Yorkshireman Nick’s role as Director of Communications for a top lobbying body was a whirlwind of being interrogated by politicians, grilled in TV and radio interviews, and meeting the demands of powerful corporations making multi-million-pound investments.
Prior to that he’d spent 15 years as a national newspaper journalist – a job which saw him despatched to an unfolding shooting massacre and take a helicopter flight into an erupting volcano.
But two decades of living a pressure-cooker existence eventually triggered a devastating mental breakdown in December 2023.
Nick, 46, from Letwell, near Rotherham, said: “After years of feeling ready to take on any challenge, suddenly I couldn’t even catch a train or go to the supermarket without crying. I was crippled with anxiety.
“The thing making me most anxious was the thought of going back to work. I was doing my best to put all the expensive therapy techniques into practice… but my brain was screaming at me ‘Don’t do it’.
“I remember getting off the train in Glasgow one morning and having to lean against a lamppost because my legs were so wobbly. Sweat was running down my back. I felt terror as if I was being forced to meet a monster.
“I desperately wanted to get back to ‘normal’ but eventually, after a particularly dreadful few days of anxiety, my therapist and I agreed that enough was enough. I went home to my wife and said, ‘I need to do something else’.”
Burnt-out Nick has rediscovered his joy for life after setting up Nick’s Mobile Bike Surgery last June – covering the greater Glasgow and Clyde area.
Nick, now living in Langbank, Renfrewshire, explained: “When I was thinking ‘What makes me happy?’. I realised I missed the freedom of getting out and about I’d had before I’d ended up increasingly tied to the office.
“I looked into doing Tesco delivery driving, but had an epiphany moment when I remembered reading about a guy who once ran a mobile bike repair service.
“I’ve fixed bikes all my life. During lockdown, when there wasn’t much to do, I’d put a post on the village Facebook group offering to help fix folks’ bikes for free. It was so popular, I almost ran it as another job, fixing about 40 bikes in nine months. I just loved going round the village chatting to people and even received a commendation from the local Provost for charitable work during the pandemic.
“I used my old journalism skills to track down an address for the guy I’d read about and we had an amazing conversation where he just said, ‘Go for it’.”
Dad-of-two Nick’s life now is a world away from his frenetic, high-pressure media career.
He said: “I realise now that I spent 20-odd years fuelling myself on adrenaline, panic and caffeine. I was stressed for decades but was too busy to notice the damage I was doing to myself until it was too late.
“The problem with the rat race is that the further up the greasy pole you climb, the further away you get from being at the coalface, which was where I was happiest.
“As a Director of Comms I was always taking on more responsibilities, including doing television interviews and appearing in front of Scottish Parliament committee hearings being grilled by MSPs.
“People would think I was knocking it out of the park, but I remember sometimes being almost paralysed with nerves and even gagging over the toilet before big moments. I was like a swan -appearing graceful on the surface but frantically paddling away under the water.
“The renewable energy sector was under intense scrutiny and I was the mouthpiece for the industry in Scotland. I’d meet government ministers and was involved in conversations we were having with Prime Ministers and First Ministers. The industry changed from smaller operators dotted around Scotland to massive international corporations coming in to build multi-billion-pound offshore windfarms. It became much more corporate and less fun.
“Then covid struck. We were stuck in the house, juggling a demanding job and home schooling the kids, with no pressure release of being able to meet friends or family. I think that’s what tipped the balance.”
Nick had previously handled major stress meeting demanding daily deadlines as a news hack for The Scottish Sun newspaper, rising to Chief Reporter.
He said: “I remember being scrambled to cover the horrendous shooting massacre in Cumbria when taxi driver Derrick Bird killed 12 people. I remember driving along seeing bodies lying at the side of the road, and he was still on the rampage as we arrived.
“But you’d regularly see dead bodies because you’d often be one of the first at the scene – sometimes even ahead of the police. I remember covering a house fire in which an 18-year-old died. I had to knock on his family’s door a street away to ask how they felt when the fire had not even been put out.
“The aftermath of death was an almost daily occurrence. You go through all the emotions the emergency services go through, but the big difference is that they get lots of training and support, whereas as a journalist you were pretty much left to figure everything out for yourself.
“You often ran towards trouble while most people would be running away. I was on the last flight out of Europe to Iceland before the spectacular 2010 volcano eruption closed airspace across most of the continent.
“We took a monster truck up the glacier to below the volcano, and then we flew in a helicopter pretty much into the ash cloud. There were rocks the size of cars, on fire, flying past the helicopter window. I wrote that it was like gazing into the jaws of hell.”
He added: “I often had to confront people who were not pleased to see me. I remember being held at knifepoint in a flat in Greenock and having to talk my way out, and being pushed and shoved by a politician while asking him some difficult questions in Glasgow.
“I was proud of standing up for readers who had suffered injustice and holding people in positions of power to account but being violently beaten covering a story about a fraudster actually hastened my decision to leave journalism.”
Instead of being told to get on his bike – or worse – Nick is now loving his new lease of life repairing them.
He admitted: “I can honestly say I’ve not had a bad customer. People seem overjoyed I’m offering a service which saves them the hassle of getting their broken bike to a shop for repairs. One day I’ll be fixing bikes at a country estate, the next day I’m up a tower block mending a puncture for someone.
“I’m loving being back out on the road again and hearing people tell their life stories with no deadline pressure and a boss breathing down your neck.
“Yes, I’ve taken a gigantic pay cut, but happiness – and my mental health – is just more important.
“A lot of my friends are jealous. Not in a nasty way, but a lot of people say they wish they could do something else.
“I’ve got a friend who is a highly-paid executive who has been saying for over 10 years that he wants to quit the rat race and become a tree surgeon… but he’s never taken that leap. I had to do something else just to survive.”
For more info about Nick’s Mobile Bike Surgery go to: http://www.nicks-mobile-bike-surgery.co.uk, or on Facebook or Instagram.
