I once interviewed a British ad exec who had spent time working in New York in the sixties. Explaining the difference between American and British attitudes to work and life, he told me:

“When I was drinking with colleagues in New York, we would see our boss driving home in a flashy Cadillac, and people would smile and say: ‘One day, I’ll drive a car just like that.’ When I was in the pub in London, we’d see the boos driving past in a Bentley and we’d just sneer and say ‘What a wanker.’”

Americans take inspiration from the success of their peers. Brits find it annoying. Our press is famous for building up public figures to knock them down again. Morrissey summed up the cynical attitude best when he sang, ‘We hate it when our friends become successful.’

This week, we have seen the prevailing bitterness of the British people vividly encapsulated in the widespread response to Liverpool winning the league.

You might like Liverpool or hate them. I’m not particularly bothered either way, although I do find large parts of their armchair fan base irritating, mawkish and performative. Mind you, I am childish, tribal, and petty about football, so my viewpoints lack any credibility whatsoever (and if we take the childish tribalism out of football fandom then, frankly, what would be the point?).

But the fact is, Liverpool won the league because they were the best team. You don't have to celebrate with them, but you at least have to give them some credit and acknowledge how they did it. Instead, every non-Liverpool fan in the country has tried to focus on the reasons why the victory was a hollow one:

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As much as I’m appalled and concerned by the early weeks of Trump’s presidency, I must admit I find myself relating to him somewhat.

When he kicked off in that press conference with Zelensky, his weirdo sidekick Vance yapping encouragement beside him, I thought to myself: “Shit, that’s the sort of thing I do!”

Donald was annoyed because he thought someone was disrepscting him. So he snapped. He was probably a bit tired and hungry. Not that I’m excusing him. The silly bastard could have started world war three just because he forgot to have his afternoon nap. Someone like me can get away with being occasionally grumpy. You’d expect more from a President.

I’m keenly aware of how ill-qualified I would be for any position of civic responsibility. Never mind leader of the free world, I’d struggle to perform effectively as secretary of my local badminton club. I am easily distracted, lack application to matters I find boring and possess poor attention to detail at times.

I ocassionally let my feelings guide my behaviour in the heat of the moment. I have got better at regulating my emotions over the years and am at least aware that it’s something I need to work on.

Sometimes it’s okay. If someone winds you up or goes out of their way to hurt your feelings, it can be good to listen to your anger and tell them to pack it in. It’s called setting boundaries. There is a fine line between healthy emotional regulation and self-defeating passivity.

But other times - like, when someone cuts you up in traffic, say, or the stressed out-leader of a war-torn democracy doesn't show you the gratitude your ego feels you deserve - it’s better to take a breath, count to ten and just allow the moment of irritation to pass, so you can carry on with your day unbothered by the toxicity of conflict.

Emotional regulation is a skill that all of us need to cultivate and nurture throughout our lives. It has two key facets: the ability to recognise our emotions and the ability to control them. It also helps if you can communicate them effectively.

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Funny, clever, compassionate and insightful: Ruby was everything I hoped and expected …

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After recovering from alcoholism, Lucy Da Silva gained a masters in psychotherapy and now specialises in the use of ketamine and psychedelics in the treatment of mental health disorders. She joined me to discuss this fascinating new area of therapy and her own powerful story of childhood trauma, addiction and recovery.

Find out more about Lucy’s work here https://silvawellness.com/

Most people who have ever been paid to stand in front of a television camera have got a ton of ‘nearly made it’ stories and I’m one of them. There are way more aspiring TV presenters than there are shows to go round, so not everyone makes it big. Some of us make it fleetingly mediocre. But at least we acquire some fun stories along the way.

During my years of dabbling in the TV industry, I was promised the world by agents, execs and producers on numerous occasions. I screen tested for some of the most famous shows on telly. For a while in my twenties, opportunities seemed to come so easily that I never bothered taking any of them seriously because I assumed another would be along any minute.

I realises now that this experience was no different to most of my contemporaries in the TV presenting caper. The reason so many of us have tales about how we were nearly the next Jonathan Ross or Holly Willoughby is because the entertainment industry is full of bullshit and dreams.

Still, I have no complaints: I feel lucky to have tasted the excitement and absurdity of working in and around TV for a few years. It’s a daft and relatively easy way to earn a living and, if I never quite made it to A list level (or B or C for that matter), then what does it matter? I’m too thin skinned to handle fame anyway. Mind you, it was my deep insecurity that attracted me to being on telly in the first place.

I first got into telly after finding myself unemployed aged 26 when the magazine I had been working for went out of business. I was reduced to flogging old review copies of books and CD’s at the local thrift shop in order to pay the rent when, one day, an ex-colleague called to ask if I would like to do a guest slot on new youth TV channel he was working for.

The channel was called Where It’s At - one of a number of short lived outlets that popped up in the early noughties when digital TV started. It was aimed at ‘the youth’ (hence the cringeworthy title) and broadcast live from a fishbowl like studio in Piccadilly Circus, which allowed tourists and lunch-break office workers to gawp through the windows at the presenters while they were live on air.

I rocked up for my ten minute slot chatting about funny things that had caught my eye in the papers. It was a chaotic atmosphere which - strangely - put me at ease. I forgot I was on telly and just starting dicking about with the two presenters, trying to make them laugh. It seemed to go well and, as I left the studios, a producer handed me a crisp fifty pound note. I was so ecstatic that I went straight down the pub with the intention of spending all of it on celebratory beer. But somehow I lost the note on the way. When I got to the pub and discovered my pockets empty, I nearly cried. I assumed that would be the first and last time I earned (then lost) cash so easily in return for talking bollocks on TV. I was wrong.

A week later I received a call from one of the owners of the channel asking if I’d like to try out for a role as an actual full time presenter. The channel was a bit of a chaotic set-up, to be honest, and I became a beneficiary of that. Driven more by the desire to get paid than seek fame, I agreed to front a twice weekly three hour live show. Madness.

I was a bit nervous for my first show so I nipped across the street from the studios and sunk a couple of pints in a dimly lit boozer in the middle of the afternoon. Then I went on air and just rambled on and on into the camera, stopping obediently whenever the director said ‘BREAK!’ into my ear piece. I don’t remember many of the specifics of the content, beyond a slot in which I challenged the south London villain Dave Courtney to an arm wrestle. It was all knockabout fun. I can only imagine it came across as car crash stuff to the handful of people who may have had the misfortune of actually watching it on the telly. But I had a laugh and they paid me which was all that really mattered.

After a few months in which I clocked up about 100 hours of live broadcasting experience, the channel went bust and I was back to square one. Then another piece of luck came my way. A showbiz agent had seen some of my stuff on the channel and offered to sign me up. A week later, she said she’d got me my own show on Channel 5. (this TV lark seemed absurdly easy).

I remember getting the news while I was in Newcastle visiting an old school mate. I celebrated that evening by getting absolutely wankered in the local boozer. It was the day George Harrison had passed away so I decided to climb up on stage while a local band was playing and insist that they joined me in a rendition of My Sweet Lord. Word to the wise: Geordies don’t like long haired, paralytic Cockney whippersnappers disrupting their Friday night drinks. I was swiftly ejected from the premises.

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The show on Channel 5 lasted a year. They let me and my co-host, the brilliant Anita Rani, do whatever we wanted: from writing the scripts to choosing the guests to rinsing our expense accounts. Once, the producer of the show was hauled up in front of channel bosses to answer for the 300 quid I had spent on taxis in a single week. Yes, that’s right, I was becoming a bit of a cunt.

After six months I was approached by Channel 4 to become one of the hosts of their new daily breakfast show, Rise. My agent convinced me that I could use the offer as leverage with my bosses at Channel 5. So it was that she and I went to the head offices of the channel, where me met the controller and demanded that he give me a five year ‘golden handcuffs’ deal that would allow me to invent and host a number of shows, across all televisual genres, guided only by my own whims. Bear in mind, I had less than a year’s experience on terrestrial TV and was merely the co-host of a Saturday lunchtime show with really poor viewing figures. Unsurprisingly, the TV boss more or less told me and my agent to go fuck ourselves. He made it abundantly clear that he couldn’t care less if I went off to Channel 4 and that he already had Scott Mills, then a young up and comer at Radio 1, lined up as my replacement anyway. Not only did I not get anything out of Channel 5, I had a last minute change of heart about working at Rise (it was getting panned in the press and my agent suddenly decided it would be a bad career move) so I just remained in my existing job with egg on my face. Ho-hum.

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Mind you, it wasn’t all barmy demands and embarrassing knock backs. Easily the best bit of that year was a women’s magazine featuring me in a section called ‘Totty Alert’ under the headline (I’m not making this up) ‘Phwoar!’ Which went some way to healing the varied wounds of romantic rejection I had sustained throughout my adolescence. I didn’t quite see it at the time but being on the box and getting praised for the way you look and behave is basically a balm for the little bits of pain and insecurity picked up in childhood. In that sense, it played a similar role in my younger life to booze and drugs - and was only slightly less toxic.

After that show came to a natural end, I found myself briefly out on my arse again before the production company, ITN, offered me a role as a roving news reporter on their evening news bulletin. I had never seen myself as that sort of journalist but I had grown accustomed to having my face on the telly and money in my bank account so I couldn’t say no. I bought myself a new suit and started life as a bedraggled bloke stood in Parliament square, surrounded by protestors, drenched in rain, a mic in my hand and a finger in my ear, signing off my garbled reports with the words: ‘Back to you Kirsty.’

The biggest role I had during that period was as ‘anti-war correspondent’ - with a special brief to cover the mass campaign against Britain’s involvement in the invasion or Iraq. It was fascinating work which took me on numerous protests and introduced me to various celebs, politicians and veteran campaigners who ringmastered the campaign.

It’s easy to forget but one million people marched on the streets in 2003 in an attempt to convince Tony Blair not to back George W Bush’s war on terror. On the day of the march, I was accompanied by a young work experience lad called Richard Wild who offered to ‘watch my back’ while I carried out filming. There were stories of journalists being violently attacked but ITN didn’t want to shell out for a security guard to protect me. Richard stepped in to help, saying that he hoped to learn something about news reporting along the way. He was a big lad, very refined and well spoken, extremely courteous and very smart. He had little to learn from me, really. I was very grateful that he gave up his Saturday to help protect me from getting my head kicked in.

A couple of months later, after the war had started, Richard bought himself a camcorder, blagged some press accreditation and went out to Iraq as a freelance journalist, making his own reports and selling them to various outlets back home. I remember hearing about this and being amazed, but not surprised, by his resourcefulness and hutzpah. Then I learned that, a couple of weeks into his time there, he had been shot dead outside a library in Baghdad after a terrorist mistook him for a British soldier. I was heartbroken. I was also humbled and ashamed that a young man who was clearly destined to be a brave and brilliant journalist ever thought that he could learn something from the likes of me. While I was busy making use of ITN’s private car account and fishing for compliments from women’s magazines, he was out there on the frontline doing proper reporting. And then he was gone.

Shortly afterwards I got a call from a BBC producer who had seen some of my anti-war reports and wanted to hire me as the host of a new docu-series on BBC Three called ‘The Hunt For Bin Laden.’ It would have involved me doing two weeks of hostile environment training in England before heading out for a month to Afghanistan, where I would poke my nose about in the tora bora caves in pursuit of the world’s most dangerous man.

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Left: 1995. Hairy and stupid. Right: 2024. Bald and stupid.

It’s strange but absolutely every man over thirty seems to have a huge take on the Gallaghers getting back together. Whether they like the band or not is not the point: it’s always about how the band somehow relates to their lives.

Why is this? I spoke to top addiction therapist and former Reset guest Chip Somers last week who told me that many middle aged men seem to be ‘grieving’ their twenties.

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Above, Sam Delaney looking ‘fat and drunk.’

I recently posted a picture of myself on Instagram at the recording of a podcast called ‘Who We Are Now.’ It is hosted by the father and daughter duo Richard and Izzy Hammond - they invited me on as a guest to talk about my dislike of ‘high performance’ culture.

I thought it was quite a nice pic (see above). However, Richard and Izzy are relatively small people whereas I am six foot two and about 100 kilos. I did think I looked a bit like Sloth from The Goonies, towering over them with my trademark gormless smile. But, whatever, it’s funny.

A mate I haven’t seen or spoken to for years sent me a DM in response to the pic, moments after it was posted. He wrote: ‘You look fat and drunk.’ No laughing emoji. No wink. No ‘hope you’re well mate, it’s been too long.’ It was - as far as I could see - just a straightforward insult.

I was a bit put out, to be honest. I used to like this bloke, now I was wondering if I had done something in the dim and distant past to piss him off. I am also sensitive about my appearance (as most people are) and don’t like being called fat (as most people don’t). I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am a little bit fat, I suppose. But I feel there is more to my appearance that mere girth. My mum says I have quite nice eyes, for example. I’m not so bothered about looking drunk. I just look excited to be there, I guess (in contrast to Richard Hammond who - despite having been a very charming and personable host - looks a bit underwhelmed to be in my company. Fair enough).

Anyway, I couldn’t show that I was hurt because that’s just not the done thing among men. We have to laugh things off and demonstrate how thick skinned we are. I simply wrote back ‘charming’ and left it at that. I have not heard from him since.

I told my wife about it ‘Why are men are such bitches to each other?’ she said.

In the ongoing chat about men and mental health, we are continually told to look out for our mates. But let’s be honest, most male friendships are based largely on being fucking arseholes to each other. We pretend that the non-stop piss-taking is borne out of affection. But is it really? And even if it is, might there be a better, healthier way to express that inter-male affection that just saying cuntish things to each other?

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I am writing an article for the paper about relationship burnout - the condition where one or both of you don’t necessarily fall out of love but lose energy and enthusiasm for each other.

Have you experienced it? Did it get better? If so how? Or maybe you took it as a s…

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When Mike, Tim and Andy lost their young daughters to suicide they felt lost, alone and engulfed by grief. Then they found each other, became firm friends and decided to walk across the UK raising suicide awareness. Inspirational, strong and funny, these are the three of the most incredible blokes I’ve ever interviewed. I hope you enjoy listening to their important and powerful story.

But their book Three Dads Walking - 300 Miles Of Hope here

Find out more about their forthcoming walk here

Find out more about Papyrus, the suicide awareness charity

Me and my stupid head in 2013, pissed on a camel

On Sunday, I threw up in a public toilet. It was the first time in years. Still, you never lose the knack.

The toilets were in an outdoor car park. They were the kind that require you to pay 20p to gain access. I didn’t have any change on me so I just had to wait outside an occupied cubicle until someone vacated, then nip in before the door shut.

Once inside, I quickly fell to my knees and spewed angrily into the stainless steel bowl. Suddenly, I stopped. I panted and heaved for a few moments. Then just stared silently into the bowl and waited patiently, until…another surge of pale brown vomit gushed forth. My throat retched, my stomach strained, my eyes filled with hot tears.

I repeated this stop/start routine a further three or four times before I was spent.

And yet, in my mind, I remained calm. It all felt strangely familiar.

Back in my drinking days, this was the sort of semi-regular occurrence that I would have barely noticed. At worst, it would have been an irritating interruption to my day. At best, the basis of a wonderful anecdote for the lads. Either way, vomiting at inopportune moments in unpleasant places was something I accepted as an occupational hazard of the casual pisshead.

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After finding fame as a child actor in the sixties, David Charkham fell foul of showbiz temptations and sank into addiction. After seeking treatment and getting sober in the eighties, he put his efforts into helping others on their own recovery journies. As well as working for years in the NHS, he has helped some of the biggest stars of entertainment get, and stay, sober, including Ozzy Osbourne. He joined me this week to share his incredible life story, his experiences of working on the road as a sober coach with global rock tours - and all of the wisdom he has picked up along the way.

David now works with The Cabin, a luxury rehab centre in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

He is also a patron of the Outside Edge Theatre Company, helping people get sober through creativity and performance