While society now is more open about mental health than it has been historically, there are still topics that many people, particularly men, find difficult to talk about. Dean Perryman, 30, learned this in the most devastating way possible when his best friend Rob took his own life in November 2025. He had no idea he was suffering. In order to process his grief and honour the empty space Rob left behind, in December, he started a campaign called Empty Chairs – inviting men to meet up at pubs and talk to each other. What started as a solo operation has now expanded to 14 countries around the world in fewer than six months. Interview by Sadhbh O’Sullivan
I met my best friend Rob when I was looking for a place to live in my early twenties in Birmingham. We’d actually gone to the same university but hadn’t met at that time – he just happened to have a room up for grabs when I was searching. We lived together for nearly five years.
It was such a great time, we had so much fun living together. When you spend so much time in close proximity with someone, that’s how you build an effortless relationship like the one we had. It was a very typical friendship in many ways – we loved making jokes at the others’ expense and doing really boring things that were incredibly fun to us. We loved football, we loved sport, we loved going to the pub a lot and ultimately just hanging out together, whether it was cooking meals in the flat or watching nonsense on the TV.
Rob was the life and soul of the party, he was honestly a joy. He was also a beautiful boy. It actually made my life so difficult because he was so bloody attractive. He was just a great guy, and anyone that knew him found so much comfort in being in his company. Though we stopped living together in our late twenties, we were still best mates.
In November last year I went on a two week holiday. I’d noticed that Rob had been a little bit slower in his replies, but I assumed that was because he knew I was on holiday and in a different time zone, so he’d left me alone. But the day after I got back I got a message from his mum out of the blue – she told me he’d taken his own life. It was devastating. I couldn’t tell you how long I just lay flat on my bathroom floor, feeling all the emotions you could imagine. He was my best mate, so the guilt and grief was just so difficult to understand. I had no idea he was sad, let alone depressed enough to do what he did. It was the worst day of my life.
It was really difficult not to look back and microanalyse every single conversation we’d ever had, and everything that Rob ever did that maybe was a sign or a cry for help that I’d missed. I was so hard on myself. I think anyone that’s lost someone to suicide can relate to this fixation, asking myself, “What more could I have done? What did I miss?”
As time has gone on, it’s become clear that, for whatever reason, Rob kept it to himself. That’s a decision he made. I’ll be angry about it probably for as long as I live, but it has also made me look at myself and figure out if I did enough as a person to make it clear that he could talk to me. In my head, it was very obvious he could have – he was my best mate, and if you have a problem your best mate is the one you would go to. But that’s not always the case – especially with men. I think it’s much harder for them to approach anyone on the topic of depression, or even talking about what is going on with them.
After Rob died, I felt like I had two choices. I could either wallow in the guilt and grief, or I could try to channel that into something positive. I was talking to a friend and realised that wherever I went from now on, there would be an empty chair where Rob would have sat. That image really stuck with me. And when I asked myself what I could do, I thought that I’m not great at a lot of things but I can sit in a pub and have a chat. So every day of December last year I booked a table in a different pub and invited strangers to sit with me if they needed space.
I have no idea what I’m doing on social media, I actually consider myself allergic to it. But I thought maybe if I created a space for other people, they might one day get the confidence to join me. Thankfully, it worked.
By day four of going every day, the first person came and sat with me who wasn’t just another person alone in the pub. I then started posting about it online and the number of people coming slowly increased. I started wearing a bright orange hoodie so people could recognise me, and then it took off. Now there are people acting as hosts in their own neighbourhoods in 14 countries including Colombia, Canada, Australia, Norway and Belgium. Based on photographs that hosts have sent me and ones I’ve taken alone, more than 2,000 chairs have been filled by strangers since December.
More than 2,000 pub chairs have been filled by strangers since Rob launched his initiative DecemberIt’s been terrifying to realise how many people feel the same loneliness, really. So it’s been lovely to see it work for them as well. It’s incredible to see how this has evolved from a place of sadness into a general safe place for people.
I’m very much a working class kid from Essex and it’s drilled from an early age that men don’t talk about their feelings. You go to work, you come home, you put the football on and that’s it. There’s a lot of embarrassment in admitting you’re lonely.
If Rob was here and saw Empty Chairs, I honestly think he would find it hilarious, purely because I am not a social media person and I am not someone who talks. It’s still difficult for me to talk about it. But I like to think he would be inspired.
This whole experience has taught me that people are inherently good. I think social media and the world at large would try and tell you the opposite nowadays, but for me to have put myself out there and the internet to not have chewed me out and spat me out was a real relief.
I don’t know how I would have coped with grief if I hadn’t had the space that this gave me. I think I would have just stayed at home and gone down this classic British approach of a stiff upper lip and insisting to myself I will get over it. I have turned into someone who is trying to talk more and it’s been so powerful.
For confidential support, Samaritans are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Call for free on 116 123 or visit samaritans.org
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