How did a middle-aged British man in a bathrobe become a global DJ sensation?

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A different type of British invasion had EDM fans in a trance at the Queen Mary in Long Beach.Armed with turntables, social media-star-turned-professional-party-starter Fish56Octagon made his U.S.festival debut Nov.

21 and 22 at Insomniac’s Dreamstate SoCal, where he performed alongside some of the world’s most preeminent electronic artists, including Tiësto, Paul Oakenfold, Gareth Emery, Ferry Corsten and Chicane.Fish, as he’s called, is a 46-year-old from the London suburbs who joined TikTok on a drunken whim after being introduced to the app by friends in 2021.Now boasting over a million followers across platforms, he’s seen his life flip because of that choice — quitting a full-time marketing career to become a DJ, produce music and play sets at some of the world’s biggest music festivals in the four years since he uploaded his first video.Though his initial post was about his watch collection, the self-described “petrol head” quickly went deep into creating content about cars and made a successful side hustle within a couple years.

Crossover between auto enthusiasts and the music lovers in his audience meant the dance songs he used to soundtrack his car videos and sporadic vinyl-haul unboxings spawned passionate discussion in the comments about the classic rave songs Fish was sharing with the world.He also benefited from an accidental, scroll-stopping visual hook repeated across videos born from his employer asking him to ensure it didn’t look like he was posting during business hours: middle-aged, thin and bald, dropping dad moves in front of his sprawling Technics decks and pumping his fists to the beat between bites of Weetabix biscuits, all while wearing a red and black dressing gown (what Americans would call a robe), gifted to Fish’s wife by his mother.“That gown is elegant,” wrote a fan in the comments.“It was legit my mum’s but she foun...