[Amy]

After Celebrity Big Brother, Bez went to ground - but one person knew where to find the former Happy Monday. And hanging out with the unlikely star for a couple of a days left him ... pretty much Bezzed

It can't be easy being Bez at the best of times. When you've been famous for 15 years for being the loose-limbed, bog-eyed dancer of a notoriously hell-raising - and, lest we forget, quite brilliant - rock'n'roll band. When your name has become a verb of sorts. When people talk about 'doing a Bez'.
But this week in particular, it's been particularly surreal to be Bez.

Having been away for a few days, I had no idea Bez was in the final of Celebrity Big Brother when I switched on last Sunday. I wasn't alone. Not completely au fait with the workings of the programme - 'It's a load of shite. It's always seemed nonsensical to me and I won't have it on' - Bez was also una ware he was in the final. 'I didn't realise till one of the others mentioned it, and then I thought "****! I'm in the final!"'

So he was, along with Brigitte Nielson and Kenzie from Blazin' Squad. And, inexplicably, when all bets were off, when everyone knew Kenzie was going to walk it, when even Bez's mates were thinking, at least he got to the final, he won it.

There's an argument that Bez - Mark Berry to his mum - winning Celebrity Big Brother was a victory for the acid house generation. For the thirtysomethings whose lives were changed irrevocably by the explosion of acid house culture at the end of the Eighties, an explosion in which Bez and his band Happy Mondays played an intrinsic part. But it wasn't just a bunch of old ravers who voted for 40-year-old Bez. The demographic of such reality shows means that if you've got the North behind you, you're laughing. And Bez certainly had that vote. There was a groundswell of public goodwill for a man who openly admitted he was only in it because his financial situation was so dire. He only entered the house because he was worried he might be about to lose his home.

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