Ryan Thomas
Conversations about men’s mental health still falter inside organisations. The audiences who most need to hear them, sales floors, operations teams, late-career managers, tend to be the audiences least reached by formal wellbeing programmes. Reaching them requires a voice they already trust before the topic begins.
Ryan Thomas is a British actor, television presenter and CALM ambassador who hosts corporate events and speaks publicly about men’s mental health.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Ryan Thomas
- Recognition that opens a room. Sixteen years on Coronation Street, a Celebrity Big Brother win and a Dancing on Ice title give Thomas an audience-warmth most corporate hosts cannot manufacture.
- A credible voice on men’s mental health. His sustained work with CALM, including the ten-marathons-in-ten-days fundraiser, places him in the small group of UK television figures who speak about suicide prevention with substance.
- Hosting craft built on live television. Awards, gala dinners, internal recognition events and panel facilitation are his primary booking categories, and he can move between scripted hosting and unscripted audience interaction without losing pace.
- Cross-generational reach inside a UK workforce. Coronation Street and reality-format wins give him recognition across age brackets that a single-demographic celebrity rarely matches.
Biography highlights
- Played Jason Grimshaw in Coronation Street from 2000 to 2016, returning to the role in 2025
- Winner of Celebrity Big Brother (2018) and ITV’s Dancing on Ice (2024)
- Ambassador for CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably, a UK suicide prevention charity
- Walked ten marathons in ten days in 2021 to fundraise for CALM
- Co-host of the Mancs on the Mic podcast with brothers Adam and Scott Thomas
- Appeared on Celebrity Island with Bear Grylls (2017) and Celebrity MasterChef (2022)
Biography
Men’s mental health remains one of the most stubborn challenges inside UK organisations. Suicide is still the largest cause of death for men under fifty in the country, and the workforce demographics most affected, men in trade, sales, operations and middle management, are the hardest to reach with formal wellbeing programmes. CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably, works directly on that audience, and Ryan Thomas has been one of its most visible ambassadors.
Thomas reached that audience through television, not through advocacy. He played Jason Grimshaw on Coronation Street for sixteen years, then won Celebrity Big Brother in 2018 and Dancing on Ice in 2024. The Coronation Street audience is the same demographic CALM is trying to reach, and his standing inside it gives him a credibility on the subject that policy-led speakers cannot easily replicate.
In 2021 he walked ten marathons in ten days for the charity, a fundraising effort that reframed his public profile from soap actor to active campaigner. He co-hosts the Mancs on the Mic podcast with his brothers Adam and Scott, which has built a parallel audience inside the same demographic.
For corporate clients, Thomas is most commonly booked as a host, awards presenter or after-dinner speaker, with the mental health content available as a substantive secondary anchor when the brief calls for it. Buyers commission him because the room recognises him before he opens his mouth, and because he can carry a conversation about suicide prevention without flattening it.
Key speaking topics
- Men’s mental health and suicide prevention
- CALM advocacy and the male workplace
- Event hosting, awards presenting and MC work
- Resilience and reinvention in a public career
- Television, reality formats and public profile
- Brotherhood, family and the Mancs on the Mic podcast
Ideal for
- Internal recognition events, awards dinners and conference plenaries seeking a recognised UK host
- HR, wellbeing and EAP leads commissioning men’s mental health content for predominantly male workforces
- Charity galas and fundraising events with a CALM, suicide prevention or men’s health angle
- Sales, trade and operations audiences where a soap-and-reality television profile lands harder than a policy speaker
Audience outcomes
- A live conversation about men’s mental health that lands with audiences usually closed to the subject
- Permission to talk about suicide prevention at work, anchored by a recognisable advocate
- A confident, paced host or MC presence across awards, recognition and gala formats
- A first-hand account of the CALM ten marathons fundraiser and what motivated it