Reality TV star Sam Thompson says he has “always been someone who is quite open with their emotions”, and describes himself as a “crier”.
The 33-year-old, who rose to fame through his role on reality TV show Made In Chelsea and won ITV’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! in 2023, says: “Some people might look less favourably on that if they are ‘old-school’, but it’s always just been who I am.”
After completing a fundraising mission for humanitarian aid organisation Unicef in June, transporting the Soccer Aid match ball over 260 miles in five days from Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge to Manchester United’s Old Trafford by running and cycling, Thompson is now encouraging others – particularly men – to be vulnerable, listen to themselves and their needs.
“I think that 99% of people in this world are good and most people have great hearts,” says the TV personality and podcaster, who was seen breaking down multiple times to his friends Pete Wicks and Jamie Laing during the charity challenge. He could be seen limping across the finish line due to a calf injury, and raised over 1.5 million for Unicef.
If you do open up, “you’d be surprised at how many people actually turn around with a lot of empathy and go, ‘let’s talk about it’,” he says.
Crediting his supportive friends and family, Thompson, who presents the Staying Relevant podcast alongside Pete Wicks and is due to take part in BBC’s Gladiators: Celebrity Special, says: “I’ve always been a talker and I’ve never felt like I need to not be that person.”
But he only started taking pride in his health over the past year and a half, he admits.
“Before then I didn’t really have any sense of looking after myself in any shape or form. Now it’s gym, skin routine, healthy eating and getting steps in. I even have a bike machine sitting here in my house and I’m really going for it now.
“Being 30 will get you and I felt like I wanted to be able to move, look and feel good because if you don’t look after yourself, it goes down pretty rapidly,” says Thompson, who is a celebrity ambassador for Nivia Sun.
“For example, I didn’t realise how important SPF was and now I wear it pretty much everywhere I go. As a guy, I had no idea about any of that stuff but now, even if it’s not hot or sunny, I will wear it. It’s something that I didn’t realise affected you so much until recently.”
A new survey by the brand has found that only 17% of Brits use sunscreen on a daily basis, with 28% saying they don’t wear it because they don’t like the way it feels.
Thompson adds: “You’re not going to get any younger and I genuinely believe if I had been wearing SPF form a younger age, I wouldn’t look as old as I do now.”
He says if he were to go back and give his younger self one piece of advice it would be to stop panicking. “We don’t need to panic. Life is going to happen and it is going to be what it’s going to be.
“I have always been a bit of an over-thinker, so I would say don’t panic as much as you think you need to, because it always works out in the end.”
Thompson was diagnosed with ADHD in 2023 at the age of 30 during filming for the Channel 4 documentary, Sam Thompson: Is This ADHD?
Family and friends suggested for years that he had ADHD, but he never actually sought help. Although he sees his diagnosis as a “bit of a superpower”, he says there are sides to it that are tough to deal with.
“One day I just decided to make a documentary about it for people to follow the journey because for those in later life especially, getting diagnosed is quite important,” he says. “For me it was showing that you can get diagnosed at any age and it’s not just a childhood thing.
“I feel like we built a really nice community around neurodiversity in general through the documentary.
“I’ve never wanted to really be preachy. I don’t like being preached to. I think it’s just nice to talk about your lived experience in a casual way. And I think that actually helps more than ramming it down people’s throats.
“I really like just discussing real, lived experience with these things, because it’s not always easy.”
Sam Thompson is the celebrity ambassador for NIVEA Sun and the launch of their new product, the Invisible Finish SPF50+.