In a past life, he was a lad mag writer and, from 2009-2011, was the editor-in-chief of Heat magazine. He later became editor in chief of Comedy Central UK. But when he reached his thirties, work, relationships and fatherhood started to take their toll. Like so many blokes who seemed to be totally fine, he often felt like a complete failure whose life was out of control; anxiety and depression had secretly plagued him for years. Turning to drink and drugs only made things worse. Sam knew he needed help – the problem was that he thought self-help was for hippies, sobriety was for weirdos and therapy was for neurotics.

The other thing is they become addicted to coverage, and they stop caring about whether that coverage is positive or negative. They want to be in there. And I’m not joking when I tell you that I didn’t have this myself, but there were members of my news team who said that celebrities would ring up and put on a voice pretending to be someone else reporting a story about themselves.” And while being posh or rich doesn’t protect you from mental illness, being working class definitely puts you more at risk. My three previous books were: Get Smashed - The Story Of The Men Who Made The Ads That Changed Our Lives (Sceptre, 2007), Night Of The Living Dad (John Murray, 2009) and Mad Men And Bad Men (Faber, 2015). More than half would be celebrities either tipping you off or setting up stuff or, very often, one of the most popular things was to collude with the celebrity to set up a photo shoot that appeared to be stolen paparazzi shots. But which, in fact, had been fairly meticulously choreographed between us at the magazine and the celebrity’s team.

The Lad Mag Years

Sort Your Head Out” is Sam Delaney’s attempt to draft a no-nonsense guide to men’s mental health. He does so less through recourse to medical or academic research, but largely by drawing on his own experience of crushing anxiety, alcoholism, and drug addiction. In doing so, Delaney has written a self-help guide free of earnest psychobabble that seeks to connect with a group often overlooked in the discourse on mental health: working class men. Sam Delaney is an experienced author, journalist and broadcaster with a special interest in men’s mental health.

I mean, like a lot less than a picture that looked like it was taken on a long lens and was slightly blurred through a bush of a celebrity being caught kissing the wrong person on holiday by the pool. That shifts a million copies, but having the same celebrity with makeup on in a photo shoot in a studio might sell less than half a million copies. Irreverent and accessible discussions about politics, current affairs and various social issues, as well as the inanities of life, mental health and other shit. Each episode we aim to have a subject up for discussion as a starting point, before veering off course and chatting about whatever’s on our minds. Sometimes we bring guests on to facilitate the discussion, to offer a different perspective or to discuss their work.In 2018 I had a complete nightmare, losing my radio show and TV show within a couple of months of each other. Shortly afterwards, my production company descended into a state of financial pandemonium and all sorts of professional and deeply personal conflict ensued. I was miserable, exhausted and scared of the future. I had been sober for three years and, despite the prevailing chaos, I wasn’t once tempted to throw myself off the wagon. I figured however bad things seemed, my mental health would be a great deal worse with a hangover. Mind you, this was the first big test I had faced since I quit drink. My writing has appeared in The Guardian, Observer, The Sunday Times, Independent, Daily Telegraph, NME, Q, Grazia, Cosmopolitan, the New Statesman and numerous others. I am still very much a work in progress. I still overdo it sometimes. I still say yes to things I shouldn’t. I sometimes fill dead evenings with chocolate and make myself an espresso at 8 p.m. at night because . . . I don’t know why – it’s just something to do, innit?

And you are allowed to feel exhausted, miserable, anxious because it happens to everyone. The important thing is recognise that. Don’t feel guilty. Because you should know that however together, your peers look, they are going through it too, whether they tell you or not.” Its starts, as many of its ilk, with the author hitting the low point. However, being pissed at the darts and holding up a sign that asks his wife to marry him does not particularly sound like a real nadir. It was - like a lot of the book - quite amusing though. We are then introduced to traumas large and small in his life. Its interesting. Raised by a single parent in relative poverty, whilst the other parent swanned around in a Bentley. There's quite a lot of this duality at play in the book. It is possible to be a blokey bloke, but be educated. Rich and down to earth etc. A network of anonymous, non-clinical groups for blokes to connect, talk and listen on a regular basis. Every Monday at 6.30pm for men in the UK and online globally. For many middle-aged blokes like me, masculinity is still all about beer, banter and a stiff upper lip.Rapper Professor Green, football player Declan Rice and comedian Romesh Ranganathan are just some of the ambassadors working with CALM. It’s a real shame because since I learned to be more open about my feelings, I have been amazed by the amount of support I have received. I craved stimulation at all times. I was terrified of even fleeting moments of boredom. I thought of myself as being constantly on the run from lapsing into that fat bored kid I had once been. The truth is, I was probably just scared of ever being alone with my own unfiltered thoughts. Although Sam did not originally like the idea of getting support and starting therapy, ‘beggars can’t be choosers. Only through desperation did I go and talk to someone’.