To all my lovely friends! I am now almost FORTY years old,
and very happy to be alive. Please don’t get me birthday presents if you were planning to – I am very lucky to say there’s nothing material that I need that I don’t have. If you were going to get me something (and I hate the assumption that you were, so please accept this with lots of British mumbling and protestationsof I’m-awfully-sorry-to-even-suggest-it) please give whatever you would have spent on it to this amazing charity.

As some of you know my friend Tony Wilkinson drowned in
Jamaica saving his son, Jake, from drowning, nearly five years ago.

It turns out that children drown on that beach – and across
Jamaica – at a horrifying rate every year. It’s a toxic legacy of slavery, when people weren’t allowed to learn to swim, so there’s never been a culture of learning it. So Tony’s surviving family set up a charity called Likkle Swimmers, which is teaching Jamaican children to swim. It is saving a huge number of
their lives, and it will carry on saving lives forever – because they’ll teach their kids, who’ll teach their kids, and on and on. You can donate to Likkle Swimmers at this link marking my birthday here, every donation saves the lives of Jamaican kids.