Phil Selway hopes Radiohead keep touring as long as they can

Phil Selway, Radiohead's drummer, has told Jonathan Dean of The Times that nobody knows whether the band will still be able to tour in ten years. I hope we go on touring for a long time.² Radiohead's next shows are the 21 they play in Australia and Japan from 3 May to 13 June next year.

Last year's tour was uplifting², Selway says, and the whole of it felt precious to him. Radiohead started out as a school band and still feel like one, only better at it four decades on, which he counts as luck. Underneath it all is love.

The Times puts his years with the Samaritans, the emotional-support charity, at four decades. As a student at Liverpool Polytechnic, now Liverpool John Moores University, Selway picked up a leaflet and trained as a listening volunteer. He calls the training profound. At the boys' school he went to, empathy had seemed neither prized nor much use. It was the first time that side of me was seen as a strength.²

He talks about Will Vaulks, who plays football for Oxford United, the club Selway supports. Both of Vaulks's grandfathers died by suicide, and the club spoke openly about that loss. Conversations like that would not have happened in the past, Selway says, and are needed more than ever now that social media gives children less privacy and leaves them more exposed.

In the UK, Samaritans can be reached free, day or night, on 116 123.