Phil Selway tells The Guardian why he still answers Samaritans calls

Phil Selway signed up as a Samaritans listening volunteer while he was studying English and history at Liverpool Polytechnic, and he admits to Sophie Petit-Zeman in today's Guardian that he was trying to impress a woman. He didn't get her, but 17 years later he is still taking calls. Last year he ran the London Marathon for the charity and raised more than £20,000.

Asked how that sits with drumming in a band whose songs are so often called depressing, Selway grants that the music confronts uncomfortable things, but says there is always a sense of moving through them.

I feel the music is uplifting.

Phil Selway¹

He wants to use both roles to break the silence around mental illness. With MTV, the campaign Mind Out for Mental Health and Samaritans, he asked young people to make films of 30 to 60 seconds on the phrase “need to talk”, set to a Radiohead recording, “Meeting in the Aisle”. Fifty-seven films came in. A shortlist of nine is now running between MTV's programmes, and the charity Rethink will show the winner at its film festival in June.

Every call, Selway stresses, is confidential and free of judgement, though he admits that taking them can leave him anxious.