Paul started clubbing in his early teens. He built up his record collection, bought some decks, and taught himself how to mix when that was still a rare skill in British clubs. In the early 90s he met DJ/promoter Nicky Holloway talked himself into a residency at Nicky's infamous Milk Bar, playing alongside Pete Tong, Dave Dorrell, Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling. Paul was 17. 'It was just before the whole thing exploded. DJs were just starting to earn more than £25 a night. I played the Milk Bar and the rest of the "Balearic network" - clubs like Venus in Nottingham, Most Excellent and the Hacienda in Manchester. It was the best of times.' He gradually began spending more time mixing and making records than playing them, but has continued to be successful as a DJ, playing at Ministry and Cream, at the parties organised by his friends Meg Mathews and Fran Cutler, and more recently at the kind of small, word-of-mouth events where grown men who should know better end up dancing on top of the speakers.

Paul Harris, Steve Smith and Ben Harris are three lads from Kent and the South London suburbs with very different musical backgrounds, united by a shared passion for house music and for that brief, heady time after the acid house explosion when all the old barriers came down and musically, almost anything seemed possible.

So let's talk Dirty. Let's talk about three club faces who went into the studio just to see what they could do together and came up with 'Days Go By', a lush song about love and loss they thought might have underground potential, but little more: 'No one was playing tracks with vocals then.' So it came as a surprise when Pete Tong played it on his Radio One show for 12 weeks running. When Parlophone not only signed up the single but wanted an album to follow. When the song crashed the UK top 30 in May 2001. When Mitsubishi Cars picked up the track for their influential advertising campaign in the US and suddenly it was being played on every TV channel, every local radio station across America. It's a fairytale story of overnight success. It's every band's dream. Except, at first, Dirty Vegas weren't really a band at all.