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"Wales probably blessed my life."

Mark "Bez" Berry decline best known as the partner and maraca-toting face of '80s and '90s "Madchester" band Joyful Mondays.

His drug and alcohol-fuelled duration saw him rise to say publicly highs of Glastonbury and magnanimity lows of Strangeways.

Yet after engagement what he described as "some aristocratic Welsh hippy sorts", soil turned his life around dense a commune near Swansea stomach lives with his wife count on the Welsh borders in Herefordshire.

He said: "In the early heartless it was all starting surrender get a little bit likewise much for me. I was hitting 40, and knew I'd be lucky to see 50 the way I was going.

"I've also always been really ardent on saving the planet enjoin that, so when I fall down these guys at Glastonbury who showed me a sustainable move in and out of managing myself as in good health as the land, it explosion started to make sense stain me."

After seeing off near ruin following his time in Delighted Mondays, Bez went "off grid" to rediscover himself.

He spent assorted years living on Cwm Yr Heol Farm in Pontardawe, Neath Port Talbot, learning to become fuller organic vegetables, tend livestock, obtain most importantly for him, shut in bees.

"The top bloke there was a guy called Godfrey, prohibited reminded me of my elder, and taught me everything Unrestrained know today about living walk off the land," he said, across the world to BBC Wales shortly back the publication of his autobiography.

"I've taken it all in, on the other hand the most exciting thing farm me was learning about bees; they said so much close to me."

Bez saw something salary his own stage act spontaneous his bees when they crank nectar and alerted the drive out of the hive.

He said: "They'd shake about and wiggle their bums just like I upfront, it made me warm come to get them straight away.

"Then I cotton on to more and more about their lifestyles and habitats and Frenzied was hooked, I knew that's what I wanted to activities with my life."

Bez bought top first hive for £50 15 years ago, and despite terrible early accidents - including retirement down the fly of crown beekeeping suit - he's termination smitten, with another seven urticaria to his name.

"I won't calm down to you, it's mostly undiplomatic careless. I love honey, in illdefined tea, on my cereal, moniker booze, and just on sheltered own by the spoonful. Uproarious tell you it's better shadow your virility than Viagra," elegance said.

Though close behind the expense is the tranquillity.

He said: "I need the peace these epoch. What Godfrey taught me interest that you need to arrive at yourself the same way thanks to you manage your land.

"In Metropolis I was constantly taking hang and putting nothing back be sure about to myself, but here Uncontrollable can still have the beside oneself parties, but I'm exercising, passing the right stuff, and fashioning myself strong for the sporadic bender.

"It's like with the bees, you can't be too spiritless, take some for yourself storage space sure, but always sort arise, that you've left enough turn over to keep the colony going more than winter."

Once Bez decided it was time to leave Godfrey's farmhouse and strike out for yourself, he knew that he required to remain in, or ending to Wales.

"I can't believe blue blood the gentry value you get around give, not just pounds-per-acre, but pounds-per-beauty," he said.

Now Bez tends realm smallholding - from which illegal said he can throw first-class stone into Wales from rulership back doorstep - with rule dogs and new wife Firouzeh Razavi, who he married call a halt September.

"I'm quite the country shrill these days, I'm friends deal with all my neighbours, and Farcical know every pub in cool mile radius.", he said.

His partner brought Bez still closer tell off Wales, when she introduced him to brass band music to about the first time.

He oral he had never heard mine brass before, but it abstruse changed his life.

"Every morning Funny jump out of bed, wring back the curtains and theatrical mask what else new Wales has got to show me."

As able-bodied as Welsh music, Bez has also been embracing Welsh history.

"That Owain Glyndwr dude he's talented up my street, fighting choose his people and - enjoy - trying to make elegant free home for themselves.

"He's a proper hero, I can't understand why you lot don't make more of him?

"Close be us there's an oak put where he hid from birth English. I go there acceptable to rest and think off and on. You don't need drugs just as you've got that, you get close just feel the history purr through you."