FROM the Russian mafia to Noel Gallagher, Pete Bell has fronted up to some seriously frightening people in his time.

He's got "messed up" with Johnny Depp in the Viper Room in Los Angeles (the club outside which actor River Phoenix collapsed and died in 1993).

As a former tour manager for top acts including the Rolling Stones and Oasis, he has worked two and half days straight through to ensure a Wet Wet Wet gig went ahead, and barred Craig David's mum from seeing her son before a show.

He calls himself "the luckiest man in the world", and yet admits he hasn't seen as much as he ought of his two daughters growing up.

Now he's trying to put that right, running Wimborne's Pudding and Pye pub with his partner Jane and daughter Suzanne.

"I took some time off a couple of years ago, and found that I liked it. So this is me slowing down, getting used to earning for 52 weeks a year, rather than six months at a time," he says, straight-faced.

Then he smiles: "Until the phone rings!"

Pete, 53, the former front-of-house sound engineer at Bournemouth's Pavilion Theatre, has been on the road with some of the biggest names in rock for the past 26 years.

He loves running the pub and has beaten most temptations, including drink (three years sober), but he still hasn't lost the yearning for life on the road.

In August he's back on the Oasis tour bus for a 14-month world tour.

"This is great in Wimborne, I love it, but there's nothing like being on the road. It's a different world.

"You're safe in a bubble where you don't have to worry about how you're going to get to work, where you're going to stay, what you're going to eat or who's going to pay for it."

Not unlike being in prison then? "Oh, it's not as luxurious as that!"

Pete was born in Clydebank, and, aged six, saw The Beatles at Glasgow Odeon. In the early 70s he saw glam-rock sensations The Sweet, and, along with a mate, offered to help load the support band's van.

"They said they were off to London to sign a record contract, and did we fancy coming with them? That band was Nazareth and I did about a year and a half on the road with them."

Pete moved to Bournemouth in 1982 ("to escape the weather!") and got a job clearing asbestos before being sent for an interview as a stage electrician, despite not knowing what a stage electrician does.

"The guy said I looked like I would pick it up as I went along and I was in. I've employed people on the same basis over the years and sometimes it works."

Being on the road is hard work, he says. "It doesn't suit everyone. You work from eight in the morning 'til two the next morning, get on a bus and move on. For months."

But what about the glamour, the big nights out, the great music and hanging out with rock stars? He simply laughs.

Pete can talk straight to Noel Gallagher, and Oasis sidekick brother Liam, who definitely hasn't bought a house in Sandbanks ("I called to tell him if he was moving down here I was moving away!") But what about Mick Jagger? Is Mick Jagger always right, no matter what? "Yes," Pete grins. "In his head!

"Oasis are the biggest and best rock band in the world, of that I've no doubt - but the Stones are the Stones.

"Touring with them isn't always comfortable, though. Other bands have an inner circle, but they have a brick wall around each one of them.

"Other bands take a small family on tour, they take a whole town. Each member of the band has his own manager, for a start.

"But, you know, none of them are any different to you or me - they've just got bigger bank balances."

Pete says he's had a good day if he gets the band from the hotel to the bus to the venue and back on the bus to the hotel again. Having said that, even the most grounded have their diva moments.

They sometimes play a rehearsal tape of Frank Sinatra at the Albert Hall (don't ask Pete how he got it) for the older regulars at the Pudding and Pye.

Pete will tell you about the time he saw Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend huddling around Ringo Starr, with the likes of Paul Weller and the Gallagher brothers also in thrall, to listen to the Beatle's stories.

Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott flew Pete to Mexico for two weeks on full pay just to play 90 minutes of football.

Pete disparages Eminem for having 180 pyrotechnic mortar points on a single show ("To keep the audience interested - the bigger the show the less the guy has to offer"); slips me the name of the "national treasure" who wouldn't let her family anywhere near the best Champagne; tells me about sacking a sound engineer for doing a line of coke ("It must have been three miles long"); and laughs about the Antipodean rocker who complained if there wasn't a swimming pool within walking distance.

"I can't say it's not fun, but then there are the days, beautiful days, which you spend in bed on a day off because of what you've been doing the night before and you miss so much.

"I did see Ground Zero not long after it happened, but it's only recently I've seen the Peace Park in Hiroshima.

"I've got rid of the drink - and now I'm running a pub! We're getting busier all the time, the food is all fresh and local, the atmosphere is good.

"I've put a few things up on the wall and people are getting past that whole Do you really know them?' thing.

"I don't actually feel any healthier, actually, only cleaner. I've been around the world 14 times I reckon and I've only just started being a tourist - and I'm 53 years old.

"The best bit though is that it all starts again in August."

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