Join us for an evening with Mark Berry – forever known to the world as Bez, as he talks about his extraordinary life captured in his new memoir Buzzin: The Nine Lives of a Happy Monday.

And, as reported by i News, the father of three and grandfather of one said: “In a funny way, I’ve lived a charmed life. At the height of his initial, turn-of-the-1990's infamy as the maraca-wielding dancer with 'Madchester' giants Happy Mondays, the pop-eyed Mark Berry, forever known to the world as Bez, was visibly a danger to society. He became the so-called Chemical Generation's bug-eyed pied piper, every weekend leading millions out to oblivion and beyond, as they adopted his E-gobbling party lifestyle. When he bowled into Celebrity Big Brother in 2005, he ended up winning the series, as viewers came to understand his fundamental decency and sunny outlook. His adult life has been extraordinary: unbelievable scrapes with mortality, periods of financial ruin, and narcotic-strewn hi-jinx. The host of the evening will guide it along a different way each night, so I never know myself where it's going to go. The last half an hour will be a Q and A with the audience, where I'll answer whatever questions people want to know.But, you know, like everyone else, I’m still two or three pay cheques away from being homeless again, and I never forget that. It added: "His adult life has been extraordinary: unbelievable scrapes with mortality, periods of financial ruin, mindf*** moments like when David Bowie genuflected before him, and enough narcotic-strewn hi-jinx to fill several more volumes of memoir." I have plenty of stories to tell and hopefully people that come along to these evenings will enjoy hearing them.

Although it's out together by a professional music journalist, this second biography of Bez has his stamp all over it. It's a lot better than Freaky Dancing, which came out almost twenty five years ago. Let's face it, who would have thought he would have been alive in 2022? I occasionally heard one of their songs on John Peel or Steve Lamacq's shows on Radio 1 and I was like, 'Ok, that's groovy but not HEAVY enough' and besides, you also needed friends to go to raves. And those friends had to have cars and/or access to acid and ecstasy, which sounded like a bit of a chore to me and not the intended outcome that was advertised. So I never bothered.Don't get me wrong it's a fun read at times but the Mondays stories are starting to wear a bit thin now. Shaun Ryder (who pops up throughout this book) has already done a couple of excellent biographies with pretty much the same details.