SIMON GUNNING: SUICIDE IS THE BIGGEST KILLER OF PEOPLE UNDER 30

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1:56Create a beautiful, functional website just by describing your idea. Track how your site appears in AI search results, create custom images on demand, or launch an entire campaign in a matter of minutes. Wix gives you AI wherever you need it. Try it now for free at Wix.com. If you've been affected by the themes in this episode, you can speak to Campaign Against Living miserably calm in confidence. Find out more about Calm's helpline tools and resources at thecalmzone.net. Hello everyone, my name is Jamie Lang and this is Great Company.

2:39Hi there, Jamie. Hello, Jemima. Before we kick off, I'm going to say this straight away. Hello everyone, welcome back or to the podcast if you're a uh old listener and og jemima likes to call you owls an old wonderful listener and i'll know our wonderful listeners now or um to your new listeners welcome to the show uh my name is jamie lang i'm the host of great company and i'm jemima and i produce great company you produce it you make all the magic happen in the episode um how do you think the episodes have gone so far i'm loving it you are yeah we have done let me see how many episodes we've done.

3:15I don't know where you're joining us, listener, whether you've listened from In-N-Out or the whole shebang, but this is episode 28. 28. So you're just discovering us. There's loads. 28 weeks. 28 weeks of this. We started with Youngblood. We're now all the way at... How many months is that? Well, 4, 8, 12, 5, 6, 6. Nearly 6 weeks. 7. 7. 28. Oh my God, 6 months. 7. So it's been 6 months. Months. 6 months. 7 months. 6 months. six times four is 24 oh so it's seven months seven months wow what's wrong with me it's been seven months uh what have you learned over oh what have i learned um i've we've learned i think together we've learned how to communicate via an ipad because uh throughout the episode what jemima does is i have this ipad and if i um i'll just bump things around you will change you'll write things in if I say something that you want to be elaborated on you'll write that on the iPad which is amazing so we have this a great sort of combo together yeah we share a brain what have I learned what have you learned I've learned to sit in silence yes and let people talk do you know I I was thinking about this the other day I find interviewing so hard really yeah I find I was thinking I was reflecting on this the other day I find it really weird that I'm actually producing an interview show because it's that I have consistently throughout my career been like that's the thing I struggle with the most.

4:41Really? Yeah, I find interviews really scary. Seven months in. Yeah, I find that really hard. I just get clammy. I quite like it. Yeah. Today's episode, we have Simon Gunning, who is the CEO of the charity Calm, Campaign Against Living Miserably. Yes, and I must admit, when we first booked him, I thought it was Calm, the app, which it is not. It is not. Big clarification. Very different. Very different. Calm, the charity. I'm an ambassador for they're an incredible charity that help people through the hardest times in their lives they have saved many people in life who are really awfully thinking about taking their own lives and Simon is coming on today to talk all about Calm to talk about the crisis that we are having in the world at the moment through mental health what potentially is causing it how we can help it and talking about finding interviews hard that's one of the key things about Calm is like is having conversations and asking questions which maybe make you feel a bit uncomfortable Correct and sitting in it and being like actually we really shouldn't be uncomfortable to ask someone how they're doing Exactly that so it's going to be an amazing episode today it might be a little bit heavy it might be light at times so hopefully we get a whole round of things but hopefully we learn a lot of different stuff as well so without further ado please welcome to the podcast Simon Gunning I'm Simon Gunning and I am Great Company.

6:12So Simon, before we ever do a podcast, I always think with my producer Jemima, what question we're going to ask at the top. Because I think at the top of a podcast, it's an important question you need to ask. So my question to you is, how are you? Oh, well, that's much easier than I was expecting. Simon leaned back as you were As you're expecting something big And I thought that was the best question to ask you Well, thank you for asking me I'm alright Yeah, I'm okay I'm alright We've got lots and lots of really stressful things happening And big changes coming up for me in my personal life as well My kids going off to university Which scares me But I'm alright I'm okay Thank you How are you?

7:03Thank you. Yeah, I think I'm okay. Do you know what? I'm going to be really honest this episode because I think it's important to, and I think the things we're going to talk about are really important. And I'm hoping we're going to talk a lot about mental health. I hope we're going to talk a lot about calm. I hope we're going to talk a lot about different things. I've been a bit stressed recently. And I'm not good sometimes because I don't recognize what I'm feeling, really. And I know producer Jemima is a little bit the same. I don't recognize what I'm feeling until I'm actually in the sort of eye of the needle or whatever.

7:35And then I go, oh, I'm really quite stressed. And I don't notice it until all of that stress builds up. So I'm a little bit stressed, but I'm okay. I found that I often don't know why I'm stressed or anxious about something until afterwards. And then I can go, oh, it was that. That's what was worrying me. Isn't it weird? You should be able to just work it out yourself. Maybe that's why it's good talking to other humans. How does stress manifest in you? running around, talking too much, scratching my head, you know, sort of not being very nice, I think, maybe. Yeah, I'm the same, I think. I do find a deep regret that I'm not very nice to people that I really care about, like my kids, to mention them again.

8:19And you think, why the fuck was I nasty to my kids when I was worried about something that had nothing to do with them? And I suppose somebody did once say to me, though, that it's all right, it's natural, as long as you understand it and then apologize and explain what was happening or what is happening. It's a normal aspect of life. What happens with you when you're stressed? I think I'm probably, I take it out on people closest to me. Yeah, I probably do that. And I would say that one of my good qualities is I'm probably quite kind. I would say I'm probably quite kind and thoughtful. And I get a short fuse.

8:58and especially with my wife, I can become irritated and little things can annoy me. And yeah, I think that's how it kind of comes out. And then I'm the same as you. I get annoyed. I'll give you a prime example the other day, which I, for some reason, really regret I did this. And it's really mean that I was walking down the street and I was feeling very stressed, overwhelmed. There's lots going on in my life. Same as you. There's so much going on. and a guy walked towards me and he walked past me and he said hello you and I went hi and he went you don't remember me I didn't remember him and I went no I'm I don't remember you I'm sorry firstly normally I would never say that I would go oh god so silly of me but I just said oh I don't remember you and he said we went to this party together and I went so I still don't remember you I'm so sorry and he said we were smashing plates in a restaurant and the memory kind of clicked but I didn't remember him and instead of saying to him oh yeah of course I still went sorry I don't remember and he went okay don't worry and walked off and I suddenly walked around and I said why did I do that that is just not me that is not friendly that is not nice in any way whatsoever he's probably thinking that guy's a bit of a dick and I don't know why that happened it's because it's isn't it I'm not going to tell you what's going on in your brain tell me that would be wrong I don't know I'm I am a marketing wanker let me tell you I am not in any way qualified to tell you what's going on in your brain but um don't you need to have don't you need to feel solid and safe in yourself and then have the freedom flexibility and energy to be able to project who you want to be if you're not feeling that way if you're feeling vulnerable or at risk or stressed or whatever it might be that you put the the wall up in order to preserve of what's happened in order to make yourself safe it's like um it's like you well it's it's like you need a healthy middle class in order to achieve revolution yeah you see what i mean yeah i mean it's obvious now yeah no what you know what i mean is you need to have like a place of comfort in order to to project positive i think you do i think you're right that's exactly you need to be comfortable in your space in order to give that off for sure have you always been quite good at being in touch with your own emotions?

11:17Oh God, no, no, no, no, not at all. Not at all. Not in any way. Well, this is good because you're hardly opening up now. No change there then. Why? Because I'm of an age, I'm substantially older than you are. And I am still, I guess I often think about, because Calm started off being about being male focused and when when i arrived there seven years ago it was still male only and and i changed that to be gender inclusive for a number of different reasons but that led us a lot and also the fact that 75 percent of deaths by suicide are male yeah we talk a lot with people and people ask me and other people other people at calm a lot about why is that and i do think that there's a generational change the change is very slow um glacial even so i think about what i inherited from my dad.

12:09And my dad grew up with rationing. He was born just after the Second World War, and sorry, just before the Second World War. And so he grew up in bomb-smashed West London with rationing, with situations where the bloke next door might not have come home, or came home with bits missing. And stoicism was really the only way to do stuff. He didn't complain about your lot because your lot was better than lots of other people and and so i inherited i think a lot of that from my dad or it's hardwired so in in at the risk of oversharing all of a sudden for me please do go straight in yeah go straight in please overshare the only the only physical contact i've ever had with my dad was a handshake or i mean that was it or i touched his toe when he was he was dead i went to see him when he was dead in in hospital when he died the night before.

13:04And as I left the room, I kind of just held his toe. And I really, I remember what it felt like. And I'm not, honestly, I'm not going to get out a tiny violin or anything because my relationship with my kids is totally, totally different. It is completely different. I tell them that I love them 25 times a day and they say it back to me and we mean it. We don't, it's not like a love you, you know, it's a real thing. And maybe I'm overcompensating a little bit for what I perceived my dad did. just didn't have, which was any kind of emotional connection, certainly with me. But it's a conditioning thing, I think.

13:41It's really interesting. I spoke to my dad the other day. And my dad, my grandfather grew up pre-World War II as well. And he was unemotional in lots of different ways. And I didn't really know him that well. And I'm kind of in the stage at the moment when I'm really interested in sort of family history and things like that. I really want to know what my family was like because I think it's really important. And I phoned my dad up the other day. My dad is unemotional in lots of ways, but much more. He will tell me that he's proud of me. He'll tell me that he loves me and all those different things.

14:10And I said to my dad, I said, we called my grandfather Grand Turk because he lived in the Turks in Caicos Islands. Probably guess why. And I said to my dad, Grand Turk, did he ever tell you he loved you? And my dad was quiet and he went, no, he didn't. And I said, did he ever hug you? And he went, no, I only ever shook his hand. And I said, did you love him? And he said, yeah, immensely. But we had that, and that was how I lived. And that was our emotions. And I realized in my dad, that's why he can be a little bit emotionally closed off. And you mentioned your kids. I'm definitely thinking about kids and things like that.

14:56And I want to make sure that my kids know they're loved. 24-7 all the time. It's so important, right, to have that. Otherwise, you do get a sort of... You become maybe emotionally closed off in certain areas. Just for the avoidance of doubt, I am older than you, but I'm not old enough to be your fucking dad. I know. As I was saying that, I was like, does the listener think that Simon is... Simon's in his late 70s. Gunnings out of bed again.

15:32When your dad died, how did you handle the grief? Yeah, like being run over by a train, really. It was really interesting, what it does, the way that it twists your brain, that kind of proximate grief. I think a large part of grief when my dad died was that we hadn't had the sort of relationship that I would have liked to have had. But then actually, I'll tell you what's saved us, barbillards. And now the world won't be saved by barbillards because there's, I don't know if you've noticed, there's a barbillards famine. It's a drought. There are no barbillards tables anywhere. It's gone. It's finished.

16:10It's all over. Barbillards? You don't even know what it is. I wasn't born in 1959. God. Can you tell me? It's like weird. It's like pool on acid. Well, you throw it with your hands, right? No, you hit it with a bat. Okay, right. A long bat known as a cue. Of people or balls? No, you don't hit people with a bat. Well, you said there was a cue. It's not a pool, a swimming pool. It's like pool with balls on a table and holes in the table. Yeah. And what you can do, so there's a really interesting thing in the way, especially that male brains operate, which we call shoulder-to-shoulder, which lots of people talk about all the time, which is we should be sitting next to each other because we're better able to communicate when we're not facing each other, and especially when we're doing something else.

17:04And there are lots of very clever brain doctors who have told me that there are physical reasons in our brains, in our male brains, why it works better when we're also doing something else. And so what saved me and my dad was bar billiards, that we'd go and play bar billiards, and we wouldn't really talk to each other, But we'd have an hour of playing this mad, old-fashioned, weird game, which is now gone. It's funny. Sport can be a great way to bond people. Yeah. And getting into that conversation about how you communicate, I was always told the best way you should have a date, really, is sitting side by side.

17:37Yeah. You should never be across from each other because it feels a bit confrontational. Yeah. And if you do want to communicate, communicating over something like sport or walking and talking is a great way to do it because you're kind of... eye contact can be hard yeah and if you have that something to do it feels more comfortable doesn't i'm finding this so awful and awkward no you're not you're loving every second so it was the victorians that stopped to sit next to each other did you know that tell me this give all of this so we we would you and i would have sat if we'd gone for a drink we'd sit next to each other so that we can watch what's happened that's what how we would have always done it and then the victorians didn't want a woman to sit next to a man so you know whilst covering up piano legs as well, said that we should have a table in between us so that nothing untoward can happen.

18:19And so we should be really sitting next to each other and watching the world carry on, and then we'd be able to open up those parts of our brains that would allow us to communicate fully with each other, Jamie, because clearly right now, we're both feeling very awkward. Yes, true, we are. I'm so glad you picked up on that. That is really interesting. I might have made that up, come to think of it. No, I don't think you have. No, I don't think I have. I went to a therapist and the therapist said to me if you're having an argument with your partner you should always lie on your back and look at the ceiling next to each other, you shouldn't do it across from each other so if you start to have an argument lie on your back and look up it's quite hard at the beginning of an argument to sort of set that premise and say let's get onto the bed and lie up and look in the ceiling but it's really important because you communicate better that way yeah

19:11Trying to make a charity relatable to people who haven't experienced something like that is quite hard. Yeah. And your challenge is to make that relatable and make people feel those emotions and understand it and get into those people's shoes and say, yes, we know maybe this hasn't happened to you, you haven't experienced it, but these people have and we need to help these people. Yeah. And we talk about it in terms of a blast radius. So the number that is very easy to understand and people talk about a lot is that 6 ,500 people die by suicide every year in the UK. So that's 125 a week. And that's a number which has slowly grown.

19:49The demographic has changed. And that blast radius comes out from that 6 ,500 tragically preventable deaths because the World Health Organization says suicide is the most preventable cause of death. That's not to say to anybody that's lost someone, you should have prevented it. What we're trying to do is change the conditions in society so that we're all able to prevent as we go about our daily lives. When we come out of that blast radius, there's 25 attempts for every single death. So that's 6 ,500 times 25. And then what I find both terrifying and really encouraging is that one in five people will have suicidal ideation, will live with suicidal thoughts in the UK.

20:29How many? One in five. One in five? Yeah. So it's not other people. It's not like a weirdo. It's not someone else. It's all of us. It's us. It's what our brains do that we are able to talk to each other, evidently by me banging on at you for ages. And that made us very successful as a species. These frontal lobes allow us to divide energy between defending the cave and going out and getting the berries or whatever, you know, and that gives us a tribe, a village, and that makes us the most successful species. But it also gives us an ability to question our existence. And when we do that, that's when we get existential philosophy, and that's when we get pop music and poetry, and we question our place, our validity in society, and then we question our own personal worth and place in society as well as the validity of that society itself.

21:27and that's encouraging because it's all of us it's um we all know more than five people so we all know statistically speaking if it's if it's not you then it's someone you know who is going to have that as a part of their life and it's okay it's all right to have that as long as we're able to address it as long as we can prevent the what we call the the continuum so people who feel really happy always have done to people who are a point of crisis as long as we all accept that these are our mums, dads, kids, friends, colleagues, neighbours, then we're able to be aware and active to prevent any kind of ideation turning to volition, turning to action.

22:10That's the real sort of crucial point. But all the way through that continuum, when we're able to understand that suicide is a part of life, then we're able to address it and talk about it because there's a guy called Rory O 'Connor at Glasgow University who is probably the strongest proponent of helping us to understand that if we talk about suicide, that word, that's suicide, then we prevent it. We bring it out of the dark where it skulks in the corner and where it goes from ideation to volition really fast. When we bring it out and we shine antiseptic light on it by talking about it, using the word and understanding that it's a part of what our brains do, then that's how we prevent.

22:58That's how we allow people to have the ability, the freedom to seek help because people won't. The shame is too much. Why? Because we can't talk about it. I still don't want to talk about it. I don't want to say that word. It's horrible. My mum doesn't like hearing the word. I don't like hearing the word. You probably don't. And when I come to say it, I feel a little handbrake come on in my brain. And I try to think, is there a way around this that I cannot say this word? Knowing full well that we have to, because we can change it. We can change the fact that suicide is now the biggest killer of young people in the UK.

23:40So people aged 30 and below, suicide is the biggest killer. It wasn't 14 years ago it was accidents but now it's the biggest killer and we have to change that behavior the good great news is that talking about it bringing it out into the open will will change society and that's that's calm's mission is that we'll change society that means that nobody will take that human behavior as a shameful secret you talk about it um don't make it so it's so relatable You make it very relatable. You make it... I'm in the unfortunate scenario where I do know people who have taken their own life. And I know what it does to family members and I know what it does to friends and I know what it does to communities and it's just horrendous.

24:31And it's really awful. I did not realise that it's now... I knew that it was... And I may be wrong here. I knew that suicide was the biggest killer for men under 40. But now you're saying it's the biggest killer for people under the age of 30. Yeah, and it's also, that group is the fastest growing group in history. So it's important as well to note that it's a cohort behavior, that we pick it up, it's contagious. There's a thing called the Werther effect. The reason why you'll never see method reported on in mainstream press, Ofcom regulated press, is because Samaritans have done incredibly strong work to avoid this thing called the Werther effect, which means that if a person identifies with somebody who's died by suicide and then method is discussed, then you'll see a jump in people copying that.

25:22So that's the Werther effect, which kind of boil it all away says that despair is contagious. But there's another thing which is equally powerful, which is the Papageno effect, which says that survival and hope is as contagious as that. and that's when we talk about we did a lot of campaigns but you were involved with Stay that when we show that people can get to a point of despair but then come back then that's that's catching part of that the lovely thing from the Stay campaign where we just it was originally called Fuck It Stay but we thought that might be going a bit far which was just saying so stay just see what happens tomorrow and there was this thing that I just bloody love which was somebody sent us an Instagram post from a girl who had chosen to take her own life and then didn't and used the calm, I think used the calm helpline, but certainly was engaged with what we do and didn't.

26:17And on the year anniversary, her friends put a picture on Instagram of her. They gave her a cake with one candle on it and the cake said, I stayed, I slayed. I just thought, oh fuck, that's fantastic because that's contagious. and that group that we're seeing the highest risk in history will behave as a cohort in the way that gen x my generation has taken suicide through its entire life we have to stop that for gen z we've got to stop that because they'll take that there's a a writer called john niven he wrote a book about 18 months ago i think called oh brother about the death of his brother by suicide his brother was 40 when he died and he talks about it as the churnable of the soul that it never goes it's burning under the ground forever in a family and he says actually that the unanswered questions are the plutonium that fuel the fire that you always come back thinking about if only what could I have done but most telling for me what really stuck in my mind from that it's a brilliantly written book is that he looks at his kids and he thinks, how can I save you?

27:26I think they're pretty young. They're sort of young teenagers. How can I save you now? But how can I save you when you're 20, 30, 40, 50? How can I create a fire break? That means that this behavior that we're seeing growing at the fastest rate ever, especially in young girls and women, we have to stop that now. We've got to save them now because if we don't save them now, we might not save them when they're 20 30 40 50 so that's that's calm's immediate mission is to change that cohort behavior can i just work the maths out and that's why i picked it so i that number so it's six thousand five hundred six thousand five hundred deaths a year times 25 times 25 i know the number i'm not i'm going to give you the satisfaction of working well i've got 162 ,500.

28:14Yeah. So that's deemed the number of attempts. Of course, it's impossible to track it totally, but that's a best guess. That's so upsetting. Yeah. It's so upsetting. And it's so living miserably, don't you think? Yes. Is there any greater or worse barometer on how someone or society is feeling by the amount of time people are trying to turn it off? I don't know why it's striking such a nerve in me. It's so upsetting because... Yeah, it is true. But there's hope everywhere. I know, I know. And that's the thing. And the thing is, is that I always, I watched this incredible clip once, and I've never forgotten about a guy who tried to take his own life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

28:52Yeah. And I don't know if you've seen this thing. He jumped off, and he survived. Yeah. And then he realized that three and a half thousand people a year take their own life or something like that, doing the same thing or in total. And he went around to the 18 survivors. 18 people have survived doing it. He was one of them. and he went around to each 18 survivors and each of them had one thing in common. When they jumped, they felt immediate regret. Yeah, yeah. And it just makes you sort of realise suicide is an ultimate decision to a preventable thing. And you can, if you do, if you just go, fuck it, stay one more day.

29:27Fuck it, just stay. I love that idea of saying fuck it, even though it was a bit aggressive. I love it. Just one more day, just go on, just go on. Keep going, one foot in front of the other. Yeah, give tomorrow a chance. Give tomorrow a chance. It's amazing. It's so important that when we hear those holy shit numbers, that we don't get paralyzed by it, that we understand that it's a big problem in our society, but that it is, again, according to the World Health Organization, the most preventable cause of death. And the prevention doesn't take big multi-million pound machines in hospitals that you need an appointment to go to.

30:07It's about communication. Not everywhere. I mean, of course, not every suicide is preventable. And it's really important for Calm that we understand that we can't be everywhere. And it's actually arrogant of us to think that, sometimes to think that we should be intervening everywhere. But the point of difference for us is that we are, as we put it, hyper-interventionist. So our helpline is staffed by paid and trained professionals, which is why it costs a lot of money to run. And we will put plans in place for people. We're not a listening service. We're an intervention service. And we would also assert that if someone's calling the Calm Helpline, it's probably because they want to stay.

30:51Hopefully, it's because they want us to help them, to save them. and that intervention can't come everywhere but it can come for huge numbers of people where they feel that they have no self-worth, they don't feel a part of something that's bigger than they are and they feel this entrapment and entrapment of things like finances and stuff is so horrible and tragic that people see them, that they're continuing down the road and there's no way off for that journey and what we try to do is what we call it off-ramps that we try to provide offer amps for people that you may be hurtling towards that horrible destination, but we'll give you other things.

31:32We'll give you things that will allow you to either just stay for a day or understand the guy from the Golden Gate Bridge. I think one of the other things that people will always often, often, often talk about is that life got better, that that entrapment was a temporary feeling, but the holy human one the the the fight flight play dead that that had overloaded and it felt like there was no we've all been there you've been there i'm sure you know you get a tax bill or something you think shit i can't pay it what am i going to do and then that spirals and spirals but giving offer amps and stopping people allowing people to change their direction is the key So if I'm an individual and I am struggling and I decide to phone out calm, what happens to me?

32:22What happens in that moment? Who do I speak to? How does it work? You speak to a paid, trained professional who will come from a variety of different backgrounds like homelessness, addiction, citizens advice bureaus, those kind of places. You can type on a big old plastic keyboard on a web chat, or you can use WhatsApp, or you can talk to somebody, whatever you want to do. And you will be completely anonymous, completely confidential. We'll listen to what's happening in your life, and then we will apply what we call our practice model, which is the methodologies that we will use to help people avoid suicide, if that's where we are.

33:03And our helpline has recently become very much focused on suicide prevention. It became very broad in lockdown. But now we are really focused on the helpline being about people who are either themselves in a point of suicidal crisis or are worried about somebody else or are bereaved by suicide. That's what the helpline is there for. The website and the products that we make alongside that, this big campaign that we're doing, which is called the Calm Care Kit, those digital products allow us to reach millions of people and and give them those kind of options the kind of things to do to alleviate what is in the care kit what is it um it's about how we can intervene it with with young people so it's it's aimed firmly at what we call trusted adults parents older siblings teachers where a young person has identified that adult as somebody that they trust we deliver the care kit through three states one is prevention then the second state is intervention if you're worried about somebody where things get a little more serious quite quickly a different set of tools skills advice there and then crisis management when somebody is in a point of crisis what to do because we do not know somebody who remained nameless rang me worried about their son who had dropped out of university and said he's talking about not wanting to be here anymore what do I do?

34:31I was like, I don't know. So I rang our helpline and said, what should I do? And the two bits that really stuck with me were, don't leave him, sleep on his floor if you need to, do not leave him on his own. But our tendency is to kind of go, I'll just, I'll go make you a cup of tea. Don't do anything silly. And I'll be back in an hour. You know, that's how we think we should be dealing with these things. But they said, no, stay in the room, sleep on the floor. The other thing that really stuck with me was - Deal with that head on. But deal with that head on and say, are you feeling suicidal? Do you think you're going to want, are you going to try to kill yourself?

35:03Get it out because. That's tough. Don't, yeah, but it's not. I know, I know, but I'm just, I'm thinking if you're in that scenario, because you're right, it goes back to that word. For some reason it does, it sends shivers down you. And you're so right, you have to batter through that. Like it's a door. Get through that, say it. And it's easy. We just, I just, I just pretended to do it to you. Yes. The last one is remove. So if you've got a prescription or over-the-counter drugs, paracetamol, for example, get it out of the house. But back to that point of it's not hard to do. It is, but that's what we have to change.

35:38I don't know what happened to me when I was a teenager, but I became extremely enthusiastic about LGBT rights. Rights, wrong word. Just like movement. Fucking be nice to people for fuck's sake. And just 20 years ago, Saturday Night TV was full of slurs, homophobic slurs. and the gay character was always funny or stupid or, you know, ridicule. And it's so fast that the lights of Stonewall and culture have changed that I do think that if somebody, I hope that somebody shouts a homophobic slur on a building site, somebody's going to say, shut the fuck up, Dave. You know, that we've come to that point where, go back 20 years and to think that gay people would not be, and of course there is, I'm not going to minimise it, of course there is still homophobia, but we've moved so far that we can do the same with suicide because we know that will save people.

36:50We know it will, and we can change it to the point where we're able to have that conversation because we know how effective it is.

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38:53you guys are doing incredible work you mentioned other charities that are doing incredible work but the rate is still rising yeah why well in that younger audience that we're addressing uh right now we also help everybody else just be clear but then we're at the the the big um miss birthdays campaigns called miss birthdays uh where that's focusing is we know why and that comes from a guy called Sir Professor Lewis Appleby Imagine Great name Sir Professor It might be Professor It's Sir Professor Sir Professor Professor Sir It's not Professor Sir It's Professor Sir Professor Sir It doesn't work as well as Sir Professor Works better than Professor Professor He's brilliant Isn't that two titles in one?

39:40That's fantastic Fantastic He's an academic at Manchester and the government key advisor. And he printed a paper, or Manchester University did, that identified that younger audience. And it's not necessarily what you think, but amongst many, many causes, academic pressure, substance abuse, and family breakup very much amplified and accentuated by, you guessed it, the goddamn algorithm, the social media accelerating all of that stuff that we know about. And then we know about body image, We know about self-respect. We know about all that stuff about comparing ourselves to others. So in younger audiences, that's what's accelerating.

40:24But I also think there's another subtext that we demonize young people, that we allow government, rather than looking at this crisis that young people are carrying, the weight they're carrying of buying a house to live in. It's like a mad fever dream for most people. Climate change is terrifying. and then previous government talking about frankly I think fucking brilliant kids blocking Oxford Street in order to try to change these things to save their species and being referred to as unhelpful crusties those kinds of things that's a big burden for young people to carry and I think that we've slipped in popular media into just a very comfortable place of demonizing young people of having a them and us view of the world that, you know, they spend all the money on avocados and lattes.

41:18And actually, most young people I come across are bloody great. And they're just as great as young people were 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. So I think there's a big, there's an agenda that we need to confront and we need to change that I don't believe that you make young people better citizens by sticking them in national service. I believe you make them better citizens by listening to them, by encouraging them, by giving them the foundations to have happy and healthy lives. The other groups that are growing are older men. There was a dip in lockdown. So the numbers that we see coming out now from the ONS show a return to growth that wasn't there in lockdown.

42:00Why wasn't there in lockdown? It's really, really interesting from a sort of anthropological perspective. Yeah, why is it? access to means is one thing explain that people were locked in they weren't so the reason why there are three times as many male deaths as female deaths is that we and i'm being very binary on this for which i apologize but the we are violent we the the method the male method for suicide is violent um and in lockdown access to those means of violence was limited but then there was also a really interesting thing that our helpline spotted as well which was that um there's suzy ruffle you know suz much like your good self yeah amazing she says that if you if you if you haven't got anxiety i don't think you're concentrating the um sort of if you were if you were freaked out by life lockdown we were all in it now and and we were we were all part of a general freak out.

43:01And we found for a lot of people using a helpline that it wasn't a told you so, but there was a, well, now I am a part of something. Now I'm not an outlier. I'm a part of what everybody is feeling. So everyone felt sort of part of a tribe? Could be. And it's those three things, a sense of self-worth, a sense of being a part of something bigger than you, and then avoiding entrapment. So maybe there was an element of that. I mean, it's very, very interesting. And that clearly is now gone. And so we do see a continued rise. And there's a rise in women as well. Yeah. Well, there's a thing called suicidality, which is a number of vectors which point to people's propensity to consider suicide as an option either now or in the future.

43:50And horribly self-harm is one of those um and self-harm in young young women 10 to 21 as well is is extremely high um and and growing and it's that psychological journey from feeling bad enough about yourself to inflict pain that door's starting to become ajar there you know And that door can get more widely open and that can lead to suicide and suicidal thoughts. My brother, he has a daughter, my niece. She's turning five. And he's terrified at the moment. I wouldn't say terrified, but he is maybe a little bit angry, I would say. Showed me a stat of when social media started. And then the rise of particularly young women in self-harm.

44:42And it basically matches it. Going up at the same time. Completely. and it feels like and i mean this is a bit much larger conversation that a lot of the issues that we are facing is down to social media and the algorithms and things like that and social media feels like it's not going away but the rise of suicide and self-harming and comparing and all these negative things is on the rise so what does one do about it if you were in charge i mean this is a very big question i know that but if you suddenly were in charge of social media of meta of tiktok of all these different places what would you put in place what would you do run it like a 1950s post office letters early closing on a wednesday close at the weekends no i mean i mean turn it off obviously would you turn it off yeah yeah same um i think i would as well 100 % turn it off turn it off yeah it's it's like I used to smoke I was really good at it really good chicks dig it right crack or

45:54nicotine I get it sorry okay and I smoked even though I knew what it was doing to me yeah and I carried on smoking and then my daughter was born I had to put a fag out and didn't have another one um you know i'm not suggesting it was easy but after a lot of pain and stopped smoking um and i but i find it interesting that i still smoked when i knew full well what it was doing to my brain and my lungs and my gums and my teeth and my eyes and everything else and that that big intervention from government global intervention of banning smoking indoors was just a fantastically benevolent thing to have done right i mean the sacrifice in tax revenue, but the amount of lives it saved is extraordinary.

46:40And I don't think there will not be, let's put it that way, there will not be a big intervention. There won't be. We've got Elon Musk who's a fucking bellend. The cat is out of the bag. But what we have to do then is educate our kids and help them understand how to use it well. and that you don't have to keep smoking. You don't have to light one off the other. And we have to get to a point of sensible maturity that we treat a product which will exist forever, that we treat it differently. And what you guys do so well is that you turn social media into a place of positivity. Yeah. And that's really great.

47:20You had the Calm campaign with Tyson Fury. Yeah. Which was kind of its first, and that was a sort of television advert and across social media and things like that. and explain a little bit about that. It was amazing. That was amazing. It was called Invisible Opponent. So we went through, we didn't, a guy called Dan Russell made it his life's mission. Incredible to do it. We took the very famous, BT gave us the footage, the Fury-Wilder fight, the one where Fury tombstoned and then jumped up. Yeah, and he got back up. Yeah, and he saw, and the agency AMV saw, the power in somebody who's apparently down but then getting back up.

48:00And they removed De Conte Wilder from every frame. So Fury's fighting himself. There's nobody there. But the way that he did it, get this right. The way that Dan managed to get Fury to do it, because he tried every single route, and then he saw that Fury was doing a book signing in Canary Wharf. So he got in the queue, and he queued up for like two hours with Fury's autobiography. and he got to the front and seized his moment, opened his laptop and pitched like a motherfucker. And he pitched Fury there and then and Fury just went to his PA, yeah, I like it. And that was it. And so he got the permission.

48:40He queued up tenacity. That's a great tip for anyone who is trying to achieve, get their dream, whatever it is. Keep going. Keep going. There'll be a route. There's always a window. Yeah. If a door shuts, find that window and climb through it. Go, go, go, go, go. No, that was a really good one. I liked that a lot. But we did, with the likes of ITV, we did, well, with ITV, we did Project 84 in 2018, which was focused on the fact that 84 men a week died by suicide. We put statues down the South Bank. So that was the big thing that blew the doors off for us, really, and got us into the social, into the kind of the conscience of society.

49:20Then with you, we did the last photo in 2022. the most awarded campaign in the world. It's amazing. But explain that one because it was incredible. Suicidal doesn't always look suicidal was the insight because we have lots of people who will say that they didn't spot any signs or that the person they lost was the happiest person at the party. But what we also saw was that so many organizations are saying what to watch out for, spot the signs. Somebody who, the cliche would be that they're sat on the end of the bed with their head in their hands, you know. but it doesn't look like that because back to all of the holy shit numbers back to everything it's us we all look like we look like and and you can't superficially spot so be vigilant so be kind so let's check that change that agenda and and talk about this subject in order to save people so we got just around 50 photographs literally the last photograph of people before they died by suicide and we made this experiential event on the south bank um which i felt was a little bit like the holocaust memorial in berlin that you sort of got lost in it get trapped at the end with those letters and it's just yeah harrowing and just awful and upsetting and yeah but you've got to get the solution close to the horror you can't just go out with the horror and so the the big line on the last photo was find out how to save a life and then there was loads of advice there and we had tons of outdoor advertising had tons of press and with miss birthday's most recent campaign again which is amazing yeah it's incredibly creative and i think that's a key point of difference that we can we can use just kind of cultural norms of creativity what i always felt when i was kind of selling stuff with advertising is that you're trying to get people to do something they didn't expect so you're trying to get them to buy that one not that one that's what that's really what you're expecting so what we're doing is using communication to try to get people to do thing they didn't expect, which would be to save the people around them and themselves.

51:18With Miss Birthdays, for anyone who hasn't seen it, can you explain what it is? It uses the kind of the cultural shorthand of celebration of birthday balloons. We subvert it. So we've got in the last 10 years, 6 ,972 people under the age of 24 have died by suicide. and we've therefore got that number of balloons, just let's call it 7 ,000 birthday balloons that are in Westfield, in West London in White City, each one representing a young person that didn't make it to that birthday. So if somebody didn't make it to their 18th birthday, there'll be an 18th birthday balloon and there are QR codes for a number of those which take you through to voice notes and video and really humanizing that young person who died by suicide and then pushing straight through to the care kit so that we, as trusted adults, we can all be highly vigilant and we have the tools, we know how to confront this because we need people to understand that our young people are at risk but that we can also save them.

52:26It's not about horror. It can't be about horror. It's about hope. and as well as doing Miss Birthdays, Last Photo, these are the things where we kind of shape the nation by the shoulders and say, oi, we have to confront this and we have to deal with it. And so break people's hearts and then give them the solution is the kind of, I guess, would be the marketing methodology you might think about there. But then we also noticed that World Mental Health Day coincides with World Toilet Day. So we got massive toilet rolls and printed Feeling Shit, Shit on them. we got with seat cars we made a pair of 15 foot tall ears if you want them we've got them in a lockup oh thank god i've been we put them on the side of a building and just a grower pair in between the ears so you know you can prod and poke and do fun things and we we're always back to positivity and hope and the fact that this is this is preventable if someone wants to support calm yes firstly they can go to all the show notes below and they can click on all the different links which are all there so they can check it out but if coming from you someone says well how can i support calm what would you say um wear a badge either figuratively or literally uh be a part of what we're trying to achieve understand that you can change you can change yourself, your proximity in your immediate family and community.

53:53You can change things by being more calm. And then, yeah, donations are great. They really help. So doing great stuff, buying tickets for things, putting things on, regular giving to us is an incredibly brilliant thing and become a part of our gang that way. But we're here for people and bringing us into your life and then spreading it out from there makes you feel good and it makes people around you feel good it's scary but it's like that word but it's like a cold swimming pool you when you get in you maybe lose your breath but once you're paddled around a bit you think yeah this is good this helps i have eight questions that i want to ask you all right are you ready for this i am what's a saying or phrase that always makes you smile or cheers you up well uh fancy a pint yeah great great and that's three points to the arsenal my little boy calls me pops and so when i he's not literally six foot two what am i talking about um yeah when i hear him say well yeah just hear him say hi pops and my my daughter saying hi daddy that makes me feel happy that was wonderful producer jemima has written a bonus one here for the same number one he says what's a phrase you'd like someone to come away from this interview you're remembering?

55:11Talking about it prevents it. And hope is more powerful than despair. That's great. Best compliment anyone's ever given you? Yesterday, in the office, lots of great people, so many people saying to me that, wow, you look well. A couple people saying, where have you been on your holidays? And I haven't. because Jamie, on Wednesday night I shaved and I didn't have my glasses with me and there was a nice new bottle of moisturiser in the bathroom which I applied liberally, let me tell you, because it was someone else's moisturiser. You're going to slap that stuff on, right? You're not going to treat it like your own.

55:55Hell no. Slap it all on. Yeah, get it on. It wasn't moisturiser. It was fake tan. so uh i'm sitting here right now looking like the orange shit gibbon himself mr trump i when i was showing a house my great friend a guy called ollie uh he i used to go into his bathroom to brush my teeth because he had the toothpaste and yeah the tans looking great i went and brushed uh my teeth because the tan because the tan because my i was young and just didn't buy toothpaste i was like this doesn't taste very good but whatever anyway finally the light got fixed in the bathroom and i went in to brush my teeth and realized i've been using his tattoo removal cream as toothpaste it's horrendous what scares you most about yourself what i don't i i don't like is i do realize that i need to control everything and and and i can't when was the last time you cried and why well as i get i become more lacrimose good word as a wow word that is a great scrabble word as i get older i mean fucking i mean like chewing gum adverts can get me going music can yeah get me going yeah um i guess though yes mention number 27 dropping my my daughter off at university really was like was awful i found it awful and i was in a terrible emotional state for quite a long time um so that was really hard um so i'm not looking forward to this september can i ask were you cool dad did you hold it till you're back in the car yes yes yes yes it wasn't in the walls driving with very stiff arms

57:41don't talk to me don't even know don't talk to me don't look at me what's something you can't let go of uh i think it's the stuff it's the recent numbers about young people and and we we did a film for the last photo which was just incredible our agency made a film which is absolutely incredible and i'd really encourage anybody everybody to find a moment to watch it on youtube it's the last photo can't last photo um and there's a boy in it who doesn't really look like my own son but is so relatable he's dancing in his kitchen and i can't let go of him and i can't let go of how his mum talks about him um sorry one of the other boys and how his mum talks about that boy i can't let go of those two things i can't stop seeing my life and my peers' lives reflected in that film.

58:37It's hard to watch, but it's empowering, and I can't drop it. It's amazing you mention that, though, because it's so right. Sometimes with stats and things, we forget there's humans behind it, and there's people behind it. That's the thing. And what you guys do so well is you humanise it. That's the thing. These aren't just numbers. These are people. The last frame of that film is this just absolutely beautiful looking woman, young woman, blonde hair, looks like Marilyn Monroe or something, you know, just this sort of Hollywood kind of glowing personality. And that was the last video that was ever shot before she killed herself.

59:17I can't let go of that. And that's a good thing, I think. we're going to leave the link to that in the show description so you can click on it right now if you want to go and watch it great what's something that you'd be embarrassed for people to know you like or want nothing at all one thing i've i mean i don't i don't like or want anything morally difficult or illegal just want to make that very clear nothing i don't want any of the illegal stuff um but no i don't that's one of the good things great you can do that i did spend so many years trying to be what other people want me to do look like we're fucking stupid children's shoes it's ridiculous i think they look great thanks man but i no i like i like what i like it's right although i do have a certain penchant for um uh christ i've forgotten her name skater boy oh avril lavigne avril lavigne oh you're speaking to the choir here that's yeah great avril lavigne unbelievable those vocal performances And he was a skater boy Said see you later boy Incredible He wasn't good enough for her That's enough That's enough That's right What turns you off?

1:00:24I'm not going to take this question in your underhand sexual innuendo I didn't go there You did I did not go there I know what you mean I did not go there I know what you mean I do feel I kept very upset and frustrated by kind of blocking by, no, that can't be done. We can't do it. I really like, I really, really, that's such a cliche. No, it's not a cliche. It's exactly the point which I'm in at the moment. It can be done. Of course it can. Find a way. Let's do it. Let's do it. I'm so with you. You can't put 84 statues made by a famous American street artist on the roofs of buildings down the South Bank and then get a drone license.

1:01:05You can't put 7 ,000 balloons in the busiest shopping center in Europe and you can't do those things. Yes, you can. You can do it. You can do it. You can find a way. You can queue up for Tyson Fury and get him to sign your book. You literally can. I love that. You can, you can, you can. What turns you on?

1:01:27Christ, David Brent, aren't I? You know, friend, boss, entertainer. I like laughing. I like dicking about. I do. You've got to be there, right? And that positive energy of, yeah, we can. We can do it. and laughing. I think, I hope that everybody at Calm knows they can take the piss out of me and they do. What do you like most about yourself? My shoes. I thought so. They're in, they're rug rat shoes.

1:01:59I have come to, yeah, I have come to just really not care about, I do care, of course I care. I care deeply about what other people think of me. I stress myself to a point of the fact that I'm not a psychopath, Jamie. means that I do worry about it a lot. But you release the reins, maybe. A bit. But I think also that I've got to the point which I really feel comfortable with is that, well, that's what it is. I'm not going to... I'm probably not going to put a suit and tie on. Probably not going to. That's what it is. And that's okay, isn't it? That's all right to get to there. I'm the same as you.

1:02:30Bonus one. Favorite swear word? I know what I'm meant to say. But I think it's more subtle than that. I think it's more nuanced. I think that everyone has a power and an equal and opposite attraction. And I think that it's important that we understand that they can be used in different ways. The word fuck to me is just punctuation now. It doesn't even really count. But they can all be used in different ways. Like, for example, bellend is very good and can be affectionate. Oh, you bellend. Or can be bellend. But most of them do come to genitalia, don't they? and I like that they can usually be positive and negative, like you're a bit of a twat.

1:03:16You're a silly twat. You twat. Good. But yeah, the best is obviously the best, isn't it? Which is? Well, you can use it nicely, you daft cunt, or it's just the best. Simon, you have been absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much for coming on. I want everyone to check out all the show notes. I want everyone to check out Calm. And if you can support in any shape or form, that would be incredible. You know, so many people in this world, suicide is people, you know, in so many different ways. So thank you so much for coming on. Not at all. Thank you for having us. The more we can talk about this, the more people, somebody will go, yeah, I like that.

1:03:57And they'll join the gang. But thank you. You've been a part of what we've been doing for a number of years and having you as a flag waver and an example to people is just absolutely... I'm going to wave it forever, so don't worry. But thank you so much. And that was... Lovely. Lovely. Really lovely. I learnt loads. Yeah, and what a great person. Yeah, there's some scary statistics, but also hearing about charities like Calm really give a little bit of a beacon of hope in what can sometimes feel like quite an overwhelmingly dark and scary place. If you have listened to this episode and perhaps you want some help, we're going to leave loads of links in the podcast description to Calm, tools and resources to help you find the support you need, including a life-saving suicide prevention helpline for people who can't see a way forward, have lost someone to suicide or are worried about their friends or loved ones.

1:04:58visit the calm zone dot net forward slash get hyphen support um and seek help if you need it so thank you so much for listening and as always you can get in touch with us um on our instagram at great company podcast um slide into our dms or you can send us an email great company at jampop productions.co.uk again everything is in the show description and if you haven't followed or subscribed to the show it'd be amazing if you could because it helps us in so many ways Okay, Jemima, we'll see everyone next week, you wonderful owls You wonderful, wonderful owls Our wonderful listeners, that's what owl stands for Hoot Hoot We'll see you next week for another episode of For another hoot Of Great Company Great Company

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