Happy Mondays member Bez opens up about his battle with Covid-19
Sam Kemp
@SamWKemp
Tue 3rd Aug 2021 15.30 BST
In a recent interview, Happy Mondays member Mark 'Bez' Berry detailed his battle with the Covid-19 virus. After a lifetime of wild antics, the band's dancer and percussionist felt he was on death's door.
"I had Covid a week before they made the announcement," he said. "I couldn't breathe, and I couldn't tell if it was my heart or my lungs. I got to the hospital, and I said, 'I've been having this heart attack for three days, and they plugged me into the machines and everything, and I had a swollen heart and a virus."
Bez explained that he was convinced he wouldn't survive. Thankfully, however, he has made a full recovery and is still doing well. He has credited his recovery to the intense training and healthy diet he'd adopted ahead of his boxing match against Manchester United Footballer Clayton Blackmore: "I continued my juicing and taking my vitamin C, drinking my apple cider vinegar, and I did get over it very, very quickly."
However, Shaun Ryder, the Happy Mondays frontman, didn't recover as quickly and, according to Bez, really struggled with the virus. He said of Ryder: "Shaun had it for like three weeks. He was hallucinating and having visitations from the aliens telling him he would be all right. I was quite worried about old Shaun as he isn't the healthiest man in the world."
Bez told Ryder to consider a healthier diet, but it seems that Ryder was unwilling to try: "I've always told him to take vitamin C and all that, but he says, 'I'm allergic to it. But it transpired he could only eat fruit as he was that ill, and he has alopecia, so all his hair has fallen out, but from only eating fruit and getting his vitamin C his hair started growing back. Like I told him, it was a Covid miracle!"
But thanks to Bez's speedy recovery, he is putting down the maracas and picking up the microphone. His vocals will feature on the new house track 'Flying bus' featuring DJ Doorly.
"We need all the Nightingale hospitals ready to receive the influx of people."
Bez from the Happy Mondays says Boris Johnson must be "prepared for the winter" and thinks vaccine passports will not work.@TVKev | #talkRADIO pic.twitter.com/mklw6BCN0s
— talkRADIO (@talkRADIO) July 29, 2021