Fatboy Slim has joined football players to learn lifesaving skills.

The DJ, real name Norman Cook, who lives in Hove, took part in the launch of a new campaign today which hopes to save more lives.

The initiative between Air Ambulance Charity Kent Surrey Sussex (KSS) and Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club aims to train thousands in vital CPR and defibrillation ahead of Restart A Heart Day on October 16.

Norman Cook and paramedic Lara HammondNorman Cook and paramedic Lara Hammond (Image: Sussex News and Pictures)

There was a helicopter flypast over the Amex stadium in Brighton before a pitchside training session.

Norman, who is the football club’s celebrity ambassador, could be seen practising his skills on a dummy while taking instruction from the KSS team.

"I learned how to potentially save someone's life," he said.

"To my shame I'm 61 and have never learned it before. I think a lot of people are a bit scared.

"I feel a fuller human being for doing it."

KSS said it wants to create an “army of lifesavers” across Kent, Surrey and Sussex where, on average, 24 people a day experience a cardiac arrest.

Some 80 per cent of those cardiac arrests happen to people while they are at home.

Only one in ten people currently survive, something KSS and Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club want to change.

Starting CPR and using a defibrillator as soon as possible, even ahead of the emergency services arriving, can more than double someone’s chance of surviving a cardiac arrest, the charity said.

Norman Cook learning CPRNorman Cook learning CPR (Image: Sussex News and Pictures)

KSS and Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club want as many people as possible to join the free 30-minute KSS online live-stream and pre-recorded training sessions and in-person events, which are tailored to every age group and delivered by the charity’s highly skilled doctors and paramedics.

People can sign up to the online and in-person training sessions for individuals, schools, community groups, businesses and organisations, via www.aakss.org.uk/restart where more information is also available.

Last year, KSS equipped 17,000 people in one day with these lifesaving skills and through this new collaboration it is hoped that tens of thousands more people will sign up to learn this year.