It's great when you're straight

[Sir Tokyo Sexwale]

Shaun William Ryder

 

 

How did this happen? How did the original 24-hour party person and leader of Manchester bad boys Happy Mondays and Black Grape end up middle-aged with new teeth and a new wife?

 

After 30 years of hellraising and debauchery, you'd think there wasn't much left that Ryder could do to shock people, but this picture seems to have managed it. The source of amusement for those who remember the halcyon days of the late 80s is not the suit, tie or the blue-tinted glasses – it's the incongruity of Ryder as a figure of respectability. There was a similar reaction to seeing footage of what looks suspiciously like Conservative leader David Cameron raving in dungarees in 1988.

 

The Mondays' tales of debauchery are many and legendary, from poisoning pigeons to allegedly introducing ecstasy to the Hacienda. On their 1986 debut, Ryder sang "everybody on this stage is into robbing and bashing, big blags abroad and smoking mounds and mounds of hash". The Mondays and their entourage partied around the world for years. In 1992, Factory sent the band to Barbados to record the ill-fated Yes Please, because the island was free of heroin. Ryder promptly developed a new crack cocaine habit, and when the group ran out of money they simply started selling the studio equipment.

Shaun Ryder performing in Manchester in 1999. Shaun Ryder performing in Manchester in 1999. Photograph: Christopher Thomond

 

While no one ever really believed Black Grape, when they proclaimed "It's Great When You're Straight, Yeah?", truth is Ryder has (relatively) cleaned up his act in recent years. After telling Observer Food Monthly "I used do drink 20 pints of Guinness a day ... when you're using you just can" and admitting "I do believe you are what you eat. I was a pie for a long time" he swapped the bong for the mountain bike, and shed several stone.

 

As for his new wife, Joanne, she's an old girlfriend from the heady days of Manchester, as Ryder told the Guardian: "She's an old flame from the 80s when the Mondays were first big. She blew me out back then, which was probably for the best because we were touring all the time and if she'd caught me cheating I would have woken up with me c**k in me mouth." We can only assume this is incentive enough for him to stick to the wedding vows.

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