Exclusive: DJ Fat Tony opens up about the dog who saved his life and his new 'bundle of joy'

When internationally renowned DJ Fat Tony greets HELLO! at the door of his garden flat in London's stylish Pimlico, his adorable red cavapoo Reenie Taylor joins in with an enthusiastic bark.

"Everyone says she's very much like me. It's quite funny," Tony says with a smile. "She has a real attitude problem. But I keep putting it down to her being two."

Then, as we sink into each side of an comfortable velvet sofa, Reenie sits between us. "She's a little joy, a bundle," her proud owner adds. "She gets called a lot of things, but Boo Boo's the main one, because she's my little Boo Boo."

Tony – born Anthony Marnach – rose to fame on London's club scene in the 1980s and became best friends with Boy George and Kate Moss. He is now the go-to DJ on the celebrity scene and a favourite at the Beckhams' big family events, such as Brooklyn's 2022 wedding to Nicola Peltz.

Beyond music, he's known for his razor-sharp wit and the mix of hilarity and poignancy in his viral Instagram memes – and he is also known for his deep love of dogs.

Lifelong passion

Indeed, he has had dogs throughout his life, starting with an English sheepdog named Worthington during his childhood. "From then on, I always had them. I don't feel complete without a dog; they're my children," he says.

His first dog as an adult was a Staffordshire bull terrier that he rescued from his older brother Kevin. "He kept him in the yard and the dog kept running away," Tony recalls. "I said: ‘Of course he's going to run away – you're leaving him outside.' So I took the dog from him."

He was originally called Chico. "I wasn't going to have a dog called Chico, so I named him Reggie after Reggie Kray, because he had a face like a gangster."

To give Reggie a companion, Tony later rescued another Staffie, Taylor, from unscrupulous breeders. She was malnourished and had mange. "I nurtured her like a newborn baby; I had to hand-feed her. She wouldn't walk on grass for four months. She was broken."

Taylor came into Tony's life a year before he stopped using drugs – he's now been sober for 18 years – and he credits her with saving him. "She gave me the responsibility of going home to look after her. However bad it got, I didn't care about me, but when it came to the dog, I really cared, because they are helpless.

"The love I had from Taylor was unbelievable. She knew every emotion. She knew when I was lying. She saw me at my very worst. She was an incredible, incredible force."

Three years ago, aged 16, Taylor died in her sleep while Tony was on a flight home from Miami – just when everything in his life was going well.

He'd met the love of his life, Stavros "Stavvy" Agapiou, 31 – now his fiancé and the creative director of Arrogant Hypocrite, the streetwear label Tony founded in 2020 – and his best-selling book I Don't Take Requests had just been published.

"I truly believe she waited for us to be on the plane before she passed," he says. "She got me to that point in life where she could let me go. She'd been with me through my recovery and had seen me grow and seen me change."

Six months after losing Taylor, Tony, now 59, started thinking about finding another dog.

"It's not about replacing; it's just about having that unconditional love in your life," he says, adding that he had been toying with the idea of a cavapoo. "Then, everywhere I'd go, I'd see a red cavapoo – in the park, on my phone… That breed was like an algorithm."

He chose Reenie – named after his former boyfriend's mother Irene, who had recently died – from a video showing a litter of puppies. "There was one that didn't want to be filmed, and I thought: ‘That's the one I want.'"

Tony and Reenie share their home with Stavvy and Raf, a dog rescued by Stavvy from Cyprus before he and Tony became a couple.

Reenie and Raf – along with stylist and designer Kyle De'Volle's King Charles spaniel Bowie and local cavapoo Blue – are best friends. "They're like a real gang," Tony says.

To read the full exclusive interview, pick up the latest issue of HELLO! on sale in the UK on Monday. You can subscribe to HELLO! to get the magazine delivered free to your door every week or purchase the digital edition online via our Apple or Google apps.