Fatboy: Zoe means so much to me

As the dance music which has won him worldwide fame pumped in the background, Norman's thoughts were a million miles away.

The news came back: No cab was available.

Clutching a bottle of vodka, he dodged the ranks of assembled Press queuing outside the Concorde 2 on Brighton seafront, which minutes earlier he had set alight with a trademark feelgood performance, and grabbed a lift back home with a photographer from The Argus, Aaron St Clair.

The pair, who have worked closely together for the past two years, spent 45 minutes talking in a car parked outside Norman and Zoe's home in Hove from 3am.

Norman, 39, admitted he had not slept in two days and was worried about his marriage.

He said: "It's been one of the worst days of my life but it's made me realise how much Zoe means to me."

He insisted they were not separating, saying they were going through a tough time but would do their best to pull through - for themselves and their two-year-old son, Woody.

He said: "We've had some big arguments but what couple doesn't?

"Zoe and I have been married for almost four years and this is the first major problem we've had.

"For the past four or five weeks it's been a bit rocky, there have been a few arguments.

"Obviously it'll be all over the papers and to be honest I'm worried sick about what they will print.

"There's no third party involved - it's just about me and my wife. But we're determined to try to make it work again.

"It's shaken me up and made me realise how much I love Zoe.

"She's at home tonight and what I really want to do is wake up and have breakfast with her and talk it through."

He said people got the idea they were separated because Zoe, 32, spends the week at their flat in Crouch End, working four days a week on her talk show for radio station Xfm.

In the past they were inseparable and he was teased for spending too much time with his wife.

He said: "I know I sacrifice a lot by being with her but I'm not going to stop because of some attention. I love her."

At their wedding celebration at Babington House in Somerset in August 1999 it seemed things couldn't get better.

Zoe was the darling of TV and radio, having shot to fame from a job as a runner for Granada TV to become children's show Live and Kicking's star presenter. She was later the first woman to present Radio 1's flagship Breakfast Show.

Norman meanwhile played sell-out gigs around the world, selling millions of records.

They were a lad and ladette, a chilled-out couple without a care in the world and apparently a match made in heaven.

But the mixture of a gruelling schedule and the inevitable lifestyle changes brought about by parenthood took their toll.

Norman admitted there had been strains on the two of them in recent weeks.

His best friend died of cancer at Christmas, which he said hit them both very hard.

In an interview with The Argus' sister publication This is Brighton last week, a subdued Norman said arranging a funeral for the first time and approaching 40 had changed his outlook on life.

He said: "I've done a lot of growing up in the past month.

"It's made me feel a lot more like Norman Cook than Fatboy Slim."

After the death of a reveller at the near-catastrophic Big Beach Boutique II last July he said he had been consumed with other people's anger and his own guilt.

Zoe has also been candid about the difficulties of becoming a mother and putting her glittering career on hold.

She admitted suffering from post-natal depression, saying after the birth she went "a bit loopy".

The TV and radio star once said: "I'm not a natural, brilliant mother."

Despite the reputation for being the happiest couple in showbiz, anyone watching the pair in the past few months could have seen cracks appearing.

Zoe forced Norman to withdraw a gift he had donated to a charity auction - a defaced copy of their wedding invite.

The tongue-in-cheek invite, resembling a magazine cover, showed a group of friends with the words: "Hola! Norman and Zoe are getting married."

With a thick black marker pen, he scribbled "I give it six months" with a heart underneath.

But only last week the couple were seen on BBC's Shooting Stars and joked about how they split the housework.

And Norman still found his wife beautiful enough to kiss her dressed in an elephant costume.

The DJ's earlier drug and drink-fuelled lifestyle have been blamed for the rift but Norman has now cleaned up his act.

He said: "Drugs were very much part of the lifestyle but drugs for me were something I indulged in whenever something was missing from my life.

"To be honest with you, I don't do that much any more since Zoe has come into my life. I don't need to."

Norman, who was christened Quentin, had a nervous breakdown earlier in his career as he overloaded on the party scene.

He has come a long way from his earliest incarnation as bass player with Hull-based band The Housemartins, best known for the hits Happy Hour and the 1986 Christmas Number One, Caravan of Love.

The group split in 1988 with Paul Heaton and Dave Hemingway going on to form The Beautiful South. Norman became a dance DJ and again reached the Number One slot with Beat International's Dub Be Good To Me in 1990.

But in the same year he went through a "messy" divorce which he said left him on the brink of bankruptcy.

After appearing under a variety of other guises, he emerged as Fatboy Slim, a leading light of the "big beat" dance scene in 1997, signed to Brighton label Skint Records.

Zoe is one of the highest-paid women in British broadcasting, recently signing a deals to develop a new prime-time show for Channel 4 and to work on new projects for BBC1.

Their jet-setting lifestyles brought them together four years ago when they were partying in Ibiza. After a six-month romance, Norman proposed on Valentine's day.

The ecstatic presenter revealed the news on Radio 1 the next morning. She told listeners how Norman gave her an engagement ring she called her "Brighton rock".

She said: "I went to sleep. I woke up - and I am getting married! My boyfriend asked me to marry him yesterday and it is so exciting. I feel completely sick and my stomach's turning over."

For Zoe, love was about losing her inhibitions.

She said: "Love to me means being able to fart in front of somebody, to able to pick your nose in front of somebody, being able to persuade somebody to get up at 5.30am in the morning to make you a cup of tea and run a bath, get you dressed and ready for school. Yes, and being able to squeeze your lover's spots."

The presenter, who is reinventing herself as a film pundit with a new show Zoe Ball on Film on Sky Movies Premier later this month, will be particularly worried about the rift, coming from a broken family herself.

Her parents, former children's TV presenter Johnny Ball and ex-model Julia Peckham, who lives in Burgess Hill, split when she was two - the same age as her son Woody.

She said her mother was not ready for marriage or motherhood and Zoe didn't see her between the age of five and 18.

She said: "She was young, didn't want to be a mum, so legged it. I can understand that. After I had Woody it was hard.

"I did think, 'Oh, God, don't let me leg it like my mum'."

Today, as they talk together at their seafront home, only they can prevent a repeat of history and give their apparently fairytale love story the chance of a fairytale ending.