BEZ is recovering from a motorbike accident which landed him in intensive care with a punctured lung and broken ribs, details of which have just emerged.
The Happy Mondays dancer, aka Mark Berry, came off a high-powered bike while driving to Edinburgh two weekends ago and was admitted to a hospital on the Scottish border.
Initially, Bez planned to discharge himself after a week but his condition deteriorated and he was admitted to intensive care.
He was then moved out of intensive care on Wednesday last week and is recovering on a regular ward, comforted by his partner.
A spokesman for Happy Mondays told NME: “All the rest of the band know about it and they’ve sent messages and presents. All he wants to say is that he’s recovering rapidly and he wants to thank all the staff at the hospital for the fantastic job they’ve done for him.”
Mondays frontman Shaun Ryder described the accident last week (November 28) in his regular Daily Sport column.
He wrote: “He’s (Bez) chucking it down the road – to each side of him there’s rolling valleys and beautiful mountains.
“Then just as he’s taking a corner, out of the mist jumps a fucking rogue haggis straight under his wheels and he goes spinning off into a wall. Ambulances are called and he’s taken off to hospital where he kicks up a riot because the doctors haven’t got any Adidas bandages.
“Fuck knows what’s happened to his bike, which he was given by an insurance company! They wanted him to go out, get wasted and then have his picture taken looking like he’s just done six world tours so they could advertise themselves saying: ‘We’ll even insure Bez!'”
It is not the first time Bez has injured himself whilst in charge of a vehicle.
In 1992, during the infamous Barbados recording sessions for the Mondays‘ final album ‘…Yes Please!’, he broke his arm after crashing a jeep. He complicated matters after going water-skiing before the arm had time to heal.