David Gandy on the power of being open about your worries

“I’m not trying to bulls**t anyone about who I am,” says British model, David Gandy. “What I put out there is pretty much me, whether people like it and whether they don’t. So I don’t really let the industry, or the industry I’m in, define me.”

Gandy appears in part two of The HUMEN Series, a five-part documentary airing every Tuesday on the Evening Standard for the next four weeks.

The episodes are produced by HUMEN, a new organisation founded by actor River Hawkins which supports men’s mental health.

This week, in the episode above, HUMEN is looking at male identity and the impact that expectations have on men.

Gandy continues: “You’re pigeon-holed, you’re stereotyped. You’re seen as an underwear model and you’re instantly thick, you don’t have a brain inside you.

“You think you’re alone, everyone thinks no one else has problems like mine, that they’re not feeling the same thing. Then when you start talking to people, you say ‘oh that’s so true, that’s happened to me’. I think younger guys are realising that everyone has been there before and it’s nothing knew, everyone’s been through tough situations.”

Comedian and television presenter Alan Carr also appears in this week’s episode where he reminisces about growing up with a football obsessed father.

“My dad was a football manager of the local team, the Northampton town football club. I was going to football matches all the time, supporting my dad and the team, you see these footballers and think, ‘well that’s what I should be like’. The thing is, I couldn’t emulate it,” Carr explains.

“Someone went up to [my dad] in the town and said ‘everyone knows your son’s gay’. That upset me because someone’s used my sexuality as a weapon to attack my dad.”

One of the most poignant stories in the second episode is from Amit, whose life changed overnight when he suddenly lost his sight.

He explains: “It was a day I finished work very late, I got in about 11pm. My wife stayed up, we had a cup of tea together and that’s the last time I saw her. It was a normal weekday, I went to sleep thinking about the busy day the next day. I woke up the next morning with a little bit of pain in my eyes, and then we went into hospital and they bandaged the eyes up because they were very bloodshot, very red and they took the bandages off 24 hours later and I completely lost my sight.

“I lost my sight a year after getting married, so you can imagine it was the honeymoon period for me. I was planning a new life, we were in a new adventure and all of that, to me, had been taken away.”

Amit continues: “A lot of people look at me and they see a blind guy. That’s all they see. They don’t see my ambition, they don’t see that I’m a father, I’m a husband, I have a job, I have dreams. They don’t see someone who went to medical school, who is a qualified doctor, they see a blind guy. That’s the hardest thing to try and convince someone to see differently.

“As a guy, I’m the one who brings the money into the house, I’m the one who supports the family, and when I lost my sight, I lost all of that. I bleed like everybody else, I suffer like everybody else, I’m happy like everybody else. To be human you kind of need to experience all of that, you need to experience the pain, the happiness and the joys in life.”

Hawkins decided to start HUMEN after struggling with mental health himself and noticing the lack of support that was out there.

He says: “For me, when it got really bad I was told I could only receive help if I was suicidal, so that gave me the determination. I knew there was a need for this, for guys that are struggling.”

With HUMEN, Hawkins has created The HUMEN Series alongside HUMEN Spaces which will provide a safe space where men can meet regularly in a non-clinical environment to discuss whatever is on their minds. The first space is now open in London and runs every Wednesday from 6:30pm to 7:30pm in Neal’s Yard. The next will open in Manchester from October 2.

Hawkins says: “The expectation of what it means to be a man and not talking about how we’re actually feeling and not being allowed to access other emotions besides anger and aggression, I think that’s been the case for generations. It’s been going on for so long and I still think that’s the issue. I think there’s a lot more awareness around it, but I just feel like the action part isn’t there yet so that’s what I really want to provide.”

HUMEN is a new organisation for men’s mental health and The HUMEN Space runs every Wednesday at 6.30pm at 14 Neal’s Yard, WC2. For more information, to attend sessions or make a donation, visit wearehumen.org

Watch part two of The HUMEN Series above. The HUMEN Series is a five-part documentary on men’s mental health featuring the likes of Bill Nighy, Andrew Scott and David Gandy, exclusively at standard.co.uk/HUMEN every Tuesday.