Shaun Ryder has revealed the £120,000 he earned for appearing on 'I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!' in 2010 was the first money he was allowed to keep since 1997.
Shaun Ryder
The Happy Mondays singer spent over a decade from 1997 seeing every pound he earned going to straight towards paying off a debt to his former management firm, after he lost a legal case with the firm leading to a judge ruling that he owed them £150,000.
Shaun refused to accept bankruptcy because that would have meant waiving the royalties to his Happy Mondays and Black Grape back catalogue which meant he couldn't ditch any of his extensive debt, instead he went into receivership which meant that all the money he earned had to go to his creditors, and with the interest added it meant he ultimately owed £4.5 million.
It wasn't until he got the chance to test himself in the jungle - eventually finishing as runner-up behind Stacey Solomon - that Shaun was able to keep any of his cash.
In an interview with The Sun newspaper, he said: "One hundred per cent of my income was took off me. The dead simple thing would be to go bankrupt. But if you go bankrupt when your write your own songs, you never get them back. Everything goes. But I'm not gonna do that, 'cause if I do, I lose all the Happy Mondays albums. Don't forget - that's all my royalties, and I was doing world tours. We'd do a world tour with the Mondays and I'd gross a couple of hundred grand. Several times we got paid £80,000 for having songs in Hollywood movies. None of that I got to keep. That went to the receivers. And once those guys get hold of you, they're not gonna let go ... I was living on absolutely f**k all. And I did that till 2010. Thank f*** I've got friends! The 'I'm A Celebrity...' 120 grand was the first money I got to keep since 1997! But then I had to pay it to my lawyer.
"That was 2010. There was another five years of paying off the lawyer. So it's only 2016 and 2017 where I've been allowed to keep my own money."
Shaun, 55, was inspired to test himself on the ITV reality show after watching his Happy Mondays bandmate Bez win the 2005 series of 'Celebrity Big Brother'.
Bez's unexpected win made the 'Step On' hitmaker want to show the British public a different side to the wild partying hellraiser he is known as from his music career.
Shaun - who can currently be seen on reality TV show '100 years younger in 21 Days' - said: "Bez went in and he f***ing won it! I watched him go from being the freaky dancer in the Mondays for 20 years and no one knowing him, to everyone in the country knowing he was, and him being on every TV show! I thought, 'Woah, maybe there's more to this reality TV lark - the Mondays' maracas player became a superstar!' So I said yes to the jungle.
"My biggest fear wasn't eating insects or penises. It was having to be with these pampered, whining celebs. They're so far up their own a**e. And that's alien to me. At the end of the day I'm still a working-class kid. A grafter ... But when I went into the jungle it was such a relief - 'cause I liked 'em all."
Tagged in Bez Happy Mondays Shaun Ryder