris, because we're getting busy living, right? Yeah, and you've got another quote, mate. Sorry, I get a bit distracted when I'm a typical man. Don't apologize. My girlfriend will remind me with great pleasure how I can't multitask and I have to agree with her, I'm afraid, but I'm just going to get that picture of Andy Dufresne up. Yes, brilliant picture. There's another quote here. Who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. And honestly, that's kind of how I feel about my early part of my life, which is why I've written Life Remix, because I do genuinely feel that river of shit was essentially anxiety, doubt, fear, worry, addictions. I was making my life, I was making my life a bit of a living hell. And you made a beautiful description about how you live in like a nice heavenly kind of utopia now. Well, that's how I feel. And there's a poignant moment at the end of that film where he swum through the sewer, he gets out the other side, he's finally free after 30 years of like feeling this, like, you know, in prison as it is in the film. And I feel that was like a mental prison for me, you know. I came out the other side and went, oh, okay, let's go, you know. And it feels good. It feels great. And that's what coaching is about. That's what we do with Life Remix coaching and all the other stuff that I'm involved in. It's just sharing that with people because I want people to feel good. Mark, we'll come on to that, but I would be gutted if I let you go without asking you some of the kind of more nitty gritty questions that I've got the chance to ask a world-class DJ. Do it. So, and I don't want to put them in any sort of order. So, substances over bloody... Over it. You know, the music's obviously most important, but just, so there you are, right? I don't mean you in particular, but there's all our world-class DJs. We all know all the names. Some of them were quite upfront about the fact they never dabbled in any filming. Some didn't even drink and not surprising their longevity, they outlasted most. I think they're still at many... Then there was those that went through the mill. Then they had their enlightenment or their... I don't like the used word recovery, but everyone knows what I mean. You don't, I don't think you recover from an experience. You just, you should learn by it. But anyway, they go on to then have a sort of second career completely substance-free. But when you're that young guy, you're 25, 30, whatever, and you're off to New York, or like the way my mind would work was how can I get some stuff when I get there, right? I'm not gonna say that I take stuff on aeroplanes because that makes me sound like a criminal, but I've put a lot of thought into this mark is what I'm saying. How is it... I mean, for example, I'm not gonna say a name, but a certain person rocked up in a place I was abroad and he had a minder that they hired a local minder to look after him. He's a top kickboxing guy. And that place just happened to have the best Charlie in the world. And I think one of this guy's jobs was to bring a bag to the airport, so to speak. So can you enlighten us on that? That sort of thing? Well, all I would say is there was no shortage of anything. There was no shortage. And actually, that's something I've brought into my later life with everything that I'm doing with Life Remix. There's no shortage of anything. Yeah, at the end of the day, whatever you think about is what you bring about. So when I was in that world of addiction and music and sex drugs and house music and all the other stuff that was going on, there was no shortage of anything. None, nothing. I could go anywhere in the world and there'd be like-minded people like me who wanted to dance to my music, but also by the law of attraction and the law of vibration, whatever I put out came back to me. So people would just supplement my addictions wherever I was in the world. Because generally I'd be around other people who were also addicted to certain things as well. And that could be sex drugs and house music, like I said. So when I say that it all felt like everyone was doing it anywhere in the world, 65 countries, I've been around the globe, all kinds of stuff. And yeah, there was party central for everybody, however you wanted it, wherever you wanted it, whatever you. And being the DJ, I had a promoter say to me once, Mark, if you're happy, I'm happy. And he's the promoter. And I was like, okay, yeah, now we're talking. Yes, it must put a sort of awful pressure on you when you're trying to put that lifestyle behind you when people keep coming up and going, there you go, mate. It was interesting. Is that a difficult thing to manage? It was massively interesting. So I basically, the story is in Life from Mix. The first three chapters are my story. Then the rest of the book is how I did recover, how I regained, how I learned, what I learned. And then it's for any other person who's having any kind of struggle at the moment. I mean, this book is basically about recovering from a crisis, right? Recovering from a crisis. It's about that. And hey, here we are in a global crisis. Here's this book, read it. You'll find some interesting stuff. I gave up alcohol one day on a detox in Scotland with a mentor of mine. He said to me, why'd you drink, Mark? I was like, I don't know. I don't know, because everybody does. Because I've been doing it since I was 14. I don't know why I drink alcohol, I just do. Because what I had spoken to him about was alcohol was the start point and it just went on like a house of cards from there. And my night would just collapse into madness and late night phone calls and all sorts of stuff when I started drinking alcohol. So he said to me, why'd you drink? I was like, I don't know. Long story short, he called me out a couple of times because I was just flanneling about stuff. He was like, bullshit. He's like, don't tell me that you're just making these stories up about. One of my stories was, the reason I drink is because other people buy me drinks. He said to me, no way. He was like, no, he wasn't having any of it. He was a great guy. He's a great guy, he's still a friend. Brian Miller, he's actually in the book and everything. Great, fantastic man. He called me out. I was 35, I was in pain. My body was giving me pain. I'd collapsed once, had an incurable disease in my body. You know, my body was screaming at me to listen. And Brian finally just went to me, why'd you drink alcohol? Went through this process with him. I made the decision there and then it was a Wednesday. I went for a detox in the middle of the week. On the Saturday night, I've been playing in a club. And the following Saturday night, I was actually back at Ministry of Sound. And on the Wednesday, on this detox, I said, I'm not gonna drink alcohol anymore. That's it, I'm done. 14 to 35, borderline alcoholic, I'm done. And I went back to the club in answer to your question. I went back to the club on the Saturday afterwards. And here's the thing. I expected 95 or 100% of the people to try and buy me a drink. And when I said, no, I'm not gonna, I'm not drinking alcohol anymore. I just just made a decision. I expected him to be like, hey, Wanker, come on, have a drink, come on. Cause that was kind of what I expected him to do, right? That was the expected thing. Come on, get involved, do this, do that. I'm telling you now, 99% of the people that night, I'll never forget it. That night, I was playing at ministry, people offering me drinks, all sorts, come on, get involved, have a drink, do this party time, whatever. I said, no, thank you, I'm all right. I don't drink anymore. I'm tidying up my app now. I've got to listen to my body. It's time to change. Almost to, I want to say to a man, almost to a person, male and female, they said to me, I wish I could do that. I'm so glad you said that, Mark, cause two things. One, I've been trying to promote this group called One Year No Beer because it's a great thing to do. If you're having problems, get on the one. I never actually did the, I didn't realize it was a course. I thought it was a hashtag, right? It's just one of those stupid, the way my mind works at times is I'm not the smartest cookie in the box. So I thought, you just declare to your mates, I'm doing One Year No Beer, so that's what I did. And I drank and took drugs every day for 30 years, right? I remember getting on your 12 can of strong lager and thinking, oh, I've got to work in five hours. You know, it was, it was, it's just, I'm not going to knock it. Like I say to me, it was all just experiences. I won't say it was always sensible and it was always good, but. So I was quite, I think I hit a rock bottom with it all because it's bad, you know, Algon families just shouldn't be, if you're a problematic drinker, you have to address dual behavior. And so when I become a father, it became a thing that I needed to address. And I'm not, I haven't been perfect at it and I don't want people to think it's that easy, but I did do the one Year No Beer and then I did another year. And now I just choose not to drink because life is just so much better without it. People either understand that or. One of my friends, one of my friends would call your son nature's handbrake. Yes, yeah. Well, if we put the sins on our own kids that we had done to us, well, then you'll just. Passing it on. You're a coward and you're a hypocrite and I don't, we are all human guys, you know what? I've never done any of this sort of 12 step mark. It's not my thing. I would recommend it if you had a massive problem and you had children and you tried everything else. And I've done the let's just work it out bit by bit as the years go by and I've got quite a strong mind off the back of that. I think one of the things is is that we naturally come to this kind of realization as we go through life. One of the reasons I've used coaches and I'm now a coach myself is because a coach can get you there quicker. A coach or mentor, someone can get you there quicker. So rather than you taking years and years and years to work something out, someone confronting you a little bit or someone challenging you a little bit or someone like giving you goals and visions and purpose and get you moving, that actually accelerates it. And I was thankfully, I was smart enough even I wasn't really aware of it. I was smart enough to look for help and listen. And once I looked for help and started to listen, I started to make these changes. So all the stuff we're talking about and all the stuff we talk about and it's in our books and all the YouTube channels and videos and everything we do is just about trying to reach a few extra people each time and just go, look, this has worked for me. Why don't you try it? And if that can help these people that are suffering and there are people suffering in the world, suicide rates are shooting up in different parts of the world for different reasons. I work in the construction sector quite a lot. Again, suicide rates are too high, far too high in construction workers. If we can just help people a little bit more and go, hey, listen to this, this could be something. And I've got various tools and things that I work with that. I know are proven to work in different industries at different times. Just let's just do, that's my life mission. My life mission is to help people not make the mistakes that I made and potentially get them to where they want to get to quicker. Yeah, exactly. I don't even go as far as to say it's like make the mistakes, but I just wanna be there to kind of like get you to the realization point quicker. Cause it took me, like I say, 30 years to find paradise. And I'm glad I did because that meant I found it at 45-ish. And now me, if I've got another 30 years left, I've got 30 years in paradise. And let's be honest, most people will never get there. Well, some people, there can be nothing sadder, I guess, that people get into their death bed or even just their rocking chair and thinking to themselves, I could have done that really differently. If only I'd listened or if only I'd studied, if only I'd changed. Yeah, and they do. I've told this story before. I've had a grown man crying on me when I was backpacking in Dan and Oz. Well, Chris, I listened to your live and I've fucked mine up, mate. I've just, I went for the house and the car in the new job position. And I've, basically, you know, job slave, or fine folks, if you love your job, I'm actually envious of you. Can I show you something? I like to do this on my courses because I do these five days where you mix your life courses, right? Which I run for free online at the moment throughout the week, each month we do it. If anyone wants to join, you're welcome. But let's do this, Chris, this is fun, right? Can you watch the screen here? Can you see what I'm doing, right? So the average UK salary is what? Should we say 40,000? I mean, you know, I don't get sort of 30,000 a year. Mate, I make less than 10 grand a year. So you're asking the wrong person. Let's just go with 40 grand a year for a salary that people might earn, right? Okay, as an average, all right? We can even do less actually, all right? Now let's do 30,000. 30,000 pounds is an average UK salary. It's somewhere in there. But if we divide that by 12 months of the year, you've got 2,500, right? If we divide that by 4.3 weeks of the month, that comes out as 581 pounds a week, right? So let's just say 580, 580 pounds a week. And then we divide that by how many hours people work? 45 hours in an average job, possibly? We divide that by 45, that's 12 pounds, 88 an hour. My cleaner, 12 pounds, 50, I love her. She's incredible, right? Beautiful woman, cleans my house beautifully every two weeks. 12 pounds, 50 an hour, I pay her. But someone on the average UK salary of 30,000 pounds a year is not earning very, in fact, after tax, you'll be earning less. So, you know, we've got to look at this. We've got to look at this with a bit more wisdom. We've got to study a few books that are out in the world and learn from people that are doing something in a different way that actually moves you outside of that job slate. You know, my business coach and mentor, Kevin Green, who studied with Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, Kevin says, job stands for just over broke, because that's where it's going to keep you. So start to think outside the box and study with a few people. Rich Dad, Poor Dad, The Rich Rules by Kevin Green, Life Remix by Mark Wilkinson. Think about this stuff and then get out there and actually make changes. Yes, definitely. Just going back to the D, I'm going to just... Keep going, mate. I'm just going to try and find a photo. I've got a photo of me with Tony Robbins here somewhere. I'll have you a brilliant, I love it. Yeah. Well, I look for that. So, okay, next question. Did it get like annoying or kind of how did you deal when you get the sort of sycophantic or should we say groupies, isn't it? Groupies. Yeah, well, I mean, look, you know, for me, for me as a young DJ with a slightly rampant ego, you couldn't praise me enough. All right, if you want to praise me and put me on a pedestal, great. Thanks, you know, I would love it, because ultimately that made me, that made my ego feel good. Okay, the ultimate thing here, and I know you're reading through the book, the ultimate thing here when you get to it is that I didn't like me very much. I didn't like me very much. So, but if you liked me, so if the crowd, 1,000 people at Ministry of Sound or Pashirah Bethore, 1,000 people liked me, I must be all right. Yeah, if the woman in my life praised me and put me on a pedestal and thought I was amazing, then I must be all right. You know, and this, and then, you know, the addictions took the pain away and all that other kind of stuff, the self-medication that I was doing and everything else. But the real skill of this was that, you know, that's not what it's about. You know, in fact, I've studied a lot about the masculine and the feminine in relationships and I do this in my relationship section of my course. Relationships, masculine and feminine, and by the way, we're all made up of mum and dad, 50-50. So it's not about man and woman, it's about masculine and feminine within every one of us. But I heard a great thing that the feminine part of us grows through praise and the masculine part of us grows through challenge. And you think about that, masculine men, they all want to challenge, don't they? And, you know, run up hills and do it, you know. But, you know, you've got to understand that part of yourself that is masculine and feminine and my feminine was raging out of control. I was brought up by my mum, my dad died when I was a kid, brought up by my mum. I wanted praise. The feminine part of me was like, praise me, praise me, praise me. So groupies and lots of other people around, I loved it. I was like, great. Everyone's there to praise Mark, he's near a wonderful DJ. Fed right into what I needed. Got ya. All right, next question. Can you tell us about some random after parties? I'm just gonna chip in my little anecdote from me. This is in, this is in homage, if that's the right word, to my mate Andy, rest in peace. But Andy, after the warehouse kicked out, it's interesting you say it's called the warehouse, because obviously the club in the middle was... I used to DJ in there. I used to DJ in there a lot, didn't I? Yeah, I've just been putting some photos of the warehouse on the screen, so. But after warehouse kicked out at two in the morning, we all jumped in the car, and we headed to this illegal rate, I'll say illegal, I mean, they're not illegal, are they? But the government makes them, makes up these, makes the law up as they go along. But we headed to this rave, and it was in a repossessed hotel. It was about 10 miles outside the city. And we're going down all these back lanes. Everyone was, well, the car was basically a hot box, and then a copper pulled out in front of us. Andy's driving, he's got no, he wasn't even British, didn't have a British license, didn't have any, the car had no insurance, no MOT. And everyone's like, Andy, Andy, cops, cops, and he went, yeah, fuck that, man, I'm gonna follow them. They must know where the party's at. And he followed this police car up, it's bumper, and we got to this party, went up to the door, and the guy on the door was like, quid for the DJ, lads. And he's like, fuck that, man, we just left here five minutes ago, didn't you see us? And he went, oh, sorry, fellas. Let's him for free. Sorry that we denied the DJ community a quid, but. Well, he's what it is, mate. And yes, it was an eye opener. It was a country house that had obviously been quite someplace in its day. And there were people lounging around on sort of those posh armchairs and all this. It was people skinning up on the ironing board, and it was just like a hedonistic paradise. So yeah, that's my story, Mark. I bet you've got a few. I've got loads. I've literally just, I was listening, of course, but I always find it easier to sort of write stuff down to remind me of what I would like to say when it's in my mind. I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven that have just come straight into my mind. So I'll rattle them off like a machine gun and just go, right. The first one, you mentioned Hong Kong. The first one I detailed at a club in Hong Kong called, I think it's called Westworld or something like that. They did the dentist chair on me where they took three people to do. I was laying back and someone was pouring drinks into me. Someone else is setting fire to it. I'm drinking it all down. And I remember standing there and I just to come off a 14 hour flight with a seven hour time difference. And I had this drink and I was like, what, hang on a minute. And I was like, my neck muscles felt like they were giving way. And I was like, I need to get up. This is a big mistake. You're living in Hong Kong. I'm going to pop outside for a breath of fresh air. Oh, that was a big mistake. So I walked outside. My glasses steamed up and I was just collapsed on the side of the pavement because it's like about 35 degrees and like 90% humidity. So that was an interesting one. Another one in Leeds. I remember someone said, let's go to an after party. And we ended up in this after party after a club night in Leeds. That was basically in a farm. We were just in the middle of this farm yard, you know, with chickens and pigs and all sorts running around. And you know, it was very, very, very surreal, very surreal. Another one, someone got me in Cornwall once for an after party and they said, we're going to this other part. It's just down the road. Just down the road in Cornwall means about 40 miles away, right? It was literally, oh, it's just down the road. I was like, we're driving for like about an hour. I'm like, where are we going? You know? Some other beauties. Clark and Well where I used to live at right opposite Turnmills. We used to have after parties in the flat there. I remember coming back from nightclubs and there was 12 flats in the building of which six people were like party, party people. And I remember walking, and we were walking up the stairs at the end of a club, club night, and we were heading for bed to me and my fiance at the time. We're heading for bed. And all we could hear was, I was like, hold on a minute, hold on. I think there's a party in flat four. So we went in and just, I went, I opened the door and there's about 150 people in this party. I'm like, right, let's go. Next thing you know is like 10 o'clock in the, anyway, that was all mad. And lots of other ones. Junior Boyzone or Boyzone did parties at East Grinstead, which was an incredible all nighter. We saw the sun go down and the moon come up and then the sun come up again on this same lake which was just spiritual at like 18 or 19. And then the Didcot party called Respect at the Steam Museum. Or some of these stories are in the book by the way. So in the first part of Life Remix, I've had quite a few people say to me, thanks for the trip down memory lane because they're remembering stuff going like, wow, yeah, I was there or I remember that or that or that. So all these things are just, but I literally just asked me the question and that all just flowed out, right? But there's so many of it. There might be another book in this, we'll see. Quick question then, which sort of celebs have you hobnob with? Oh, that's a good one. Faces, let's not use that horrible word, but you... I hear you, I hear you. Boy George comes straight to mind. And then you'd have people like, all the DJs, I mean, if you say, if you say Mark Wilkinson to DJs, I had a text from Fat Boy Slim yesterday saying how much he loves Life Remix as a book, you know? So that was nice to get out from Norman Cook. He keeps texting me, trying to borrow a tenner. I've had, Norm, I blocked you, all right? Stop it. Brilliant, stop bothering me. Yeah, so yeah, lots of, all the famous DJs, you know, I mean, you Marillo's, you Pete Tong's, all these kind of other DJs. All the Junior Boy's own lot, of course, that I've worked with Rocky and Terry Farley. You know, just really, really cool people that I've enjoyed spending time with and have really committed their life to music. So there's a lot of that, obviously. Boy George, certainly, I remember Boy George dancing to me all night at Pasha and Ibiza one night, and that was great. I've reached out to him, actually, and said, does he want to have a chat about the book and stuff like that? Yeah, so many people, mate, so many. I'm sure more will come to mind as I go through it, but the bottom line is, is that we're all people, we're all one, we're all dancing to music, we've all got our own journey, we've all got our own trials and tribulations, you know, and just because someone makes it more successfully in a certain area, doesn't make them any better or any worse than anyone else, you know? It's all part of our journey, right? I want to hear about the women, Mark. Come on, don't hold back. I want details. Well, I'm a specky, slightly chubby at times, chat, and I used music as my way of attracting women, basically, and I was not the best boyfriend to many women. I didn't know myself, let alone how to work in a loving relationship, and yeah, I kept going in and out of relationships. I'd have one or two year relationships, but the thing was I was always hungry for the next, you know, the next relationship or the next girl or whatever, you know? And it wasn't nice, that's not a nice way to be, but I was misguided. I was misguided. My mum couldn't teach me that stuff and my dad had died, and I just, I've had to learn masculinity as I've got older, because when I was younger, yeah, there was a lot of women. I mean, my current wife often asked me, so what's your number? And I'm like, I'm not going there. That's not happening. We're not having that conversation because I wasn't the best young man. Do you know one of my old muckers from Hong Kong, Lee Burridge? I know Lee really well. Lee got me out there. Lee and Tim Fag, and a lot of the other guys, they were the ones who got me out there to DJ. I went twice. Hilarious, absolutely hilarious. Yeah, Lee gets a game, giving him a mention in my book. Look, I'll promote my book now. Look, that's one of them, I should say. That's my first memoir. Oh, wow. Eating Smoke, One Man's Descent into Crystal Meth Psychosis in Hong Kong's Triad Heartland. Wow, amazing. And it was in that Triad Heartland that I was chatting to a chap on the dance floor, and he told me his name was Lee, Lee Burridge, and he was over there trying to make it as a DJ. And he said, you want a beer, Chris? I said, yeah, I'd love... I'll tell you that, when you're a bit nutted on Crystal Meth, that corona or that soul, I can't remember which one it was with the liming. Dunn half go down well. So, yeah, he bought me a beer, and years later, of course, he's now, well, one of the world's leading DJs. Oh, he's done brilliantly well, yeah, absolutely. He hooked up with Sasha. You know, he used to take DJs out there. He took me out there, as I say, a couple of times, Lee, and we had some great gigs. It was brilliant. I always remember ending up in the after party in Hong Kong at the Big Apple. Ha! Ah! Da, da, da! It's all in there. You're going to hear it in here as well, mate. You're going to hear a few bits in there as well. What year was that, mate? 94, definitely. And then maybe the year after, 95, something like that. Oh, man, that was... I was then 95 and 96, I think it was. Okay, there you go. So, if you remember the Big Apple, mate, we know what we're talking about. Oh, mate, I only really went in the Big Apple. My mate, Roy, who's Ray in my book, ex-squaddy, he was the manager in there. Frankie was the triad big brother that ran the place. I was worked on the door across the road club. I called Club Nemo in my book. That was run by the 14k triads as well. I was on the... It was another club. I was on the door of a club called Rick's Cafe one night. And no, I'll tell you a very quick anecdote. I'm going home from work one day as a doorman, as a guy pacing up flyers. I said, hello, mate. How much did you get paid for doing that? He went, oh, nothing. I'm a promoter. I, you know, do this for myself. He said, you heard of Brandon Block and Alex P. Back then, I used to love the music, but I wasn't really that familiar with names and that sort of stuff. So I said, no, mate, I'm not... And he said, oh, best DJ in the world at... Brandon's best DJ in the world at the minute, mate, right? Obviously he's a promoter, so it's a good thing to say, but then when I went to work the next day, all the boys behind the bar were like, Chris, you're going to see Brandon and Alex on Saturday night? I'm like, I think I've got to. I just, I keep hearing about these guys from everybody. So I was out later that night in a club and in Hong Kong, you go out all night. Clubs are open as you know, all night. Coming the next day, the two guys I was with, they both left and I was having a beer in a club. I think it was called Carnegie's, if I remember rightly. Might have been somewhere else. And I had a tie on because the mate that I used to go out with worked in an Italian restaurant and every time he finished work, he had his tie on from work. So one of those stupid things you do when you're young for no looking back, like why, is I thought I'd ditch my Dickie bow and I'll put like a normal tie on in honor of my mate. So I'm there at this club. I'm there in this bar at 10 a.m. in the morning or whatever. And this girl starts having a go at me going, what you got a fucking tie on for? You look like, you look fucking stupid. And then this geezer that I'd seen out, I'd seen him out in a few clubs the night before. It just turned around and went, mate, any time you want to wear a tie, you wear a fucking tie. And I said, oh, thank you, mate. I'm Chris. He said, Brandon, mate, Brandon Block. He's a top fella, Blocko. He's a lovely guy. I've got another little story for you as well, actually. I've got so drunk in Hong Kong. Those boys, you know, Lee and the rest of the time got so drunk it was savage. I remember going to the following morning, this is how classy I was the following morning. Well, probably lunchtime. The following day I went to McDonald's in Hong Kong. We walked down to get them McDonald's breakfast or whatever. And I got an orange juice and I got me a little burger and everything. And I wasn't, he wasn't going to go down very well and it didn't end well. But the funny bit of the story is I was drinking this McDonald's orange juice. And I was with a mate, a guy that was there to look after me sort of thing. I went, that's got vodka in it. And I swear to God, this McDonald's orange juice was full of vodka. I was going, I was like, can you taste that? Can you sm- Honestly, I was so polluted with, oh, dear. I mean, you know, you can laugh about it but there was, yeah, there was some crazy moments. Favorite house track, mate? Oh, oh, oh. I've been playing online DJ mixes on MixCloud throughout lockdown for everybody. And I've been playing some wonderful music for four or five hours a night on a Saturday night. So it's to pick one. Oh, but actually, the one that's coming into my mind consistently for the last, since you mentioned about house, about pianos and everything else, it's Marshall Jefferson and the house music anthem. Movie El Bardi and the big pianos and everything, really great track. And then that would just leave me into like Byron Stingley and all 10 city, right back to you, Devotion, all those big vocals. Hey, listen, don't get me started, mate. We'll be off, we'll be off on hours for that one. Mate, I'll tell you what, I've been really enjoying lately and it comes, because I watched, I rewatched that film Rise of a Foot Soldier. Okay. About the Rhett and Dinesse Boys murders. Oh, yeah. And when they cut, when they're in sort of narrating a new scene in that film, they play this track. Is it, is it Carrier, Let Me Love You For Tonight? And he goes, dinnin, dinnin. Oh, I'm not even going to try and... Yeah, don't sing it, but I know what you're talking about. I'm not going to make a fool of myself, but it's got this real kind of like riff that just, it almost sticks in your head like an earworm. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, I remember it very, very well. Sorry, just push, push the wrong buttons. Look, I was a DJ. Easily done. I got the job as DJ in the biggest nightclub in Southern China, believe it or not. Okay, nice. And when I went for the interview, you have to go there from Hong Kong on a boat, right? And I called up Roy and I said, Roy, I've got an interview in China for a DJ in his club. It's huge. It's like a million, millions of dollars venture between the government and local businesses and organized crime and all this stuff. I said, can I go into the Big Apple and write down the names of the tracks? Because I dance them every night, but I don't know what they're called, right? Yeah, of course. And he's like, yeah, Chris, go for it. So I went in the Apple and I'm in a DJ box and the Filipino, they have Filipino bands in Hong Kong in the first part of the evening. The Filipino band is playing and then they stopped playing and they went, over to you. And I'm like, and the DJ wasn't there, so I gingerly, I put the headphones on one ear, worked out how to get this deck spinning. I could hear it in this area and I've just basically worked out the slider between A and B. I've got this knob here, A and B between the decks. So I just went for it and everyone jumped up and started dancing and they're like, yeah. So my DJing career kind of started accidentally. The first mix went really, really well. The second one sounded like I heard the Mustangs falling down the stairs. I heard of free-legged Mustangs falling down the flight stairs. Some hands, yeah, yeah, someone's falling down the stairs, yeah. But I went for the interview in China and I just basically blanked it. I got up on stage, I got everyone sort of clapping and doing handstands and just sort of being a bit outgoing. And cut along so short, I lost the job within a week or two because they were advertising for a DJ so I'm thinking like what you do, right? Take the crowd up, bring them down. No, what they meant is they wanted an emcee, you know, like a Butlins red coat type person. Let's rock. Yes, yes, exactly. Yeah, I've got a funny little story for you about that as well because everyone talks about the big moments, like the moments of like 1,000 people in Pascha or Ministry of Sound and yeah, yeah, it was great. I've got an opposite one for you as well. I got booked on a Ministry of Sound tour in Dubai. I went over there, I went on, I started to, the club was packed but a guy was playing like, you know, like not the sort of music. And I said to the promoter, I said, are you sure you want me to play like Ministry of Sound house music here right now? Because I'm not sure this is gonna, you know, I'm not sure this is gonna go well, you know, you've got a packed club, you know, 1,000 people in there, it's all good, you know. And he went, no, no, no, no, you must, you must, you play a house, you play, you play your music, play it. I'm like, all right then. So I went, oh, literally the guys' record ran out and I went boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. On with the house music. I'm not joking. It was like a part, literally the dance floor just disappeared and then everybody sat down, everybody sat down. If there wasn't seats, they left. And I cleared this club within like six minutes. Like literally, and the guy came back to me, he went, do you have any Arabic music? I'm like, of course I don't, why would you ask me that? Of course I don't, he went, oh, and I played another one and he was like, I was like, mate, I could have told you this one. Yeah, I mean, I could see how this was gonna go. But yeah, anyway, listen, it's all part of fun, right? Can I, can I ask you about Avicii? Sure. Did you ever meet him? No, he's like a different generation, probably 20 years younger than me. But fascinating story and difficult choice that the guy was obviously being worked and working hard and he was obviously passionate about music and he wanted to be successful. And I'm not close enough to the story, but obviously I know about the suicide, of course. And it's a shame. Do you think it was suicidal or is it that... Okay, well, I don't even know that to be honest, 100%. I believe that the music industry, if you're not careful, can pick you up, rinse you out and then sling you out the back door. And I never had that level of success to that point where I was like the superstar, I used to see some of the DJs have that superstar status and you've got to be very, very strong-willed I think at that point to survive. I mean, more recently as well, Eric Marillo. I mean, the sad demise of Eric Marillo in only like last year or whenever it was, you know, potential suicide, I believe. You know, after various accusations around him and stuff like that, really just sad. It's really, really sad to see anyone have a demise, especially one of the things I've learned and this is from the live coaching and stuff from Bob Proctor and everything else. If you show me someone who gets very, very excited, I'll show you the same person who can get very, very depressed. Yeah. And you can be up and down and up and down and up and down. And imagine like, you know, I mean, I had that to an extent, up and down, up and down, up and down, but I wasn't being adulated by 30,000 people, but I also wasn't in the step, step, steps of depression, but that I was up and down, up and down, up and down. And one of the things I've learned is to be enthusiastic about everything and happy and grateful and here and being positive and not be on that huge roller coaster of like, yeah, exhilarating highs, but savage, savage lows. Yeah, he used to hit it hard, didn't he? And his body took a toll, but I think something, when you get signed up by these major record labels, personally, I think it all starts going a bit dark. You've got to be careful and you've got to be careful. I mean, I love, you know, I love comedies, obviously, to watch, to lift my spirit, but I also love watching documentaries. And one of the saddest ones, I suppose, really, is Amy Winehouse, the documentary just called Amy. And you see how successful she was, how incredibly talented she was, but how the self-destruct button came in and how at times people acted out of self-interest for their own benefits, rather than actually for her to recover, perhaps. Yeah, of course. When I think of everything I've been through to try and find my answers, and then I think someone like Amy has all of what I've been through, but it's all in the spotlight and it's all on the front page of every tabloid. It's just criminal, isn't it? The way we treat people in this society. Well, here's the thing, though. I heard you say something this morning. I watched one of your short videos on Twitter and you said, if you want to be happy, you need to switch off mainstream media and then switch off mainstream media. Switch off mainstream media. And I hear you with that. Absolutely. The thing with the media is that we are the cause and they are the effect. So the reason that viewing figures all shoot up when there's something negative on the TV, we all tune in, right? So if their viewing figures go up where they stick Amy Winehouse on the front cover or a member of the Royal Family or anyone who's in the spotlight, pitchers Diana, their viewing figures go up or their sales go up, they're going to keep doing it. We are the problem because we then go and buy it. If we're buying it or purchasing it or switching it on, then that makes them do more of it. And someone who's talented as Amy Winehouse with as many issues as many problems, she was just like, she was cannon fodder. They were just all over. And as you say, you think to your own mistakes and the things that you've done that, you don't want that plastered all over the 24 hour news and stuff like that. You've got to find yourself or find your own mistakes in your own way and then recover them. You've got no chance if you've got a reporter with a long lens trying to check on every little thing you're doing when you're like 25, it's just, I mean, horrific. But, you know, it's so sad. As a society, so sad. We need to tune into the Good News Network or tune into you Chris or me, you know what I mean? We need to tune into people with a more positive message that can then like lift people up because if you put on the news, 24 hour news, there's some dark stuff that's reported on there that you do not need to know. Yeah, it's just really simple for me. It's the mouthpiece of the sociopaths. So, if you want sociopaths who possess no empathy, their life is just about power and they probably don't even know why. If you want them to control you, then watch their media because they own all of it. Don't tune into it. They own all of it. I believe go on a negativity fast. So, switch in, if it doesn't serve you, it doesn't make you feel happy, doesn't add money into your pocket, it doesn't do something good for you, switch it off. Yeah. Yes. Oh, I had a question in my mind then. So, the minute, right, no, this question first. How is it then when you got, I mean, when CD-DEX came out and it was there, it was that big, oh, I'm never gonna use them. It always comes out on vinyl and all the stuff that you know is in 10 years, all that's gonna be horseshit, everyone's gonna be using them because you have to. Then it, of course, went to laptops, didn't it? You just can hit it up on your laptop and you can get an auto-cuing software that does it all for, I think I can speak for every traditionalist that you're never gonna be two technics-dex and vinyl for the traditional authentic experience. But how do you, what's your views on all of this and how has it affected your career mark? Well, what's interesting is that as far as technology goes, you don't get a vote on it. It's happening anyway. So, you either go with it or you don't. When I see people DJing off laptops, it makes me think that they're checking their emails and I just feel a bit like, that's not really for me. But what was interesting was vinyl, obviously I worked in a record shop. So it was all about vinyl for the first five, 10 years of my DJ career. Then it moved into CDs. And I remember using CD decks for like brand new music rather than cutting acetate vinyl, which was like a temporary vinyl. So I wouldn't cut a temporary vinyl, I just record it onto CD. So I'd be playing my vinyls and then promos and hot stuff that was brand new. I'd be playing off CDs. And then after a period of time, literally, yeah, it became like the vinyl, you had two CD decks and you had the vinyl decks. So the vinyl decks literally just ended up being a place where you could put your CDs on and then play everything off CD and it just develops like that. But I always on the CD decks and even now I've got a controller where I just plug in my USB sticks and then I control all my music through that. But you've got a vinyl setting. So I just set it to vinyl. And it's like, honestly, I've never stopped playing vinyl just because I haven't actually got the vinyl. I mean, when I basically lost everything materially, my vinyl went and it was gone and I never saw it again. So, you know, that was a shame. But at the same time, it's actually, I don't know if you've ever seen a film with George Clooney called Up in the Air where he's a motivational speaker at night and during the day he fires people as like a corporate kind of belt tightener type, you know, asset stripper type thing. And it's a great film. And he says about, you know, putting the weight of everything you've collected through your life on your back in a backpack, metaphorically, taking it off, putting it down and setting fire to it. And that's basically what happens. I no longer have to carry around huge amounts of vinyl. When I move house, it doesn't take me three weeks to move all the vinyl or anything like that. Everything's on USB stick. It's all over there on this little 64 gig stick, all the music I ever need. And I still play like I'm playing on vinyl. Yes, got you. So that leads me into my next question, Mark, which will be, how often do DJs make fuck ups? And what have you experienced? There's some big names that you've dropped a few clonkers or? Oh, one of my favorites, one of my favorites, one of my friends who worked in the shop with me, great DJ, brilliant DJ. And I remember being, it was at Full Circle which was the Sunday afternoon club. So a lot of us had been awake all Saturday night, maybe had a couple of hours shut-eye but then go to this club on a Sunday afternoon. And I remember it being packed. It was always like a thousand of people there. It was really like a buzzy place. Nobody ever had the chips, but they had to have the chips on just in case, right? But the point is, no one ever had the chips. But the point is, is that my friend was DJing and the decks were here and the mixer was here. So the decks were here, the mixer was here. And you had to kind of like move between the two and you had to keep track of what was going on and your next record. And I just remember the club being packed, the atmosphere was up. Everyone was getting really excited, really enthused, like, yeah, here we go, here we go. And all of a sudden, you just said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, literally, he'd like, he picked up the record it was playing. He picked it up, realized that he picked up the wrong one because it all went silent for a split second. Then he dropped the needle. But as he dropped the needle, it went bup, bup, bup, bup, and just, and literally the whole place was like, oh no, right. And he just stood there and he was like, yep, yep, sorry, sorry, my fault. And he turned the volume down and started again and stuff like that. But listen, we've all made loads of mistakes. I mean, you know, the problem was for me was I used to beat myself up about them. If I played what I perceived to be a bad set or I missed a couple of mixes or people didn't like my music very much or I was in the wrong club and it wasn't the right crowd for me and all that, honestly, I could find a myriad, hundreds of reasons to beat myself up. And that would last quite a while. You know, I wouldn't let myself off the hook. I wouldn't forgive myself. I wouldn't say, I wouldn't congratulate myself and go, those were all the positives. I'd look at all the negatives and be like, oh no. You know, and that would affect me during the week. And then, you know, I'd be carrying that possibly into other gigs and stuff like that. So I didn't, I wasn't the smartest young man. I didn't, I didn't, you know, if I could go back and have a word with my 20 year old self, I would, I would give him some good guidance. Mark, listen, I've got the pleasure of talking to the wonderful Carol Decker in 15 minutes time. I've just realized that that's my fault for making us late, mate. I'm so sorry that we're actually, let's just blame the bloody technology. Hey, listen, I've loved, I mean, we could talk for days, can we? Yeah, we're not going to go though without coming on to what you're doing now. And I look forward to chatting to you again, Mark. You're such a great guy. I love that one. We've got sort of shared experiences, although albeit you were up on the platform and I was on the dance floor. Well, most of the time, but what is it then? Is someone, you've got two things going on from what I can see. And I know you have a host of successful business interests, but you've got the life coaching, which is getting people just to get a grip of themselves. And I never say happiness, I say balance because, you know, when you can hop out of bed and it's your worst day ever and you're depressed and whatever, and if you can still go, do you know what? I don't care, I'm just lucky to be here. And it's a great thing. So you've got that going on, but you've also got the ability to make a few quid. Is that right or help people to make a few quid? Yeah, absolutely. So I've got numerous multiple sources of income. Something when I was bankrupt to living in my mum's spare room at like 38 years of age, after a 20 year music career that saw some incredible highs. Next thing I'm on the floor, you know, with an incurable disease. Next thing you know, I'm bankrupt to living in my mum's spare room. I'm like, this could have gone better, couldn't it? So, you know, I started studying with Bob Proctor, Tony Robbins, I watched The Secret. I started to get my head together and get information from successful people. And I remember watching Bob Proctor at the time he was 75, he's now 86. At 75 years of age, he's got one of those like radio microphones and he's walking around on a stage talking to hundreds, if not thousands of people. I'm like, I'm gonna do that. That's what I'm gonna do because he's helping people. And I love to help people. I did it with music, but I'm gonna find other ways to do it going forward. And all I did was I just studied successful people ever since I've studied for sources of income. I've studied all Tony Robbins life coaching. I studied Kevin Green business and wealth coaching here in the UK. And many, many other people, of course, in between all my recommended reading, it's on my website, if you go to Mark Wilkins and official.com, it's all there. But I've studied all this stuff and then I put it into practice. So I haven't taken anyone's word for it. I've gone, that's interesting, I'll try it. And every time it works, I go, I'll keep going, I'll keep going, I'll keep going. And now, thankfully, I've got myself to a position where I can actually write my own book and then I can start to help other people with that. And it's a beautiful thing. And I mean, I asked many people and we did obviously the breakdown of the numbers earlier. But I asked many people, I say, well, how'd you earn money? And they'll say, well, I get a job. I'm like, okay, right. That's immediately, it's kind of program thinking. It's kind of like what all the masses are doing. There's two ways to earn money. One is to add service and the other one, so one is give service and the other one is to add value. And as long as you're doing those two things, give service, add value, you will make money. It's just a fact. And we all have the same amount of hours in the day. So we just have to decide our worth and get on with it and get moving. So yes, big life coaching is really, really important to me and I help a lot of people through addictions, through anxiety, through fear, doubt, worry, all those things, depression, disease, all of that. And we've got big, big visions and goals of being able to go into addiction centers and or youth clubs and or schools and actually help people at a very nice young age so that they don't go through some of the traumas that perhaps we've spoken about, perhaps. Mark, can I just, I'm just gonna chip in here because we've kind of, I've done you a disservice. So for our friends at home, in the height of Mark's DJing career, when he's on the world stage, he suddenly comes down with a crippling autoimmune illness, which then knocked him on, if I can say, knocked you on your ass, Mark. And suddenly everything was different. As you said, you found yourself skint, your careers snatched away from you. What measures, and my mind's immediate, I'm just thinking of toxic Western diet here immediately, but I'm interested to see what you think. What measures did you have to, what did you have to do to get better? So I would say it was 80, down to 80% stress and 20% diet. So the toxic Western diet definitely had an impact. Certainly the lifestyle that I was living the first time I had a big flare up of the dis-ease in my body was an interesting moment. However, the real big moment for me was when Bob Proctor said on the secret, a dis-ease is two words. You must put a hyphen in there, it's a dis-ease. And if you are at ease, mentally and emotionally, you will not get a dis-ease in your physical body. I'm like, whoa, hang on a minute. So the doctors just told me I've got an incurable disease for the rest of my life and you're telling me it's a dis-ease and if I'm at ease I won't have the dis-ease, what? So that was, I had to ask some serious questions, but it was light bulb moment. I'm like, I need to study now. I need to get my head around it. And there's a great phrase that when the student is ready, the teacher will come. And I literally just, I went from book to book to book to course to course to course to lesson to lesson to lesson, study, study, study and then put into practice myself. And the more I did it, the more successful I became. And the life that I live today, which is a very comfortable existence with my beautiful wife and our little puppy we've just got, and multiple businesses, a book out, talking and being interviewed with you, Chris, this beautiful life that I've created for myself is the life that I envisioned 12 years ago when I first saw Bob Proctor with the mic and how I'm giving speeches. I'm now doing it. I'm not doing it in the physical world, but I'm doing it in the Zoom world, in the internet world. And the next step for us will be to do live events. I do live events with Kevin Green anyway in the UK, but we'll be doing more around life for a mix because we want to help more people. If we can help more people get their life sorted out into a nice balance, as you rightly say, then they've got an opportunity to go into business. And when they've got an opportunity to go into business, that's when they can really like see the joy and what they really deserve. Mark, I'm just gonna say here and now, I've been stood, it's the second time I've been stood up by Carol Decker. This is, I'm getting a complex about this now. So she's just emailed me to say she's running a bit behind. So what I mean is we can relax. What I'm gonna do, Mark, and this is a new thing I'm doing as a sort of little add-on video to the podcast, I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna put a video out and it will be world-class DJs, 10 tips for life or for success or for, whichever way you want to frame it. I'm gonna do some talking now to give you a bit of time. If you can just write down 10 of your life philosophies that you teach when you're live coaching. Hmm. Friends at home. Yes, it's very interesting what Mark says because I was rushing through, I think, Exeter train station once. It might even have been Plymouth when I was going up to Exeter, maybe going back to the Marines or something. I thought I'd gone buy a book in the WH Smiths. And there was a book there and it was some, I don't wanna say cliche title, but it was one of these how to take charge of your life and your mental and it wasn't actually physical self because back then, so we're talking 30 years ago, people didn't understand that your body is related to your mind. Used to be like you did sport for your body. That's great. And you do kind of reading books and philosophy and strategizing for your mind, not realizing of course the two of critically interlink, healthy body, healthy mind, et cetera, et cetera. So I read this book on the train, I just got straight into it. It was already give me these answers in life that, wow. Yeah, I've not heard this before, but it makes perfect sense. So when I left the military, I went to see the gentleman that I showed you. Dun, dun, dun. Johnny, shall I get him back up? There he is, mister. This is me and Tony Robbins. Yeah, the world-renowned business guru. And when I left the Marines, I used my resettlement money, so my two and a half thousand pounds to go and see Tony for a three-day seminar. I don't know. It was well worth it because I got off with an Ecuadorian girl and she was delightful. So that was worth the two and a half thousand pound. The bonus was I got taught to do the fire walk, which is still can do to this day. And I'll be honest, it's ironic that all my addiction stuff came after seeing Tony. So it says a lot about when you sow the seed and then you use it later. You know, that little gems of knowledge, which at the time, the biggest thing it helped me with, I'm going to say was diet. It set me on the road to understanding my body's physiology and more importantly, the pH balance. Yes. But going back to what Mark said, I'm now in this delightful position I'm quite proud of where people are starting to book me as a speaker. Good man. Because the things that come out of my mouth make sense to people. Exactly right, mate. You know, and the crazy thing is they're just, they're all so simple. They're all, none of it's groundbreaking. And I'm sure Mark will testify to that, mate, hey? Absolutely, listen, I mean, for me, you know, it's reasonably simple information. I think human beings, we can make our lives very, very complicated. We can, I was a master at it actually. You can make your life very complex or you can make your life very simple. And a lot of the things I picked up as a youngster had to unlearn to relearn the stuff that I picked up from Robby's Proctor and now from all these wonderful people that we talk about in the teachers and the coaching. Mark, listen, stay on the line, mate, because I've got a couple of things I'd like to chat to you about after if you've got two minutes. Of course, mate. So I'm just going to play my outro sort of stuff. So when you see me again, that's like, we're off air, everyone. Cut, whatever it is I'm supposed to say. But I thoroughly enjoyed this chat, mate, honestly. It's like that gap in my knowledge of my wonderful life that you've just filled in all those little blanks for me. And we got to talk about drugs and sex and music. So... What else is there? Is there anything else? Oh, there's a bit of success in there as well. We're good, yeah. We'll have to do food next time. But yeah, so thank you ever so much. I'm going to put all your links below the video so people can hop onto your success plans or your happiness plans and certainly read your wonderful book, Life Remixed. Thank you, mate. As I said, I get asked to read a lot of books, Mark. And I'll be honest, I like reading for me. It's one of my few special things in, I don't get time to do it now because of the podcasts and stuff. I'm wading through Simon. I say wading, that's very rude. I didn't mean that, Simon. I'm tackling Simon Mann, the former SAS turned mercenary who's been on the podcast. I'm trying to read his book at the minute and I can manage two pages a night and then I'm just, I'm Bush. But what I will say is, so I get asked to read a lot of books, I get sent a lot of books. If I go like that, sorry, my life's too short to read something that's either not well written, not well presented or it's just not what I'm interested in. But your book, as I said, I couldn't put it down and that's that you've hit the spot as a DJ, entrepreneur, live coach and now author. So it says a lot about this man, folks. Pick up a copy of his book and come back on the podcast, mate. Welcome any time. Let's maybe do a little special about mental health or something along these lines. I'd love that, Chris, thank you. Yeah, if you see Brandon, can you tell him I want my credit cards back? And I'll tell Norman to stop texting you, is all right? And to our friends at home, thank you for watching another episode of the Bought the T-Shirt podcast. If you could like and subscribe, that helps the magic, massive love to you all and we'll see you next time.