He is still the same old Bez. He is laughing and chatting away about how he's so excited The Las are back together (he speaks much faster than you expect) and says the jostling between the Manchester and Liverpool music scenes is "good healthy rivalry".
"You're winning though," he says. "You've got the No.1 spot with The Beatles.
"There's good music coming out of both cities. I don't think there's ever been a Manchester sound or a Liverpool sound. It's just different bands doing their own thing."
After reforming with The Happy Mondays to play 48-hour party people with The Farm recently, he relived his old melon-twisting days.
But Bez is almost a grown-up these days. He has sons - his main reason for turning down some lucrative offers for a reality show like The Osbournes - and he even takes Shaun Ryder out to the hills on bike rides to get him in shape.
"I have been known to get him out there. He was fatter than he is though. Shaun's a new man."
Now the human version of an over-excited pet Labrador is playing the Zanzibar this Sunday with his new band Domino Bones. Ryder described them as Happy Mondays meets The Clash - which is pretty on the money.
At one of their gigs last year, when Bez was in the Big Brother house, it was announced that he was safe from eviction when he was up against Liverpool-bashing John McCrirrick.
He is still looking forward to seeing the DVD of that show, but he says the DVD machine confused him.
Conceived back in 1998, Domino Bones has Wags (from Happy Mondays and Black Grape) on guitar, Bez's gorgeous Glasgow-born, Manchester-bred girlfriend Monica Ward on vocals (fantastic) and Bez on . . . well . . .
