Suggs: 'I'm not too bothered by UK riots'

Suggs has said that he was not too bothered by the recent riots in London and the rest of England.

The Madness frontman told Digital Spy that such disturbances have been a regular part of our history and are no great surprise given the economic climate.

Suggs said: "I'm not too bothered really. There's a lot of stupidity. I think there's a lot of hysteria about it. I'm 50 now and I've seen three waves of riots in my life. I've seen three recessions - really bad, worse than this, in the '70s and '80s.

"When times are hard and people are skint and there's a lot of unemployment and there's a hot summer it's more likely than not that there's going to be some sort of riot."

Suggs added: "I'm not justifying it and I'm not saying that you can ever justify these things, but it seems to me also that when you get quite historical perspective, there's no great surprise that you get a riot at this particular time.

"London's been going for 2,000 years and there's been riots pretty much on a regular basis every 10, 20 years since the Romans were here, so it didn't really surprise me too much."

Massive Attack have claimed that the UK riots are political, while Will Young has suggested that young people feel "lost" in British society.

Read our full interview with Suggs next week.

> Kate Nash on UK riots: "We need to focus on the positive"