SHAUN Ryder, legendary lead singer of Happy Mondays and Black Grape, is back in the music saddle with a new album – 20 years after the last one hit the shops.

The singer says it is well worth the wait as it is the best they have every done... and they won’t be stopping now.

Shaun said: “It should have been a Mondays album but they take longer to organise.

“Me and Kermit (Paul Leveridge from Black Grape) were performing together at a few festivals when one of my American agents reminded me it was 20 years since the last Black Grape album, so we started writing.

“We met up with Youth in Spain and then took four weeks to record it. I like working quickly.’’

Youth (producer Martin Glover) has worked with The Verve, U2, Primal Scream, Guns ‘N’ Roses, Punk Floyd and Depeche Road.

“He’s brilliant – a proper old hippie – but don’t call him Martin,’’ said Shaun.

Voodoo Pop is out on Universal Music on August 4 and Black Grape will be signing copies and performing a few tracks at Sound Knowledge in Marlborough on Thursday next week (August 3).

Shaun is currently performing both with Happy Mondays, who have a UK tour planned for the autumn, and Black Grape, who are off to Japan.

At the same time the singer/songwriter is having input into a new movie based on his autobiography.

“I wrote it with Luke Bainbridge, who used to write for The Guardian, but I could remember the 1960s better than the 1990s! The lawyers helped because we were not allowed to use some of the stories. It was very therapeutic,’’ said Shaun.

A previous film, 24 Hour Party People, featured a semi-fictional story based on his youth and days with the Happy Mondays.

“Everyone in it was a caricature. None of it was real but it was a good movie, really funny.’’ said Shaun

It has been well recorded that Shaun had both a drink and a drugs problem in the 1990s and found himself in rehab, but he says that he got clean largely thanks to his wife, Joanne.

“When we started out in about 1982. Music had no rock ‘n’ roll energy left, punk had gone and I wanted to live the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle like in Stardust the movie,’’ said Shaun.

“We were young lads doing what young lads do. But when I turned 40 - and I’m 55 now - I was still living like an 18-year-old, and it was a bit sad.’’

Today the rock ‘n’ roll is still very much in evidence and Shaun says he really enjoys playing in the bands again. “No sex, no drugs! We took our second album on the road and I had to learn it all again, I hadn’t appreciated what we had done.’’

It was his wife and children who encouraged him to enter the jungle in TV’s I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. His music pal Bez had won the Big Brother challenge.

“I did not want to do it, I thought it would be torture. But everyone was great and I really enjoyed it,’’ said Shaun.

Along with his passion for music Shaun has a fascination with UFOs and appeared in his own programme about them on the History Channel.

His interest started when he was a post boy in Greater Manchester at the age of 15.

“I was going to the bus stop when I say this thing zig zag across the sky, shooting up and down and zooming off, and I was fascinated, always gazing up at the stars, believing that there was not just us in the universe.’’

Shaun and Kermit will be performing at Cafe Thirty8 in Marlborough from 6.30pm before signing instore at Sound Knowledge, 22 Hughenden Yard.

For more details or to book to see them, call 01672 511106.