Simon Thomas

We want them to be the comfortable version again.

And grief isn't comfortable, particularly for the people around you.

Yeah, yeah.

And if you're strong, you're going out and get a stiff British upper lip.

Part of it comes from that.

That kind of culturally, the way that we dealt with loss, a stiff upper lip, crack on, nothing's happened here, and let's just go again.

And I'll put it all down here somewhere, and it'll explode out on another day, and it'll be just as devastating and just as spectacular and just as messy.

But for now, pop it down here.

Just don't tell people to be strong.

What's something you wish someone had asked you when you were struggling?

Well, the answer I've got to this is something that someone actually did when I was struggling because it was such a relief and it was such a key moment.

So I was struggling with really big mental health problems in the autumn of 2017.

I'm doing the Premier League on Sky and these...

whole anxiety and panic attacks thing had really really built and I was really struggling with it and I think because I'm working in football and working in TV I just got it into my head that this is just not going to play out well and I think he's never going to be a safe pair of hands again and can't put in front of a camera if we really know what's going on with him so I just kept it all kind of down here and I'd go to a game and it was just so draining kind of just keeping everything internalised

And I remember going to a game at Stamford Bridge and I was such a mess.

And I was getting these panic attacks as well.

And I think a sign that you're struggling mentally is often when we begin to, and I think men are particularly bad at this.

And I think it's part of the reason, not the whole reason, part of the reason so many men end up in a place where life isn't worth living anymore.

We tend to isolate ourselves.

We withdraw.