Table of contents for 10/7/2024 in The Big Issue

There is a new John Le Carré novel coming. This is cause for much excitement and celebration. It’s not ACTUALLY written by Le Carré. That would be incredible, considering the great man died in 2020. But, in the manner of reimaginings of the work of dead writers, mostly, genre writers – new James Bond adventures, Mr Men books – it is delivered in the style of Le Carré. Actually, this goes further. It is an attempt not just to ape his voice but to be his voice. The book is by Nick Harkaway. As well as being a celebrated author himself, Harkaway has more right than most to stake a claim on Le Carré’s legacy. He is Le Carré’s son, and he grew up, he writes in the introduction, with…

COVER FEATURE “Lead the way, André, lead the way. And you get the readies, don’t ya?” the actor says to Big Issue vendor André Rostant as they walk along Charing Cross Road in Central London. Most people passing by are paying little heed to the two men in matching red tabards as they arrive at their pitch. But one young woman does a double, triple and quadruple take. “Oh my god, it is him!” A few seconds later, Dyer makes his first sale of the morning. Dyer, who stars in Rivals, the upcoming Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s skewering of social class and the media in the 1980s, is selling the Big Issue magazine for the first time. It’s an enlightening experience. Here he is, one of the most recognisable…

At 16, I just loved music. I always sang. Anywhere I could get to sing, I would sing. We lived in a very rural part of Ireland, so there was lots of traditional music and ceilidhs. We used to go to them all the time. There was a great sense of community and whatever was going on, everybody was involved. Every weekend there was music at a hotel here [in Dungloe] called Ostan na Rosann. It was a great gathering place and there was a local group called The Murray Family who would get people up to sing with them. Everyone went. I would get up and that was the main place I would sing. I was also in the church choir, so there was singing everywhere. At home, we…

Back then, noses had been made illegal. Nor were mouths permitted. Everyone wore a mask. Looking out of a window at those people keeping their distances it was very clear their faces had been censured. As if these were only partial humans that walked about beyond our homes. Look at all those half-heads. The masks in theatre, in Commedia dell’arte say, generally have the other half of the face concealed. What strange piece of theatre then was everyone engaged in? The world was closed. We couldn’t see anyone, go anywhere. Theatre then, of course would be especially dangerous. Live entertainment – alive entertainment – was dead, what we saw on our screens was old. Nothing was now any more, nothing was fresh. The act of putting on a play for…

CULTURE INTERVIEW In 2023, it was reported that there were 4,000 sightings of mythical beasts across the UK. Something is out there. It may not be actual big cats, demon dogs, shy monsters or other apparitions, but a desire to reconnect to the more mysterious side of life and what it truly means to be British. Charlie Cooper, co-writer and star of This Country (alongside his sister Daisy May), investigates the phenomena in new documentary series Charlie Cooper’s Myth Country. BIG ISSUE: You have a self-confessed obsession with British folklore. Where did that come from? CHARLIE COOPER: I think it’s one of those things I’ve probably always had but was slightly unaware of having. I mean, I grew up in the countryside, and a bit like This Country you…

EXCLUSIVE Catchphrase star Stephen Mulhern promises to end his tenants’ damp and mould nightmare after Big Issue says what we see By Liam GeraghtyBig Issue Deputy Digital Editor Tenants of television star Stephen Mulhern will have their two-year damp and mould nightmare come to an end – thanks to Big Issue. Catchphrase frontman Mulhern is one of the UK’s most popular television presenters. But away from the small screen he has amassed a £4 million property empire. One of his tenants – who wished to remain anonymous – contacted Big Issue out of desperation after efforts to fix damp and mould in their Leicester bungalow fell on deaf ears. The tenant, a key worker during the Covid pandemic, said the situation had damaged their physical and mental health and left…

I had a déjà vu feeling last Tuesday when in a room with a flip-chart trying to define the upcoming MOPPAC – Ministry of Poverty Prevention and Cure. Déjà vu in the sense that I had been there countless times before, most memorably in 1991 when Phil Ryan – the first person I took on to help me launch The Big Issue – and I imagined what it would look like; the flipchart being the most useful piece of kit. This time though we are seeking to sharpen the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s mind about lifting the enormous weight of poverty off the NHS’s back. Reducing the 50% of people suffering food poverty who fill the beds and surgeries with their poverty-related ailments. By investing in poverty prevention and cure…

Sophie Willan’s got decorators in. The 36-year-old writer, actor and comedian has recently bought her first house and apologises over Zoom as she calls out: “Hiya Pete, I’m in ’ere, do you need me? There’s more coffee if you need it. And milk. Help yourself to food.” Willan grew up in and out of the care system. She has used these experiences as material for stand-up routines, theatre productions and, most recently, in her multi-Bafta Award-winning BBC comedy, Alma’s Not Normal. “I don’t know about you,” she says, referencing the fact I was also in care, “but a lot of ‘care experienced people’ are people-pleasers. Because you’re literally taught if you don’t keep these people [foster carers] happy, you are not going to be loved.” Many within the community, including…

Can a concert change your life? Yes it can. My first gig was to see a band called Northside (who I thought were the next big thing in 1991 but turned out to be also-rans of indie’s Madchester era). It was at the Town And Country Club in Kentish Town. I was 16. My mates and I had just finished our GCSEs and this was how we chose to celebrate. We guzzled numerous cans of warm lager on the underground, which is why my memories of the concert are a blur. The main thing I recall is my mate Josh throwing up on a bouncer’s shoes, resulting in him being slung out. He waited outside the venue until the gig was over, whereupon he lobbed a bag of hot chips…

SPECIAL REPORT Law firms are racking up significant debts while taking on legal aid work for asylum cases – all thanks to a crisis in the legal aid system. As part of our investigation into the pressures on the system, solicitors working with asylum seekers told the Big Issue of burnout, impossible finances and human suffering as vast numbers are turned away without representation, unable to find a solicitor. With the government mulling a decision on whether to grant a long-called-for increase in funding for asylum legal aid, lawyers explained exactly how the system has broken down, how it harms asylum seekers – and how it costs the taxpayer more in the long run. Stagnant rates mean firms cannot afford to take on legal aid Lawyers working on initial asylum…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Seek justice I am prompted to respond to Liam Geraghty’s article [Issue 1631, 02-08 September] and subsequent correspondence concerning housing association accommodation provided with no fixtures, fittings or floor coverings. The small national charity Housing Justice, for which I am a project adviser for its work in Wales, runs a service called Citadel which addresses this very problem. Running for several years in Wales, it is shortly to be launched in London, Bristol, Cornwall, Hastings and Sheffield. Citadel is a volunteer-led service to help find and sustain a tenancy and establish a home, starting with support for receiving benefits, welfare rights and appointments. It can then include personal practical assistance from…

The British-Palestinian novelist Isabella Hammad’s latest, radiant work Recognising the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative is a clear-eyed meditation on myth, confrontation and the Palestinian struggle for liberation. Hammad’s major, insightful essay consists of a lecture that she gave in honour of Edward W Said at Columbia University on 28 September 2023. Her text explores the radical power of reading in the face of oppressive regimes, given how “fiction uniquely deals in subjectivities”, attending to Aristotle’s notion of anagnorisis. This means a “turning point”, where “the moment when the truth of a matter dawns on a character”. As Hammad exacts, “denial is based on a kind of knowing. A wilful turning from devastating knowledge, perhaps, out of fear.” Anagnorisis then becomes a paradigm to recognise the ways in which the…

There is something highly seductive about the idea that we all have a soulmate. The problem is that there could be a million obstacles standing between you and your beloved. Maybe they live on another continent, or work on a nuclear submarine or are already married to an atypically moral billionaire. To invest everything in the hope that there is one true love for you out there is to risk stepping on a cosmic banana peel. Timestalker – the eccentric new film from writer, director and star Alice Lowe – embraces the possibilities of that banana peel, finding the farce in dreamy, high-minded romance. As the title suggests, it also turbocharges the idea by adding some Doctor Who time-travel energy. Imagine two eternal souls, destined to be entwined, reincarnating through…

Ife Ogunjobi was 10 when he first picked up the trumpet. It was love at first note – but his neighbours were less impressed. “I was a kid, and my mum took me to a performance of Hugh Masekela, a great South Africa trumpet player who has sadly since passed away,” he tells Big Issue. “After that concert, I was like to my mum, ‘Yeah, I really want to play trumpet.’ I got one, I started practising at home. All the neighbours were just losing their minds through the wall.” Those early months of ear-splitting practice paid off. Ogunjobi is one fifth of the award-winning Ezra Collective, a London-based jazz quintet known for blending jazz with Afrobeat, hip-hop and reggae influences. Their 2022 second album Where I’m Meant to Be…