‘I’m of an era, really, where nobody ever got old,” says Pete Tong with a smile. Certainly not in the rave scene. “When you start, you never think you’re going to be doing it for that long. But then, equally, you don’t think it’s going to only be for, like, two years or 10 years. You just don’t think about it.” The dawn of dance music in the 80s was far too exciting to worry about when the party might end – and there is no sign it is about to. Tong is still presenting his BBC Radio 1 dance music show 35 years later, as well as running a record label. Last year, he says, he had more gigs than he has for ages.

Tong, who is 65, was talking to fellow DJ and longtime friend Carl Cox (63) about it the other day. “We’re just so blessed and lucky to still be doing it – being able to play music to people and doing what we loved as kids.”

He has escaped the burnout (and worse fates) of many other DJs who started around the same time, but he is not unscathed. Hearing loss is an occupational hazard for DJs and ageing ravers, and Tong’s latest mission is to raise awareness of it (untreated, it can affect mental health and cause social withdrawal). In the 2004 mockumentary It’s All Gone Pete Tong, the superstar DJ Frankie Wilde, played by Paul Kaye, goes deaf – Tong, who has given his name to rhyming slang, makes a cameo. About 10 years ago, Tong was diagnosed with hearing loss in his right ear. “I’d been in and around music since I was 15, so I guess I wasn’t surprised. I just started to become conscious of it.”