ANGELA WALLS was the celebrant – the preferred term, though sometimes it seems pretty paradoxical – at Sam Gordon’s funeral last month.

She’s 62, had been a police officer, worked in prisons with the probation service and for ten years was an advocate, chiefly a voice for those with mental health issues.

None of it prepared her for Sam’s funeral. “It hit me between the eyes, left me reeling, affected me far more than ever I expected it to,” she recalls. “When I came out of the crematorium I had to take a very deep breath. I’d never done a suicide before.”

Sam, about whom the Backtrack column has written at length, was just 30 when he hanged himself in the early hours of the day that the clocks went forward.

“I offered my life to God if only they could be put back,” his dad, Jon, told a thronged funeral gathering at Consett Rugby Club.

Sam was one of 84 men under 45 who in an average week take their own lives, the biggest single cause of death in that age group. Seventy five per cent of all suicides are male.

His death almost coincided with a Coronation Street storyline about factory owner Aidan’s suicide and the resultant desperate emotions of family and friends. “It seems to have been done quite well,” says Angela.

Now she has embarked upon a mission to raise awareness of the issues and funds for Project 84, a campaign launched in March which helps tackle them.

Its watchword aims to address a perceived macho culture: “It’s OK not to be OK.” A related petition calls for a minister with responsibility for suicide prevention and bereavement support.

For 84 days at 8.40am, Angela – self-styled couch potato – will leave her home in Chester-le-Street to walk to the local leisure centre. On May 17, exactly a month after the funeral, she swam one length. Each day the number will increase. On the 84th day she’ll swim 84 lengths.

She has two daughters, in their 30s. “When something like that happens you want to hug them, to tell them you love them. I guess it’s harder for a man to say that to his sons.

“The swim’s quite challenging for me, but I knew almost immediately after the funeral that I had to do something,” she says. “I’m not a sporty person at all, even nicked out of PE at school, certainly couldn’t run marathons or anything like that. I felt that I had to do something.”

SAM GORDON. smashing kid of loving parents, was Tow Law Town’s mascot in 1998, when the hill top football club improbably reached the FA Vase final at Wembley. Initially denied his dream by FA red tape, he was given the go-ahead to lead out the team after direct intervention by FA chief executive Graham Kelly.

He became a goalkeeper, played for Middlesbrough under-15s, won a sports scholarship to an American university and after returning to the UK played football for Tow Law and rugby for Consett.

Always, but always, he seemed to have a smile on his face.

After his death, rugby club colleagues themselves made immediate contact with CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably, which works to address male suicides and directs Project 84.

Its website talks of challenging a society that prevents men from seeking help when they need it. “We believe there is a cultural barrier,” it says.

“Men are expected to be in command at all times. Failure to be seen as such equates to weakness and loss of masculinity.”

Project 84 is spearheaded by 84 individual statues lined along the roof edge of ITN buildings on the South Bank in London. “It’s the old, old thing,” says Angela. “Big boys don’t cry.”

SHE’S been a professional celebrant – not just at funerals, but at naming ceremonies, weddings, memorials and other non-legal occasions – since September 2016. She’d been caught short, she admits, by the raising of the state pension age.

“The government kept moving the goalposts. I was talking to an aunt and said I needed to be creative about making some money. She recalled that I’d spoken at the funeral of another aunt and suggested I go on a celebrants’ course. It immediately seemed right.”

She’s an “independent”, not a humanist celebrant. Her ceremonies may be non-religious or have religious and spiritual content. “Humanists have their own belief, which basically is non-belief, they won’t accept prayers and hymns at funerals.

“So far as I’m concerned if people want religion they can have it. It’s still a life that is being celebrated, not a death. In Sam’s case it was acknowledging his decision, a decision that had a massive affect on so many people.”

Most will have attended funerals, in church and elsewhere, which have seemed little more than an “insert name here” exercise. Sensibly, Angela declines to discuss them.

“I don’t ever want it to be a conveyor belt situation, that isn’t how I see myself at all. Listening skills are a big part of it; it’s an absolute privilege to be invited into people’s lives at such times.

“I have perhaps a level of maturity, certainly experience of working in difficult circumstances. I try to paint a picture of the dead person, to reflect their character, to use their own words – but there’s nothing so emotional as a young man being carried into a funeral by his team mates.

“People say that they don’t know how they do it, but it isn’t my grief and it isn’t my loss. I’m just there to try to support others

“In the prison they used to say that people didn’t intend to die for ever, just for a short time. I never forgot that one.”

WE meet over coffee at a cafe in Chester-le-Street, talk funerals. Earlier that day she’d led her first biker’s funeral.

Her own is planned and paid for – “I don’t want my kids to have the worry of it” – though the chosen music stays secret. The swims will provide a daily reminder of Sam’s.

“I don’t see myself as any sort of expert, but clearly there’s a tremendous challenge there. I know that women find time to talk to each other about their problems and you can almost see the processing going on.

“I don’t know if the same thing applies to men, though sport is the perfect arena to highlight it. The guys at Consett Rugby Club have been wonderful.

“I’ve already been inspired by people’s generosity, there are a lot of very good folk about. It’ll work if in the future there’s even one fewer funeral like Sam’s.”

n On-line donations towards Angela’s efforts can be made via justgiving.com/fundraising/angela-walls1. The Campaign Against Living Miserably, founded in 2006, can be found at thecalmzone.net