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Shaun Ryder, the Happy Mondays’ party-starting singer, is a changed man. Gone are the drugfuelled concerts inside Manchester’s hallowed Hacienda club, the endless parties and debauched recording sessions in Barbados. These days you are more likely to find the lyricist at home asleep in front of the 10 o’clock news — following a sold-out gig at your local arena, of course.

As one of the pioneering voices of the so-called Second Summer of Love, Ryder (56) surfed an acid house-drenched wave of popularity through the late ’80s and ’90s.

That ended when the Salford band split following the commercial flop of their fourth album, 1992’s Yes Please!, the recording of which bankrupted Factory Records, their home for some eight years.

Now a father of six, Ryder continues to tour, with both the reformed Mondays and rap-rock side project Black Grape.

Things, however, are different now. There are no drugs and certainly no after-parties.

“When the gig is finished, I literally go back to the hotel room. If I can get home, I will. I’ll put the news on and go to sleep,” he says in his famously gravelly voice.

“I don’t do the tour bus anymore. Nope. Never,” he adds, chuckling at the thought.

“Back in the day — 20 odd years ago — it was great. It was fun. It was sex, drugs and rock and roll for a very long time.

“Then you get on that treadmill — album tour, album tour, album tour, album tour. You do that for a long time, and you do get f ****** whacked.”

Ryder, who fought an addiction to heroin in the ’90s, adds: “But you can’t live like that anymore. You can’t go on like that, otherwise the tour would never finish.

“It was brilliant back in the day, but we appreciate it more. There’s no sex and drugs. It’s just rock and roll. We’ve still got the rock and roll.”

Ryder was once described by his label boss Tony Wilson, famously played by Steve Coogan in the semi-fictional biopic 24 Hour Party People, as the musical equivalent of the Irish poet WB Yeats.

Now the Salford-raised singer lives a quieter life — he’s a pescatarian and enjoys cycling and swimming.

“I wish I’d got into vegetables years ago,” he says with great enthusiasm.

“All I used to eat was fillet steak. No vegetables, just steak and mushroom for breakfast and evening meal.

“Now what my missus does with vegetables and fish... it’s incredible.

“I might be eating a load of plastic because of what’s happening with the fish, but I feel healthy.”

Of late he has suffered a spate of health problems, which he suggests might be the result of