How David Doughty, of Brandon, is aiming to spread positivity, enjoy life and help hedgehogs in 2024

At the start of a new year, one Brandon man is aiming to continuing spreading positivity and doing his best to help at-risk hedgehogs in 2024.

David Doughty had a busy 2023, seeing the publication of his first children’s book and launching an organisation to help support a vulnerable species close to his heart.

But the journey to where he is now started years ago, when David lost his parents, step-father and two friends. He said the bereavements ‘made me realise how precious and short life is’.

And with his children by then at university, David started to question what he wanted from life.

“I thought about how I had always like wildlife and thought I should work in it in some way and that I should put my energy into helping one kind of animal,” he said.

“I’d been learning about hedgehogs and I thought ‘that’s the creature I am going to do something about’.”

So David made a robotic hedgehog for the conservation stall he worked from within his new role promoting the RSPB’s work.

“That robotic hedgehog always got people interested – my boss named him ‘Robo Hog’,” said David.

“That’s when I thought maybe there was a story about this robotic hedgehog. But although my mind was working on ideas, then covid hit, I moved to a different town where I didn’t know a soul and the idea went on the backburner.”

With the onset of the pandemic, David found the stark contrast between his history living within a busy household to living alone in a strange town a difficult adjustment.

“I felt the reality of what loneliness is and I found it extremely hard,” he said. “But I found focussing on wildlife helped me.”

But then David was diagnosed with cancer.

“I felt like I had been pushed to the ground and I was being beaten. I had never felt so low,” said David, whose initial treatment involved five weeks of radiotherapy.

Keen to make the experience ‘in some way cheerful’, David started to dress up in costumes for his Friday treatments at hospital – whether Elvis, Batman or Spiderman.

“It gave me a lift – and other patients,” he said. “It helped me to try to stay cheerful.”

After the radiotherapy David had three operations and spent weeks in a London hospital, when he felt ‘far from Haverhill, the town I grew up in’.

“That loneliness really hit again and because of the pandemic there were no visitors. I started to report about my situation on Facebook and tried to find humour in life in hospital. The Facebook community became my partner in life and I got a lot back,” said David.

“People were starting to connect with me and were saying how much I was helping them. I was contacted by people going through diagnosis themselves or some people I hadn’t seen for 30 years. They were saying my posts were helping them.

“I realised the power of positivity and that I had to carry on after I left hospital. So I did.”

Through his Facebook profile David Happy-Dave Doughty, he started to share videos spreading his message of positivity, love of wildlife and humourous take on life events.

“I might be cooking, or singing, or a lot of it is nature-based when I film places I go and creatures I’ve seen,” said David. “I wanted my page to be a little respite from some of the bad news we hear – and it helps me to keep positive.”

But at the beginning of 2023, David realised he still hadn’t done anything about writing his book: “I thought, ‘this is the year I am going to write my book and help to educate children about what they can do to help wildlife’.”

So David wrote Robo Hog – A new superhero for nature, worked with illustrator Gary Theobald on the book’s illustrations and published the book, with hundreds of copies sold within weeks of its release.

And now, having fund-raised for a national conservation charity, David is launching his own registered organisation to help one of the UK’s at-risk species.

SOS Hedgehogs – www.soshedgehogs.org – aims to raise funds for local hedgehog rescue centres across the UK and to raise awareness of how people can help them in their own gardens and local area.

Meanwhile, David performs shows as Elvis and the Rat Pack, with any proceeds going SOS Hedgehogs and those funds then donated to the small hedgehog rescue centres operating up and down the country.

“I have put my life savings into starting up SOS Hedgehogs because it means a lot to me and I want to be able to help. Hopefully I will be able to donate more to help those at the frontline of rescuing hedgehogs,” said David.

“But ultimately I now just do my best to enjoy myself – I do things that I enjoy and that is the secret to having a good life. Life is for enjoying.”