Shaun Roberts. Photo courtesy of Marc Roberts

AN outpouring of grief from some of clubland’s biggest names has followed the death of a “music obsessive” promoter at the age of 47.

For more than a decade, Shaun Roberts acted as a promoter at the famous Fabric club in Farringdon, where he was responsible for programming Friday nights at the venue.

Mr Roberts, who spent much of his adult life living around Islington, including in Essex Road, died last month after a long battle with cancer.

He had originally joined Fabric as part of the flyering team shortly before its opening in 1999 but his sharp eye for emerging talent quickly saw him propel up the ranks.

According to his brother Marc, Mr Roberts was a “very, very popular person – he had that knack: he’d walk into a room and go and introduce himself to people.”

He added: “Shaun liked being on stage, he was very good at making connections with people, at joining the dots between people.”

Mr Roberts had an ability to see potential and sought to give young, unknown artists the opportunity to perform on Fabric’s “big-time platform”, Marc said.

“He would drag me down to the club at nine or ten o’clock when there was nobody in there. He’d say: ‘They’re going to be massive.’ I’d go down and listen to people and five years later, they were headliners.

“Shaun took a lot of pride in giving people a leg up and he never asked for anything in return.

“He’d go out a lot and go to smaller venues and check things out – he was always looking for what’s going to be the next thing.

“He’d go in and introduce himself and make these artists feel like someone was interested in their genre and their whole scene. He was very interested in building communities.”

Fabric. Photo: Lolita Montana

Although he had no children of his own, he had a “ridiculous” number of God’s kids, his brother said.

He added: “It’s nice he had so many because so many parents saw him as a role model.”

Tributes have been paid by a range of DJs, musicians and an array of famous faces, including Fatboy Slim, Lauren Laverne and Annie Mac.

Annie Mac described Mr Roberts as “an affable, fun-loving, big-hearted man who was instrumental in so many DJ careers, including my own”, adding: “Shaun took so much pride in what he did, a master collaborator and a genuine music obsessive, living for the events he ran.”

She added on her Instagram account: “I feel very glad to have known him and am gutted that he has gone so soon.

“I’m so grateful to him for giving me a chance and for his unerring kindness and upliftment through the years.”

Fabric boss Cameron Leslie said: “This isn’t people jumping on the grief bandwagon, this is a genuine outpouring for a good person.”

He celebrated Mr Roberts as someone embedded in a “very eclectic mix of genres”, whose “legacy, certainly for London music – and I would go so far as to say for UK music – is quite profound”.

Instead of “following trends”, Mr Leslie said his colleague “was finding small unknown interesting acts and talent that he was incubating, giving these scenes a home”.

“He was planting those early seeds and nurturing them and watering them and looking after them… rather than just having one specialty and one passion,” said Mr Leslie.

“He had an ability to straddle so many and that’s what made him very special and very unique.”.

Marc will be working with Fabric to set up a legacy fund in his honour.

“We’ll make sure there’s something long term for him to be remembered by,” he said