‘It explains why drugs made me feel normal’: Shaun Ryder on ADHD diagnosis

Published

4 years ago

August 3, 2021

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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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

Entertainment

Half of novelists fear AI will replace them entirely, survey finds

Published

4 hours ago

November 20, 2025

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Half of novelists fear AI will replace them entirely, survey finds

The novel has survived the industrial revolution, radio, television, and the internet. Now it’s facing artificial intelligence – and novelists are worried.

Half (51%) fear that they will be replaced by AI entirely, according to a new survey, even though for the most part they don’t use the technology themselves.

More immediately, 85% say they think their future income will be negatively impacted by AI, and 39% claim their finances have already taken a hit.

Tracy Chevalier, the bestselling author of Girl With A Pearl Earring and The Glassmaker, shares that concern.

“I worry that a book industry driven mainly by profit will be tempted to use AI more and more to generate books,” she said in response to the survey.

“If it is cheaper to produce novels using AI (no advance or royalties to pay to authors, quicker production, retainment of copyright), publishers will almost inevitably choose to publish them.

“And if they are priced cheaper than ‘human made’ books, readers are likely to buy them, the way we buy machine-made jumpers rather than the more expensive hand-knitted ones.”

Why authors are so worried

The University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy asked 258 published novelists and 74 industry insiders how AI is viewed and used in the world of British fiction.

Alongside existential fears about the wholesale replacement of the novel, many authors reported a loss of income from AI, which they attributed to “competition from AI-generated books and the loss of jobs which provide supplementary streams of income, such as copywriting”.

Some respondents reported finding “rip-off AI-generated imitations” of their own books, as well books “written under their name which they haven’t produced”.

Last year, the Authors Guild warned that “the growing access to AI is driving a new surge of low-quality sham ‘books’ on Amazon”, which has limited the number of publications per day on its Kindle self-publishing platform to combat the influx of AI-generated books.

The median income for a novelist is currently £7,000 and many make ends meet by doing related work, such as audiobook narration, copywriting or ghost-writing.

These tasks, authors feared, were already being supplanted by AI, although little evidence was provided for this claim, which was not possible to verify independently.

Copyright was also a big concern, with 59% of novelists reporting that they knew their work had been used to train AI models.

Of these, 99% said they did not give permission and 100% said they were not remunerated for this use.

Earlier this year, AI firm Anthropic agreed to pay authors $1.5bn (£1.2bn) to settle a lawsuit which claimed the company stole their work.

The judge in the US court case ruled that Anthropic had downloaded more than seven million digital copies of books it “knew had been pirated” and ordered the firm to pay authors compensation.

However, the judge sided with Anthropic over the question of copyright, saying that the AI model was doing something akin to when a human reads a book to inspire new work, rather than simply copying.

Most novelists – 67% – never used it for creative work, although a few said they found it very useful for speeding up drafting or editing.

One case study featured in the report is Lizbeth Crawford, a novelist in multiple genres, including fantasy and romance. She describes working with AI as a writing partner, using it to spot plot holes and trim adjectives.

“Lizbeth used to write about one novel per year, but now she can do three per year, and her target is five,” notes the author of the report, Dr Clementine Collett.

Is there a role for government?

Despite this, the report’s foreword urges the government to slow down the spread of AI by strengthening copyright law to protect authors and other creatives.

The government has proposed making an exception to UK copyright law for “text and data mining”, which might make authors and other copyright holders opt out to stop their work being used to train AI models.

“That approach prioritises access to data for the world’s technology companies at the cost to the UK’s own creative industries,” writes Professor Gina Neff, executive director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy.

“It is both bad economics and a betrayal of the very cultural assets of British soft power.”

A government spokesperson said: “Throughout this process we have, and always will, put the interests of the UK’s citizens and businesses first.

“We’ve always been clear on the need to work with both the creative industries and AI sector to drive AI innovation and ensure robust protections for creators.

“We are bringing together both British and global companies, alongside voices beyond the AI and creative sectors, to ensure we can capture the broadest possible range of expert views as we consider next steps.”

Entertainment

Princess of Wales says her children were ‘very sad’ to miss Paddington at Royal Variety Performance

Published

7 hours ago

November 20, 2025

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Princess of Wales says her children were 'very sad' to miss Paddington at Royal Variety Performance

The Princess of Wales has admitted her children were “very sad” to miss the Royal Variety Performance in London, which she and the Prince of Wales attended.

Prince William and Kate made their first appearance at the event since her recovery from cancer.

Wednesday’s red carpet show at the Royal Albert Hall was headlined by the cast of Paddington The Musical.

After arriving and being presented with posies by nine-year-old twins Emelia and Olivia Edwards, the family of staff at a care home for entertainment industry workers, Kate asked if they were fans of Paddington Bear.

The princess, wearing a green velvet gown, then told the girls that her children were “very sad” not to attend the show and added she had to tell them children were not allowed to go.

“My kiddies were very sad, we’re going to have to keep it a big secret that I saw you guys,” she said.

“They were very sad not to be joining us.”

It is the sixth time William and Kate have attended the annual charity event.

When Olivia told the prince, wearing a tuxedo, her favourite singer was Billie Eilish, he replied she had good taste.

He said: “It’s very nice to see you both. You’re very smiley, you two.”

The royals were also greeted on the red carpet by ITV board members and representatives from the Royal Variety Charity, of which the King is the royal patron.

The Paddington cast were set to take to the stage on Wednesday evening, while pop star Jessie J and Grammy award-winning singer Laufey were also expected to perform.

Held annually, the Royal Variety Performance was first staged in 1912 for King George V and Queen Mary in support of the charity, which helps those working in the entertainment industry.

Ahead of the show, its executive producer Giles Cooper said the charity was “thrilled” the prince and princess would “once again attend the Royal Variety Performance”.

Mr Cooper, also chairman of the charity, added: “This annual great British institution, viewed by a worldwide TV audience of over 150 million, continues to be a crucial fundraising event supporting people in all areas of performance, either on or off stage.

“In this pressurised world of working in the entertainment industry, our mental health initiative, started in 2024, has been a lifeline for many who are experiencing issues such as anxiety, depression or addiction.”

On Tuesday, the princess called on businesses to value “time and tenderness just as much as productivity and success” in her first speech since she was diagnosed with cancer at the start of 2024.

Speaking at the Future Workforce Summit, Kate told 80 business leaders: “Every one of you interacts with your own environment; a home, a family, a business, a workforce, a community.

“These are the ecosystems that you yourselves help to weave. Imagine a world where each of these environments were built on valuing time and tenderness just as much as productivity and success.

“As business leaders, you will face the daily challenge of finding the balance between profitability and having a positive impact. But the two are not, and should not be incompatible.”

Entertainment

Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer sells for £180m at auction, a record for modern art

Published

19 hours ago

November 19, 2025

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Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer sells for £180m at auction, a record for modern art

A painting that helped save the life of its Jewish subject during the Holocaust has become the most expensive piece of modern art and the second most expensive painting ever sold at auction.

The Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, was bought for $236.4m (£180m) by an unnamed buyer after a 20-minute bidding war at Sotheby’s in New York on Tuesday.

Its sale price beat the previous record for 20th-century art set by Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, a portrait of Marilyn Monroe bought for $195m (£148m) in 2022.

The most expensive painting ever sold at auction was Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which fetched $450m (£342m) in 2017, Christie’s said on its website.

Sotheby’s said on X the price for the Klimt was “astonishing”, making the piece “the most valuable work of modern art ever sold at auction”.

The portrait, which Klimt worked on between 1914 and 1916, depicts the daughter of one of Vienna’s wealthiest families wearing an East Asian emperor’s cloak.

Evaded fire and Nazi looters

Measuring 1.8m (6ft), the colourful piece, which was completed in 1916, illustrates the Lederer family’s life of luxury before Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938.

It was kept separate from other Klimt paintings that burned in a fire at an Austrian castle.

It also escaped being looted by the Nazis, who plundered the Lederer art collection.

They left only the family portraits, which they held to be “too Jewish” to be worth stealing, according to the National Gallery of Canada, where the painting was previously on loan.

Father lie saved her life

To save her own life, Elisabeth Lederer made up a story that Klimt, who was not Jewish and died in 1918, was her father.

It helped that the artist spent years working meticulously on her portrait.

She convinced the Nazis to give her a document stating that she descended from Klimt, which allowed her to live safely in Vienna until her death from illness in 1944.

The painting, which is one of two full-length portraits by the Austrian artist that remain privately owned, was part of the collection of billionaire Leonard A Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics empire, who died this year.

Five Klimt pieces from Lauder’s collection sold at the auction for a total of $392m (£298m), which also included pieces by Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse and Edvard Munch, Sotheby’s said.

An 18-carat-gold toilet by Maurizio Cattelan – the provocative Italian artist known for taping a banana to a wall – sold for a reported $12.1m (£9.2m).

The fully-functioning toilet, one of two he created in 2016 satirising superwealth, was stolen while on display at Blenheim Palace, the country manor where Winston Churchill was born, in 2019.

Two men were convicted of the theft, but it’s unclear what they did with the loo.

Investigators believe it was likely broken up and melted down.