Simply the Bez

Call the cops! Yep, Madchester's wild bunch are back.

After providing one of the liveliest gigs ever seen at Oxford's Carling Academy - and arousing the scrutiny of the city council after defying the smoking ban and lighting up on stage, the Happy Mondays are returning to the county, to headline this month's Wakestock.

The event is based around the sport of wakeboarding - basically snowboarding on water while being towed along by a speedboat.

It's a healthy, active sport, favoured by lithe men and women clad in figure-hugging neoprene. So just the kind of place, then, to find the famously clean-living (cough!) Happy Mondays.

I took a trip down to Blenheim lake to join the band's dancing percussionist and Celebrity Big Brother winner, Mark 'Bez' Berry, in a spot of action on the water.

After squeezing into my own wetsuit, I arrived at the lakeside in time to see the former wildman not puffing on a fag, but skimming across the water, sending terrified geese scattering in all directions.

And while dragging him on to the bank, after the crew on the boat got tired of his showing off, I asked him what on Earth he was doing!

"I love it!" he shouted, still deafened by the water now gushing out of his ears."It's the first time I've tried it, but it's really good."

I put it to him that many might be surprised to see the famously hedonistic rock star engaging so proficiently in a sport which requires concentration, physical strength, balance and panache.

"Well, you'd be surprised," he laughed. "I do a bit of surfing in Cornwall, and I've learned to snowboard, so I found it pretty easy. It's certainly far less painful!

"It's a lovely way of spending an afternoon.

"I'm in training for a charity boxing match in Manchester, too, so I'm trying to get fit."

Did I hear correctly? Bez? Boxing? "Yeah, I can't say 'no' to anyone!" he grins "But I don't know who I'm fighting yet."

So is he planning on getting on a board during the festival?

"I would if they let me," he says. But he scotches any suggestion that even-harder partying bandmate Shaun Ryder will be taking to the water.

"You're joking aren't you? It's hard enough for him to get on a bike!"

So how do the Happy Mondays feel about exchanging grungy clubland for the clipped lawns of Woodstock?

"Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. The site is beautiful, the lake is really nice, and you can't disturb the neighbours!"

Leading lights of the crossover dance-rock scene of the late '80s and early '90s, which had as its nexus Manchester's Hacienda club, the Happy Mondays were a hugely influential band, releasing such iconic anthems as Hallelujah, Kinky Afro, Loose Fit and Step On.

They broke up in 1993, Bez and Shaun going on to form Black Grape, before relaunching the Happy Mondays in 1999. for all of a year, after which they again broke up. They've now been together for about four years, and seem to be going strong.

Now, a relatively settled father-of-two, Bez is enjoying life and, he admits, taking, every opportunity he can.

"I'll do anything - I'm a right prostitute for money!" he grins.

Bez is now 44 ("last year was the big one - 43," he frowns). So, is he finding life with the Mondays different to in their heyday?

"It's less manic now," he concedes. "But that's because I'm a seasoned pro, rather than wet behind the ears. But it's still rock 'n' roll. If it's not rock 'n' roll there's no point doing it. I still like the same things. I've not grown up yet. I wish I could. but I can't!

"My work entails me being out until the early morning all the time. But I have rediscovered the lost art of reading, which I do instead of watching telly.

"In fact, I've just finished reading Wilbur Smith's The Quest. It's a bit long-winded and he's a bit lyrical, but I got to the end of it."

But it's dancing with the band that keeps him going: "The crowd still goes mad at the gigs," he adds. "The new tunes go well and everyone likes the old classics.

"If someone had said when I started, that I'd still be doing this 25 years later, I wouldn't have believed them. I'm either the luckiest man alive, or the unluckiest. I'm not sure which!"

And is he looking forward to playing in Oxfordshire again? "I've been here before?" he asks genuinely confused. "I can't remember," adding with a little twinkle: "It must have been good!"

And his favourite? "Everyone likes Step On. But they don't play my favourite - Cut 'Em loose, Bruce."

Why not? "They don't listen to me. I feel like I'm talking to myself!

Seeing him swinging his maracas about on stage, let alone wakeboarding, it's clear Bez still has massive reserves of stamina. "I'm blessed with the natural grace of being hyperactive!" he smiles.

And he knows what he's talking about. Famously he and Shaun were neighbours themselves - in the Peak District, where they perpetually disturbed each other by letting themselves into each other's houses.

"We were neighbours for a while," recalls Bez, now resting under the trees, nursing a can of Relentless energy drink.

"Shaun used to jump our fence and come through the garden into my house. He'd just let himself in. We both did! But he got a new missus, so moved, and I now live in Manchester again."