Virgil – The Man's Guide

Every so often you’ll be with friends, colleagues, family, or those random barflies at the pub. Someone will pipe up and ask, “Which famous people would you have round for dinner?”

Or, in my case, it’s normally, “Which five famous people would you have a drink with?”

After I name a few fairly peculiar footballers who made a brief appearance in Scotland, I always have one name left.

Louis fucking Theroux.

I’m not sure how old I was when Louis first came into my orbit. I don’t even know which documentary I watched first. But for a working-class Scottish lad, he was someone I probably shouldn’t have immediately admired. He’s well educated, middle class, eloquently spoken, and carries himself like nobody I had ever met. But Louis Theroux made me understand the power of listening and asking the right questions at the right time. A man who could make anyone feel uncomfortable and defensive by saying absolutely nothing. The ability to turn a lens on people who knew, deep down, they were doing or believing something wrong for profit or power. Louis showed me—and the world—that to make a meaningful point, you don’t have to be the loudest man in the room.

The modern man?

This blog is very much in its infancy, and one of the reasons I decided to start it was the struggle men are having with cultural identity. The world has changed dramatically for men—but not in the negative way the manosphere pretends it has.

Whether I believe these boys who pump out hours of hate speech on social media are doing it purely for profit, or whether they genuinely believe it, is irrelevant. The fact that we, as a society, have created these platforms and allowed it to happen is a worry in itself. My views on the entire social networking phenomenon aren’t relevant in this post, but these people are being called influencers—and that’s an us problem.

The world I see for men now is much more open and forthcoming about the struggles we all face. It’s true we all have that hunter-gatherer instinct, which isn’t really needed in 2026. And that feeling of not being needed sits right at the core. It’s something men have struggled with since the dawn of time, but here and now, we deal with it much better.

I myself am part of a men’s mental health group—a safe place for men to talk about the stress of navigating life. The fear of not being good enough, or not being held in high enough regard to meet their own father’s approval. We, as men, are getting better at being kind to each other. The millennial generation is the most emotionally open I’ve known—giving ourselves and each other the confidence to be who we want to be, to speak openly about our struggles and our happiness, to hug our children and share our feelings with them. That is what the modern man is—not this red-pill drivel that’s a cancer seeping into the next generation’s “For You” page. Being a man is about being emotionally aware of yourself and the people around you.

I believe that men need to be around other men—to have safe spaces where we can spend time together, just as women need space together too. Men and women are genetically different, and some things we can only truly understand and work through in our own groups—and that’s fucking OK. The dream of this blog is to be exactly that: a place men can come to read about the things men like, think about, or worry about. To get another man’s perspective on the little things that help us along the road.

Louis Theroux has held a mirror up to the boys who will undo all the good work being done for men struggling around the world. Now let’s put down that mirror and stop giving them the attention they so desperately crave.

Go and hug your dad, brother, son—and most definitely your mates. Tell them you fucking love them for being who they are. Then, most importantly, look into your own mirror and tell yourself you are enough—and that you’re only going to get better.

Men’s mental health support:

• https://www.menmatterscotland.org/ – Men Matter Scotland peer support charity 

• https://mindthemen.co.uk/ – Mind the Men peer support group 

• https://andysmanclub.co.uk/ – Andy’s Man Club (UK‑wide men’s support groups) 

• https://www.brothersinarmsscotland.co.uk/ – Brothers in Arms digital wellbeing support 

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathing_Space_%28organisation%29 – Breathing Space counselling and helpline (Scotland) 

• https://www.menshealthforum.org.uk/scotland – Men’s Health Forum (covers Scotland as part of UK forum)