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

Published

3 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

Andrew Garfield on baking cookies and keeping perfume to remember his mum

Published

5 hours ago

December 28, 2024

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Andrew Garfield on baking cookies and keeping perfume to remember his mum

Andrew Garfield says he bakes cookies every year in memory of his late mother.

The double Oscar nominee‘s mother Lynn Garfield, from Essex, died in 2019 from pancreatic cancer.

In a conversation about his new film We Live In Time, he told Sky News about the special ways he likes to remember her.

“My mum had the most incredible chocolate chip cookie recipe that I will do every year on the anniversary of her birth and on the anniversary of her death.

“So, I will bake them, and we will all eat them, but I’ll leave a few out for her somewhere, you know, like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or Santa Claus at Christmas or something.”

The English-American actor says he looks to keep the connection to his mother alive and notes that he has some of her keepsakes in his own home.

“I have her perfume in my house that my mum used to wear when I was a kid. I have it, like, in a very special place. I’ll just like [smell it], when I need it.

“It’s like in the missing and the longing, you actually get closer to the person. It’s a weird thing. As we reach out in grief, we actually feel much closer to the person so it’s this weird conundrum”.

‘Leaving a legacy behind’

Garfield stars alongside Florence Pugh in the romance film We Live In Time, which follows an up-and-coming chef and a Weetabix salesman through a decade of their love story.

Pugh says she loves playing “really strong-willed women” and says playing a woman dealing with ovarian cancer allowed her to look at the idea of creating a legacy.

“She’s constantly juggling whether she does something for herself, does something for her daughter, does something for her family and ultimately, she’s allowed to do all of those things.

“I do believe that she is trying to leave that kind of legacy behind so that her daughter is proud of her.

“Just because you are a parent and you’re a mum does not mean that your wills and wants also completely vanish and disappear and you can’t have or want them too”.

‘A level of detail and care’

We Live In Time is directed by Brooklyn filmmaker John Crowley.

Having previously worked with Garfield on Boy A, the Irish director says seeing Garfield and Pugh on screen together is magic.

“All that life experience is present in his performance,” he says.

“I wouldn’t say he’s vastly different. I think the level of detail and care that he puts in the work is every bit as much as it was back then, there’s just more there now”.

We Live In Time is in cinemas on Wednesday 1 January.

Entertainment

‘It made me feel less than human’: Disabled musicians demand greater inclusivity

Published

5 hours ago

December 28, 2024

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'It made me feel less than human': Disabled musicians demand greater inclusivity

Elizabeth J. Birch has been a musician for a decade, has won several awards, and loves her job. However, she continues to feel like an outsider in a competitive and precarious industry.

As a wheelchair user, she commonly experiences accessibility barriers at venues, but there’s a more pressing issue – tokenism.

Birch tells Sky News: “While it’s not explicitly stated that it’s tokenistic, it feels tokenistic because [organisations] need a certain amount of disabled people on their board.

“For example, I was once called a poster girl for inclusion.”

When asked how the experience made her feel, she pauses and reflects: “Perhaps it didn’t make me feel like an individual or it made me feel less than human because I was narrowed down to one aspect of myself.

“It’s not about trying to look inclusive, it’s about trying to be inclusive.”

A recent report by Help Musicians and the Musicians’ Union found 94% of those who have experienced discrimination based on their disability said it impacted their ability to work or advance their career progression.

Nyrobi Beckett-Messam, one half of the sister duo ALT BLK ERA, was diagnosed with multiple chronic conditions in 2021.

Out of the fear of discrimination, she wasn’t open about her hidden disability until only a few months ago.

“I didn’t feel comfortable sharing that side of me because society doesn’t accept it,” she says.

And she doesn’t regret opening up.

“I think the biggest benefit of me disclosing my disability is seeing how it’s impacted others,” she says.

“It’s really empowering, I wake up feeling every morning like the effect I’m having on the community.”

Among other key findings, the Musicians’ Census identified the following areas of concern when it comes to financial security, fair pay, and discrimination in the workplace:

• On average there is a £4,400 pay gap between disabled and non-disabled musicians
• The gap widens a further £1,700 for musicians with mental health conditions and/or neurodivergent profiles
• 27% of disabled musicians said they had experienced racism, compared with 7% of non-disabled musicians
• 73% of disabled respondents said they aren’t in receipt of any state benefits, tax credits, or support

Grace Meadows, head of engagement at Help Musicians and Music Minds Matter, said: “What this report really starkly highlights is just how much more work the industry needs to do to support disabled musicians but also to support anybody who may have a disability to speak up without fear of discrimination or disadvantage.

“And with benefits, really what we are needing to see is a change in what those systems look like so people can get the support they need when they need it.”

A government spokesperson told Sky News: “We are bringing forward proposals to reform health and disability benefits in spring as part of a proper plan to genuinely support disabled people.

“We will work closely with disabled people and their organisations, whose views will be at the heart of these plans.”

Both Birch and Beckett-Messam believe in the social model of disability which recognises that people are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment or difference.

For now, they are determined to stay in the industry, but that could change if it stays the same.

Entertainment

Gavin & Stacey star Laura Aikman’s family only discovered her secret return while watching show

Published

2 days ago

December 26, 2024

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Gavin & Stacey star Laura Aikman's family only discovered her secret return while watching show

The family of Gavin & Stacey star Laura Aikman only found out she was returning to the sitcom while they watched the finale on Christmas Day.

The 39-year-old actress shared a video on her Instagram showing her family screaming in shock as her character Sonia appeared in the episode.

Sonia, the ex-girlfriend of James Corden’s character Neil “Smithy” Smith, appears in the final Christmas special in a crucial plot twist.

One member of Aikman’s family can be heard shouting “press pause” while another tells her “you never told me”.

“We never told anyone,” Aikman replies.

Sharing the video on Instagram she wrote “the moment my family realise Sonia is ruining Christmas again” and captioned it: “I take an NDA very seriously.”

She also shared a photo of a cast board of all the Gavin & Stacey characters, with a space missing where her picture would have been.

Aikman joined Gavin & Stacey as Sonia in the last Christmas Day episode in 2019, when Smithy brought his girlfriend to meet his family and friends.

But she did not get on with the group and left before Smithy could propose to her as he had planned.

Vanessa “Nessa” Jenkins, played by Ruth Jones, later got down on one knee and confessed her love for Smithy, but before he could respond to her proposal the episode ended on a cliffhanger.

Fans have waited five years to find out his answer, with the 2024 Christmas Day episode opening with the family of Stacey Shipman, played by Joanna Page, and her husband Gavin, portrayed by Mathew Horne, preparing for a wedding.

The BBC said the episode secured the highest overnight Christmas Day ratings since 2008.

The 90-minute episode drew an average audience of 12.3 million, according to overnight figures, surpassing the show’s 2019 Christmas special by more than half-a-million viewers.