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Professor Green: ‘People feel safer to admit that they struggle’ ​



Professor Green has made mistakes. “I was at Buckingham Palace last year,” says the rapper. “I was dressed like a skateboarder, Adwoa Aboah next to me in a tracksuit. Prince Harry said, ‘If my grandmother saw either of you she’d have a heart attack.’ Next time I went there, I wore a suit.” It’s a long way to the palace from the Hackney council estate he grew up on but Green — Stephen Manderson to his friends — is an essential part of the conversation.

His royal sorties sprang from his and model/activist Aboah’s involvement in Heads Together, the mental health  charity set up by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry; he’s recently been working with Gillette on its #MyRoleModel campaign ahead of Father’s Day, helping demonstrate what “being the best” means for men today.

As part of the campaign he talks about the loss of his father to suicide and the support he found afterwards (he  constructs a DIY barber’s chair with hairdresser Joshua Coombes, known for his free haircuts for the homeless). The  rapper has shot powerful documentaries on suicide, poverty and the white working class; he’s a regular feature on men’s issues podcast The Book of Man. 

He’s disruptively nice: on the five-minute walk from the Ivy Kensington to the photo studio, he stops to help a woman carry a heavy case down some stairs, then runs across a road to congratulate  someone he knows on their new job. 

“Sometimes I’m having a really good day, then someone stops me and tells me their brother’s just taken their own life, and that’s difficult, because it brings a lot of what I’ve been through back to the surface,” he says. But also: “I’ve had people with paint on my overalls or on a building site stop me and say, ‘Geezer, come here, that programme you did really touched me and it was close to my heart. I think we’re getting to a place now where people feel safer to admit that we all struggle.”

Mental health: Professor Green is on a mission to get people talking (Dave Benett)

After a gig in Stuttgart, a couple sought marriage counselling. “She’d thrown a glass of water over him.” His advice?  “Listen more.” He says he hasn’t raised his voice this year (a New Year resolution) and urged them to do likewise. After the break-up of his three-year marriage to Millie Mackintosh in 2016, and other demons, he’s happy. “I used to be scared to say those words because I’d be  worried about what’s around the corner. When you’re OCD [living with obsessive compulsive disorder] you find patterns in things or look for things. It’s great for finding a solution to a problem but also means you pre-empt and create problems just to have something to solve.” 

He found a therapist “hugely helpful” but cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) “didn’t work for me”, whereas journaling, or writing lyrics and thoughts down, is the most calming part of his day job.

With Father’s Day on Sunday, he says: “I could have a kid now, yes. But I always wanted to do as much work on myself as I could before having children. One reason I’ve not had children yet is because kids are sponges. Anything you haven’t resolved in yourself, they’re not just going to fix that for you.” 

Opening up: Professor Green, Example and Howard Donald last night (Dave Benett/Getty Images)

Even so, in February, due to start a UK tour, he suffered three seizures while packing, fell and fractured his neck. “I’d run myself into the ground doing way too much and it caught up on me.” (He’s frustrated as he was “deadlifting 127.5 kilos” in the gym and his “muscles have atrophied”.) Green now turns his phone off from 9pm to 9am “to avoid stress”, gets up at 6am and walks his dogs.

He has no time for “negative role models like Donald Trump” but lauds Jordan Stephens of Rizzle Kicks as “confident in his masculinity”. When he was younger “people would say, ‘Stop being a girl, what you being a woman for?’ as an insult, but I was like, ‘Hold on, the women in my life were the ones who stuck around, they did a better job than the men in my life, so how dare ya.’”

A new EP is on the way, with “upbeat tracks” like Got It All with singer Alice Chater and more “sombre” numbers such as Home. “I don’t have to self-sabotage to find something to talk about in my music any more,” he says.  His voice may be lowered, but he’s still making himself heard. 

The Book of Man podcast is available for download now. This Father’s Day, Gillette is celebrating all the role models that help you be your best. Join Gillette in thanking the people who’ve made a difference in your life. 



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