‘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.”
The Stone Roses bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield has died at the age of 63, his family has said.
Mani’s brother, Greg, said in a post on Facebook: “It is with the heaviest of hearts that I have to announce the sad passing of my brother.”
“RIP RKID,” he added.
Gary “Mani” Mounfield and his wife Imelda at the world premiere of “The Stone Roses : Made Of Stone” in 2013. Pic: Reuters
Formed in 1983, The Stone Roses were a mainstay of the “Madchester” scene.
Mani joined the band in 1987 and formed part of its classic line-up alongside singer Ian Brown, guitarist John Squire and drummer Alan ‘Reni’ Wren. He remained with the group until their split in 1996.
Mani’s death comes two years after that of his wife, Imelda Mounfield, who was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer in November 2020. The couple welcomed twin boys in 2012.
Ian Brown, left, with Mani, right, performing on stage during their 2012 reunion concerts in Manchester. Pic: Reuters
The Stone Roses frontman Brown shared a tribute online, writing: “REST IN PEACE MANi X.”
Oasis singer Liam Gallagher said he was “in total shock and absolutely devastated”, describing the bassist as “my hero”.
“RIP Mani – my heartfelt condolences to his twin boys and all of his family,” wrote the Happy Mondays’ Shaun Ryder, whose bandmate Rowetta added: “Back with your Imelda, Mani. Going to miss you so much. All my love to the boys, the family & all those who knew & loved him.”
The Charlatans frontman, Tim Burgess, shared a photo of himself with Mani, writing alongside it: “I shared this photo a week or so ago on Mani’s birthday.
“It never failed to bring a smile to my face – and that was exactly the same for the man himself.
“One of the absolute best in every way – such a beautiful friend.”
Echo & the Bunnymen vocalist Ian McCulloch said Mani was someone “who I have always loved and always will love, deeply and forever. Like a brother”.
He continued: “I am in shock to be honest. Please tell me I’m just having a bad, bad dream. My thoughts and feelings and Mani. Love to all of his family from me”.
Pic: Robert Marquardt/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
The “Madchester” bands were known for blending indie with acid house, psychedelia, and pop.
The Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album of 1989 was a huge success, and was named the second greatest album of all time in a “Music of the Millennium” poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian, and Classic FM.
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.”
Chevalier, author of the book Girl With A Pearl Earring, with the painting of the same name. Pic: AP
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.
Read more: The author embracing AI to help write novels
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Could the AI bubble burst?
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.
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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.”
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