Meet Shaun Ryder!

Meet Shaun Ryder: “I’ve lived a wild life but life really begins at 60” – here at the Torch Theatre on Saturday 5 April.

He’s the wild man of rock, a guy who makes Mick and Keith look like wannabes, a star whose appetite for sex’n’drugs’n’rock’n’roll is as fulsome as an alcoholic’s desire for whisky.

Shaun Ryder is now spilling the beans, and the secrets, and the celebrity juice…

So, tell us Shaun, what’s it all about? “I’ve got the attention span of a goldfish, an inability to plan too far ahead, but an opinion I’m prepared to share on pretty much everything. And thankfully we still have free speech in this country of ours, don’t we?

“My new book and tour - Happy Mondays - and Fridays and Saturdays and Sundays.

 is an epic journey from Manchester to Mastermind, Brazil to Barbados, Spanish sunburn to the sewers of Salford. I’ll tell you some truths which are so improbable you’ll know they can’t possibly have been made up.”

So, who exactly is Shaun Ryder?

“Well, if you believe Wikipedia, I’m an English singer, songwriter and poet – a leading figure in the Manchester cultural scene of the late 1980s and 1990s. But that was over thirty years ago now – so there’s a lot more to this long and winding story than that. I’ve grown up… a bit!

“There used to be a time when I was just the mad rocker who went onto TV shows off my head on heroin. I’m still having great fun in the spotlight, whether that’s with the Happy Mondays, Black Grape, or as a solo performer, but these days you’re just as likely to find me blowing off the cobwebs on a bike ride, watching telly with my best mate Bez, or catching up on Corrie in my slippers.”

All night parties?

“They’re in the past. If I’m not out working, I’m tucked up in bed by 11pm these days. Well, we all have to grow up a bit sometimes, don’t we? Do I miss the old days? They were brilliant times that I certainly wouldn’t have missed for the world, but no I don’t. That was then, but this is now. I’ve been off the drugs for more than 10 years now, and I’ve never been happier.”

And your new book?

“If you’re faint-hearted or easily offended, I’d suggest you jog on, make yourself a milky cup of cocoa, and binge the latest series of Antiques Roadshow instead because I’ll be visiting Caribbean crack dens, encountering extra-terrestrials, and leading you through my hedonistic, hectic and sometimes hell-raising life in the music and entertainment business.

“I might not have any hair, eyebrows or eyelashes these days. I might be on so many pills that I rattle when I walk. But I’m still brimming with energy and excitement for whatever’s coming next. This is my journey, my memories, my views… presented in my own unfiltered words.”

It sounds wild. And it is.

“School wasn’t the only place to learn important lessons about life; the local sewerage works was a very educational place too. We used to climb over fences and get in there, to poke around and see what we could find. It’s amazing what you can learn about people’s digestive systems! This is where I discovered that one of the only things that the human body can’t digest is tomato seeds. It happened when I first saw a big 20ft wide sewerage tunnel full of tomatoes, looking like a giant bum. It was quite a sight. What was my first thought? We could take these and sell ‘em… they’d make great natural fertiliser.

“I always got up to no good as a kid, and I lost count of the number of times the cops would come to our house. My dad was a proper old-school kind of a bloke, and I remember coming home from school one day to see the cops had knocked on the front door. I’m walking up towards the house, with my Adidas bag, and I see my dad on the front doorstep talking to them – wearing nothing but his acrylic purple Y-fronts with swirls on them.

“He saw me coming up the road and just legged it out of the house, chased me all the way down Madams Wood Road, across the field, and eventually got me. He gave me a good leathering… then had to walk all the way back through the estate in nothing but those purple undies.”

And there’s so much more...

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