It's Great When Yer Straight, Yeah

In my past life as a music hack I interviewed all sorts of boring rock twits. Pity I didn't get to speak to addict savant, Mr Shaun Ryder. The Times' Pete Paphides did.

"ARE we going to get any sense out of Shaun Ryder today? For ten minutes, it’s touch and go. Only half an hour late, he saunters into his local pub, removes his sunglasses and embarks on a rambling monologue about the grim industrial landscape that surrounds us: “Look at the smog! And the factories. And rats the size of cats! Everything smells of old eggs! Yer cannae get it out your nostrils!”

It’s not so much that the words don’t make sense, rather the broad Glaswegian accent in which the Mancunian delivers them, and the fact that Hadfield, League of Gentlemen country on the edge of the Peak District, has no factories. Cat-sized rats are also conspicuous by their absence."

Full story in The Times Online.