There was a period of my life where it felt like everyone was worried about my health. I’m doing great these days. That said, I just had a hip operation and all my hair has fallen out. My eyebrows, my eyelashes, my pubic hair, armpit hair – even my fingernails. The doctors don’t know what it is. I have an underactive thyroid and I don’t make testosterone, so I reckon it might be something to do with that. But I’m tough. If I was Peter Andre or someone, I wouldn’t leave the house.

Men don’t have to grow up like women do. Women are expected to grow up with every year that passes. Men can get away with being kids until they’re at least 40 – I did. I was still living the same lifestyle I had been when I was 16. But I wasn’t a kid any more. The stuff I’d done when I was younger – drugs – had to go. My kids were getting older. The last thing I wanted to do was embarrass them.

I think I’m a really good dad. This time around anyway. I’ve got kids who are hitting 30. I was a kid having kids when I had them, and I said things and let them see things that I shouldn’t have. But since I started again – I’ve now got a 10-year-old and an 11-year-old – I have become a proper dad. The idea of drugs or that kind of lifestyle isn’t something that comes anywhere near them. We don’t even have any booze in our house. We won’t let our kids go to a children’s party if it’s in a pub.

I don’t really regret anything about my youth. I was never an intravenous-drug user and I didn’t have to make the same choices a lot of my friends had to make. I never had to choose between heroin and paying my bills. I never had to choose between drugs and food or clothes or toothpaste. I was lucky.

I’ve never cared about being indie or cool. I wanted to be on Top of the Pops. Go back to the mid-80s. The Mondays were talking to Piers Morgan. None of the other bands in the scene were doing that because it wasn’t cool, but we were just so desperate not to have to go get a job in McDonald’s. I was desperate not to live in poverty. It’s why I ended up doing I’m a Celebrity in 2010. I’d seen what Big Brother had done for Bez. A man who was previously best known for playing the maracas and dancing on stage in an indie band had suddenly become the most famous man in Manchester, if not the country. I wanted some of that. I didn’t mind them making me look like a cunt if it helped me to keep on doing this.

I don’t have time for people who don’t believe in UFOs. It isn’t a case of “Do you believe?” It’s fact! The evidence is out there. It’s been there for years. Go find it! The government believes in it; they said it all in Project Blue Book in the 60s.

The Happy Mondays’ Greatest Hits Tour begins on 23 October. For tickets and more information visit alttickets.com/happy-mondays-tickets