‘i’m not Ready for Romance – i need to sort myself out’
DJ and mental health campaigner Roman Kemp opens up about his own struggles, the importance of family and what made him go for fertility tests
Roman Kemp would love to replicate his parents Martin and Shirlie’s true romance after a string of failed relationships. But even though he is tentatively on dating apps, he admits he’s not yet ready for a relationship.
“Don’t get me wrong,
I come from a family of romance,” he says. “My grandparents were together from when they were 16 and they died on the same day, then you’ve got my mum and dad who have been together for so long. In an ideal world I’d meet someone in the middle of the street but that’s not reality. But I need to sort myself out first. I’m not ready to think about someone else until I can sort my own head out.”
When we catch up with Roman, 29, he is soaked after motorcycling home in a downpour from Fearne Cotton’s house, where he’d been recording for her wellbeing podcast. Wellness is important to the Capital FM DJ. He has achieved huge success waking up millions of listeners on the breakfast show since 2017, but he hasn’t had it easy.
He’s about to release his part autobiographical, part self-help book, Are You Really OK?.
In it he unflinchingly tackles the subject of suicide after contemplating taking his own life in the summer of 2019.
At the time, he’d just landed his gig on I’m A Celebrity where he would later endear himself to the nation. But Roman suffered a breakdown when he stopped taking medication for the depression he’s battled since he was 15. Consumed with feelings of worthlessness and self-hatred, he was planning his next steps when his mum’s face popped up on his phone and made the call that saved him.
“I’m insanely grateful Mum called that day,” he says. “She got in the car and came with my sister Harley to get me. It makes my mum feel sick whenever it’s brought up and I know it upsets her, but it’s the reality. Why are we pretending this stuff doesn’t exist and that men don’t have these thoughts?”
A year later, during the pandemic, Roman’s best friend, Joe Lyons – the producer who’d nurtured his career – took his own life aged 31. In August, on the second anniversary of Joe’s death, Roman got a tattoo on his arm of a dove. He already had a bird tattoo on his leg to match one that Joe had.
Ever since his friend’s death he has been fighting the stigma still surrounding men’s mental health, aware he too could
‘losing my best mate to suicide is still so raw’
have been a statistic: suicide remains the biggest killer of adult men under 45.
“Losing my best mate to suicide is still so raw,” he says. “That’s why I’ve done the book. I’m still living this, I’m still going through it. I remember the day of Joe’s funeral. It was during lockdown and there were only a handful of us, and it was tipping it down with rain, and I remember looking over at his mum and dad and thinking, that could have been my parents.”
Roman’s mother, Shirlie, was a backing singer for George Michael in Wham! and his dad, best known as Spandau Ballet’s bassist and for his role in Eastenders, gave him serious bragging rights throughout his childhood. Still, at the age of 15 he suffered badly from depression. His mum took him to therapy and he has taken antidepressants ever since.
“I still have bad days,” says Roman. “When I was a kid they would call it a chemical depression. people’s hormones are constantly up and down and can lead to things like depression. Every two months my hormones will feel depressive. I’ll notice it and Mum and Dad will notice it.”
The fear of not being able to have children of his own sends Roman into a panic, so much so that he had fertility tests done earlier this year.
“I wanted to know if I’m infertile or if I can have kids,” he says. “I think it’s an insecurity a lot of men have but don’t talk about. I spoke to my friends
and suddenly they were like, ‘I think about that as well, let me know when you’re going!’ That’s the goal of humanity in my opinion, to try to birth nicer, kinder people. I view family as the most important thing. I don’t have an ideal age, it just has to be with the right person.”
Roman admits he fears his children could suffer from the same challenges as him, and feels passionately that more could be done to give kids better coping mechanisms. Next month, he’ll start filming a new documentary focusing on mental health at schools.
“This country doesn’t have it right in terms of how we approach mental health for young people. Less than 50% of schools in the UK have any form of counselling on site. Yet school is filled with trauma – understanding social cues, the pressure of exams,” says Roman. “More and more I hear that a boy aged 10, or a girl aged nine, has killed themselves. That can be stopped.”