As told to Tim Heap Photography Markus Bidaux
I’ve grown a (pretty terrible) moustache for Movember twice now: once in 2010, when I managed to raise about £1,600, and again last year, raising £2,300. When I did it the first time, Movember was still all about testicular cancer awareness, but last year I ticked the box saying I wanted the money I raised to go towards men’s mental health, which is a more recent arm of the charity.
The reason was that my Movember efforts book-ended a few years of my life where things got a little bit screwy. At the beginning of 2015, I was diagnosed as having undergone a prolonged nervous breakdown. I had underlying depression and anxiety issues, and between 2012 and 2016, I underwent 10 operations, all on my bum — obviously a sensitive area.