Phil Selway on St. Martin's Challenge

On a podcast about vulnerability, Phil Selway is interviewed as a long-standing supporter of Samaritans, not as a musician.

His involvement goes back nearly 30 years and began by accident. As a fresher in Liverpool he was handed the usual pile of leaflets, and one for the student version of the service caught his eye because it listed the qualities they were looking for. The description of the work struck a chord: the ability to listen, to give someone space, and to come into a conversation without bringing oneself or one's judgements into it.

He volunteered there and carried on back in Oxford, spending about 20 years as a listening volunteer before taking on an ambassador's role.

Most of the conversation is about what that training teaches. The hosts, Lewis Owens and Savraj Kaur, argue it is less specialist knowledge than a way of being with people that anyone could use. Selway agrees, and recommends the book that sets out the approach, saying it is accessible enough to take into ordinary life and that reading it leaves a person feeling cared for.