Paul Gordon

After interviewing many doctors, I have concluded that there are three reasons they are more likely to recommend an oopherectomy than a mastectomy. First, it is because they are men, usually, and they have been taught by men – always – and work in male-dominated institutions. They believe breasts are essential to femininity and the suggestion of removing them is an insult at best. Second, it is because doctors tend to confuse the surgery itself with its consequences: an oopherectomy is a quick and easy surgery with a short recovery time, while a mastectomy with reconstruction is the opposite. The third culprit is the compartmentalisation of medicine: cancer specialists think only about lowering the risk of cancer – and not about the rising risk of heart disease, stroke, or depression

Great African-American stars who can command major theatre and film roles in successful international projects are not uncommon: James Earl Jones, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Whoopi Goldberg and Jamie Foxx, to name just a few. We on the other side of the Atlantic are confined by our smaller industry, it’s true, and many actors of whatever colour have found success in the US that had eluded them here. But ifChiwetel Ejiofor, Sophie Okonedo, David Harewood, Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Idris Elba had to leave these shores to make their name, then surely something must not be right about the UK’s distribution of roles.

Finally, it cannot be a coincidence that we had a year of great period dramas and a dearth of black talent represented in the subsequent awards. As I know from my own experience, I may have the skill and the training to wield, say, a Brontë hero’s finely turned phrases, but it’ll be a cold day in hell when I’m even in the room for the Mr Darcy auditions.

The UK, he says, is “one of the clearest expressions of how austerity kills”. Suicides were falling in this country before the recession, he notes. Then, coinciding with a surge in unemployment, they spiked in 2008 and 2009. As unemployment dipped again in 2009 and 2010, so too did suicides. But since the election and the coalition government’s introduction of austerity measures – and particularly cuts in public sector jobs across the country – suicides are back.

Ministers seem unwilling to address the increase in suicides, arguing it is too early to conclude anything from the data. Stuckler points out that this is because the Department of Health prefers to use three-year rolling averages that even out annual fluctuations. But based on the actual data, he is in no doubt. “We’ve seen a second wave – of austerity suicides,” he says. “And they’ve been concentrated in the north and north-east, places like Yorkshire and Humber, with large rises in unemployment. Whereas London … We’re now seeing polarisation across the UK in mental-health issues.”