Dancing On Ice’s Bez opens up on bizarre experience with Piers Morgan on a plane

DANCING On Ice star Bez has revealed how he once took drugs on a plane … while sitting next to Piers Morgan.

The former Happy Mondays dancer found himself sitting next to The Celeb Report columnist on the way back from Rio in Brazil in the 1990s, during the peak years of his time with the band.

Bez – who has built an army of new fans following his stint on Dancing On Ice – had been on a hell raising five day cocaine binge and was in no mood to slow down once he’d boarded the flight.

Explaining what happened he said: “By the time we got on the plane there was a mad scramble for seats. I couldn’t believe my luck spotting an empty seat in a boss position, right at the front. I made a mad dash for it, hurdling seats and bags, determined to grab it before anyone else.

“When I got there I realised instantly why no one had wanted to sit in this seat. My neighbour was Piers Morgan who was at the time a gossip columnist for the Sun. I turned round to see everyone was laughing their heads off, but I wasn’t bothered. As far as I was concerned I had a top view of the telly and that was all that mattered.

“Besides it wasn’t long before I had Piers pretending he was asleep so that he could in no way be connected to me! I think it was something to do with the fact that I kept putting a blanket over my head to snort the remainder of the coke I had on me before we got home – and lighting spliffs after each session.

“Piers wouldn’t even talk to me in case the other journalists thought he was up to the same nonsense …

“Luckily it was a Brazilian Airlines plane – so I got away with murder.”

Bez opened up about the pair’s extraordinary encounter in his book Freaky Dancing.

Earlier this month we told Bez nearly got shot dead in a row over drugs.

The Happy Mondays rocker had a gun held to his throat by South American dealers who he fell out with during a trip to New York

Bez – the unlikely star of this year’s series – only escaped when a pal disturbed the gangster allowing the musician and his pals to leg it.

Talking about the fall-out which happened after he and pals tried to score some drugs in a dark alleyway in the American city back in the 1980s he writes: “A Puerto Rican gang surrounded us and this kid pulled out a gun and shoved it in my throat.

“It dawned on me that I might have a problem on my hands. But God must have been looking down on me because a guy then appeared at the end of the alleyway and quickly diffused the situation and dragged me away while I was arguing the toss.

“Maybe I was a bit too excited and overly animated at the time but I can be like that when I am on drugs.”