Quotes from Shaun Ryder

I had Oliver Reed as a neighbor. He was always in the pub and despite his age, he always wanted to wrestle everyone.

Drugs shut you down, cut you off emotionally. You think being off your head makes life easier, but it's a lot easier when you're not.

I had my first panic attack at 52 years of age. I'm glad it came when it did. If I'd had one as a young lad I don't think I'd have been able to have a career.

From being a little kid, I've always been interested in space. 'Star Trek' and 'Close Encounters' - not 'Star Wars.'

There were some miles-better bands than us. We were conscious that we weren't the best or the smartest, but we certainly knew how to work the press.

'Tiger King.' They are absolutely gone with the fairies, they're all absolutely raving out of the box, the lot of them. All those people with animals like tigers, who've got their own zoos in America, and one guy's got something like 2,000 tigers in his back garden. It's absolutely mad.

There were some great tunes played between '67 and '73. The Beatles were everywhere in those days, the most famous people in the world. You couldn't avoid them if you wanted. Not that I did.

I didn't think I'd ever follow Bez on to a reality TV show. But it was brilliant for him winning 'Celebrity Big Brother' and he's still my best mate.

I've enjoyed all my times, teens, twenties, thirties, forties, and now I'm enjoying my fifties.

My melons are twisted every bleeding morning at about half past five when I'm up with the little ones!

When he was young and because he was off his nut, Bez would spit when he talked.

My mum and dad only had me and my brother.

I don't get involved with the music scene any more. It's just alien to me.

I got tired of soundchecks. At first it was important. But after a while, there was no point in me doing one.

The problem stems from the ADHD. The nutty behavior. You have got all this energy going and you can't focus on anything. It's like games at school - like football. I couldn't play because I couldn't understand the rules. I couldn't get offside. I just couldn't take in the rules.

Good music always sticks around.

I'd love to see the Stone Roses do a show but it won't happen.

My dad loves it - being onstage - but I don't.

The rest of the band tend to notice things like the door getting opened for the lead singer. And the door shuts on the rest of the band. The lead singer doesn't notice that, but the rest of the band does.

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 have discovered vegan ice-cream; that's replaced the whisky.

When we came along in 1982, music was getting boring - like 1976 when punk hadn't happened. We wanted to be rock 'n' roll. We grew up with The Velvet Underground, the Stones and Mars bars and Marianne Faithfull and we knew we didn't want to be boring - and we weren't!

It never bothers me playing huge venues; it's not personal, is it?

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.'