Step on: Happy Mondays star Bez hoping to dance to success with new racing club

Maracas-shaking sidekick to Shaun Ryder in the Happy Mondays and a past winner of Celebrity Big Brother, Bez is the latest famous face from the world of entertainment hoping to enter the winner's circle as he launches a racing club, with the Showcasing filly Mystic Moonshadow being readied for a debut this spring.

The club was the idea of the same team behind the Burrow Seven Racing Syndicate, which raised more than £50,000 for motor neurone disease in its first month and is part of a wider charity effort in the name of Leeds Rhinos and Great Britain Rugby League star Rob Burrow.

Bez is hoping that Mystic Moonshadow – like Burrow Seven in training with Jedd O'Keeffe at High Beck Lodge in Leyburn – will be able to raise much-needed funds for the Manchester-based homeless charity Coffee 4 Craig.

The Mondays rose to fame in the late 80s and early 90s at the head of the Madchester movement, with Step On, Loose Fit and Wrote For Luck all becoming dancefloor anthems.

Bez has already made several visits to O'Keeffe's yard and has been bitten hard by the racing bug.

He told the Racing Post: "I've been to see her a few times now. I'm obviously biased but I think she's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. She's gorgeous and she's grown so much between visits. She is turning out to be really fast as well, she's doing very well in training."

Mystic Moonshadow in action on the gallops in LeyburnCredit: Jules Annan

The Bez Racing Club aired adverts during Cheltenham last week and the main man is hoping to bring excitement to people at an affordable price.

Bez said: "I used to love the Dick Francis books as a kid, all the skulduggery, and I envisioned like a novel going on with excitement, twists and turns at every moment. I've been told that might be only in my imagination.

"I don't agree with it being for posh people or rich people, it's a proper working-class pastime. Generations of people have been going to the bookies and betting on the horses. You look at the local bookies where I am in Manchester and it's usually packed. And it's a meeting place for people where they come together and hang out."

Among the Happy Mondays' back catalogue there should be plenty of inspiration for future horse names, though Kinky Afro is already taken, having finished fifth in the 2010 Sandringham Handicap at Royal Ascot for Stan Moore and Phil Cunningham.

On Mystic Moonshadow's name, Bez said inspiration came from a Cat Stevens tune.

He said: "Throughout the lockdown me and my son have been out in the garden dancing to the Moonshadow. When I got involved with horseracing, I was having a dream and I woke up screaming 'Moonshadow! Moonshadow!'"

More details can be found at www.bezracingclub.com

You can donate to the homeless charity at www.coffee4craig.com

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