As a broadcaster, he has fronted documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4 and hosted over 1000 hours of live national radio across the BBC, talkSPORT and talkRadio. Covering his complex upbringing, fast paced career, struggles with addiction and recovery, and detailing lessons he’s learnt along the way, Sort Your Head Outis Sam’s startlingly raw, compassionate and hilarious account of why opening up is the first step to sorting your head out. 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. So it was the scandal and the mischievousness that shifted copies. And the celebrities knew that as well as we did.

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. So next time you’re in the pub, go to the trouble of asking how your mate is actually feeling. Twice.They keep it all inside and that only makes it worse. There are still old-fashioned ideas on what it means to be a tough, strong man that exists across all social classes.” 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.”

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. 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. In other words, we shouldn’t be blaming working-class lads for not wanting to get involved in the soft and cuddly language of mental health. It was during that period, probably when I had my second child, so we had two small children, and I had a lot of other stuff going on. I had a lot of work going on because that’s the other thing driven sort of mad with anxiety and the idea of providing and taking on much more work and stress than was healthy while simultaneously trying to really do the dad thing as best I could. And it all became overwhelming for me. And that was why I turned to drink and drugs to sort of try and self-medicate my way through it because I wasn’t able to share any of those stresses and strains with anyone.” Because if it looked like if it looked contrived, like an interview of a celebrity, with a nice photo shoot on the cover where she’s been shot in a studio and it’s obviously all endorsed, it sold a lot less.

And so I got involved in magazines towards the end of the 90s, but it was still absolutely booming, and magazine publishing in this country was huge. We can all make a change by being more open with our mates: honest conversations show us all we are not alone in our feelings, and we don’t need to feel so ashamed. My writing has appeared in The Guardian, Observer, The Sunday Times, Independent, Daily Telegraph, NME, Q, Grazia, Cosmopolitan, the New Statesman and numerous others.

We try to cover interesting topics and often serious subjects, but in a way that is easy to follow and understand, and it doesn’t get overly tedious and up itself. We don’t take ourselves all that seriously and don’t like the tone to remain too serious or heavy for long. Like many podcasts, it’s all about having a good chat and a laugh. 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. And it was probably unhealthy that this was my first proper grown up job doing that sort of stuff, because it kind of made me feel, well, right, this is just working life is lots of free things and free drinks and pretty girls all the time and all the rest of it.” 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.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’. In this extract from his new book, broadcaster and journalist Sam Delaney tells how he embraced a simpler, more idle lifestyle to save his mental health

After discovering that therapy didn’t have to be for ‘hippies and weirdos’, Sam became far more interested in the subject as a whole, reading books and researching the topic properly. He has learnt to ‘not belittle your own problems or pain’ and he feels hopeful that the newest generation of young men feel more able to discuss their feelings and experiences without judgment.I told myself that football was my hobby. But going to football was always as much about getting twatted as it was watching the game. Similarly, playing Monday-night five-a-side was only a ritual we endured prior to the post-match beers. Of course, in practical terms, there are people much worse than you. But what I would say to that is no socioeconomic advantage, no familial advantage, no advantage in relationships or family incubate you from being a human being. You’re a human being, whoever you are and whatever your circumstances are. Sam’s writing has appeared across the national press for many years, including The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, The Mirror and many more. His other books include Get Smashed – The Story Of The Men Who Made The Ads That Saved Our Lives (Sceptre, 2007) and Mad Men And Bad Men – What Happened When British Politics Met Advertising (Faber, 2015). Thankfully, more positive role models are emerging who are showing you can be successful AND vulnerable.