Phil Selway backs a Samaritans drive for young volunteers

Phil Selway went on BBC News at about 8.30 this morning to talk about Extreme Listening, a new Samaritans campaign he is backing to recruit volunteers aged 18 to 24. The item ran a short clip of Radiohead playing “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”. The campaign sells volunteering as another kind of listening, and is running on postcards handed out in Ibiza and on posters around the UK.

Radiohead are on a break from recording and touring now the Hail to the Thief run is over, and Selway says there are no plans yet to go back into the studio.

Selway has been a Samaritans volunteer for 18 years, since he went to university. In February 2002 he opened the charity's new Oxford centre, and last November he talked about the work on Radio 4's You and Yours.

There's the common misconception that at that age you're too young to do the work, you haven't got enough experience, but age isn't a barrier.

Phil Selway¹

The experience a volunteer needs, he says, is to listen properly and give callers room to look at their own feelings. It's the knowledge that hopefully you've made a positive difference to someone's life when they've been going through a crisis.¹