I debated suicide after divorce, then one phone call changed everything

I went through divorce and started to question my existence. I was considering taking my own life,’ Dave says.

Dave Lock, 61, and his first wife Elizabeth, had both been 25 when they tied the knot, and a couple of years into their marriage it was apparent ‘it was a mistake’.

‘We both thought we knew what we wanted and it was an amicable divorce, in that we knew it was wrong,’ Dave tells Metro.

‘But it was what came afterwards – the guilt, that sense of failure, of letting my family down and having them be ashamed of me. Of course, they weren’t, but it was all inside me. That was the problem.’

This separation quickly spiralled into Dave being terrified of making any mistakes in his life.

‘I thought they would just reconfirm that I was a waste of space, and I couldn’t do anything right,’ he adds. ‘Someone could say: “Dave there’s a couple of spelling mistakes in that paragraph”, and all of a sudden, my world would come tumbling down. I knew in myself that that was a problem, but I couldn’t stop it.’

Dave also believes that some of his insecurity stemmed from his own family history. His mother Diana, had met his father, who was married and had a family back in India, but she fell in love with him and fell pregnant with Dave.

Diana was judged heavily and it created a difficult relationship with Dave’s grandparents, and he felt the burden of that too, growing up. Diana then passed away from cancer at the age of 41, in 1978.

He explains: ‘I carried that feeling of my mum dying young and it being all my fault. If I hadn’t been born, then her life would have been a lot different.

‘If you pull those experiences together, then you start to feel like you haven’t really made much of a contribution to anyone’s life apart from ruining them. I felt like I shouldn’t be here, and I knew if I didn’t get help for that, then it was only going to go one way.’

These feelings were what left Dave desperately in need of help in May of 1989. One evening, with nowhere to turn, he picked up the phone and called Samaritans.

But, before anyone could answer, he hung up. He had a deep-seated fear that whoever picked up was going to criticise him.

After a few more attempts though, he finally made it past the dial tone and a voice crackled to life on the other end of the line.

‘Samaritans, can I help you?’

‘I can still remember the kindness,’ he says. ‘You hear the kindness coming down the telephone line, the calm voice, the patience, the love and the compassion,’ Dave says.

‘I felt then that someone had put their arms around me, because I didn’t have a lot of that when I was growing up. I did have love from my grandparents but something was always missing.

‘Then my life started again.’

Dave felt listened to and, in turn, he was able to navigate his feelings. It wasn’t a one-call fix though. He called the Samaritans helpline countless times over a seven month period.

‘Initially I was calling probably every day, but then it gradually spaced itself out,’ Dave explains.

‘I ended up getting therapy though a GP, so the calls dropped to every week.

‘I don’t think I consciously thought I’m not going to call anymore. I think what happened was I gradually my life filled up with other things. I just gradually moved towards a better place.’

Dave began to feel ‘so much stronger as a person’ and good things in his life began to blossom.

He met his wife Francis in 1991, during what was meant to be a 10 minute work meeting, which ended up lasting for two hours as the pair lost track of time getting to know each other.

In 1993 the pair moved to Spain to live in Mediterranean bliss for two years before moving back to London.

As he reminisces about his meet cute with Francis, Dave says: ‘My life just changed so much and it was great to think, “hey, there are some people here who like me and love me”.

‘It was just around the corner, I’d never known it was coming.’

Dave became a Samaritans volunteer in the 90s but felt he wanted to give even more back to the charity that saved his life. So, as an avid runner, he signed up to do his first London Marathon for the suicide helpline in 1999.

‘I ran it dressed as Big Ears to promote listening, but I didn’t feel like we were getting enough attention,’ Dave says. ‘So I thought “why don’t we design a big telephone costume?”.

From there his persona Dave The Running Telephone was born, and 2024 marks his 25th marathon for Samaritans. He’ll have covered well over 1,000 kilometres for the charity.

‘It’s a great fusion of my passion for running, which I completely lost when I was suicidal. I was a mess. Then Samaritans saved my life and I got back on the road,’ he says.

What makes this even more special, is that Dave’s daughter Isabella, 23, will be running this London Marathon with him for the first time ever, after the loss of his brother Steven, her uncle, to suicide last year.

Steven had been just four years old when Diana died and was adopted by Dave’s uncle. But he returned to LA where he’d been born, in hopes of becoming an actor, and appeared in the last ever episode of Sex And The City.

Chasing his dreams had left him close to destitute though, and his money troubles meant his mental health deteriorated. Sadly Steven took his own life on March 13, 2023.

‘It’s still painful and it was suck a shock – we’re still looking for answers,’ Dave says. ‘I could’ve ended up like that. I was lucky, and unfortunately Steven wasn’t.

‘I treasure the memories we have but life’s never going to be the same.’

The loss of his brother has doubled his ‘determination and passion for Samaritans’, and his fight against suicide.

So, despite the pain of losing his brother just weeks before the 2023 London Marathon, Dave decided he’d brave it and still complete the staggering 42-kilometre run.

‘We printed off some large pictures of Steven and pasted them on the tablet on my green telephone costume. We put messaging on it saying: “This was Steven, rest in peace, Steven”.’

It was during the 2023 Marathon that Dave saw, as he has time and time again, just how much people ‘really genuinely care’.

Dave ran into Andy, who was also running for Samaritans after losing his girlfriend to suicide in 2016. Dave needed help because he was feeling so emotional.

He speaks about that interaction with Andy: ‘He said, “Dave, I’m going to get you to the line”. And he stayed with me the whole way. We laughed, we cried and we hoped.

‘I got there and it was just a great moment in my life.’

This year, running with his daughter, Dave will be just as emotional.

‘Steven used to come and watch me run,’ says Dave, smiling. ‘He’d always stand at mile 24, near Temple. Isabella and I were saying this year Steven will be there, so we’ll be high fiving him as we go by, like I always did.’

You can donate to Dave’s fundraising for Samaritans here.

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