BY JOHN JACKLIN
Nationally, Mental Health Awareness Week starts on May 11 but Henley has a face-to-face forum for men to share, listen and support each other all year
PERSONAL tragedy was one of the triggers that prompted the formation of Henley Man Club. Gary Boys, a co-founder, whose father left the family home when Gary was just five years old, suffered the sudden loss of his long-term partner, Claire, and two friends took their own lives.
Gary, who lives in Friday Street, Henley, says: “I had had to deal with quite a lot of grief over a few years, and that culminated in Claire just dropping down dead from a brain aneurysm in 2014. A couple of years before that, my best friend in Henley committed suicide. It was out of the blue.”
After Claire died, Gary started doing charity work, “fundraising, I did the London Marathon, stuff that I thought Claire would have liked me to have done”.
“Then Covid hit, I did some more fundraising for the NHS, then I got connected with Nomad, the Henley charity that runs the food bank, and started doing some work for them. So I kind of got into the whole volunteering space, through obviously the events that happened to me, I realised I could use my skills to raise money, because I’m a salesman.”
‘Man Club’s goal all-year round is to give men in the area a sense of purpose, identity and engagement’
Gary adds: “Then another friend, who had helped me raise funds for the NHS, committed suicide in 2023. He planned his suicide. I thought I’ve had enough of this, I want to do something. So at the time, Luke [Dorn] was my personal trainer, we just got chatting, and I said ‘Why don’t we set up a club, not a charity, more like a club for men to talk’. And we started in March 2024, and now we have more than 70 members – and are aiming to make it 100 by the end of the year.”
With Mental Health awareness week starting on May 11, Man Club’s goal all-year round is to give men in the area a sense of purpose, identity and engagement. “We are not trained psychiatrists,” Gary says. “But the group is there to support men. We’ve got men that join who have just moved into the area, alone or with their family, that don’t know anyone. We’ve got people that are living in a van. They sleep and live in the van. We’ve got people that have joined and said ‘I’ve got a gambling addiction, I don’t want to tell my dad, but can I tell you guys?’
“People are being bullied at work by their bosses; we’ve got men who have been made redundant, that have lost their self-worth. The club is non-subscription, so there’s no fee to do it and it’s not like Alcoholics Anonymous where everyone sits in a circle, we all communicate if we need help and get involved.
“The club has evolved; it still has the same thing in mind, which is to signpost men who are having challenging times, but moved into a volunteer group that do good things for the town, whether that is cleaning the streets or cutting back trees.
JINGLE AND MINGLE: Henley Man Club with Irenna Bailey arranged the event and provided volunteers. Gary Boys with Anthony Wright of Henley Masons lodge, who donated £925 towards the Jingle & Mingle Xmas lunch. Over 80 people had a free Xmas dinner presents for those that would be otherwise alone!
“The YMCA asked us to take down a goalpost; we shifted some rubble for the Kenton Theatre and this month we are taking part in the Tough Mudder. On a Monday we go for a walk and talk for an hour, so people can share anything that’s on their mind.”
The Man Club, which also gathers on a Monday at 8pm in the Garden Room at the Bull on Bell Street, raised funds to feed 80 people on Christmas Day at the Christ Church Centre on the Reading Road. The celebration attracted widows, widowers, men on their own and families who could not afford Christmas dinner. Gary says: “It’s called No One Should Be Home Alone for Christmas and we are going to do that again this year.”
IN THE COMMUNITY: Fundraising at Tough Mudder and community gardening.
The club attracts young and old men, some of the younger men might need fatherly help. “But they don’t have a father figure because their dad, for whatever reason, is not around and they want to lean on some older men for advice. It’s like a little brotherhood.”
Gary was born in Peckham, south east London, and moved to Sutton, to the south of the city, when he was nine. His father was “kicked out when I was five. So I don’t have much recollection of a father figure myself. Mum brought me up with my grandma and my brother.”
He describes his background as being in DJ-ing and entertaining, but combined that with a job in sales, which he got into when he was 16. He joined an American company and stayed for 22 years. As well as his DJ work, he is also a career coach. “I help people who have lost confidence and coach them one to one to get them back to work.”
The club’s success has come from the “feedback from guys, basically saying we’ve changed their life. Men who possibly had no confidence feeling wanted. The Christmas Day event was so well received by people who otherwise might have been home alone and got depressed.”
Gary calls the club members volunteers “because men generally don’t want to get a free meal. And that instinct, that DNA instinct of doing something is what men like to do. There are enough bad stories about men, you only have to put on the TV, and you are just littered with stuff on the news. But there is a lot of stuff that guys do that is brilliant. And this is a group that enables good men to join, to do positive stuff to the community.”
He adds: “A big part of this is improving the identity of men, while doing stuff, whether it is physical fitness or volunteer work, that makes a man feel like they have a purpose.
“The local doctors refer people to us. If they’ve got lonely men that come in, or they are worried about the fact that they just turn up and want to just talk to a doctor because they are depressed, they get referred to us, and we embrace them into the group.
“We’ve also done work with the Freemasons in the town. They’ve been very supportive. From when I first started this with Luke, it has really evolved in the diversification of what we do.”
Gary adds: “When you unpeel the onion of the town, Henley’s no different to any other place in the country. There’s a lot of windows and doors here that have got people sitting behind them that feel lonely.”
Squadron leader flies in for Henley Health and Wellbeing Festival
A FORMER British military combat helicopter pilot who headed up special forces missions in Iraq is scheduled to round off a day of mindfulness and health awareness at the Henley Health and Wellbeing Festival on May 16.
Sarah Furness, an RAF squadron leader with more than two decades of military service, has turned her front-line experiences into a motivational mental-health talk having qualified as a mindfulness instructor.
Louise West, practice manager at Bell Surgery in York Road, which is organising the festival, says: “She came to talk to our staff as a motivational speaker, she was great. She’s a very interesting lady, a very powerful lady. She talks about not working harder, but about working smarter. Part of her message is that fear is contagious and so is courage. She’s a really good speaker.”
Sarah will be giving her talk in the town hall, where other presentations include include one about ADHD in girls, another about addiction and another about meditation. In the market square is space for up to 24 stalls occupied by health professionals and well-being services such as counsellors, trauma and tension release exercise classes, a gym, a holistic image coach and Henley Man Club.
The slogan for the festival is Healthy Body, Healthy Mind and proceeds from the day go to the Bell Surgery Charitable Trust appeal for a health monitor. Louise says: “The first one we did was in 2015 and we don’t do it every year, but each year that we do stage it, the event seems to get bigger and better. It is one of those things that has grown because people are more aware about health issues.
“We just hope to help a few people. It’s really about signposting people to things that they might not have thought about. So, you know, whether it’s just a few people that gain knowledge about something that might help them with their health and wellbeing.
“Maybe they had not thought about doing art for relaxing or hadn’t done art for a long time or hadn’t thought that actually gardening is good for you because it’s good physical exercise, but actually it’s so good for your soul and your mental health and just being able to switch off and spend some time out in nature.
“If we can showcase all of the wonderful organisations that are out there for people that they might not have heard about that will help them — and if there’s just a few people that go away feeling that they have gained some information and something that they might want to pursue – then we have done our job.”
The event takes place from 11am until 2pm in the
market square and the town hall.
www.thebellsurgery.co.uk/henley-health-festival-16-may-2026/