Pete Tong

Few people have done more to bring club music to the world than Pete Tong. His Essential Selection on BBC Radio 1 began in 1991, the Essential Mix he has overseen since 1993 became the most famous mix show on the planet, and he founded the FFRR label. A Pacha Ibiza resident from 2003 to 2007 and the force behind Ibiza Classics, he was made an MBE in 2014.

Born in Dartford, Kent, in 1960, he was working in the music industry from his teens and joined London Records, where he launched FFRR and signed some of the defining dance records of the late 1980s and 1990s. Week after week on Radio 1, a play from Pete Tong could make a record.

His name even became rhyming slang, “it’s all gone Pete Tong”, and the title of a 2004 film. With Ibiza Classics, created with conductor Jules Buckley and The Heritage Orchestra, he has taken house anthems to the BBC Proms and to arenas around the world. He played Social in 2023.