Shaun Ryder’s brother Paul’s funeral was also a secret farewell for Bez’s father.
The Life on Mars-esque cop dad, Happy Mondays dancer, died hours after Paul Ryder died in a double heartbreak for the band.
Bassist Paul, 58, was found dead in his bed at 6am on Friday July 15 by her mother Linda at her home in Manchester, hours before the band were due to play the Kubix Festival in Sunderland.
EXCLUSIVE: Happy Mondays suffer double heartbreak as Bez’s father dies just hours after the death of Shaun Ryder’s brother Paul (pictured, Bez left and Shaun right).
Sad time: Bassist Paul, 58, (left) was discovered dead in his bed at 6am on Friday 15 July by her mother Linda at their home in Manchester, hours before the band were due to play the Kubix Festival in Sunderland ( picture 2012).
While Bez, also 58, was comforting Shaun, 59, at his home, he received news his father was seriously ill and left his grieving bandmate to rush to his family home in Blackpool.
His father – who fought for Bez, aka Mark Berry, when he was a gorgeous teenager and whose father instilled a love of beekeeping in his son – passed away hours after Paul in the early hours of Saturday morning.
His funeral took place a week before Paul’s, but much was said about him at Paul’s funeral.
A family source told Web: “The band have had two really big hits in the past few weeks. First Paul leaves, then Bez has to deal with the death of his father.
Mourners: Happy Mondays bassist Paul’s family, friends and old bandmates paid tribute to the star bassist and buried him at his funeral on Thursday. Shaun (centre) helped carry the coffin into St Charles Church in Swinton, Manchester – Bez’s father’s funeral was held the week before
Through thick and thin: The Happy Mondays have turned their lives around after years of publicized wild parties
“But Bez is very, very private when it comes to his parents and family, and he didn’t want to make a big public announcement or make a big show of it.
‘He dealt with his grief calmly while also comforting Shaun.’
Paul was cremated on August 4 following a funeral service at St Charles Church in Swinton, Manchester.
Celebrity mourners included Stone Roses lead singer Ian Brown, 59, and Peter Hook, 66, bassist and co-founder of New Order and Joy Division.
Ian McCulloch, 63, of Echo & The Bunnymen for mourners was his band’s tear-jerking ballad Nothing Lasts Forever – which includes the lines: “I have to live in dreams today, I’m tired of the song grief sings… Love that.” always brings me to my knees.”
There for him: ‘But Bez didn’t want to overshadow Paul’s departure by talking about his father and he won’t do any interviews or speak about it publicly – that’s how he sees it in private’
The family insider added, “The funeral was rightfully a big deal and a lot of people there knew about Bez’s father, so in a way it was really a double goodbye.
“The wake not only included a toast to Paul, but also to Bez’s father.
“But Bez didn’t want to overshadow Paul’s departure by talking about his father, and he won’t do any interviews about it and doesn’t want to talk about it publicly — he keeps it completely private.”
The source said Bez is so private when it comes to his parents that he doesn’t like his father’s name.
The dancer’s father is believed to have been in his 80s and was ill for some time before he died peacefully at home “basically of old age”.
The source said: “He lived a good life and always did his best for Bez so it’s just a really sad time for the whole of Monday.”
CAN VACCINES MAKE YOU ILL?
Live vaccines, such as those given to protect against yellow fever, work by injecting a weakened but still live form of the virus into the body.
The purpose is to train the body to make the right antibodies to fight off the virus so it can remember how to do so in the future.
However, if a person’s immune system is weakened – for example, by cancer, pregnancy, HIV, or old age – it may not be able to destroy even the weakened form of the virus.
In this case, it’s possible that the injected virus survives, takes hold, and causes the infection it was meant to prevent.
When this happens, the symptoms are usually milder than the actual disease.
People who have received live vaccines may also be able to transmit a disease to someone with a compromised immune system, so should stay away from them after they have been vaccinated.
Live vaccines administered in the UK include: rotavirus, MMR, influenza (nasal only), shingles, chickenpox, tuberculosis, yellow fever and typhoid (oral only). They have all been shown to be effective and side effects are rare.
Source: Vaccine Knowledge Project, University of Oxford
Speaking exclusively to Web from his Manchester home last week, frontman Shaun said he had become fixated on the lack of answers about the Covid vaccine after learning his brother Paul had had a booster shot weeks before his death.
Shaun’s comments are in sharp contrast to the coroner’s verdict, which said Paul died of complications from ischemic heart disease and diabetes.
Shaun said: “It’s a bit iffy for me — he’s a 50-year-old guy, he had a clean bill of health, and he’s got his booster, flies over here and dies.”
“We’ll wait two weeks for the autopsy.
“I don’t think our kid really paid attention to it (covid vaccination scare stories), he just went and had his booster – I think that triggered something.”
Meanwhile, Bez was kicked out of his home as a teenager before going to jail due to his lapse into crime and “criminal ways.”
He told The Guardian in 2015 during a rare conversation about his past: “My early childhood was really happy because I didn’t fall into my criminal ways, so ages one to seven was pretty good. We come from a fairly close family; we all visited each other, my grandparents on both sides. It was pretty conventional.
“One of my biggest problems growing up was my father’s job: he was a police officer. So I came from a strong authoritarian background and that was difficult. I got pretty recalcitrant.”
Bez added that his sister, who is 18 months his junior, went to Oxford University and works in the city “as a high-flying solicitor” and his mother was an assistant nurse.
His father was a Life on Mars-style chief inspector in the anti-terrorist unit in thg’ and ‘hard-living’.
After years of wild life and drug use with Shaun and company, Bez is now settled and a die-hard fitness fanatic.
Cute! Last October, Bez announced he was engaged to personal trainer Firouzeh Razavi, 34, after a sweet proposal on a mountain top
He lives in Herefordshire with his girlfriend Firouzeh Razavi and has three children, Arlo, 30, Jack, 28, and Leo, 13, and a grandson, Luca, nine.
He added of his upbringing: “I moved in with my grandparents when my parents kicked me out. Then, at the age of 17, I went to prison, to a detention center, and I stayed there until I was 20. That — and having kids — made me change my way of life because I didn’t want my kids growing up thinking that was the way to live your life.”
Bez added that his paternal grandfather inspired him to keep bees: “My dad’s dad made me a honey monster. He fought Rommel in Africa and spent the rest of the war in Italy.
“The only thing he brought home was these cans of honey and it’s been a regular part of our family life ever since. Every time I drink honey I always think of my grandpa.”
WHY VACCINATIONS ARE IMPORTANT
Vaccination is a simple, safe and effective way to protect people from exposure to harmful diseases.
Vaccinations not only protect individuals but also others in the community by reducing the spread of preventable diseases.
Research and testing is an essential part of developing safe and effective vaccines.
In Australia, vaccines must pass rigorous safety tests before being approved for use by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). Vaccine approvals can take up to 10 years.
Before vaccines become available to the public, they are tested in large clinical trials on thousands of people.
High-quality studies have compared the health of large numbers of vaccinated and unvaccinated children over many years. Medical information from nearly 1.5 million children around the world has confirmed that vaccines do not cause autism.
People first became concerned about autism and vaccines after the medical journal The Lancet published an article in 1998. This article claimed that there was a link between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. Since then, scholars have completely discredited this paper. The Lancet retracted it in 2010 and printed an apology. The British General Medical Council has removed the author from the medical register for misconduct and dishonesty.
Source: Australian Department of Health