I'm one of these DJs who likes to play true to myself, so I'm not gonna be throwing in some rock bootleg mashup mix of some record to get a reaction. Sometimes it does amaze me, you go to festivals and DJs think, "Oh, I need to play big crowd-pleasing records." You don't need to spoon-feed the crowd.

People think my career started when I sent that tape to Renaissance. I’d actually been working hard for seven years before I got to that point. I was putting on parties and booking DJs around me to get my name on the flyer. I knew I had to do it for myself. I knew no one was going to come knocking on my door. I knew it was up to me.

The most important thing is how you program and how you choose your records. That really does sort out who is a good DJ and who is just playing records.

I've always strived to find those records that people don't know, but they actually go "Wow, what is this?" - and they go crazy to it. To me, that's more rewarding as a DJ, and that's what I always thought a DJ was supposed to do: it's about educating people. Now there seems to be a commercial edge to stuff and people are reacting to stuff they've heard on the radio all day long: to me, that's not what youth culture should be reacting to.

As a personality, I'm not one that likes to be center stage. It's not about me, it's about the music. I just want people to listen.

I love what I do. I'm living the dream. I know that sounds corny, but I wanted to be a DJ from about the age of eleven or twelve, so the fact that I've spent over half my life living out my dream and still doing it at a very high level, I consider myself very lucky. But I've also worked extremely hard and I still work really hard, maintaining my career.

If you're the biggest DJ in the world, you're in a position where you can play stuff that people don't know and blow people's minds. But if you just chose to play stuff they know just to get a reaction, that's just being lazy.