What planet is he on?
Shaun tells Sky Guide about his bizarre trek across the globe to discover if there's anybody out there, and his own encounter with a UFO.
For some Shaun Ryder has acquired the status of 'living legend' as the lead singer and lyricist behind Happy Mondays. To others he's the funny bloke who finished second to Stacey Solomon in 'I'm A Celebrity...' Now he's about to embark on another strange chapter in his consistently entertaining career.
Shaun Ryder On UFOs may sound like an idea scrawled on the back of a beer mat that somehow got made into a four-part series. Yet it succeeds through Ryder's sheer likeability and genuine fascination with the subject that dates back to an incident in Salford 35 years ago...
You talk about seeing a UFO when you were 15. Did you immediately tell anyone about what happened? Did they take the mick out of you?
I can remember walking to the bus stop at about 7.30 in the morning, me and another little kid who was about 13, he was going to the local grammar school, and we saw this sort of light in the sky zipping about doing sort of Z shapes, very, very fast, bobbing about a bit and then it zapped off at about 10,000 miles an hour. From what you learn afterwards, that particular time, around 1977, ’78, around the north of England there was a lot of sightings. Some famous sightings happened across the Yorkshire Dales at around the same time involving a couple of police officers (one of whom Ryder gets to meet).
I went straight to work and told everyone about what I saw. Did anyone laugh? Not really. I wasn’t the sort of kid who had his ears flicked and was bullied and made things up to get a bit of attention. I just went to work and told the lads there what I’d saw and that was it really. A few laughs, a few giggles, but no one doubted what I’d seen.
What about by the time you were in your twenties and in the Happy Mondays - Did you tell anyone then?
Well obviously mate, things do change as you get older, especially with being in the Mondays. I got the usual ‘was you off your head, was you on drugs...'
We understand that one of the reasons you got you into the idea of doing this show was through meeting Travis Walton (who claims he was abducted by aliens and his experience was turned into the film Fire In The Sky)?
I got asked what sort of show do I wanna do, after I was on I'm a Celebrity. There was suggestions of more reality stuff. 'Shaun, do you want to do something about trainers?' (Ed - he means the footwear, not a personal trainer). And I came up with a show about UFOs. He was obviously one of the people I wanted to talk to. There are a lot of abductee stories that you hear, and I don’t believe many of them, but one of the few people I do believe is Travis. I’d seen his movie and I’d been in touch with him for years but he dropped off the radar for a while. He turned his back on it all. So when we started doing this show one of the main people I wanted to get was Travis. He came over here and was brilliant.
Are you of the opinion that the powers that be have information on UFOs they would rather the public doesn't know about?
The evidence is there to see. It’s right in front of everyone’s face and yet it all gets poo-pooed. This isn’t conspiracy rubbish, this is absolute, proper evidence and fact. We’ve got people from Congress speaking out now, we’ve got ex-ministers of defence in Canada that are respectable people who’ve been in high-ranking positions for years and years who are coming out and talking about this stuff. If you looked at the facts, if this came to court, you would get a guilty verdict on the proof that UFOs exist. No doubt about it.
In the first episode you go out to Chile. Over there you are allowed access to all sorts of government files.
Yeah. In South America it’s totally different. They are really welcoming. With the United States you get told to p* off, but with Chile even the military are like, ‘come and have a look’. We saw some fascinating stuff. I even got pilots in Chile to say that it’s not just us in the universe.
I guess pilots are in the best job to see this sort of stuff.
Yeah. They’re like the police officers of the sky!
Was there anyone you came across who made you think, 'they're making it up to get on TV'?
There were a few. The thing we didn’t want to do was show it all one way because there are some real utter buffoons in this game. There are some really disturbed people, some attention-seeking people, there are some people who I really don’t agree on some of the stuff that they’re in to. Obviously there’s a lot of BS in it.
You start off in South America and you come back here to Britain. What was the strangest story you heard about a British UFO sighting?
A lot of stuff we covered in Britain was showing the other side of things. We went to talk to people that took a religious aspect on it and who prayed to a box. They believe it gives off energy. I’m a Catholic and each week millions of Catholics go to church and pray to a box called the tabernacle that they believe Jesus is inside it. It’s not really what I’m into or believe but I try and respect it.
You've done a lot of strange things throughout your career from those early days in the Mondays through to I'm A Celebrity. How does this compare?
It’s progress. I was in a band since I was 18 years old. I’m 51 now. The game changes. It’s show business. The whole music industry is show business. Things change.
Now some people may look at the show and say ‘Oh, it’s Shaun Ryder talking about UFOs’ and think it's all a bit of a joke. Do you hope that by the end of the first episode they’ll think differently?
I hope so. I’m no expert, mate. I’m a geezer in a band who’s very, very interested in this sort of stuff. I'm not a presenter, I'm just trying to be myself. But I want to take this further. I want to bring the physicists into it, I want to bring the scientists into it. So hopefully in the next series we’ll go more with the scientists and physicists.
Finally, Shaun, there are going to be a lot of people who will dismiss you as being, as you said earlier, ‘off his head’. Explain to them why they should believe UFOs exist?
Anyone who thinks we’re alone in the universe is as dumb as the people who thought the world is flat and would fall off the end of it.
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