RISE OF THE FAR RIGHT REALLY TWISTS MY MELON

Happy Mondays hero Shaun has cleaned up his act and is pushing for political change

IT HAS taken more than 50 years but Shaun Ryder is finally going political.

The legendary Happy Mondays and Black Grape frontman’s main protests during the 80s were more likely to come when he ran out of drugs.

But, back performing again with Black Grape, he now means business and is fighting against the wave of right-wing hate politics in the UK, the US and other Western nations.

Shaun, now 55, didn’t even vote until he was 53, when he was stirred by the Tory Government’s exploitation of nurses and other low-paid public servants.

But he has turned his guns on Donald Trump and others he believes have encouraged the rise of the far right.

He spoke to the Record in the wake of a number of recent articles we’ve run, exposing hatemongers peddling their bile on Scotland’s streets.

Shaun said: “The world has gone f****** mad. There’s a crazy, right-wing lunatic running half of the important countries in the world and people are electing him so there’s definitely a need to get political.

“I can’t believe we’re living in a world where Donald Trump is the most important man on the planet.

“You’d be as well voting some gobby guy like me as Trump. It’s not right and there should definitely be protests all over the place.”

Shaun penned a skit that berates Trump in Black Grape’s new album, Pop Voodoo, which reached No1 after a 20-year gap since their last LP.

Shaun, who is now clean of drugs and committed to bringing up his kids, aged eight and nine, in a relatively normal lifestyle, admits that he barely remembers the late 80s and 90s.

During his youth, bands like The Smiths and The Jam were decrying the Thatcher governments that savaged the opportunities of the poorest in society.

Despite operating through a drugs haze, Happy Mondays were one of the most influential acts in decades, at the vanguard of the Madchester movement that was renowned almost as much for its association with acid and ecstasy as its music.

Shaun said: “I can’t say I was that into politics in the past, particularly since I never even voted until I was 53.

“I wasn’t that bothered. I left that to other people. I just got on with partying.

“But I’ve been living a different life in the last few years.

“I couldn’t keep going the way I was or I’d be dead.

“At the general election in 2015, I finally decided I should get involved and I put my cross on the ballot paper. I