By Donna Ferguson, Photo: Kirill Kudryavstev/AFP/Getty Images, The Guardian, March 13, 2022
It was freezing cold the day Neil Laybourn saw a man in a T-shirt sitting on a high ledge on Waterloo Bridge and made a split-second decision that would change both their lives for ever. “It’s hard to pin down what it was that made me stop… but it would have played on my mind if I hadn’t,” he said. “That’s not how you live your life is it? You don’t just walk past when you see someone in need.”
On that January morning in London’s rush hour, hundreds of other people were doing exactly that. But Laybourn didn’t and – it turned out the man, Jonny Benjamin, was contemplating suicide. Six years later he would launch a campaign to find and thank Laybourn for persuading him down off that ledge. The two of them now give talks on mental health issues and suicide prevention together.
Looking back now on that day, Laybourn says: “It’s made me much more aware of how important it is to put the amount of kindness you have in you, out into the world.”
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