Happy Mondays and Black Grape frontman Shaun Ryder is publishing a new memoir and will personally sign every copy.
“I’ve done more books now, I think, than Shakespeare, sort of,” said Ryder, announcing the release of 24 Hour Party Person.
In the book, Ryder moves from his hedonistic Mondays era – recalling taking crack cocaine for the first time in New York while on tour – to his appearances on Celebrity Gogglebox alongside bandmate Bez. “Dodging bullets in Jamaica, surviving a gunpoint ordeal in New York and escaping kidnap in Amsterdam” are among the stories to appear in the memoir, according to publisher A Way With Media.
“I had a right laugh writing my first book, and people liked it, so when the chance to write another came up, I thought ‘why not?’” said Ryder. “I’ve got even more mad tales to tell.”
In the book, Ryder writes about “the studio sessions, the bust-ups, the benders, the making of era-defining albums”, as well as the importance of family, according to the publisher.
Ryder’s previous books include How to Be a Rock Star and Twisting My Melon. One of the madcap tales recounted in the latest book involves watching Watership Down with Bez in the 70s while on acid. “I’m telling you, when you’re on an acid trip, this hallucinogenic story about rabbits trying to escape destruction from human bulldozers is definitely not the fucking film to watch.”
Ryder formed Black Grape in 1993, shortly after the Happy Mondays disbanded (though they would go on to reform several times). The most recent Black Grape album, Orange Head, came out in 2024.
Ryder has been considered something of a national treasure since coming runner-up on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! behind Stacey Solomon in 2010. In a 2021 interview with the Guardian, he said that appearing on TV meant younger people would discover his music: “That’s how you bring the fans in now. A kid sees us on TV and the next minute he’s pressed his thumb and downloaded all the back catalogue and is looking at photos of when you was 18.”
Asked about the “national treasure” label in a 2024 Guardian interview, Ryder said: “I’ll take it. Better than being called a crackhead or a smackhead, innit?”