‘It explains why drugs made me feel normal’: Shaun Ryder on ADHD diagnosis
Shaun Ryder is talking TV. As one of Gogglebox’s resident celebrity armchair critics, alongside partner in crime Bez, he’s happy commentating on the small screen.
The X Factor (RIP) had its place for family viewing, he reckons – it’s good if you “sound like Frank Sinatra and can do a dance”, although he knows Happy Mondays “wouldn’t have made it through auditions” – but he has no patience for Love Island: “I can’t watch a load of adults with minds of babies.”
Ryder also keeps up with the news, especially in the 18 months since COVID-19 first hit. “The problem is, though, I don’t retain stuff, like that’s just on and done, so I’ve got to be constantly told what’s going on. Otherwise, it’s just gone.”
Ryder and his Happy Mondays bandmate Bez are now favourites on Channel 4’s Gogglebox
At 58, Ryder now, finally, has discovered the reason for his short attention span, previously blamed on his well-documented years of excess as the Madchester era’s most recognisable party animal. He was diagnosed with ADHD earlier this year, which was “like a light bulb going on” in his brain.
“It explains everything,” he says in that unmistakable Mancunian accent. “I went and got tested because out of my four daughters I had two that had [been] diagnosed with ADHD. My youngest girl was finding difficulty with the education side of things and everything. And then I went and got tested and it’s all come from me.
“But as soon as I got the result… one, it told me why my life’s been so chaotic, you know, why I didn’t learn the alphabet till I was 28 years old. Why I find things like just paying bills difficult and lots of other stuff… why as a young man, a young kid, you know, when I took drugs, I felt normal. I didn’t feel like my underpants was on back to front, you know? I felt like I was in my own skin.”
ADHD is not the only diagnosis Ryder has received recently, having caught COVID-19 in the early stages of the pandemic in 2020. He thinks he is suffering from long COVID, although it is getting better. “I’d be guaranteed once or twice a week I’d go completely under and have to go to bed, but over the months and months now that’s got less and less,” he says. “I’ve not had another episode for quite a few months now but I do still get one every now and then I’ll just end up floored.”
He pauses before adding: “I could breathe, though. Main thing with me is I’ve got a fixation about breathing, so as long as I could breathe, it was all right… yeah, it’s not a good idea not to breathe, is it?”
Ryder has also had to deal with his hair falling out, the result of a change in his treatment for an underactive thyroid a few years ago. Now, it looks like it’s starting to grow back. “No, that’s a tattoo!” he says. “That’s called skin pigmentation, that, so are my eyebrows, same thing.”
Ryder rose to fame with the Happy Mondays (pictured) and went on to form Black Grape (below), and is still going strong with both bands. Pics: Paul Husband
The doctor told him the reason for losing his hair was stress, he says. “But to me, I’ve been the least stressful in the whole of my life.”
He certainly seems content, and has long extolled the virtues of clean living after his years of taking heroin and other drugs. He is still working with the Happy Mondays and his second band, Black Grape, and is also just about to release a solo album, Visits From Future Technology, which comes almost 20 years after his first, Amateur Night In The Big Top, which was released in 2003.
The songs on this album were actually written years ago, before he reinvented himself in the I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! Jungle in 2010, and then put on the shelf while he continued to build on the nation’s newfound appreciation. During lockdown they were discovered “down the back of a sofa” and he decided to do something with them. Did he have to rewrite much to bring them up to date?
Not really, he says. “I mean, I’m always writing about the same old crap. I write about the same stuff I did back in ’88, which is like anything, madness, what I see on television, or conversations with people, or escapades that Bez gets up to and, you know, all the same stuff that I’ve wrote about for years, really. Nothing really changes in my mind. I’ve got about a million things going on at once, they all get to come out in songs.”
Fittingly, the first single is called Mumbo Jumbo. There’s also a track called Popstars Daughters, which is a tongue in cheek warning, he says. “A long time ago when I was a good looking young pop star – I could have been called a pop star, I don’t suppose now – but I’ve got four daughters, and I’ve also dated a couple of pop stars’ daughters, so… the song really I wrote for my girls is a bit of a tongue in cheek sort of thing.”
Ryder has been collaborating with artists including Noel Gallagher during the pandemic. Pic: AP
As well as his solo work, he’s also been collaborating with artists including Noel Gallagher and Robbie Williams during lockdown, which “kept me busy”. He’s enjoyed his time at home, though.
“I know people have had a really bad time and people [have been] locked up on the 24th floor of the tower blocks and that, but I had an all right, er, lock up… what was it called again, when we all stopped doing it? Lockdown, yeah! I had a pretty all right lockdown. I haven’t spent that amount of time at home in the last 25 years. I got to spend a lot of time with the wife and the kids and the family.”
But now Ryder, and his family – “they’ve had enough of me now” – are ready for live gigs once again. He has a tour with Black Grape coming up and later plans to tour the solo record; the singer is double jabbed and ready to go, he says.
How does he feel about the idea of vaccine passports potentially being needed for nightclubs and gigs? “Whatever [the government] is gonna do they’ve got to do it quick and it needs doing now, whatever they’re going to do,” he says. “There’s no reason why it’s… if we’re all supposed to be vaccined up and everything then they should be opening up, stop messing about, open everything up.”
He thinks the government’s handling of the pandemic has been “a bit of hit and miss” but “I suppose whatever government would be in power, they wouldn’t have got it right, straight away”.
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On the Matt Hancock affair scandal, he laughs. “Well, what’s new there? It’s always been one law for one lot of people and another law for another lot of people. I wouldn’t expect anything else.”
Ryder has performed two shows already since restrictions lifted, one with Happy Mondays and one with Black Grape, which were great, he says. Some people chose to wear masks, others didn’t. No one was “mithered about anybody else”. He has plans in place for touring and making music over the next few years at least. “I don’t have hobbies,” he says. “I get asked what my hobbies are and my hobby is making music and playing music and being involved.”
The only thing that will stop Ryder, he says, is “doing a Tommy Cooper or whatever”. (Cooper died on stage live on television in 1984). “Look at all the ones that I grew up with, like the Stones and Tom Jones and all those guys, and The Who and Roger Daltrey. I mean, Roger Daltrey is fit as a butcher’s dog. You seen him? If you enjoy what you do you don’t stop, you just do it.”
So that’s the plan for Shaun Ryder, along with Gogglebox and his other ventures, which continue to see him living his best life, reinvented as a national treasure. How does he feel about the term?
“Well, you know…” For just a brief moment he seems lost for words. “It’s better than n**head, isn’t it? So, you know… I can live with it.”
Hip hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs has lost a bid to delay his upcoming sex-trafficking trial by two months.
US district judge Arun Subramanian said the 55-year-old rapper made his request too close to his trial, which is due to start next month.
Jury selection is currently scheduled for 5 May with opening statements set to be heard seven days later.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to five criminal counts including racketeering and sex trafficking.
Prosecutors with the Manhattan US attorney’s office accuse Combs of using his business empire to sexually abuse women between 2004 and 2024.
Combs’s lawyers say the sexual activity described by prosecutors was consensual.
In a court filing on Wednesday, Combs’s lawyer Marc Agnifilo asked Mr Subramanian to delay the trial because he needed more time to prepare his defence to two new charges which were brought on 4 April.
The charges were of sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.
Mr Agnifilo also said his team needs extra time to review emails it wants an alleged victim to turn over.
The new allegations brought the total number of criminal charges against the rap mogul to five – following the three original counts, which also included racketeering conspiracy, filed in September.
Federal prosecutors were opposed to any delay, writing in a Thursday court filing that the additional charges brought
earlier this month did not amount to substantially new conduct.
They also said Combs was not entitled to the alleged victim’s communications.
Read more: Everything you need to know about the Sean Combs trial
A sketch of Combs during one of his court appearances. Pic: Reuters
Meanwhile, Mr Subramanian is weighing other evidentiary issues, such as whether to allow alleged victims to testify under pseudonyms.
Also known during his career as Puff Daddy and P Diddy, Combs founded Bad Boy Records and is credited with helping turn rappers and R&B singers such as Notorious B.I.G, Mary J. Blige, Faith Evans and Usher into stars in the 1990s and 2000s.
But prosecutors have said his success concealed a dark side.
They say his alleged abuse included having women take part in recorded sexual performances called “freak-offs” with male sex workers, who were sometimes transported across state lines.
Combs has been in jail in Brooklyn since September, having been denied bail.
He also faces dozens of civil lawsuits by women and men who have accused him of sexual abuse.
Combs has strenuously denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
Entertainment
Warfare’s Alex Garland: ‘Being anti-war is not the same as saying it should never happen’
Alex Garland says while it’s “the most obvious statement about life on this planet” that the world would be a better place without war, it “doesn’t mean it should never happen”, and there are “circumstances in which war is required”.
The Oscar-nominated screenwriter and director told Sky News: “I don’t think it is possible to make a statement about what war is really like without it being implicitly anti-war, inasmuch as it would be better if this thing did not happen.
“But that’s not the same as saying it should never happen. There are circumstances in which war is required.”
(L-R) Co-writers and co-directors Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza. Pic: A24
His latest film, Warfare, embeds the audience within a platoon of American Navy SEALs on an Iraqi surveillance mission gone wrong, telling the story solely through the memories of war veterans from a real 2006 mission in Ramadi, Iraq.
Garland says the film is “anti-war in as much as it is better if war does not happen,” adding, “and that is about the most obvious statement about life on this planet that one could make.”
Comparing it to ongoing geopolitical conflict across the world, Garland goes on: “It would be better if Gaza had not been flattened. It would be better if Ukraine was not invaded. It would it better if all people’s problems could be solved via dialogue and not threat or violence…
“To be anti-war to me is a rational position, and most veterans I’ve met are anti-war.”
The screenwriter behind hits including Ex Machina, 28 Days Later and The Beach says this film is “an attempt to recreate something as faithfully and accurately as we could”.
The film opens to Swedish dance hit Call On Me. Pic: A24
‘War veterans feel invisible and forgotten’
Almost entirely based on first-person accounts, the 15-rated film opens with soldiers singing along to the video of Swedish dance hit Call On Me – complete with gyrating women in thong leotards.
It’s the only music in the film. The remaining score is made up of explosions, sniper fire and screams of pain.
Garland co-wrote and co-directed the film alongside Hollywood stuntman and gunfight coordinator Ray Mendoza, whom Garland met on his last film, Civil War.
Mendoza, a communications officer on the fateful mission portrayed in the film, says despite the traumatic content, the experience of making the film was “therapeutic”.
Mendoza told Sky News: “It actually mended a lot of relationships… There were some guys I hadn’t spoken to in a very long time. And this allowed us to bury the hatchet, so to speak, on some issues from that day.”
Turning to Hollywood after serving in the Navy for 16 years, Mendoza says past war film he’d seen – even the good ones – were “a little off” because they “don’t get the culture right”.
Mendoza admits: “You feel like no one cares because they didn’t get it right. You feel invisible. You feel forgotten.”
With screenings of Warfare shown to around 1,000 veterans ahead of general release, Mendoza says: “They finally feel heard. They finally feel like somebody got it right.”
As to whether it could be triggering for some veterans, Mendoza says decisively not: “It’s not triggering. I would say it’s the opposite, for a veteran at least.”
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D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai plays communications officer Ray. Pic: A24
‘I’m an actor – I love my hair’
A tense and raw 90-minute story told in real time, the film’s ensemble cast is made up of young buzzy actors, dubbed “all of the internet’s boyfriends” when the casting was first announced.
Mirroring the Navy SEALs they were portraying, the cast initially bonded through a three-week bootcamp ahead of filming, before living together for the 25-day shoot.
Black Mirror’s Will Poulter, who plays Eric, the officer in charge of the operation, says the film’s extended takes and 360-degree sets demanded a special kind of focus.
Poulter said: “It required everyone to practise something that is fundamental to Navy SEAL mentality – you’re a teammate before you’re an individual.
“When a camera’s roaming around like that and could capture anyone at kind of any moment, it requires that everyone to be ‘on’ at all times and for the sake of each other.
“It becomes less about making sure that you’re performing when the camera lands on you, but as much about this idea that you are performing for the sake of the actor opposite you when the camera’s on them.”
Another of the film’s stars, Reservation Dogs’ D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, plays Mendoza and is the heart of the film.
Woon-A-Tai says the cast drew on tactics used by real soldiers to help with the intense filming schedule: “Laughter is medicine… A lot of times these are long takes, long hours, back-to-back days, so uplifting our spirit was definitely a big part of it.”
He also joked that shaving each other’s heads in a bonding ritual the night before the first day of filming was a daunting task.
“As actors, we love our hair. I mean, I speak personally, I love my hair. You know, I had really long hair. So yeah, it definitely takes a lot of trust. And you know, it wasn’t even at all, but you know it was still fun to do.”
Warfare is in cinemas now.
Birmingham band UB40 say the city’s striking bin workers and their union should “keep fighting” in their dispute over pay.
It comes as the government and the council urged them to accept a “fair and reasonable offer”.
“We’re fully on their side,” drummer Jimmy Brown told Sky News. “I think they shouldn’t give up, they should still be fighting.
“Working people shouldn’t have to take a reduction in their incomes, which is what we’re talking about here.
“We’re talking about people being paid less and it seems to me with prices going up, heating, buying food, inflation and rents going up then people need a decent wage to have a half decent life… keep going boys!”
Members of the Unite union in Birmingham earlier this month. Pic: PA
Workers joined picket lines again on Thursday, with some fearing they could be up to £600 a month worse off if they accept the terms.
“We have total utter support for the bin men and all trade unions,” said guitarist Robin Campbell.
“The other side is always going to say they’ve made a reasonable offer – the point is they’re the ones who’ve messed up, they’re the ones who’ve gone bankrupt, they’re the ones now trying to reduce the bin men’s wages.”
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Lead singer Matt Doyle told Sky News: “It’s a shame that what we’re seeing is all the images of rats and rubbish building up, that is going to happen inevitably, but we’ve just got to keep fighting through that.”
About 22,000 tonnes of rubbish accumulated on the city’s streets after a major incident was declared last month by Birmingham City Council.
Rubbish has blighted the city’s streets for weeks . Pic: PA
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Bin situation ‘pains me’ – council boss
On a visit to the city, local government minister Jim McMahon said the union and local authority should continue to meet in “good faith” and the government felt there was a deal that could be “marshalled around”.
He paid tribute to the “hundreds of workers” who have worked “around the clock” to clear the rubbish.
Read more:
Bin workers urged to accept ‘fair’ offer
Military planners help with bin crisis
“As we stand here today, 85% of that accumulated waste has been cleared and the council have a plan in place now to make sure it doesn’t accumulate going forward,” said Mr McMahon.
Sky News understands talks are not set to resume until next week.
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