Some DJs are icons; Pete Tong—radio presenter, club jock, label head and tireless dance-music advocate since the ‘80s—is a veritable institution of one. Born in Dartford in 1960, he came up playing rare groove and soul in the late ‘70s, then experienced something akin to a religious conversion when Chicago house hit the UK in the mid-’80s. He joined BBC Radio 1 in 1991, hosting specialist dance shows like the long-running Essential Mix, and at the helm of FFRR Records, he provided a platform for U.S. house originators and homegrown producers alike. Never content to sit behind a mic or desk, he’s also a regular fixture behind the decks at club nights like his own All Gone Pete Tong events—a name invented in the ‘80s as rhyming slang for “all gone wrong”, making him one of the few DJs in history to merit his own dictionary entry.