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Smokin Jo

You Don’t Need a Dick to DJ

Hay Festival 2024, 

Smokin Jo – Joanne Joseph – is the only woman to win the prestigious International DJ of the Year Award. Reclaimed by an absent mother after years in care, she led an unpredictable childhood and drifted towards Soho when barely a teenager, where she joined other fish out of water who lived through dance music. She became Smokin Jo (after Smokin’ Joe Frazier) and one of Britain’s top DJs. She shares stories from her life of transitions, farce and, above all, freestyled endurance, including meeting Russian oligarchs’ sons, clinically insane promoters, Naomi Campbell and Arabian princesses spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for glorified karaoke sessions. Smokin Jo will be talking to Anita Bhagwandas is a multi-award winning music and beauty journalist and author of Ugly: Why the world became beauty-obsessed and how to break free.