Roger Rides for Chichester Counselling Services.

The original Action Man model talks about his experience of counselling from Chichester Counselling Services.

Claire Smith (http://www.scotsman.com/)

Roger Johnson was scrambling up a climbing wall with his fellow marines when he noticed the overweight executive in the grey suit staring at him. "I want that man there," said the man from Pedigree toy company, who had picked the soldier to become the face of Tommy Gun, the prototype for Action Man.

But while he became the face of the ultimate macho fantasy in the lives of millions of young boys, Mr Johnson himself faced mental illness, relationship break-ups and homelessness in his adult life.

Now, after three years of counselling, the ultimate "tough guy" has decided to tell his story and to make men more aware of mental health problems.

	Three years ago, Roger had a breakdown and was suicidal. Roger was told about Chichester Counselling Services and says it saved his life.

The former soldier, now 62, plans to cycle the length of Britain, from Land’s End to John o’Groats, to raise money for the counselling centre that helped him. He also plans a series of interviews, telling his life story, and sending a message to British men - even tough guys need to share their troubles.

Mr Johnson was 59 and living alone in a damp cellar when he realised he needed help. After a relationship breakdown and a failed marriage, he felt as if everything was falling in on top of him. "I felt like the roof was caving in," he says.

He was experiencing fainting fits and finding it difficult to speak, but when he asked his GP for help, he realised his problem wasn’t physical but emotional.

"I went to the doctor and asked, ‘Can you help me? Can you make the pain go away?’ and he said, ‘I can give you pills, but they are very addictive’."

Mr Johnson realised he would either have to admit himself to a psychiatric hospital, or face up to the psychological distress which had been dogging him all his life.

It was a far cry from the day, back in 1963, when he had been at peak fitness as a member of the elite Royal Marine Commando force.

An executive from Pedigree came to watch troops training in Devon and pulled Mr Johnson out of the line as the man to become the face of the company’s new male doll, Tommy Gun, the soldier boyfriend of Sindy doll. "This man in a grey suit pulled me out and said, ‘I want that man there, his face has character’."

The original Action Man: "Tommy Gun" http://www.forgottentoys.co.uk

Photographs of Mr Johnson in his climbing gear were taken to the model-makers and became the basis for Tommy Gun, the original male army figure who became Action Man and was also the inspiration for the American toy GI Joe.

He received no money for his modelling assignment and told very few people about it in later life, but his pronounced jaw and square cheekbones became one of the most famous faces in the world.

Today, Mr Johnson is still physically fit and speaks proudly of his achievements in the Royal Marine Commandos, where he became a climbing instructor and joined the elite Parachute Regiment.

But now he admits his drive to push himself to physical limits was inspired partly by a self-destructive streak: "I was terrified of heights so I became a climber - a night climber. Then I went one step further and became a parachutist.

"I have been looking for a way of killing myself for most of my life. I tried to do things which were very dangerous."

However, at the same time he admits: "Going into the marines saved my life. The discipline was so strict. Without it, I was headed for borstal."

Mr Johnson joined the marines as a 15-year-old drummer boy, after being thrown out by the parents who had adopted him from an orphanage at the age of one.

"My heart was wrecked," he says - not just because of the feeling that his birth mother had abandoned him, but because the couple who adopted him quickly had their own son.

Throughout his childhood, Mr Johnson felt he compared unfavourably with the couple’s natural son, who excelled academically while he did not. Regular beatings from his adoptive parents also contributed to his drift towards delinquency, although he now says he holds no grudges.

"Later on, I had a go at being a parent and I screwed it up," he concedes.

Married to a devout Catholic while in the marines, Mr Johnson fathered three children, but the relationship with his wife failed.

And while his experience of army discipline may have saved him from a life of crime, it also taught him to hide his feelings, and he admits he found it difficult to show his children the love they needed.

After leaving the army he became a bricklayer - another environment dominated by macho men who were afraid to show their feelings.

His inability to show emotion came between him and fulfilling human relationships, and for a three-year period he lived in a car park, using his commando training to survive by hunting rabbits.

When Mr Johnson finally came face to face with the older lady who was his voluntary counsellor, he discovered he had never learned how to express his real emotions, and the experience terrified him.

"I started to talk about my childhood, getting bashed around by my parents," he recalls. "I wouldn’t speak to the counsellor, to her face, I would speak to the chair or the wall. I would shout and rant and start to weep. I invented a new word for it. I don’t cry, my eyes were ‘leaking’.

"Over the months and years, I have become more confident, and now I’m no longer frightened.

"I was frightened of being me."

Mr Johnson hopes his cycle trip will encourage other men to speak out about their problems and to overcome their fear of seeking help.

"I have been maintaining a tough image all my life," he says. "But I am prepared to say that this guy who was a commando and a parachutist, a guy like me, can walk up to a counselling organisation and say, ‘Can you please help me?’"

Philip Hodson, a psychotherapist who has written about men and their emotional health, hopes Mr Johnson’s efforts will inspire other men.

"It’s part of masculinity that you don’t admit to having weaknesses," he says. "But in many ways, men are emotionally more fragile than women. We don’t live as long, we are subject to more suicides, more homicides and suffer more stress.

"This is a very tough guy, the archetypal tough guy, but even tough guys need help - even Action Man. I hope he will raise a lot of money and inspire other men with problems to come forward."

And Penny Spearman, the chief executive of the Chichester Counselling Service, where Mr Johnson was treated, hopes his mission will inspire the creation of a men’s counselling project.

"The voluntary counselling centres in this country are the Cinderellas of the charity sector," she says. "Forty to 50 per cent of our clients come from their GPs, but we don’t have funding from the NHS at all.

"For a man like Mr Johnson, it is very unusual to say, ‘I have had counselling’, or to admit, ‘Look, I need help’.

"He has spent all his life being courageous, but this is a different sort of courage."

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