Shaun Ryder

“When Happy Mondays came out, that was different to all the music around then.”

“If I put anything negative in me then it seems to amplify the situation. I have to think positive.”

“I've never cared about being indie or cool. I wanted to be on 'Top of the Pops.'”

“If I was working in Greggs I'd still be working until I was 65.”

“I love rap. I love hip-hop. But something is wrong when every song, no matter what, has got a rap.”

“I know a lot of people in the music business who came from working-class backgrounds and they vote Tory.”

“The values me mam and dad tried to drum into us were no stealing, go to church, go to school - all of which we ignored. We'd fight, we stole, we cheated and we didn't go to school.”

“I was a pretty straight kid when I was 15 - there was no drunk or drugs.”

“When the Mondays split up I looked at the others who'd rather sign on the dole than work with me and Bez, and thought: 'Whoa, you're gonna throw this opportunity away and maybe never work in music again?' There was no way we were doing that.”

“I don't really regret anything about my youth.”

“Tony Wilson once compared me to WB Yeats. It didn't really mean that much because I didn't have a clue who Yeats was.”

“My kids that are grown up, in their 20s, they all go to festivals. They have to behave, though. When it comes to things like that it's do as I say, not do as I do.”

“Seriously, I do 20 lengths a day. I get a few funny looks in the pool from people who think, 'Isn't that that Happy Mondays geezer? What's he doing here?'”

“When I was at school you never heard the word 'ADHD.' We didn't even hear 'dyslexic' at school. There was really nothing on offer. It wasn't on the planet as far as we were concerned.”

“I grew up in the '60s and '70s, where it was still acceptable to say, 'Well, you're not academic, so that's fine, you'll do it some other way.'”

“I'm on Radio 2 all the time now. Feels a bit weird but there you go.”

“Yeah, when I had Covid all I could eat was fruit. Big bags of pears every day.”

“I actually stop breathing, I think it's 80 times a night, because I have sleep apnea. I've had it since I was a kid.”

“I've got six kids from three mums.”

“When you're a young rebellious kid, you think you can beat the system, and when you grow up you realize you can't.”