Happy Mondays' Bez thinks sugar is the "gateway" towards hard drugs.

Happy Mondays star Bez

Happy Mondays star Bez

The 56-year-old dancer has suggested that sugar-filled sweets are effectively responsible for a large proportion of the world's drug addictions.

Bez explained to the Daily Star newspaper: "What I’ve found is if I stop it completely - I get headaches. So I get my sugar hits. And people say the gateway to drugs is cannabis and all that, well I actually think it’s sugar.

"When I was a kid I would do anything for sweets.

"I definitely think sugar is probably the gateway for everybody as a young kid into addictive behaviour. I have to eat a whole packet if I open a packet of sweets or a packet of biscuits - I even eat full cakes.

"My missus says to me: ‘I can’t believe you’ve eaten that full cake already!"

Fellow Happy Mondays star Shaun Ryder previously described Bez - whose real name is Mark Berry - as his "drug buddy".

The 58-year-old star admits that Bez helped to ease the pressure he felt at the height of their success.

He explained: "I was always the class clown and a walking contradiction. I am a real show off and an extrovert, but only around pals.

"Because I’ve always had real problems walking on stage and being looked at. I used to hear artists going, ‘Oh yes, when I get on stage I come alive and when I walk off I’m just dead’. But I was never alive on stage … I was f****** dying.

"One of the reasons for bringing on board Bez, who was my drug buddy, was to take the pressure off the frontman a bit.

"It was only when I came off stage that I went, ‘Right, where’s the party?’ So I never thought I was an artist."