and you clearly care very i‘m rico hizon in i'm ben bland with bbc world news. passionately about these causes. breaking taboos on mental health, our top story: breaking down barriers that keep singapore, the headlines: the uk prime minister theresa may down kids from says she and eu officials have disadvantaged backgrounds. but in a sense, that‘s you taking on more burdens. agreed "legally—binding theresa may and eu officials agree changes" to the brexit deal. i know you get e—mails legally binding changes the alterations are over from across the country from people the backstop — the guarantee of no who are sharing their mental health to the brexit deal, hard border in northern ireland — problems, their difficult ahead of a crucial vote times with you. in the british parliament. and the most controversial that‘s incredible difficult and unpopular part of her agreement. because all i can say to them british mp's will vote as a responsible adult is here‘s where you can get help because it today we have secured legal changes. on the revised deal on tuesday. now is the time to come together could be irresponsible of me to try and give anyone advice, to back this improved brexit deal investigators have recovered i‘m still dealing with my own— and to deliver on the instruction the voice and data recorders from the ethiopian air crash. like, i‘m not sitting here, like, i‘m fixed, i canfix more airlines have grounded all of you, i can‘t. of the british people. the type of plane involved, but us aviation officials say but isn‘t the danger, they believe it is airworthy. you‘re doing your head in some more and this story is by taking on all of these other problems. european commission president jean—claude juncker warns it‘s wonderful that people reach out if the deal‘s voted down trending on bbc.com. to you with their problems but what does that do to you? um, do you know what? it‘s really, and i think everyone there will be no "third chance". zinedine zidane is set to return should probably take this on board, as real madrid managerjust ten months after leaving the post. it‘s what you choose, like, you have to filter stuff. madrid of course have been it‘s what you choose to let in, in a terrible run of form — really, because you do there will be no new negotiations. last week they crashed out have the power to decide of the champions league. as to what you do let in. it is this. that's all. stay with bbc world news. it‘s like, i could read twitter all day and look at all the people saying nasty things, you know? and that could become my opinion now on bbc news, stephen sackur is in the bbc radio theatre of myself, but i am too old and too with a special edition of hardtalk.

long in the tooth to be living my life for anybody else now. i‘m not living up to anyone else‘s expectations. i make my decisions based on what i believe welcome to a special and what i want to do. edition of hardtalk from the bbc radio theatre in london the word selfish i think we need to look at and really readdress with me, stephen sackur. the connotations attached to it because looking after yourself mental health is not easy to talk is in no way a bad thing at all. about, least of all for young men, like, how many of us find ourselves so often brought up to regard any emotional in situations that we are in just vulnerability as weakness. because other people wanted us to be there? well, my guest today like, go with what you need to do knows that and has lived for yourself, as long as it‘s not with the consequences. at the detriment of other people then, you know, like, i had to work this out the hard way, but you‘re no good to anyone if you‘re stephen manderson is much better no good to yourself. known as rapper professor green. applause. all his hit records, the awards and the rewards, couldn't ultimately ijust wonder, listening mask his own inner pain. but he chose to speak out. to you and hearing what you just said about the importance of tackling inequalities and giving people chances, whether there is, possibly, a bit of a politician he is determined to break the taboos inside you? around mental health. so, can we all learn from professor green? cheering and applause. i hate politicians. laughter. i hate politicians. even the ones i like, i can‘t stand.

laughter. but you, unlike politicians... applause. to generalise massively, unlike politicians, you are a public thank you. figure that young people in particular can connect stephen manderson, professor green, with and who do not, for a second, welcome to hardtalk. thanks for having me. question your genuine interest in them. i've got to start by asking, how are you? because people who follow you closely know that you were about to go on a national tour. yes. you then had an accident and you fractured bones in your neck. that is an incredible power you‘ve got and i just wonder if you‘re so how are you doing? tempted to use it. do you know what? yeah, i'm all right, yeah, i am, but but in the way that's my answer and i'm that i have kind of, sticking to it. but you're not in a neck brace. by accident, stumbled no, i think the way they described into and it‘s by not preaching, it‘s by not telling anyone how it is that it wasn't structural, they should live or how they should it was a hairline fracture of my c7, do anything differently, it‘s which is high up, so we were quite just by, and it‘s how i learn worried initially, from the people that i watched but i'm all right. growing up and the people that i'm notjumping around yet but i'm i listened to. probably doing better than they thought i would be. this is my last thought because we‘re almost out of time. my last thought is about the book title that you chose, lucky. when i was introducing that was asking for you, i was wondering whether to introduce trouble, wasn‘t it? you as stephen manderson laughter. or professor green. and the tattoo which hides a scar ‘cause obviously you are one from an attack that nearly

of those artists who has always had killed you and we didn‘t a sort of stage name, even get to that. a stage persona. no, i had the tattoo first! is it important for you to be sorry? i had the tattoo first. separate from professor green, no, i know! or do you not see it that way? but then the tattoo was ripped apart by the bottle, anyway, the point is, you have gone through an awful lot. there‘s the car smash we haven‘t talked about that almost killed you. that's a tough one to answer, recently you‘ve had this terrible because i've always put so much accident that‘s done your neck in. of myself in my music. you‘ve had the personal and that wasn't a character, pain and anguish... it wasn't a character that i played. i‘ve a brilliant osteopath, so look, a lot of the musicians that i can move my neck again now. i listened to when i was growing up, laughter. and yet, your book is called lucky. my favourite artists put themselves in my music, and i guess you‘re still here, and that was what gave me so there‘s an element that i understand there. what i‘m interested in, an affinity towards them, really. after all of the honesty you‘ve given us about the pain so when i started writing in your life, is whether, music, i started writing alongside lucky, about how i felt, what i saw, what i'd been through. you could write happy. it's always been incredibly personal, hasn't it? yeah, and that for me, you mentioned mental health already, 0hhh. i didn't realise this um, do you know what? until recently because i only tried it once it really depends on the day. i‘m not going to sit here and, and it didn't work for me, cbt, cognitive behaviour and...i can‘t lie to you, i can‘t do it. not every day, not every day. more days than not? um, of recent, yeah. i‘ve learned a hell of a lot about what i find happiness therapy, a cornerstone in and i‘ve spent a hell of a lot more time doing those things

and spending time with those people as opposed to putting myself in situations which may have made me of which isjournaling, writing down how you feel at any given moment in time feel better temporarily which is actually a really good thing to do that because it gives you perspective. but ultimately made things worse. you can write something a week prior which you look back on and say, and that‘s the most important life lesson i‘ve learned, i don't feel like that any more. find the things that make you happy and find the people who make you've made progress. or, i do feel like that, you happiest and put your energy and i was right to feel like that, into those things and those people and it was a justified anxiety and, you know, life does get because it was actually something a hell of a lot better. to worry about. i‘m a hell of a lot happier now what i'm trying to say is basically, from the age of 18 when i started writing music, i was doing something that was really beneficial to me than i was a couple of years ago, as far as my mental health, because i was making sense of the mumble—jumble inside my head. i can tell you that much. lets end on that thought. stephen manderson, it‘s been terrific having your. thank you so much. i tell you what interests me, applause. that you chose a form of music, a genre, which to many people, rap and hip—hop, to many people that was — in the 1980s and 1990s and through the 2000s — thank you, thank you for being here. associated with images of young men bragging. young men putting on a show of bravado, of macho behaviour. macho attitudes. and your take on rap and rhymes and the words was never quite like that?

no, there is a lot of bravado in my music. laughter. isn't there? hello there. what about that word, macho? macho... no, not really. i think, i think the idea that... although it was quite windy out there on monday, listen, there are things that it was probably the quietest were instilled in me growing up day of this week. from when i was very, very young, through the next few days, as to what a man should be, the rest of the week, because i grew up in a very hard household. we‘re going to see some outbreaks i was brought up by my grandmother of rain, which will be heavy who was working three jobs at times, and accompanied by some and looking after her very windy conditions. grandson, having already raised three of her own in fact, we‘ve got a storm on the way. children on her own after her husband walked out the latest storm is being named and left her, and was also looking after her mum, my storm gareth, and it‘s around that great—grandmother, nanny edie. and i think this happens in a lot of single—parent families, curl of cloud there, already pushing ahead this especially when the single thickening cloud to bring parent is the mum, some outbreaks of rain. they think they have to be hard because they assume that's and on ahead of those weather what the man would do. fronts, we‘ve got some strong and gusty winds, as well. so my household was very, you know, very stiff british upper lip, and i was taught that being a man but it‘s really as the storm, meant being hard and you've got the low centre, approaches later to suck it up and get on with it. on on tuesday and into tuesday night which isn't necessarily the best way that the winds really start to deal with things, and i learnt through to pick up. so this is what we look my own experiences and through going through things like early on in the morning. that the more honest those are the sort of temperatures — i was about my vulnerabilities,

pretty mild out there. the more strength i had in myself. that‘s not the main story, mind you. and actually, there is a strength in admitting being vulnerable you can see we‘ve got that band because as soon as you're honest about how you feel you can of rain around from that cloud, deal with it. and these are the sort of gusts as long as you lie about it, especially if you're we‘re looking at early in the day, lying to yourself about where you're so gales, i think, in many places. at and how you feel, and it could be particularly you're doing yourself a disservice. squally, briefly, in that rain band, as it sweeps its way across northern england, wales and the south—west of england in the morning, into the south—east of england through the afternoon. we may well find some sunshine and showers following on, and the winds easing just a little. but then they really start to get noisy again around that swirl of rain, around our storm that approaches the north—west later on in the day. that honesty about pain and we‘re drawing down some chillier within you, i think air as the day goes on, it's run right through your writing and your music. so temperatures will we're actually going to play a clip. be dropping a bit. the winds, though, really picking up because you late last year through the afternoon, released a new song, into the evening and overnight it was a collaboration in northern ireland, with a guy who is now western parts of scotland. very big in britain and around 70, maybe 80 mph around some coasts, the world, rag and bone man. and we‘ve got that rain around, we can show it, and i think too. when people look at it, it's important that‘ll push its way for people to know that into england and wales. it is deeply personal. 50—60 mph gusts quite widely.

very slowly, the winds easing down just a little bit on wednesday, but still a very windy day, and there will be some sunshine and showers, before we get some more it's about photographs, persistent rain coming back the importance of pictures, into northern ireland. and lots of the pictures those temperatures should be we're going to see in the clip a little bit higher, typically in double figures. now, our storm is heading are actually you with the dad you barely knew. across the uk and out let's look at this video clip. into the north sea, so the winds # i can't believe i left are easing down a little bit. you feeling so low but then we‘ve got that next weather # i was just at nan‘s system coming in rapidly going through old photos # and you ain't in many of them, from the atlantic, which you can see overnight brings rain in many areas, you're barely in any of them # three or four of them, that weather front then sinking its way southwards on thursday. i wish you were in more of them some of the heaviest rain likely # ijust wish there were more to be over the high ground of them in north—west england. # ‘cause now all i got is memories you can see we‘ve got some strong to gale—force winds, # and i cry but that river's run dry and then by friday, # if only time was something money sunshine and some showers. could buy the strongest of the winds, though, # goodbye, but it ain't # with words there's only so many arriving with storm gareth later on on tuesday. pictures i can paint # and i'm running out of film now # there's only so many pictures i can take # how does faith feel through tuesday night looking at pictures of b? and into wednesday, there‘s likely to be some travel # how does courtney feel looking disruption and some damage. at pictures of kurt? you can keep up to date # is the pain worth with the forecast here, the thousand words, i love you, and all the details on bbc local radio. # but i hate looking at pictures of you, ‘cause it hurts. # wish that i took more photographs of us # said goodbye, now our love's collecting dust # just a memory of you is not enough

# wish that i took more photographs of us. i‘ve watched that a few times and it really gets me. you wouldn‘t be the first person it made cry. yeah. and i think it resonated with a lot of people. the girl that you saw there was someone who contributed to the video by way of hashtag. there‘s a lot of negative talk about the impacts of social media. we found a way to use it for something really positive. you appealed to people for whom pictures of absent loved ones, or people they had lost meant so much. you appealed for them to send in those pictures. you said, you know what, i can relate to that. people did, and it became this beautiful, albeit sad, this wonderful public forum where people were engaging in each other‘s stories and sharing those

stories of the people they lost and people they had lost, and by way of doing that, keeping them alive. the girl in the video lost her brother, she only went to one concert with him and it was mine. but it seems to me that your relationship with your dad has become so central, to be honest, to your life. yeah. which is crazy, when you think... i was going to say, it‘s so ironic, because in life, and of course your father took his own life when you were just... 24. 2a years old. you didn‘t really know him. not as an adult. and in fact, the most difficult thing to say to you is that when you last had a conversation with him, when you were six years younger, at 18 years old, you told him basically to get lost. no, i said if i see you again i‘ll knock you out. and people say, do you regret that? why would i regret that?

he had done so much to me by way of letting me down time and time again, and i swore before that conversation that i would never open myself up to him doing that to me again. and then i thought, actually, you know what? maybe i need to be, even though i‘m not the elder here, i am not the parent, maybe i need to be the one to take that step because for whatever reason, unbeknownst to me at the time, he was too scared to. and i have an understanding now which i didn‘t have then. so i found him and i said, what‘s happening tomorrow? are you going to come and see me? he was mobile, i wasn‘t. i mean, he was driving. and he started to go, well, jackie and the kids would love to see you. jackie being his now—widow, and the kids being his stepchildren who he was more of a father to than he ever was to any of his, you know, his actual children. and i just said, for the first time ever, i stood up, i was honest about how i felt, you know? and i said, "this isn‘t about me coming to play happy families,

this is about you and i sitting down as adults and trying to see if there is a relationship there for us to salvage." and he started to stutter, and ijust went, you know what, don‘t even bother. if you can‘t make the effort, don‘t even bother. if i ever see you again, i‘ll knock you... how‘s that for macho? typical man, the first emotion, anger. and what i actually was, i was upset. and this is even harder to talk about, i guess. but the next time you saw him... he was dead. i id‘d his body because no—one else would walk in to do it. they were going to let the owner of the shop he worked in to identify his body. and ijust said, have some respect. there might have been something in between those words. but i walked in and i said, you silly sod. i gave him a kiss on his forehead and i cried my eyes out. does talking about it,

and it is so intense and so personal, and yet you have talked about it in recent times, does talking about it ease the pain? or is the painjust as real today as it ever was? what‘s funny is, i normally have a real good way of disengaging with any of the emotions that have anything to do with it, because i have to talk about it so often. and today, i don‘t find it that easy to disengage from, yeah. that‘s the thing, he‘s never going to not be dead, but we‘ve got a really bad relationship with death. we pretend it‘s not going to happen, and when it happens, we quite often pretend it hasn‘t. we sweep it under the carpet, we don‘t deal with that, we don‘t give ourselves a chance to deal with that. people, the old saying about i would rather cross the road than talk to you, you know? it‘s because it‘s an awkward conversation. i think it‘s because we also want to fix things, we want to make people feel better, but your job

isn‘t actually to do anything in that situation. sometimes you just have to give someone a chance to talk. or to cry, or to say nothing, just give someone the chance to grieve. absolutely. in the years directly after your dad took his own life, your music career took off in a big, big way. well, i almost died. sorry? i almost died. well, we‘ll get to that too. you are very accident prone person. you almost died because you were stabbed in a nightclub. and i don‘t know if the camera can pick it out, but if we look at the tattoo on your neck it actually also now is deeply scarred, because that‘s where that broken bottle went right in. i had a tattoo which said "lucky," which was an ode to me being less pessimistic, if not optimistic, at least realistic. and just trying to be a little bit more positive about things. and then i was lucky, to be honest.

it‘s weird, people always say, "but you got stabbed." but how many people get stabbed in the neck and walk away from it? nonetheless, if we don‘t get too distracted by the multiple accidents, because there are others we can talk about later, if we just focus for a second on the career. because i‘m interested in this disconnect in a way, between such a troubled, anguished life, but the ability you found going on from 2008 through to 2014 to have a string of hit records, to work with some of the biggest artist in the world, to become, if you like, the sort of vanguard of a rap movement in the uk that was a really big deal. some would say surely that, the success you had, the millions of records sold, that might have eased the pain. did it? no. i‘m silly as well because i had this idea, right, that if i became successful in music i would be absolved of everything that hurt me in my entire life. everything i saw growing up, all the stress that was in my

household from the minute i was able to work out what was going on and even probably before, you know, before your memory is forming, before you can think, you can feel, can‘t you? i was four when i was diagnosed with ibs and it was just anxiety and stress. you just said you had a permanent knot of anxiety in your stomach. not anymore. not anymore? not anymore. when did it go? when, uh, well it came back two weeks ago when... yeah, well, you know, there was a slight worry when they told me i‘d fractured my neck but then that‘s warranted and what i‘ve learned to do is distinguish between what‘s worth worrying about and what‘s not. did you reach a point when you realised that no amount of money, no amount of record sales, no amount of adulation was going to fix you? completely, and that‘s what i was getting to, it doesn‘t stop you from having good and bad days. nothing does, no matter what you achieve. and people always focus on numbers. so like, you can obsess with selling a certain amount of records. i didn‘t know how many i wanted to sell, ijust knew i wanted

to sell enough to be able to support myself so i could continue making music ‘cause i loved doing it so much. and i‘m extremely lucky. myjob is a hobby, you know? i don‘t look at going to the studio as work, that‘s a day off for me, and i‘m lucky for that, but it absolved me of nothing. if anything, it put a microscope under it and just meant i wasn‘t allowed to complain about anything because everyone still in the situation that i was in looks at me as someone who can‘t complain because i‘ve done what they‘ve wanted to do and they still think what i thought which is it gets rid of all your problems and absolves you of your past, which it doesn‘t. the other element of your life and actually i guess an element that some of your friends stuck with even after you left it behind, is drugs. and again, you‘ve been very frank and honest about the degree to which, in that period from sort of being a teenager to your early 20s, you were building a life that actually revolved quite a lot around

selling cannabis, selling weed. and other stuff, i never sold crack or smack though because i would never deal with people in the most desperate situations they‘ve ever been in every day of their life, i don‘t believe in it. but what do think made you different from the friends you had in that tough neighbourhood of hackney in east london, made you able, in the end, to escape from that when so many others did not? i don‘t know. there was a lot of people— and you know, not everyone carried on, some people did. you know, i‘ve got friends that are still in prison from it now. some people got regularjobs, there were people that said to me who were working on music, as i was, who said, you know, come on, this is never going to work. remember, i didn‘t start selling records till i was 28. i really did go all nothing. like i risked everything to do this. and they said you know what? you gotta get a job or you gotta do something different or this is going to be your life. and i don‘t know if it was, like, a bit of some kind of self belief

buried beneath all the blind stupidity thatjust led me down that path continually, but i carried on and thank god i did because it changed my entire life and gave me an opportunity, hopefully, to show others that it‘s possible. it makes me feel good whenever i see a young rapper coming up that would otherwise be doing what i was doing, it makes me feel good because, you know, i know what that life is, i lived it. that element of wanting to show others and in a sense, maybe guide others as well, seems to me it‘s really taken a big part of your life in recent years, as you‘ve made quite a number of tv documentaries. the first i think many people in this country remember very well, suicide and me, which built around the story of your father taking his own life, to look at the phenomenon of young men, so many young men in the uk. the percentage is extraordinary. i think 5,000 young men a year kill themselves.

i would never have thought it. even having a dad and his brother also took his own life two years prior to him doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same way. i would never, if you‘d have asked me what‘s the biggest killer of men between 15 and a5, i would never have thought it to be suicide, ever. never would i have thought that. itjust strikes me that given your own vulnerabilities, the mental health issues you‘ve had, the willingness you‘ve then shown to go into areas and dig deep into mental health, suicidal tendencies, you‘ve also looked at the drugs industry, you‘ve made documentaries about the class system and the difficulties that white working class kids face. 00:19:36,094 --> 2147483051:46:32,762 you have become something 2147483051:46:32,762 --> 4294966103:13:29,430 of an activist and a campaigner