 You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications button so you're notified for when my next podcast goes live. And what's going through your mind at that time? You know, instantly I think I screamed, you know, and I leapt out of bed because I heard Nicky actually say, you know, what do you want to get out of my house? I knew someone was in there, it wasn't like there's someone trying to get in there. It's every husband's worst nightmare, every father's worst nightmare to think that your kids are in danger, your wife's in danger, there's nothing you can do about it. I phoned down to her and I kept the line open to Nick and I was just talking to her down the phone and I was just saying, you know, stay with me, you know, I know you can hear me, just please, just don't go, don't leave me. There were so many thoughts going through my mind at that time. You know, I think deep down I knew something really awful had happened because of the nature of the screams that were on the phone. I kind of assumed that Nicky was probably dead and they thought the kids were probably next and I just lost control. Well, we're on. Today's guest of Get Daniel Cross, how are you brother? I'm good, good to be here. Great to have you on, bro. Mad story, senior story, three years ago, it was all over the news, all over the newspapers, you were on the media, you were doing the SES, who dares wins. Very brave and all, it was that show about 2015, you had lost your wife to murder. Well, she on the phone to you, the burglar broke and killed her and you heard it all that. I watched you three years ago and your strength, brother, your strength, your calmness, your energy, your aura, that I was like, wow, blown away. This was before I had started my podcast or maybe when I just started that. Always knew you were born here one day, which is mad, but when I kind of lost family members and friends to murder and mad stuff, I had been behind my pain by drinking drugs, violence, anger, frustration. When I seen you had done, how can this man be so calm? I couldn't understand that, but for being here today and showing your courage and the things that you do, we'll touch on obviously later in the interview, but first and foremost, how are you? I'm good, yeah, I'm in a really good place. It's six years since we lost Nick. It was six years on the 14th of September, so it's been a difficult date, just gone. It always is a difficult date, it was this difficult build up to that date, but in general, life's very, very good. Very busy with work, very busy with strong men, just had a new baby. Congratulations. Which was never on the plan, but none of this was on the plan, but that's part of life, isn't it? Your plan's changed all the time and you've got to move with it. Yeah, before we get into it all, brother, I'll always go back to the start of my guess, get a better understanding about you and where you grew up and how it all began. Yeah. Well, I grew up in Hemmel, Hempstead, born and raised there. I know some people talk about, I was brought up on a council estate and they plead poverty and all that, but I was brought up on a council estate and it was fucking brilliant. Loved it. Loads of kids about everywhere, you know, part of that. I guess we were a town that was part of the post-war boom, the baby boom and all that kind of stuff. And yeah, it was an amazing time. I grew up in Hemmel, had a pretty unremarkable life, I would say, up until 2015. I went to school, did all right, bit of trouble here and there of fighting and that kind of stuff, but who doesn't when they're growing up? There was nothing really major in my life. It was just a normal life. So when what happened happened, it was just something that I never thought could happen. So I was completely unprepared for it like anybody would be. But yeah, went to school, did A-Levels, got a normal job, and as I say, it was a fairly normal life. Yeah, so no trauma of pain before 2015. Mum and Dad raised you right. Exactly, yeah. Mum and Dad stayed together all the time, still together now. As I say, I had a really good upbringing. I had a family holiday every year, got an older sister, younger brother, and we didn't experience anything in our lives that was painful. We were really, really lucky. And yeah, so to say I had the perfect upbringing, I would say, yeah, I did. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, lucky you. Very lucky. That's a great thing to see, and you tend to see a lot of people on the show come from broken homes and stuff, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're a bad person or a good person. Everybody's raised differently. Everybody's parents are raised differently. They've been raised differently. That's just life. How was your jobs and stuff growing up after school? I never really knew what I wanted to do. I sort of undernourished with the military. I considered the Navy. I considered the Marines, but after A Levels, I was sick of school. I didn't want to go to university. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I ended up just going through a few different jobs, warehouse work. Then I worked in a cool centre for a while, and then I got into a sales job. And then from sales, I went into IT and that's where I am today. I'm an operations manager for an outsourcing company. How's that? Soulless. How's that? Who pays the bills. I'm just talking about managers not watching this. When did Nakalakumatnia leave? She came into my life in 2004. I knew her before that, but just as friends. We were in the same friendship group, but we never really knew each other very well. Then we got talking in a nightclub in 2004 for the first time properly and sort of hit it off, really, and started talking from there. Then we went out on a couple of dates and then we were inseparable from there. Then we were together for 11 years. Two kids? Two kids. We were going to get married in 2008, 2009. We were planning it, but of course the credit crunch hit. We thought, well, this can't really afford it. Let's have a kid instead. Then obviously, kids turn out to be much more expensive than fucking weddings. I've got that ass about face as well, yeah. Even though, yeah, it's fucking hell, man. So life is going great. There's no speed bumps, there's no... Because were you already a camp person? No, really? No. I was a stress head, bit of a temper. I would always stress about money, about life, where I'm going with my job. Stress me out a lot, but I loved it. I loved the IT job then. I was a career man. I was in the office at seven. I was getting home again till half past seven, eight o'clock at night, doing those long hours, putting the effort in, but it was stressful. So I wasn't a calm person. The only bumps in the road we really had was Nikki's health. She was unwell for a couple of years after we got married in 2013 with severe asthma. So she was in and out of hospital with chest infections and this kind of pneumonia and that kind of thing. But other than that, again, a steady marriage, nice marriage, great for the young kids. It was a lovely life. And again, as I say, couldn't really ask for anything better. It was just a really lovely life. So does that put extra pressure on you when your message isn't really feeling well and not well and you're working more? Yeah, it does. The money problems come in, the stress is anxiety. That's what causes all that. It's trying to provide for your family, be a man, and that's the difficult thing. Absolutely. I was very much a victim to that. I need to keep up. I need to keep up. What's the next thing? What's the next thing? I want to be another level up in my career. I want the next level of money. I want to keep chasing it. I was always like that. And when I couldn't get it, I was impatient and that would lead to stress as well. And then, as you say, I really wanted Nikki to be able to stay at home with the kids as much as she wanted to. We live in a world now where everyone really should get to choose what they want to do with their lives. And Nikki wanted to be a stay-at-home mum. She wanted to do that and she wanted to bring the kids up until they went to school and then she would go back to her career again. So we were on plan for that. We were on par. Stanley was had already started school. He was six and Isabella was moving towards nursery and school. Yeah, it was going really well. And as I say, I would say we had the normal stresses of family life. Again, we were very lucky not to have anyone severely ill in the family, that kind of stuff. My dad had cancer, but we dealt with that. And yeah, it just kept moving forward. Yeah, that's all you can do in life when the obstacles are there. It's such a it's a mad experience this journey. I haven't viewed so many different people in all the stories are different, but in the same way they're all connected as well for people who's being victims and for people who's caused harm on others. I've sat with both sides of the coin, the people who hurt people and the people who've been hurt. But when you break it all down, everyone ends up hurt because assuming beings, we shouldn't be seeing that stuff, we shouldn't be hearing that stuff. People in the army are struggling with PTSD, human beings should not be seeing that stuff, I believe anyway. And it's just in life, what I've realized in the people I interviewed is that bad shit happens. How do we deal with that? And how you dealt with it is which we'll touch on, but I don't know how the fuck you got through that. But when you lead up to 2015, when you were at working stuff, were you away working? Not a lot. No. So there was a restructure at work and some new directors came in with new ideas and like they always do. And one particular director, he was quite pushy and he wanted us to go up to Hull, where the head office was a company called Kingston Communications and I was pushing back on it a little bit. It wasn't really my kind of thing to go and stay away from work or from home, should I say, but he was quite pushy. So I thought, you know what, shame up, I'll agree to go up there for these couple of days. But it was just the normal work up to that weekend, up to that week. So on the day of, was it the night team or day team? So on the daytime, 14th of September, the day before we had been to a music festival in London, just me and Nick, with some friends and just had a great time. And then on the 14th I set off for work about four in the morning to get up to Hull for the sort of start of the business day. So all the way through that day, I was in communication with Nick because the kids were off school and the nursery because they weren't well and she was still nursing a little bit of a hangover. But they were fine, you know, normal day, other than all staying at home together on a Monday. Yeah. So the kid who did this was 27, Polish guy. Is that correct? He was 23. 23, so a lot younger. Yeah. And there was no signs nobody ever knew him or ever came across him? No. He was a bit of a mystery and the investigation afterwards kind of proved that. He had come over to the UK in 2014. No previous mental health issues as far as anyone knew. Had a job in a warehouse locally and lived in a shared accommodation house. But as far as anyone knew, he was just very, very quiet. So you got the phone call Nick four and you said that somebody had broken into the house? Yeah. So it's been a long day. I've been working with this director till about seven o'clock in the evening and as I got back to the hotel with a group of the guys I was working with, they were like, right, let's go out for a few beers. I was like, I can't be asked. I'm knackered. I'm going to go up to me room and have a phone call with the kids. So I phoned Nick about half past seven and she said, yeah, I think it's fine. Don't worry. You know, just relax and I'll speak to you later on. So I put the phone down and I drifted off to sleep at about eight o'clock and I woke up at about half past 11 with the phone ringing. But it was on charge across the other side of the room. So I couldn't get to it. When I did get to it, there was a message from Nick on there saying, can you ring me as soon as you get this? So I'll give you a call back, see what's going on. Thought there'd be a problem with one of the kids, you know, maybe not well or needs to go to urgent care, something like that. So I phoned her back and the first thing she said was there's been a bloke hanging around outside the house earlier. And don't get cross with me, but I called the police. I was like, why would I get cross with you? I said, that's, you've done the right thing. She was like, what was it? You know, what was he doing? She said, well, he was kicking and punching our car. And when I opened the window to tell him to get, to get, get lost, she said, he was talking about kids. She said, but I couldn't really understand him, what he was saying. So she said, I just phoned the police and they came. She said, but they were quite rude to me. She said, they kept saying, you know, what's he got to do with you? Why is he talking about your kids? She said, well, that's partly why I'm worried, you know, he hasn't got anything to do with my kids. So the police had gone, but they hadn't come back to her to let her know what happened. And she said, I'm a little bit worried because I can hear banging again. You know, I'm worried he's come back. He's got the hump because I phoned the police on him. And he's going to, you know, have a go at me or something. So I said, all right, look, phone the police, see what they did. So she said, all right, so she's gone onto the other phone, phoned the police, come back to me. She said, they don't really give a shit. They've let him go. So she said, I'm really worried now. I said, don't worry, don't panic. Mum and dad are away. They're in Cyprus. Get the keys. They only live around the corner. Just drive the car. Get the kids in there. Don't even get them dressed. Stay at my mum's for the night and I'll be back tomorrow. Okay, yeah, okay. And then she said to me, did you hear that? I was like, no, I didn't can't hear anything. Only you. She said, there was a big loud bang. I said, no, didn't hear anything. She said, I'm just going to go and check what it was. And the next thing I know, you know, she, she, she screamed to have someone in the house. And what's going through you mean that that thing? You know, instantly, I think I screamed, you know, and I leapt out of bed because I heard, I heard Nikki actually say, you know, what do you want to get out of my house? I knew someone was in there. It wasn't like there's someone trying to get in. There's someone in there. So I grabbed the hotel phone and I dialed 999 and then it wouldn't work because obviously you have to dial 9 first. So that tried again. No, no, no, no. Got through to local police. I could hear Nikki on the phone kind of some, some screams and some like, you know, get away, you know, that kind of stuff and pushing, I could hear sort of a struggle going on. And while I was through to the police, I was trying to sort of relay information to them to say, look, I know you can see that I'm in Hull because they obviously go through to the local place, but I need you to get me through to the, the force control room in Hertfordshire. I need, I need you to get me through there because there's somebody in my house attacking my wife. They just couldn't really understand what I was saying. And as far as I remember, I was ticking letting it quite well. I was calm. I was like, get me through there now, someone's attacking my wife. But as the call went on, I started to lose control a little bit because they weren't listening to me. I could hear what was going on on the other line, which was horrendous. And then the woman came on the phone to me and said, I've managed to locate the Hertfordshire police control room and they've actually got somebody on route to your property now. So don't worry. So I'm sending someone to your hotel. I said, what's, can you hear what's going on in your phone? I said, no, it's gone quiet. It's gone completely quiet on the line. And then it just suddenly dawned on me that obviously the kids are in there. There were so many thoughts going through my mind at that time. I think deep down, I knew something really awful had happened because of the nature of the screams that were on the phone. I kind of assumed that Nicky was probably dead and I thought the kids were probably next. And I just lost control. I remember screaming down the phone at this poor operator on the phone that she was going to be responsible with anything happened to my kids because she hadn't acted quick enough and all this kind of stuff and it wasn't her fault. And as soon as I put the phone down to her and I kept the line open to Nick and I was just talking to her down the phone. I was just saying, stay with me. I know you can hear me. Just please, just don't go, don't leave me. And I couldn't get up off the floor. My legs were completely gone numb. I just could not get up off the floor. I was just dragging myself up onto the bed, trying to make my legs work. And I remember just hitting my legs with my fists and trying to get some feeling back into them so I could get up and go downstairs to the reception and start seeing what was going on. And yeah, I managed to pull my jeans on and a t-shirt and I went out of the room. I ran down to the reception and I tried to find out the numbers of the rooms that my friends were staying in and it gave me a couple of numbers. I ran back upstairs and I was knocking on the doors but of course I forgot they'd all gone out on the piss so they weren't in their rooms. And eventually, you know, I just sat down in reception. I just remember sitting there shaking. You know, I couldn't control my arms and my shoulders. They were just shaking and I was trying to talk to Nick on the phone and then all of a sudden I heard the children crying on the phone. So I knew they were alive at least. But then I could hear them ask, you know, saying to Mummy, wake up, you know, and one of the kids was saying, why has this happened to our family? And they were only six and three. So something, you know, for them to be sitting there or whatever they were doing or something awful had happened, I knew. And then I heard the paramedics arrive with the police and that's when I cut the line off. I didn't want to listen to any more. At least I knew the kids were kind of safe. At least I knew that someone was there with them. But it seemed like forever that that took, you know, but in reality it was probably only about three or four minutes in its entirety of that phone call. And then I just sat downstairs waiting for the police to arrive in the hotel. How long did they arrive to come into you? They were there in about 20 minutes. They took me into the back room. They knew what was going on. They knew that they were in contact with the with the Hertfordshire police. And there was this big Yorkshire copper. He was huge. He was about six foot five. It was big bloke. And he was just sitting there. He had his hand on my shoulder. And I remember him saying just to try not to panic, you know, we're going to find out what's going on. And the female lady, a police officer, she came back and said, like, listen, your children are fine. Your children absolutely fine. They're unharmed. Just know that that's okay. I'm still trying to find out about your wife. And then, and then, yeah, she she went away again. She came back and she said, I'm sorry, Mr Cross, to tell you your wife has died. And I just fell onto this copper, this big bloke. And he was just hugging me and I was just sobbing my heart out. I knew, but, you know, you need that final confirmation before it actually starts to sink in or, you know, hits home that what's gone on. And then it was the start of a long journey back in the in the back of a police car. How long did it take to get home? Four hours. The thoughts, man, everything going through your mind, but especially if she's already the contact of the police as well, there must have been a lot of hate and rage then that blaming yourself and other people and constant going round and round in your mind like on that drive back. And what was the police's excuse? How why get released the first time? Well, there was a full IPCC investigation because obviously they'd been called before and then and then something happened afterwards. So that has to be as an automatic process. But honestly, when I got the report back from the IPCC, I think I've seen better projects put together by GCSE students. It was shit as far as I was concerned. It was not very thorough. There were clear mistakes made by the police that night. And of all of this, you know, you've got the guy that did it, you've got, you know, the own guilt that I felt about myself being away from home and everything else. The only anger I've ever felt is towards that local police for not doing something that night because of the mistakes they made. And the stuff that came out in that IPCC report of where police officers did have a chance to actually save her while the guy was in the house and they didn't do it. They had a chance and they didn't do it. Yeah, so that plays in your mind. Yeah, big time. Every day and anything like that, especially when anniversaries and that come like, yeah, that's when everything plays back. Even speaking about it now will bring up a lot of emotion and stuff. Definitely. You can understand why you would be angry at especially at something like that because that's every husband's worst nightmare, every father's worst nightmare to think that your kids are in danger, your wife's in danger, there's nothing you can do. It's constant a battle. Like I've, like I spoke at the very start, I've lost many people to serious stuff and you blame yourself, could have done more, could have helped them, like could have told them not to go with that person or stop going around with that person and you kind of let them go but with yourself it's out of your hands because obviously you play over different scenarios, could have, I could have maybe not took that job order, I could have, the police could have done more, like it's all ifs and buts as well and that's the scary thing. Yeah, I mean the whole reason that the police actually got there so quick because what he did after he killed Nick, he went upstairs to the kids bedrooms, put the knife down on the side and then grabbed him out of their beds and took him, dragged them down the stairs and was off, was going to leave the house with him. It was only the fact that the police were at the back gate of the house and told him to obviously stop at that point but the reason they were there was because 20 minutes earlier he had smashed the window next door and gone into his house and the police had been called and so when he actually smashed our back window, our patio door, the police were already in the kitchen next door and I heard the window go and the police officer that was in the kitchen said that his thought process was I don't want to go through the broken door that's already there and over the fence which would be the quickest route in case I cut myself on the broken glass, I just thought aren't you supposed to run towards the danger, not away from it and that really stuck him, you know, really grated on me that somebody had that chance to just go straight through that door, it's no more than 10 yards and instead went out the front door, out the front, could see Nikki banging on the bathroom window screaming for help and then you know took an age to go all the way around the end of the terrace and back to the alleyway where the back gate was by then everything had gone, you know. How many injuries did Nicola have? 10, stab wounds, yeah and how when you hear that he had your kids three and six and he was taking them away like how do you deal with that like that, what if he would have got away? I remember them saying that he was carrying one of the kids when they stopped him and it I just collapsed again you know into another sort of heap, almost like relief that he had been he was there really to get the kids and not not Nikki, she was in the way and if he'd done anything to them you know we wouldn't be here now, we wouldn't be talking now about it for sure, that's for sure. Yeah do you think that's we had to find this drain from Dig Deep is because the kids were still here? Yeah absolutely, I always talk about it with when I talk around Strongman and I talk about how I coped and it was this line of clarity and I talked about the police drive home four hours in the back of this car and even then where I was a complete mess and I was starting to get flashbacks already I was dying I could still hear the conversation playing over in my mind, I felt like I was underwater like I couldn't hear what the police officers were saying to me because I was still in the moment but I just had this line of clarity going through I still remember it just going through my mind, you need to make sure the kids grow up happy confident adults, you need to do what Nic would have done, you need to make sure that happens and that was there from the very start and that's never changed never wavered. So how long did it take before it went to court? 16 months, it was in and out of court for a while but there was a lot of delays with getting him into a secure psychiatric facility because he could only go to Broadmore or Rampton and they were just you know overloaded with with patients already so they couldn't do the psychiatric assessments they needed to do eventually when they got him into Rampton it took another few months to observe and assess and write reports and finally they came back and the doctor who did the report he was apparently the most respected forensic psychologist in the country and he said it's the clearest case of you know delusional, paranoid schizophrenia he's ever seen. Did you ever come face to face with this kid? Yeah. What was that like for the first time? It was in court when it was the sentencing which was obviously a hospital order indefinite hospital order he looked totally different to what he did in the in the newspapers in the newspapers he was obviously very skinny very withdrawn you know and just pale and vacant and then honestly sitting behind the glass in court he was obviously he'd blown up quite a lot whether that's the medication or you know what they've been feeding him I don't know but he just looked lost he didn't look like he did he didn't look evil he just looked like a lost soul so yeah fucking hell bro that yeah I can sit in there and thinking that because he was at manslaughter he played guilty is that correct? Guilty to manslaughter by the ministry responsibility yeah but he could be out potentially 25 years? He could be out in 10. What? Yeah so this is this is what got me as well the the forensic psychologist stood up in court and said if he responds to treatment there's no reason why he couldn't be back in society in 10 years and that really got me because you know although I wasn't angry at him I've never felt an ounce of anger towards him which is very very strange why is that? I don't know whether it's the logic that sits in my brain with mental illness and I just accept that he didn't he wasn't in control um and you have to accept that um I think that's what it is um but yeah angry at the system I think as well you know that we come back to a bit that anger it's at the system where if he does respond to treatment he could be out and then you have to make sure that there's restrictions in places to where he can go afterwards because I don't want the kids ever seeing him again I don't want to see him again because you don't know what you might what might happen that anger might come out that's been it might have been suppressed you know but um so far he's not responded to any treatment he's still away with the fairies in six years yeah but that's still scary to think that somebody who murdered your wife and potentially going to murder your kids could be walking in streets after 10 years but sometimes scientists are too alienant in many different cases but like you say the system is flawed the system's there it cracks everywhere yeah and um it's scary to think that he could potentially be on the fucking streets because then that becomes an extra added pressure on your own life your kids life so that you try and move on but that's something you need to deal with the rest of your life you know that you know to score with it that it's um it's trying to make your life as as comfortable as possible where you're not reliving those moments certain smells or certain noises can trigger things like it does with me anyway that I think fuck and then you put you know downer for your whole day because you're something's triggered you from 10 years ago five years ago whatever it is that so we're getting through the process of the court case and that because that's an extra burden on yourself so because there's never any closure yeah but when you go up it's it got the sentence of manslaughter yeah and had to serve was a minimum of 25 years though no but then they can change that just yeah indefinite yeah but they say 10 years but potentially could be in there for the rest of his life anyway yeah but it's still scary to think that he could adjust and and if he's got mental health issues listening they can trick the system as well yeah sometimes but it's to go through all that then when did you start finding okay what was the day that you realized that you needed to work on yourself and seek help and ask for professional help to then discuss these topics like yeah because that ain't easy yeah everybody goes through trauma but nobody ever really addresses that to then you've got to face it head on to heal yeah I believe but for yourself how fast because you did you not move fast to go and get help straight away no no because as I said I grew up with a really big group of mates and you know quite macho guys nobody who I knew had been to seek counseling for anything as far as I knew somebody might have problems but they've never spoken about it I was looking at my my granddad who's second world war veteran you know D-Day landings he's still alive he's 96 he's still going well and he's never spoken about any of that stuff you know in the war he'll tell you a funny story or two but he won't tell you anything about the the horrors he saw or people that he lost or friends he lost and he and he he nursed my nan as well all the way through her cancer battle until she passed away and he's never as far as I know he's never spoken about that either so I was looking to people in my life for inspiration you know and and as far as I was concerned at that point you know I needed to show toughness and what I thought toughness was was clamming up you know sucking it up sticking my chest out and saying I'm going to get on with it and I'll beat this on my own but with the PTSD you know the grief is one thing but you know the grief hadn't even settled in then the PTSD the trauma symptoms the flashbacks and the and being in stuck in that episode it was constant and I thought it was going to subside you know as time went on and I thought right tomorrow I'll wake up and I won't have a bad dream tomorrow night and I'll get a bit of a breather didn't it just kept going and I would find myself just sat on the bed just talking to myself and I'd be actually saying the same words that I spoke to Nikki on the phone I'd be actually doing the conversation again and try and almost change it in my mind you know sometimes I think you know which I was like Liam Neeson in Taken I could just say what I wanted to say on the phone and I would make it all right but I was stuck in this stuck in the trauma I was stuck in the episode and I knew my son was as well he was six and he was having nightmares instantly and he was petrified and he'd created a lot of make-believe around what had happened and that's a defense mechanism that children do my daughter was three she wasn't doing any of that she was as far as we could see she was acting normally she was missing mummy but she wasn't getting any bad dreams and she was able to sleep but my son was petrified so I asked for some support through the victim support charity for my son for some trauma counselling I'd read that if you get trauma counselling the first 45 days after an event for a children especially it's it's the best time to do it so we got that sorted and within three sessions Stanley's bad dreams had gone and I just thought it was amazing and then I realised that if I didn't sort myself out it was probably about eight weeks after didn't sort myself out I'm not going to be able to look after these kids because the stuff was getting worse and I was feeling worse so eventually I sat down in the room with with my case worker and I just said look I don't really have anything to lose let's see if I can talk to someone about the trauma because I can't really cope with what's going on I can't function day to day I can't you know I can't process anything my mind is consumed I've got no memory and so she said yeah okay I think it's a good idea and I'll arrange it for you straight away that's the best decision I've made unbelievable to make that decision especially when you're going through trauma you can't think straight you can't make decisions because you think you're fine yeah for over 10 years I thought I was fine and then I look back at all photos and how bloated I was and how depressed and when you talk about lost souls that's what I was a lost soul I couldn't handle the pain of losing my dad till he came my mom goes to murder my best friend to suicide and I had behind the pain for years for years and years brother I had masked it with so much drugs and drink and anger and violence and women and all the bullshit today because I was too much pride to ask for help I had too much pride to come forward and say like I'm struggling I'm struggling now I'm in a good place I stole battle but I tend to now reach out more and speak to people say well I'm not really having a good day and then we have a discussion in half an hour later it's gone feel great the pain is not there because as soon as you open up that's when you can learn to heal that's when you can learn to adapt that they say time's a healer but it's not really true I believe as time goes on the pain isn't as strong the pain's still there but the connection isn't as powerful it was you still have your moments and your down days that yeah that's just life I think that everybody has them but it just goes to show the people like yourself and people watching this that people can push through the pain and still get caught in life yeah absolutely I mean the way I looked at it to start with was that if I spoke out what I was I was weaker you know but having gone through it gone through the counselling learned the tools that I needed to learn learned about myself more learned how to cope with the flashbacks and the intrusive thoughts as I came through it I thought actually you know what I'm getting stronger I'm actually getting stronger as a person I now know how to cope with trauma you know I know how to do this I didn't know that before so I started to see myself as rather than damaged rather than a victim actually I'm improving and that's how I started to look at myself. Did you take medication or anything? I did for a while yeah I took diazepan just to take the edge off the anxiety that I was suffering because with the PTSD I was so anxious as well you know I'm so worried that Saint Bad was going to happen all the time a constant feeling of dread that feeling when you know when you're in that fight or flight mode it's just that feeling you think there's always someone behind you about something bad's about to happen you know that's the only way I could describe the feeling like someone was creeping up behind me all the time and so the doctor gave me diazepan for that and yeah I used that to help myself relax in the evenings it worked didn't have sleeping tablets but that helped me just to drift off and then after about six months I was getting to grips with the trauma there were certain other things that helped me with the trauma which was actually seeing the body cam footage from the night because in my mind I'd heard everything that went on but I was creating you know a million and one different scenarios and stories of actually fit visually what happened I was trying to piece it all together and where was Nikki at the end and all this stuff and the police officer the liaison officer he said to me do you want to see the body cam footage I said yeah I do I just need to see you know what the house was like I need to have that in my mind and he showed me and he showed me 10 seconds of just this officer going up the stairs and there was Nikki sort of laying or sitting backwards against the wall and she just looked asleep there was no blood she didn't look calmed she just looked asleep and we turned the video off there and it wasn't until about a week later when sort of a flashback trigger happened again that I realized I hadn't thought about it for a week that was kind of like I needed that end to my story to put that to bed with the with the trauma counselling so it worked fantastically but as that came to an end it's how depressed I was you know this is the grief coming in now the trauma was subsiding and the real grief was allowed to come in because until you've got rid of that you can't process any of the other stuff that's gone on in your mind so I went to the doctor as I said I've the only way I can describe it is I can't see another happy day in my life like this is it this is the rest of my life now it's going to be shit every single day that I thought was going to be good fun happy is now going to be extra sad it's not going to be even remotely good you know kids getting married maybe grandkids even like stupid things like Isabella Tyner shoelaces for the first time when the kids swimming without our own bands all of that was sad that they should have been happy and I just said to him I just can't see and I'd just like to go to sleep and wake up in 50 years when it's all better and the kids are okay and I can see that everything's all right he said are we obviously you're depressed he said there's a couple of routes we can take here he said one is I can give you these tablets virtually he said you can take these and you need to be on them for three or six months before you start to notice a real benefit and impact he said but we could review it after nine months and see how you're going and then we can reduce the dosage and or play around with it depending on how you're feeling so that okay he said but there is also the alternative route that choose exercise he said you're getting the stomach aches which I was getting really bad crippling stomach aches he'd got migraines which I had he said this is a build up of stress hormones in your body and one way to get rid of that is exercise he said you're obviously a bit of fit bloke before are you in the gym still I said no I haven't been to the gym since Nick died so he said we get back in the gym so I thought all right I'll take his advice didn't want to but I went home that day I got the box of sertraline tablets I took one and an hour later I went to get on the exercise bike I thought do you know what I'll do the tablets and the exercise because that I'm hitting it from both angles I couldn't I couldn't pedal the bike my legs were just numb really yeah and I just thought if this is what these tablets are going to do to me I don't want to know and so I'll bend them completely first day that was it job done I thought right tomorrow I'm going to go to the gym just 20 minutes on the treadmill and that's where I started my journey with the with the physical exercise and and and using it to sort of bring my mood up yeah so we see the thoughts down a lot but never acting on it because you had the kids yeah I would say not quite suicidal but more just I would I want this to be taken out of my hands you know if I if I go to bed now and don't wake up I won't be bothered but I would never hurt myself um I don't think it was pure it wasn't like real suicidal thoughts it was just in case I want this pain to be over yeah the screams and yeah noise in the main yeah how hard was it though to see the body cam footage was that your counsellor's idea was that your idea to get some closure of other things you're replaying in your mind whose idea was that behind to that was that was it was kind of put together the the the police officer suggested that I could watch the body cam footage he said discuss it with your counsellor I said okay he said she might want to be there with you when you watch it um and I can't you know what my mind is so fuzzy from that time I don't remember if she was with us or not when I watched it I think she might have been I'm not sure um but we watched the footage and they said it actually do you know what it could be it could be a really good thing to to watch it it could give you that end to your story that you need it give you the give you the real visual to the to the sound that you heard if you like rather than making uploads of different stories in your head um and it just worked it just worked unbelievably well I just needed that last piece of the jigsaw um and almost like it was almost like I was because it was almost like I was able to sort of say goodbye there because I could see her in front of me whereas you know one of the hardest things losing someone you will know tragically and unexpectedly as you don't get to say goodbye and that's one of the hardest things yeah that's something you love with I think yeah for as long as you you know that's planet anyway that did you ever have an apology from the police no no um they held the complaint that I put in about not going back to tell Nikki what they had done after they dealt with him because obviously she made the phone call they went and spoke to him they should have come back and given her the opportunity to say do you know what I think I'm gonna go somewhere else tonight or um you know just have an option but they didn't yeah they probably like I say there's there's good and bad everywhere it's probably a thing that I never thought would be as extreme but that's that's why I've tried to tell myself you know they didn't know that's gonna happen but you know I argue with that constantly back and forth yeah that's understandable but like you say the people who have the police officers that have came there showed you the body can't put your arm around you look they're amazing they're amazing do you know I mean there's so many good coppers out there listening to so many bad but they're probably for and their mind that's not as extreme and you're never going to see that because to see that it doesn't happen very often it does just does that play in your mind as well why me yeah I think that's the question the why is um is something that can never be asked and that's something that the kids still struggle with I've accepted that there is no why you know for me yes that's that's been a long journey to accept but I've accepted there is no why just bad luck um but for the kids they're still struggling with the why why was it our house why did he choose our house um because he had been to sort of four or five other houses on the way to ours knocking on doors and mumbling and asking for kids and you know all this kind of stuff and people had phoned the police and mentioned that there was somebody in the area that was um knocking on doors looking for kids did they have any previous nope nope nothing um all it transpired was in the um in the month leading up to it um his housemates said he'd been acting strange hadn't been to work he's kind of locked himself in his room um been carving names of priests into his legs with with a knife um um swore blind that this Polish priest had been to see him at his house and told him that he was on sort of some sort of mission um but um the people we live with just you know they didn't know him well enough they were just housemates they weren't even friends really um they just you know just thought he was a bit mad yeah how's the kids know what what are the nine and 12 uh yeah Isabella's coming up for 10 stan is 12 um a work in progress for stan he was very much more affected by the trauma than Isabella as we spoke about earlier he still needs medication to sleep he has medication for anxiety um and we are waiting now for more treatment from um tier three NHS services specialist mental health for him because um bless him he he's fearful of everything and it all comes back down to to that moment um of feeling just completely unsafe as as as a child um it goes right through his life he has a real low opinion of himself low self-esteem low confidence um he plays football but you know he's scared of getting hurt with attack or he's scared of the ball he's scared of all sorts of things bless him we're working on it with him all the time try and build him up um but I think you know the professionals that we're now with will we'll get to get to help him and how he needs it you know as he moves into sort of adolescence and and into an adult because you know I want him to grow up being proud of himself for what he's coped with and what he's handled and what he's been through rather than looking at himself as a victim and a failure and which is how he looks at himself which is really really hard to see Isabella on the other hand she's a pocket rocket um full of confidence which makes it even harder for Stanley to see you know because why is she not affected and I am um but she has her own struggles with that um loss of relationship you know she's got a great relationship with my wife stepmom Alex um as far as I can see it's just mother and daughter relationship but because she lost her mum she wonders is this the same am I missing anything you know what was it like and she struggles with that just wondering what it was like to have mummy around um because she doesn't really remember properly um we've got memory books we've got photos all that kind of stuff and but the one thing she really clearly remembers black and white is the moment it happened oh yeah yep but she remembers it without fear without emotion and that's just how it was at the time for her it was no there was not fear and there was not emotion it was just it was just happening yeah um and she can still remember it to this day yeah but your son will be a reflection of your strength as well he doesn't really not realize it now but how strong he is to be even here to be pushing forward that is unbelievable yeah like for a kid to see that like childhood traumas of the worst kind of trauma I believe because like I say it gives you a lifetime of pain yeah misery but as time goes on and he will get stronger yeah he will realize how strong he is like he's still growing he's still going through adjustments yeah hormones are changing like but once he gets all done it'll be a reflection of you and obviously you're already proud but he's going to go and make mass changes where people then follow his footsteps and then he can guide people out the darkness that he's been in for so long because that's where your strength is that's the people who do make the changes and then help change others as at ones who've seen some serious struggles and ones who've seen some serious darkness that that's the ones who can change lives and like I say your son's going through his moments but were you working on yourself and keep pushing forward your son will only see that as a strength also obviously can be it's your kid you let it protect him and we'll feel sometimes I feel like I feel you're sometimes as a father because the first two years of my kid's life I was out partying so I missed all this was only the first time I felt like a proper father the last three four years because now I'm being a man and and owning it and yeah my past mistakes and my own faults and my own problems because this life is a hundred percent our responsibility nobody's coming to save us we need to fucking get out and graft for it ourselves and try and break the connections of the pain but yeah it can be done and like you're living proof that people can make changes and can you can't really learn from that because it was out your hands but you can try and accept the pain to try and break it it's fucking hard though like as much as we can talk about it but this is why these conversations are so powerful not only you speaking helps others but also helps me because I really have a lot of stuff and then just speaking about it puts it into existence and it doesn't have the same power over you how paranoid do you become now does it still heighten does it still okay now like are you constantly locking doors are looking over your shoulder how does it how do you feel the locking of doors has stopped that moment when I realized if someone wants to get into your house and hurt you they can unless you've got shutters and bolts on every single window and door took a long while for that to come back to normal when I first met Alex I was still locking up dead bolts and everything else on the doors but at the same time in my mind and you knew I still got great big patio windows and everything else if someone wants to get in they're getting in but I didn't sleep very well Alex would always tell me you don't sleep you're up at the any sound you're up and you're about and you're moving around the house and you're checking on things that was the case she said the only time I ever used to see you sleep was when the kids were at nannies and grandad's for the night and she said you'd be like I can't wake you up because that was my protective instinct coming out obviously but now I'm good with that you know I do analyze everyone I see you know I can be on I was on train today and I was just looking around and it's just a natural thing for me to look for danger now I think as I said I'll long walk from the tube here through Pat Morris State wherever it was I was I was at a gentle jog by the time I got halfway but no I'm good with that you know I'm not I'm not always thinking something bad's going to happen but I am more aware yeah but you can never be too safe anyway as you know as time goes on but it's good to be but then again where do you find the the thin line of try to let your kids be free without being too overprotective as well but then again if anything ever happened god forbid that then it's the fucking old emotions come back as well that can we ever be too protective over our kids I don't think we can but yeah I'm too overprotective where I want to be able to trust me but I just know how dark and bad the world can be as well there's still a beautiful place there's still amazing things happen there's beautiful there's beauty everywhere but when you go through some pain and darkness like you kind of you don't want to force too much shit on them as well because then you push them away yeah I mean with Stanley he's all right going out in the daytime with his friends he doesn't worry about that it's just you know the evenings and being at home and specifically in his bedroom because that's where it obviously happened not in this house but he's at our last house but I'm always encouraging him to go out more with his friends you know I don't mind that I'm quite happy to let him go off he's got his phone he can contact me and then Isabella this week she said can I walk to school on my own now she's like coming up 10 I was like no it's only like 300 yards across the road I was like no not yet and then she saw one of her friends walking to school on his own and she was like see Eddie's Eddie's going why can't I I was just like I'm not ready for you to walk I'm I'm not ready for you to walk yet but I think we'll start sort of like you know walking halfway and letting her go the rest that kind of thing but it's so hard because you know your your bubble of the world your innocence of the world even though you see so much shit on the news about someone's stabbed here someone's been shot you know someone's been raped it or there's a war going on it's not real until something bad happens to you and then I remember we don't watch the news anymore because if I do see something like that I feel it and if somebody's lost a child or someone's lost a wife or anything like that from a stabbing or a mugging or something like that is on the news I feel it and I don't want to feel it it's it's hard because it's the news is real and when somebody has been through a traumatic thing like that and you've lost somebody in that way the news feels like it should be on that like 11 o'clock at night it shouldn't be on six o'clock for all them with all this stuff on for kids and everything else to hear but you have to go back to realising that until this happens to you it didn't feel real anyway yes you know that stuff in the news you're thinking that's sad but then you just get back on your daily routine thinking it's never going to happen to you but like we spoke earlier events that can happen good or bad to anybody all across the board all walks a life on this planet like that's where you'll find out who your true character is in the year lie down and quiet or do you stand up and fight and that's all you've done is to don't fall back like it's not going to let it defeat you like you still got kids there you still got a beautiful wife knows you're married now yeah got married um two years ago yeah this was one of the women who helped you as well well no that's a common misconception actually yeah the the papers love that one um now I met Alex um at a charity evening for one of our friends that I think she was running the marathon or something and I just I just went to the pub where they were and I met her there and we just said hello and then um great sort of we're kind of sort of like softly match made by um one of Alex's friends um later on but no she it turned out when I started talking to her that um she was in psychology um she used to work at Brixton prison as a psychologist there um and when we first met she'd just taken a new job to do child mental health so I was like what you know this is uh you know like a gift from heaven you know you couldn't really have asked for anyone better to to sort of be involved with and um yeah she's amazing she's absolutely amazing to say you know she wasn't one of the professional people that was putting to help us but she's helped us probably more than she'll ever realize yeah because it's the baggage that comes with it as well to unpack all your fucking shit your screams at night the the sweats like up and down looking at windows like that's a lot for somebody the people who's not in that field don't understand it that so far a woman to come in and understand it is perfect for your it would calm your own soul yeah it would help your kids progress in life that that's when you then think that people come into your life as a I always say this but a lesson or a blessing that it's um she's obviously coming for the right reasons a blessing to then yeah try and help you heal while still probably try to heal herself because we're all trying to hear in some degree that is that a major factor in why you're you're more chilled and understanding towards everything that's happened yeah I think I'm a completely different person than I was six years ago I don't stress about money really um I don't stress about my job ever because you know if I don't like that job I'll just go and get another one um I don't stress about um um silly things like a bit of road rage all that sort of stuff anymore you know if someone cuts you up in the car so right you know I'm just more I don't know what's happened but I've just chilled out you know um I've realised that there's so much more important things in life than getting stressed out about the normal rat race stuff um all I really care about is the health and well-being of my family and friends um and doing good things for other people that's it I don't have to worry about um the stresses and strains of normal life if as I say if I lost my job tomorrow of course I've got bills to pay but I'll just go and get another job yeah that's the best way to say it but you've also got to count your blessings because a lot of people who aren't of you go through trauma go the opposite route violence revenge hatred hating on the world fill it with drink drugs like you've went the complete other side where you know what is bad shit happens like catastrophes happen I need to accept it I need to move on and protect myself protect my kids protect my wife like other people who aren't of you as well go the other way they want more violence because they're so caught up in the trauma that they then give other people trauma and pain like it's mad like how you're in control of your choices obviously the mental health side some people like we spoke earlier that kid with a mental health his mind's gone wired up differently but people majority people are in control of their choices they are in control of how they're feeling what they're doing they can make the changes to then because if you're conditioned for so long to think something's normal you've ingrained it in your brain where it has become normal even though whether it's good or bad that it's just mad that we still don't understand the brain we still don't have watched so many videos I've read so many books to try and understand where the pain come from like yeah my life is going great and I'm doing great things but I still don't feel happy I feel bursts of happiness when I've achieved a goal but for maybe 10 to 20 seconds and then it goes away and I think fuck and then I get myself down because I think I should be more happy than what I really am is that not because maybe I'm not showing off gratitude I don't know but because I'm always wanting more as well I'm constantly trying to raise the bar to show and give my kids a bit of freedom that I never had as well but I know it's all external stuff it's all external noise and I know everything is up here if I'm feeling good or bad but it's life we're still learning we still kick on like when the SCS who dares wins came across yeah and that's where I seen your story like they're tough bastards who are talking to you like these are stone cold killers who've seen trauma and pain so they could probably relate to you in a lot but you've seen them getting quite emotional and these guys probably are trained not to show emotion like when you told your story you've seen like the shock factor how did that come about for you well it started off really with that journey from the doctor's office when he told me to get back in the gym so I was set about you know physical exercise get myself back into a better place and I just noticed you know that those half an hour as I was in the gym I was I was focused on what I was doing rather than focusing on the shit that was going on in my mind and I just noticed those half an hour breaks I was getting here and there was obviously helping me through the day so I put myself more and more into it more and more into the the physical exercise and gradually felt better and better from it and it helped I would say that the physical activity the gym the running the outdoor training was the main thing that helped me lift my mood out of the depression and helped me cope with the grief and definitely made my body resilient to the stress that the emotions were putting on it the headaches went the stomach aches went all the problems I was getting physically there was a manifestation of that emotional pain went so I realised that the more fit I was the more I could just deal with my mental stresses and it wouldn't impact my body so I'll make myself healthier that way and I've got to a point I think it was not long after Nick died actually the first series of SAS Who Dares Winds went out on telly and that was something I managed to get a little bit of a break from where I was able to watch something I enjoyed and in amongst the crap that was going on I was able to enjoy what I saw and I thought this is this is right up my street I love this sort of stuff and Middleton obviously stood out and I just thought it was fantastic and then the second series came on a year later and I saw F from Brian in on there who's talked about losing his son in afghan and at that point I was thinking oh should I apply for this show you know I'm fitting strong and I love it maybe I'd love to give it a go I've always undone about that military side that I talked about when I when I was younger I'm not sure if I don't want to do it or not and then it got to it got to May 2017 and we were preparing for a fun day a fundraising day for a local charity that I set up with some friends called Nicky's wishes we support brief kids and I was sitting there in the morning and something just appeared on my Twitter feed like a notification from minnowfilms saying SAS Who Dares Winds applications are open so I thought fuck it I'll just fill out a form so I just remember sitting at the breakfast bar and just filled out this form then emailed it off thought I wouldn't hear nothing more the next year now I'm getting an email saying can you come for a casting day I don't know what entails but they said just fitness test basically and if you get through the fitness test you might get an interview with one of the producers so I did the fitness test that was hard that was mile and a half in nine and a half minutes a bleep test to level 10 at the minimum and then load of strength stuff it was quite hard I got through it and then I had a chat with Naomi the producer just spoke openly really and she I think she was quite surprised at how open I was talking about what happened and then I didn't hear anything for a while I thought well you know that's kind of gone sort of took my foot off the gas on the training a little bit and then all of a sudden I've got a call saying you're through to the next stage we'd like you to come from a psychological interview with Howie the psychological guy and if he thinks you're all right you know you've gone to the next stage which is a institute of sport fitness test with the old mask on measuring your oxygen and all that sort of stuff went through those no problem didn't hear anything again that's it I've flunked out and now went on holiday was in Tenerife with my wife and well she wasn't my wife then but with Alex and the kids and her family and I got a call from Naomi saying we want you to come for your your proper interview next week you're on the show you know I've taken my foot off the gas the training we're only like three weeks away from actually going out there in where we were supposed to be going so the next thing I'm running up Mount Tady like Nigel Ben in a train again trying to get fit again but yeah got onto the show the whole way it's done is amazing they don't they tell you nothing get to the airport at this time wear in your army boots that we've supplied you and we want you to bring a wash bag 10 pairs of pants and that's it basically that's all you need so you turn up for the airport don't know where you're going don't know where I'd prepared for cold weather really I've been laying in streams and lakes and all that sort of stuff just to sort of acclimatize really quickly and of course next week I'm landing in Morocco and 40 degree heat in Sahara desert and they give you a couple of days to sort of get used to the heat and they run you around in the desert and they don't really let you sleep so by the time you get to camp you're knackered and then you're just running on adrenaline and they do it so well that you don't feel like you're on a TV show you know you don't really see cameras and yeah then it then it starts the minute you see see anton billy and foxy and ollie was being bundled into a helicopter on the first morning in my jeans that I shouldn't have worn I should have worn shorts and then flowing over this lake by a dam in a helicopter with your bergen billy says he was the guy that was in my chopper and he says right if you don't swim when you hit the water and now I'm thinking he's going to push me on this fucking helicopter now we're about five six meters up if you don't swim you're going to drown so just start swimming and he said if you let go of your bergen you're in fucking trouble because that's what floats okay so next week I just shot me on that helicopter and I landed just flat on my back it really hurt but I managed to keep hold of the bergen and swim to shore and it all just started from there it was fantastic it really was. Was that a good challenge for yourself to then realize how strong you are and what you've overcome? Yeah it was you know I I applied for the show because I knew where I'd come from you know I knew how bad I'd felt I knew what I was going through and at that point I was just being positive in my life I just say yes to everything just be positive and I felt like a superman I felt like I could take on the world I felt like I was ready for anything if I can overcome and get through and keep going what I've got through there's I can't there's nothing I can't do so got on into the camp and the minute they took my phone away from me at Casablanca airport I started to feel that tightness coming in here again the anxiety and the worry because I hadn't been out of contact with the kids and I hadn't been away from the kids since the night happened in those two years and that anxiety just drained the energy out of me it got worse and worse as the time went on but I absolutely loved being in there but being away from the family was it was hell and when they said to me your knees too bad to carry on you know I probably could have pushed it and said look I'm not going anywhere and they would have had to keep me in for a bit longer but at that point I was just I needed to see the family I was mentally I wasn't as strong as I thought I was um physically I definitely wasn't as strong as I thought I was definitely not as young as I thought I was I was the oldest guy left in that course um and um it was a struggle you know I felt like I was back at the bottom bottom rung again for a while um I wasn't as fit and strong as I thought I was I wasn't as mentally tough as I thought I was because I was worried about the kids again and it gave but it rather than it knocking me back it I just took it as a lesson you know yeah but you can't think that mate you're one of the strongest guys ever across making a genuinely mean that let's even do that show just two years after what happened shows you a kind of character you want to test yourself push the boundaries and fight through it it's weird that I'm doing I've got a boxing fight coming up in a few days and it's barring it to start and stuff out you're scared and then when you do it you kind of start enjoying it you kind of start enjoying the pain and that's a fucking mad experience that because you realize we ain't made the glass yeah we are strong every individual strong everybody is like it's just life like it's just we all roll we're all about strong we're all about for comfort but the brain can take you to places that you can you can't you can't even imagine that yeah everybody is capable everybody's capable of change everybody's capable of raising a bar everybody's capable of fighting their fears and anxieties and depression you're living proof that you've done it you're still here to tell the tale you've got a smell in your face yes you've been through some bad times and trauma will that always be there of course but will it be there as frequent no of course not because you can have I always say this as well but if you have more bad days and good then something needs to fucking change you need to wake up and realize that you don't need to live there you shouldn't be accepting that go get help ask for help but go on to go go and search local areas that are willing to help you for free that people can make the changes but you need to want to change it and like we touched on earlier that this life's 100 percent your responsibility we don't know what kind of curveballs is going to be threw at us but it's down to us how we react to it and that's the special thing about it that people can realize that you are realized at a very start of because if you let that trauma go one or two years you might have ended up and that's a scary thought but after the SES then what were you doing what was life like then it was really good it was it was just family orientated you know working family I was sort of formulating some ideas in my mind about creating something to help other people I'd done some volunteering with victim support to do peer support just on the phone talking to other people that had lost people by murder did a couple of days training with the victim's support charity where there was six other people in a room all lost someone by murder and we were doing that volunteer training and I was I was dreading it I was thinking oh god I can't be with these other people that have lost by murder I don't know if they're like downbeat and stuff I don't think I can handle it and you know what it was two of the most fun days everybody there was there and the connection was instant because of the shared life experience but we were talking about things and we were just you know what happened to each other and we were like oh Jesus Christ you know that's that's that's herobrine I wouldn't you know I wouldn't want yours over mine kind of thing it was almost like the worst ever game of top trumps and we were all laughing about it you know but it taught me that connection and I was still formulating these ideas of what I wanted to do for men specifically because there was that gap when I was looking for support loads of loads of offers but nothing that was attractive to me I'd done the counselling but I'd progressed now I wanted something else and I didn't want to just constantly sit in a room with a stranger and pour my heart out all the time I'd done the trauma work but it wasn't right for me for the grief it wasn't right for the anxiety as far as I was concerned all the depression but there was nothing else out there not designed for men it was all traditional type stuff which we normally shy away from you know we just we just don't like it we don't go to doctors fuck sake we won't even speak to anyone so went on sas and that taught me like the brotherhood side of things that how quickly these military units obviously bond and they don't know each other to start with and you can see how tight they get it's all about common common goal in mind and living together washing eating all that sort of stuff and being amongst other people and that gave me the idea for like a retreat um for for a bereavement to retreat for men it would be based on that sort of camp ethic and that ethos where we all washed together and all that and just just get on so I approached Olly I put these I put these ideas down on a bit of paper and went to see Olly from the show on the other side and yeah and he said um he said yeah I think it's a great idea I think it's got legs you know let's have a chat I'll speak to the guy that I do some business stuff with and we'll work out a plan and um he said I think I know someone else that might want to be interested in in getting involved and that was Ephraim from series two so he put me and Ephraim together and then um yeah me and Ephraim hit it off and we've just gone from there really just gone idea after idea after idea and today Strongman has gone from that idea on two sides of A4 paper to a national charity supporting hundreds of men yeah that's amazing working people getting involved for people who's maybe struggling just now yeah so go to our website which is strongman.org.uk on there you'll find all about our services um we aren't your traditional help you know we we run camps where you can come and you can climb snowden and you can do some adrenaline sports and all that kind of stuff and nobody's forced to sit in a room and share if you want to talk about your stuff you can it's just it's a fun weekend away and we do some phone support as well you know peer support where you can speak to one of our volunteers all of those volunteers have men that have been through one of our weekends so they know about the Strongman ethos um but we just have one recently and it's it's a case of tell a man he's got to go in a room with a stranger you know and talk about his feelings he's just going no no no I'm going down the pub fuck off yeah um but you tell a guy he's going away for a weekend with a load of other blokes they happen to have experienced bereavement like you I'll go do a bit of that and the talking just happens just naturally happens instantly the organically starts from five minutes after they arrive at camp by the time they go home on the Sunday they've made 20 25 new mates that have all been through something like them a support network that they never previously had they've realized the benefits of actually talking about their problems they've got some physical exercise they've kickstarted a healthier lifestyle if they weren't already and they go on just growing after that you know the the impact of that weekend on the guys that we have is from life changing to life saving it's amazing yeah that's what it's all about that's what the growth is that's what the happiness is yeah um like helping other people as we are you find your true blessing that and as human beings we're all under the same sky we'll breathe the same air like we're so all disconnected with each other and really man we should all be helping each other we should all be loving each other and helping each other up like human beings have got the potential to do that like over 7 billion people in the world that's scary to think that imagine everybody was on the same frequency and fought the same but yeah maybe one day maybe not my lifetime but guys like yourself putting these things in place and showing the world that you can come through a pain and that's where we talk about the darkness of the past because then that shows you lightly your son he'll be leading this charity in 10 years himself like he'll have the younger generation that he's not alone there's kids that've been through that sort of stuff as well at that age and i believe your son a bit the forefront he's just come through those stages of his life where we're learning and we're growing we're still going through our fucking madness like i'm still going through mine i'm in a good place but i still think fuck me man like i've still got so much to work on and sometimes i can get you down as well but that's just life seeing 2018 when you were coming out the scs show and then everything about your life was all over the news and newspapers because it was new key headlines yeah how was that to adapt to that because then everybody knew your story where you couldn't hide it anymore yeah it's difficult yeah you know one of those things that's that's really difficult in the even in the early days is that feeling of the spotlight um you don't want to go out your house because you think people are talking about you well people are talking about you you know what's just happened in the neighborhood is just unheard of um so i didn't want to leave the house um being talked about was was difficult you know you'd see people that you kind of knew in the street and if if you were walking in that direction you'd see them cross the road or turn around and walk the other way because they just don't know what to say to you um but yeah when when things are in the papers it it was difficult because it's really hard not to read the comments at the bottom of an article you know and some fuckers and those you know so um but it didn't get me down too much um being in the papers i just thought was a bit weird why is why is it why is it interesting to anybody um even when we got me and me and alex got engaged that was in the newspaper and i just thought it's it's not really news um that gives more people a chance to comment on you know obviously he's moved on a bit quick and all that kind of stuff he shouldn't be happy shouldn't be happy yeah um and um yeah it was i guess it was difficult i mean i i don't think yeah life life as a celebrity must be extremely tough and you you understand now why these people that you know on these reality shows like love island and things and they're suffering really badly with their their mental health is because you know they are their world is social media and it can be an awful awful place you can get so much good out of social media but at the same time it can be really bad especially for people that are vulnerable and fragile yeah so yeah i kind of i kind of imagine it was like for them because for me it was a bit of uh i just want to want it to go away now i did the show um really pleased i did the show i just want it to sort of like get us now just want to get back on your life yeah social media like as a poison i believe that's why so i say this at it's all time high because we're competing with other everyone's life that we're seeing the good in all the photos and videos we're not seeing the struggles don't see the battles i try and be honest as i can be when i do my videos and stuff like not feeling good today but i need to soldier on i need to i'm in control push myself through some people feeling like shit to stay in bed but getting up and going to the gym for that hour instead of staying in your bed you'll feel better staying in your bed will make you even more tired like we're living in a world where people think why they get anxiety but if they're drinking taking drugs eating bad food so on social media they watching crap tv drinking coffee smoking fuck me i've just ringed off seven eight different things they're telling me that we're just caught up in this yeah this this fake world sometimes where we forget our true purpose and what's really important but i don't have the answers to all you don't have the answers but we're trying and there are stages of your life when you're like i'm the guy who laugh at it after no i'll go after no laugh it's because i'm nervous it's because i'm broken that's because i'm sad but when you go through a sort of trauma and pain like you think to yourself i don't have the right to be happy sometimes and that's a negative it kicks in that i shouldn't be happy because i'm through too much shit so i can't laugh or i can't joke but then there comes a time you think the people who have lost their whole life would have been to see me happy to see me smile to see me joke around what i always do because that can be the difficult thing of going through trauma you don't think you deserve to be happy anymore that's the worst thing you can fucking think absolutely i mean i um i remember feeling worried about what other people would think if they saw me happy like you say maybe i shouldn't be happy um certainly don't feel like i'm worthy of being happy for a long time you know for for me i was part of the reason why why nicky died i wasn't there to protect my family it took me a long time to get through that guilt um i still feel partly responsible for it but you know it's not a massive part of part of me anymore um but yeah i say this to people a lot and some of the guys i helped through through our um our charity we always talk about it's okay not to be okay but it's also okay to be okay you know once you're on recovery um and you're getting you're positive and you're and you're getting on with your life it's all right to be happy you're allowed um don't beat yourself up about it because i did you know i felt guilty about being happy again um as you say i didn't feel like i should be after what i've been through am i allowed to be happy again um but i put a lot of that down to the support i've received from my friends and my family my mates are just the best mates on the planet um i've grown up with most of them pretty much since junior school we're a very uh good bunch uh tight bunch and they just wrapped their arms around me from the start and they gave me the confidence to make decisions and um not question anything and tell me i was doing a good job all the time even when i thought i'm i'm failing i'm sinking i'm drowning they were always telling me you're doing amazing what you are actually getting through day by day and and what you're doing with the kids is simply amazing so they kept giving me confidence and same with my family and it was through that i think that i i gained the confidence back in myself because that goes after you lose someone in that way i was completely unconfident anymore um it gradually came back and um i then started to not worry what other people thought strangers so what if they think i shouldn't be happy so what if they think i'm moving forward too quickly in my life the only people i really care about the ones i really care about my friends and my family who have been here since they dot and the ones that have cared for me they all think i'm doing great they're giving me the confidence to keep going and so that's what i held on to um i stopped worrying about the wider the wider population when actually most people are happy to see you move forward most people are you know genuinely happy for you and want that for you sometimes that i think it's that paranoia creeping back in again you just assume sometimes the worst of what people think but you know what most of the time i found the best in human nature guys that i never got on with previously in my town you know um that would have run-ins with as a teenager and early 20s that kind of stuff just other groups of of mates that we didn't really get on with they were messaging me straight away you know a company what's happened to you i'm so sorry for you and and now you know i talk to them all and it's it's i've seen the best of human i've seen the worst of humans outside i've seen the best yeah humans we're all we're all right people my majority isn't we're not that always yeah if catastrophes happen and bad things happen we kind of get together like and we want to help like we're all right people like you're gonna have your your badness out there that's that's also in life as well like good and bad everywhere like but human in general like you walk along the street you don't really see that you've been through what you've been through is a very very very very small percentage but when you walk along the street you don't see people driving their cars are driving normal you don't see people fighting and arguing like the humans are we're all right people man and you can see the goodness in everybody for you to do that for what you've came through shows you're kind of character but going for when's the last time you cried then you seem to hold a lot of emotion and they do it now a room yourself yeah i don't i don't i haven't cried for a long time yeah i did cry a lot no problem with that whatsoever i would i'd cry in the shower i'd cry when i was driving my car i would cry sometimes you know when the kids were in bed i would get pictures out and all those kinds of things and have a good old cry and it did make me feel better afterwards you know sometimes i'd be proper subbing you know like i hadn't subbed since i was a kid but yeah i cried a lot i haven't cried for a while i still get the the the dread come over me from time to time as i said when the the anniversary comes up i could i can just feel it come in as you get out of august and sort of towards them towards september middle of september yeah the dread is there and you just can't stop it no matter how much you feel like you're prepared for it every year you're not so i i don't really like to mark the day or anything like that i just try and push through it but crying i haven't cried for a long time i i do get emotional from time to time but no not crying yeah certain songs and smells and that i used to see robins and stuff and used to think well that's such and such and i hear that song that yeah it's mad that i cry a fucking lot now i never used to because i always thought be solid man not be strong when really i was weak now i feel a bit more stronger don't do it in front of everybody yeah but certain songs will trigger it and if i'm doing good i kind of get emotional because you that you know yourself that it's not just the anniversary that you're losing the person it's also buff these fucking christmases or whatever that is that it's just life man but for what you've come through and sitting here and smiling and and being as strong as you can be to show others that you can push through the pain is an inspiration i genuinely mean that brother but going forward for the future then what's the plans then plans are to grow strongmen to a point where it is recognized alongside some of the biggest charities out there is a real need for it you know men do need services specifically for themselves the same way women do and other groups that need services for themselves we talked about suicide the male suicide rate it's obviously still going up yet they're still low but there's loads of campaigns about now encouraging men to talk encouraging men to do this encouraging people to check in on their friends but when we look at it the only way i can see the reason it's still going up is one of the reasons is the support services on the back of those campaigns are still the same old traditional support services that men shy away from so let's put some meat on the bones behind these campaigns and put some proper services together that actually men will go towards rather than shy away from and strongmen needs to be one of them and i think i think going forward next next three to five years i'll i'll be disappointed if strongmen's not right up there alongside some of the other big bereavement charities in the uk yeah it will be we will leave all the links in the description but for anybody that's watching then it's me begging through their own bit of darkness and urban trauma what advice would you have for them if you haven't already told someone tell someone first the first step to healing is admitting it to yourself and then admitting it to a friend or a doctor or somebody else that can help you um don't keep it to yourself it's not strength that's the weakness putting your hand up and saying you need support knowing your limits knowing when you need to get help that's the strength and you'll get stronger from it yeah i love that brother i'd like to finish up on anything else dan anything else you need to promote or get out there um no i think i think that's it you know the charity is the main thing for me strongmen it's all about that now um the nine to five job will just tick along as it is and then one day maybe we'll we'll be able to do strongmen full time yeah next year that'll happen brother i guarantee you that but for coming on the day and telling your story and honestly brother it's an inspiration man it's great to meet you and um i look forward to see what you do for the future but i'll make sure all the links in the description because i know a lot of people message me every day and struggle at yeah i ain't a counsellor i ain't a doctor i can only talk from my own experiences how i've changed and i'm still learning as i go i still make mistakes i'm still human brother but for coming on the day you're a great man great character and i look forward to see what you do for the future brother thank you very much cheers bro