It's a guy thing Men are depressed, and that's official. The Royal College of Physicians has reported that men feel bad about work or the lack of it, about relationships and children. So, if mental health matters more than machismo, what are they doing to help themselves?

Gary Roe runs me through his chores. `After my wife and daughter leave the house at nine, I get the washing on the go,' he says. `I've got it sussed. You've got your whites, you've got your jeans. Whites take longest to wash, so it's whites in first. Then I dust, clean, vacuum and polish. Then it's whites out, next load into the washer and time to prepare lunch. My wife, that's Julie, comes home for her meal. Her factory is only a mile away and I have her sandwich ready. Then I dry, iron and change bedding until dinner. If I have time, I write poetry or read local history, about the Byrons and the Luddites . . . I'm hoping to write a book about them one day.' Gary Roe, 39, nickname `Gaz', is a six-foot, 16-stone, barrel-chested, Nottingham Forest-supporting ex-coalminer. He lives in a squeaky-clean pit-house in the village of Annesley, a few miles south of Mansfield in the Midlands, one of a long row of semi-detached, pebbledash houses, just six doors down from the home where he spent his childhood. For 22 years, before being made redundant in February last year, he worked 700 yards underground on the coal face, the most macho job on the mine. `You'd see us coming across the yard at the end of the day, black as soot. They called us `top men' because we had the most dangerous job and we earned the top money.' But now the rumble of compressors has given way to the domestic hum of the washing machine and Gary has become, as his wife bluntly describes him, `one hundred per cent pure housewife'. He cleans, washes, cooks and irons. `And whenever they give me hassle at work, he's the most supportive wife one could hope to have,' she adds. Gary rifles cheerfully through a thick file of rejection letters - applications for store detective, warehouse operative, refuse supervisor - and recounts his experience as a daffodil picker and telephone box cleaner (he could barely fit into the box, let alone wash it). `I've been trying to get a job, but if we could afford it I'd be happy to do this and pursue alternative interests the rest of my life,' he says.