the big issue 18 august 2014

E V E R Y M O N D A Y £ 2 . 5 0

Kate’s backBabooshka!SOUNDS OF LOVE, page 16

L O N D O NAugust 18-24, 2014 No.1116

A H A N D U P N O T A H A N D O U T

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THE BIG ISSUE / p3 / August 18-24, 2014

NIGEL, WHERE ARE THEY?

August 18-24, 2014No.1116

“KATE’S A CHATTY WORKING MUM PICKING UP CHEESE FLANS FROM THE SUPERMARKET” 16

A HAND UP NOT A HANDOUT: Big Issue vendors buy the magazine for £1.25 and sell it for £2.50, keeping £1.25 for each copy that they sell. All our vendors

receive training, sign a code of conduct and can be identified by their photo ID badges, which must be worn at all times on their pitch. The Big Issue was

set up in 1991 to provide homeless and vulnerably housed people with the opportunity to earn a legitimate income. Becoming housed is only the first step

on the journey away from the streets, so we allow vendors to continue selling the magazine once they have found accommodation. Through the Big Issue

Foundation, we also provide support to vendors looking to address the issues that led them to become homeless. The Big Issue Foundation is a charity

that relies primarily upon donations from the general public. To find out more about the Foundation’s work visit bigissue.org.uk.

If you have any comments please email me at:

[email protected] or tweet @pauldmcnamee

THE MIXPosted: your letters & tweets 4

The Big Picture 6

Samira Ahmed 9

My Week: Lloyd Langford 10

John Bird 13

Denis Lawson 15

FEATURESKate Bush 16

Reforming prisons 20

Rubbish collection 22

Vendorendum update 25

THE

ENLIGHTENMENTFilm & TV 28

Books 30

Music 32

What’s On 34

Puzzles & competition 43

Street Lights 44

My Pitch: Jack Richardson 46

Paul McNamee EDITOR

THE BIG ISSUE

JOURNALISM WORTH PAYING FOR

Do you have them? Are you hiding them under your bed or in the shed out the back? That’s it – they’re all in the shed, thousands of them, packed, like silent sardines.

Actually, that’s not true. They’re not there. They’re not anywhere. The vast tide of millions of Romanians and Bulgarians who we were warned were arriving to take us to hell in a handcart just haven’t come. On January 1, when EU movement restrictions were dropped, there were around 125,000 Romanians and Bulgarians working in the UK. Figures released last week said there were 132,000 (it’s worth noting that the reading of some stats puts this at 140,000 rising to 153,000 but that’s stats for you). Either way, Nigel Farage said there’d be 5,000 people a week coming for years. Nigel’s wrong – who’d have thought that of Nigel?

The vexed question of immigration won’t go away, though. On messageboards on most newspapers under fact-based pieces that illustrate just how wildly inaccurate stories about the arrival of the eastern menace have been,

lines. And while it’s xenophobic and unpleasant, it is illustrative of a feeling that is out there. Politicians, from Gordon Brown to David Cameron, who have pushed the British people for British jobs line, don’t help address or quell such thoughts. Though it’s interesting that John Major, the last Conservative leader to actually be able to form a majority government following a general election, praised the “guts and drive” of immigrants. He said they showed a “very Conservative instinct”. I’d argue that the instinct to reach up and try to make a better life is a human instinct free of party alignment, but that is a small point.

John Major is broadly right. We need people coming here to do jobs that Britons can’t or won’t. We also need to always extend a hand to those fleeing situations we can barely imagine. Address the issue of numbers, yes, but let’s stop the casual demonising of anybody from beyond Britain’s borders. It’s boneheaded and it’s this that will really take us

to hell in a handcart.

Editor of the Year 2013 (British Society of Magazine Editors)

readers still continue to gripe with the old “why do we need somany of these bloody foreigners coming overhere, taking our jobs”


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THE MIX

@hjrothery Just bought a Big Issue for the first time in ages – what persuaded me? The vendor talked about the magazine’s contents – which is unusual!

THE DOC GETS A FACELIFTI enjoyed Adrian Lobb’s interview with Malcolm Tucker and the glimpse it offered into Mr Tucker’s intentions for the newest Doctor [Cover feature, August 11-17]. Unfortunately I think Lobb was mistaken in describing the “budgets being stretched tighter than the Face of Boe”.

Surely he intended to say tighter than the face of Lady Cassandra – a character whose face is nothing more than stretched skin as a result of hundreds of surgeries to extend her life. The Face of Boe on the other hand, despite being millions (some say billions) of years old, is not stretched but wrinkled. If this “fan letter” seems a bit obsessive, I’m sure Mr Tucker would understand. All the best of luck to him in his new role.Chris Sampson, London

@bluemac79 @BigIssue Thoroughly enjoyed John Bird’s piece on #WW1 in latest issue. Germany as French & British Frankenstein so true

FIGHTING TALK“We had to stand and fight” the First World War, writes John Bird. I love that word “we”. It wasn’t you, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t John Bird, though no doubt he would have bravely marched off had he been alive

at the time. I am concerned, though, with the memory of those young men who didn’t want to fight or who realised that they didn’t want to fight when it was too late to get out of the military machine. They are all gone now but I talked to some of them when they were alive (including my grandfather, who as a teenager was given a white feather by a member of the ‘stand and fight’ brigade).

There was no democracy as we understand it; they had no votes and almost no choice. They would be threatened, abused and imprisoned if they refused to kill young German-speaking men who had been told precisely the same thing. If you want to know what it was like for the nonconformists, read DH Lawrence’s Kangaroo. If you want to know what it was like at the front, read about Harry Patch.Merryn Williams, Oxford

@lookingforcache @BigIssue got this from Lincoln only had £2.20 on me. The guy said it was ok. I came back with the rest later. Gd guy

A GOOD READRead with great interest the article on Bob the Cat in the July 14-20 issue. Why? Because my book group has just read A Street Cat Named Bob and for some of the group it was a revelation about life on the streets, and most importantly three members said they had never bought The Big Issue but will from now on!Mary Rensten, email

@MartinBarrow @BigIssue’s Vendorendum gives a voice to Scotland’s most disenfranchised ahead of next month’s vote. Could they swing the result?

#CELEBRATEYOURVENDORA huge thank you to my vendor – Donny at Green Park – who this morning gave me a gift to say thank you for being one of his regulars. What an act of generosity! He brings such a bright, friendly and open-hearted approach to what he does. I’ve thanked him in person and would love him to receive this public praise.Hazel Russo, email

@nickbroom @BigIssue great and friendly new vendor in #horsham – he’s always got a smile and a witty one-liner or gag at the ready! #makesmesmile

@mother_shipton Sat reading The @BigIssue I bought from my favourite vendor in #Salisbury yesterday; the happy guy in the Panama hat! #WorkingNotBegging :-)

Nice interview @BigIssue

– not sure why they needed to make me look

like a drag queen though?… oh well, all right!

@JLloydWebber

Write to: The Big Issue, Second Floor, 43 Bath St, Glasgow, G2 1HW

Email: [email protected]

Comment: bigissue.com

Follow: @bigissue

CHAT’S THE WAY TO DO ITOne of your reader’s emails in the last Big Issue [August 11-17] in your Comment of the Week section struck a chord. I used to be one of those people who would walk on by a Big Issue vendor every day to work until the day I stopped and spoke to Phil. Over the last 18 months my husband and I have really got to know Phil, and Reggie his

little black dog. We stop every day to have a chat and buy our Big Issue every Tuesday without fail. I prepare a pack lunch for Phil each day and I know this means a lot to him. If he is not on his pitch or unwell we do worry about him.

He always says good morning to everyone as they pass by, even if they do not buy a Big Issue. He will always ask how our day or weekend has been. It has been a pleasure to get to know Phil. I know he has a sweet tooth and also enjoys a good book to read. It is so frustrating to see so many people pass him by. I wish there was a way to make people care more. They will not hesitate to spend £2.50 on their morning coffee but if just 50 people a week gave up one cup of coffee this would have a significant impact on a Big Issue vendors like Phil. I have been actively promoting Phil and Reggie and The Big Issue with friends and colleagues at work to encourage more people to get to know them. Karen and Duncan Betts, email

COMMENT

OF THE WEEK

POSTED


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www.thecalmzone.net

CALM is a registered charity in England & Wales no 1110621 & Scotland no SC044347

KEEPING MEN ALIVE BY TALKING

MANDOWNNOUN. / ONE OF THE TWELVE MEN WHO TAKES

THEIR LIFE EVERY DAY IN THIS COUNTRY.

#MANDICTIONARY


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THE MIX

THE BIG

PICTURE

DARK LAND OF THE “DEAR LEADER” North and South Korea, 23.04.2014

SHROUDED IN SHADOWSAn International Space Station picture shows the Korean peninsula at night. The brightest area is South Korean capital Seoul, while the dark strip is North Korea, languishing in blackness as a result of the North’s lack of electrical infrastructure.

Pope Francis visited South Korea last week, home to 5.5 million Catholics – 11 per cent of the population. Speaking in English, he called for dialogue to replace “mutual recriminations, fruitless criticisms and displays of force” in the region.

North Korea launched three short-range rockets off its east coast shortly before the papal visit on Thursday, but denied any link to the event. A Pyongyang rocket scientist was reported as saying, “We have no interest at all in what [the Pope] is going to plot with the South Korean puppets.” North Korea has test-fired more rockets than usual this year.


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TOP 5FANTASTICAL BABY NAMESPeople really name their kids after Game of Thrones characters. Here are the most popular ones from 2013…

Phot

o: N

asa

ARYA

187 babies

KHALEESI

50

THEON

11

SANSA

5

DAENERYS

4

O1

O2

O3

O4

O5

After the Commonwealth Games, another cultural exchange took place in Glasgow last week. The International Network of Street Papers (INSP) celebrated its 20th

anniversary with editors, photographers, distributors and vendors from 46 street papers worldwide.

More than 90 delegates got together to share ideas at the conference, hosted by The Big Issue UK. Attending were representatives from 23 countries, from Austria to Taiwan. They took part in a lively programme of work-shops, presentations and talks, with Big Issue founder John Bird, editor Paul McNamee and CEO Jim Mullan leading events.

Street papers offer vendors the chance to connect with their community, as well as contribute to the publication and move away from begging to earn a legitimate income. Since The Big Issue’s foundation 23 years ago, the concept of the street paper continues to change the world, and discussions included innovative ideas on how to take the movement forward in the digital age.

The INSP supports more than 120 street paper projects – in 40 countries and 24 languages. It has helped 250,000 vendors improve their lives and has given hours of reading pleasure. The Big Issue sold more than 4.2 million copies last year, with each magazine sale earning vendors £1.25. Thanks for your support! O

THIS IDEA IS CHANGING THE WORLD

WHO RATES STREET PAPERS? WE DO…

Source: ONS


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The British Science Association is a registered charity: 212479 and SC039236

Hosted by In partnership with Part of

There is more to the Festival than just science…

Get your tickets now at www.britishsciencefestival.orgBritish Science Festival BritishSciFest #BSF14

manyFREEevents

Food waste

Future of cities

Jewellery design

Giant outdoor bubbles

Theatre, cabaret & comedy

Botany

Sex, maths & the brain

The Simpsons

Society and the media


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Blackwell’s bookshop in Oxford has three-and- a-half miles of books. It’s a wonderful place. The deputy manager told me how they staged Doctor Faustus in its stacks recently. Nearly 25 years

ago as a student, I was there for what turned out to be Salman Rushdie’s last public reading from The Satanic Verses. I was the only person to ask whether he feared his Muslim background meant he was going to be treated in a way no other writer would. Rushdie said no, and it’s highly probable he believed it at the time.

It felt like a singular madness. When I agreed a year ago to chair some discussions for the World Humanist Congress in Oxford, it was as a favour to the head of the British Humanist Association (BHA), who’d introduced me to the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But the weekend turned out to be a thought-provoking chance to connect what happened after that 1988 book reading to the global fight by humanists for a moral framework of human rights without religion.

Among more than 1000 delegates in Oxford I met Norwegians concerned at how they felt the Lutheran church had pushed to cement its state influence after the Anders Breivik massacre.

Exeter University professor Francesca Stavrakopou-lou described how some of her students, funded by American Christian fundamentalist organisations, waste hours of teaching time challenging her expert authority on the historical origins of Bible texts.

Babu Gogineni, a leading humanist campaigner in India against superstition, which is embedded in public Hindu life, recounted stories that made you laugh, such as embarrassing astrologers on national TV for their failed predictions but also incidents that made the audience sit in sombre silence – the regularity with which Dalit (untouchable) caste Hindus were harassed and tortured for “witchcraft” by landowners. Babu told me how the police stopped him boarding his flight to the conference and held him for just long enough to remind him that they

can make his life difficult. Leo Igwe from Nigeria has been beaten up for his relentless campaign against Christian witch hunters who starve and torture children. All these years after the murder of Victoria Climbié as a result of such beliefs, Leo pointed out that a prominent Nigerian witch hunter was set to come to London in a widely publicised visit.

Valentin Abgottspon, a school teacher from Switzerland, might not have faced any violence but his

fight to enforce the law protecting freedom of belief by taking down a crucifix in his classroom exposed the hypocrisy of a nation that likes to claim it is a bastion of human rights. His challenge to the Catholic Church and

its privileged support from the supposedly secular state authorities embodied the

biggest question of the congress:

After all, the congress was taking place as Yazidi minority

Iraqis were starving to death or being buried alive in the desert by

Islamic State (IS) fighters. So who better to ask than Rich-ard Dawkins, vice chairman of the BHA at the congress,

whose belief in logical thinking and his related provocative pro-

nouncements on Twitter have led to huge controversy? I put to him

Nobel prize-winning physicist Peter Higgs’ criticism – that it was a mistake to pick on moderate religious believers and alienate potential allies in the war against extremists.

Dawkins said watching the horrors of Islamic extremism, he did wonder if Christianity was a useful “bulwark” against it. But he also felt moderate faith leaders, by upholding core superstitions, ultimately made it possible for extremists to flourish.

In the Q&A one prominent ex-Muslim pulled an easy stunt by ripping up a paper homemade IS flag with a flourish, to great applause. Afterwards another ex-Muslim told me how one delegate had suggested to him that someone should invent an anti-Muslim “vaccine”. An isolated moment but revealing of human nature at a conference all about the danger of sweeping prejudices.

The conference theme, you see, was building a 21st century Enlightenment. Europeans during the 17th century one proved capable of advocating human rights while widely tolerating slavery, child labour and the subjugation of women as subhuman and the property of men. Today western leaders condemn IS while remain-ing politically close to the Gulf States from where much of their ideology and funding is believed to emanate. I bought a book in Blackwell’s before I left by the novelist and humanist EM Forster. That bloke who said: “Only connect!” O

Samira Ahmed is a columnist for The Big Issue. She is a

journalist and broadcaster. @SamiraAhmedUK

Photo: PA

THE MIX

COMMENT

MAKING THE CONNECTION TO 21ST CENTURY ENLIGHTENMENT

Does every case of religiousdiscrimination matterequally?Samira

Ahmed


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I’ve been griping about modern life in my show at the Fringe, so The Big Issue challenged me to 48 hours without technology. I put my laptop under my bed, let my phone die and smashed up the television (don’t worry, I’m renting a place for the Fringe). Then I gritted my teeth.

The first problem was the diary. Normally I would have got my schedule from alerts on a computer calendar. Instead I had to write everything on paper and remember it. I felt like a cut-price Samuel Pepys. Not contacting people was the hardest. I couldn’t confirm I was coming to extra gigs, so I had to turn up early. I couldn’t contact friends. In Edinburgh it was easy to bump into people I know – it might be harder in London. I was meeting a friend but he didn’t turn up, so I tried to ring him on a payphone. Yes, they do still exist and they smell really badly of piss. They’re dotted around the country, monuments to a forgotten age. Like smelly Stonehenges. I visited four but the coin slots were blocked and wires severed. I begged for a phone in a hotel reception but as my mate didn’t recognise the number he refused to pick up. No technology made me a sleuth: I found him by having an idea of a show he was going to and tracking him down. I wrote a letter to my girlfriend. I didn’t know where the Post Office was. Without Google I was wandering the streets figuring out where to buy a stamp.

MY WEEKNot having my phone encouraged me to live in the moment. If plans fell through I went along with other people. On Sunday I bumped into Tim Vine who always carries pub darts with him – not as a weapon, just because he really loves playing darts. I asked: “What shall we do?” And he said: “Darts!” Which I would never have arranged using my phone – it’s not something I’d have ever thought of doing. Tim is always thinking of darts. I’ve been coming up to the Fringe since 2002, when I was a new comedian doing open spots, getting five to 10 minutes where I could. Then I didn’t have a laptop but a Nokia 3210 with the snake game and a good battery life.

I’ve got a brother in Japan and Skype means we can talk. But technology can be a distraction. Though it brings people together it takes you away from the moment. When people film gigs they’re just making a digital note so they can put it on Facebook and show their friends.

It’s hardly the most taxing thing you can do but I thought no technology would be harder. I was tempted to do it for longer – when I turned my laptop back on I felt a bit downhearted. After the Fringe maybe I’ll turn off the phone at weekends. Make my plans, then just switch it off! O

LLOYDLANGFORDWe challenged the comedian to ditch technology. Could he cope?

“I HAD TO WRITE EVERYTHING ON PAPER AND REMEMBER IT. I FELT LIKE A CUT-PRICE SAMUEL PEPYS”

THE MIX

Illus

trat

ion:

Mile

s Co

le

Lloyd Langford: Old Fashioned is

at the Pleasance Jack Dome until

August 25. lloydlangford.com

INTERVIEW BY ROBBIE GRIFFITHS

REAS NS

TO BE

CHEERFUL

Big Issue busk

Music fans were treated to a busk by Feeder frontman Grant Nicholas, who teamed up with The Big Issue to help raise awareness of hardworking vendors.

Nicholas, who last week released his debut solo album Yorktown Heights, stopped by The Big Issue’s Cardiff office to play a 30-minute set to 100 fans on Queen Street. “I always love playing in Cardiff and always will,” said Nicholas.

“And I was glad to be able to team up with The Big Issue in Wales to help draw

attention to the great work that they do.”

Nicholas’ support follows our hugely successful UK tour with Passenger, the songwriter behind juggernaut hit Let Her Go, earlier this year.

Rugby winners!

Well done to Edinburgh Rugby pair Grayson Hart and Carl Bezuidenhout, who sold the most copies of The Big Issue during the Pro 12 side’s guest sell-off competition last week. Now they can tell their teammates they must try harder...


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STREET PAPERST H E R E A R E M O R E T H A N 1 0 0 A R O U N D T H E W O R L D . E V E R Y W E E K W E S H O W C A S E O N E .

RANDOMISER“YOU’VE FORGOTTEN

ONE THING – ME”

Edinburgh decorator Willie Sibbald won a £7m

Lottery jackpot and split the cash with mate Rab Layden. The two retired the next day.

‘WE ALWAYS AGREED THAT WE WOULD SHARE THE WINNINGS’

… of people with mental health

problems get no treatment at all, according to the new head of the

Royal College of Psychiatrists, Professor Simon

Wessely.

TWOTHIRDS

plastic bottle spoiled a Downton Abbey

promotional photo. The new Downton series is set in the

1920s…

Expenses claimed by Foreign Office minister Mark Simmonds in 2012/3, including his wife’s salary. He resigned last week, saying he couldn’t afford life in London with his £28,000 living allowance.

Screen siren Lauren Bacall’s words from The Big Sleep. She died last week aged 89.

THE MIX

AL MARGEN, ARGENTINAArgentina may have lost the World Cup final but one of the country’s street papers, Al Margen, still celebrated all things fútbol in their latest edition. Launched in 2004 and distributed in San Carlos de Bariloche, the bi-monthly magazine is sold by 20 vendors reaching 10,000 readers per edition.S

TR

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T-P

AP

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S.O

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Get real, says MAL MITCHELL. The Madagascan paradise depicted in DreamWorks films is a far cry from reality – and we need to help.

Its famous lemurs and other unique wildlife are apparently believed by some to be taken care of either directly by

David Attenborough or the BBC natural history unit. But the reality in Madagascar in terms of chronic deforestation, and the smuggling and slaughter of endangered species, goes from bad to worse.

Lemurs are now seen as our planet’s most endangered mammal group, with some 95 per cent of the 100-odd known species reckoned to be facing extinction. Madagascar is one of the poorest places on the planet. Despite the lush green image of Madagascar typically seen in the media, if it’s seen at all, the situation on the island is already critical.

What’s this got to do with us in Old Blighty? Well if a sense of shared humanity wasn’t enough, go back 300 years to a time when we’re laying down the foundations of Britain’s economic power, the time of transatlantic slave trading, and you’ll see abductions of Malagasy people to Barbados by the English. And while you need to go that far back to find plague in the British Isles, you can find bubonic as well as pneumonic plague among people in Madagascar today.

Things are bad. Like a candyfloss smoke screen, Madagascar is best known in the west for a cartoon film bearing its name but which has virtually nothing to do with it. How to address this critical situation? Raise awareness. While there’s still time for it to count. O

madagascar.co.uk

Get on your soapbox and tell us

about a campaign or issue you care

about and the change you want to

see. Email [email protected]

Tweet @BigIssue

SOAPBOX

HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY BUT NOT BEING HEARD? HERE’S YOUR PLATFORM...

‘HE MADE US LAUGH. HE MADE US CRY’

President Barack Obama, paying tribute to much-loved comedian and actor Robin Williams, who died aged

63 last week.

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Who was it who said that “even though the government does cause problems for the poor, it supports so many poor people that it should be forgiven for not always getting it all right?”.

No one. You don’t get that kind of thing said. The only people

who would say something near that is a member of the government defending governmental record. For instance, any government department that has cocked up over benefit provision would always declare that this was an oversight that was being looked into, and would be repaired on the morrow, if not earlier.

I see that there is a 350 per cent increase in people being punitively punished, as opposed to being told off by letter, for not keeping appointments with government departments to talk about their benefits or for job oppor-tunities. I saw the figure on the front page of The Independ-ent. Stark and hard-looking. What does it actually mean?

Are we or are we not committed to reforming the social security system so that instead of it being a millstone around someone’s neck it becomes an opportunity for social mobility? No! No, most of the people on the liberal side are against any form of reform because it shakes peo-ple out of their livelihood, causes pain and panic to people who have not had to face the job market for too long.

And on the right they want the whole superstructure, or most of it, swept away so that if you don’t work you don’t eat, and you certainly don’t live in prime real estate rent free. There might be one or two people who tend to see the whole of social security as a fraudulent short-changing of

THE MIX

COMMENT

people in need, and that the sooner you can get people out of the mire of dependency, the sooner you can get them to Oxbridge – there to join many others who can then get a job in a think tank.

I feel I am in a way describing a muddy field in which many people of differing takes on things are putting up a tent while others are taking it down, and others are saying it’s in the wrong place.

I wish we could reach a consen-sus but it does not seem likely. And because we don’t, the people caught in need in the summer of 2014 are the ones that suffer a cold future.

Next year there w ill be an election and if the ‘other lot’ get in, within a short space of time the

excoriating attacks by liberal papers will be directed at the successfully elected ‘other lot’. And the bitter betrayals of the British taxpayer by government, as witnessed by the right, will be underlined. In some ways editors could save

themselves a lot of money by reproducing the terrible exposés of the present government’s indifference

to the poor, or over-indulgence of them, again next year: but instead of Cameron, IDS and Osborne, substitute Miliband and his band.

So Miliband, if you are wise and successful next year, you better get practising the

argument that though you recognise there have been cock-ups with delivery, or you’ve given too many ‘handouts’, this is totally unacceptable and will be righted on the morrow, if not earlier. Practise the facial moves, the honesty, the integrity-loaded words.

–other than complain at governments for not making poor people more comfortable, or more uncomfortable, depending of which brief you take.

The final argument is yet to be had. The final reform is yet to be made. The final piece of legislation yet to be put into place; to at last free the people living dependently, to soar above their encouragers and detractors to some place where they can at last be themselves. And not controlled and fought over by people who would either be hard on them or be lovingly sympathetic to them. To be out of the thoughts of those who say “grow up” or those equally harshly saying “please don’t, and stay as you are”.

What a mire those who need our help find themselves in. They are the booty fought over daily, poisoning the debate and turning government into bluffing and lying and failing, when they should be governing.

Miliband, it may be your turn soon to square the circle.Although of course we could stand back and look at all

the poor rigging and unrigging of the tent of government in the midden field that takes up so much airtime in governmental and oppositional hours. We could think outside the chamber. O

MOVE PAST THE HEADLINES TO A BETTER PLACE

John Bird is the Founder and Editor in Chief of The Big Issue.

[email protected]

@johnbirdswords

And don’t worry about theliberal press or the vicious rightersbecause over the decades, through

their excoriations, they have changedlittle

John Bird


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LETTER TO MY

YOUNGER SELF

THE MIX

My 16-year-old self was very naïve. I was brought up in a small market town called Crieff, in Scotland, which is a gorgeous place, beautiful, and a great

place to have a childhood. We moved from Glasgow when I was three. When I was a teenager there were a few jukeboxes in town, so we were all into rock and roll. But you also had this amazing countryside to run about in.

I was quite skinny and seemed to have these big ears. When I look at old photos, they stuck out in an odd way and yet now they don’t – it’s usually the other way around.

I was five when I knew I wanted to perform. I was inspired by the movies – Singing in the Rain, people like Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, Jerry Lewis, Danny Kaye, those guys. I wanted to sing and dance.

I was quiet at school because I was bored to death. I was privately, I think, quite funny and ran with a bunch of guys who shared a sense of humour. But I wasn’t the class clown at all. So I was sort of charming and quiet and not any great trouble to any-body – except I wasn’t very good at school. They kept saying they were sure I was intel-ligent, and I was, but they couldn’t find it anywhere. But don’t get me started on that!

When I look back on my younger self, I like him a lot. He is sensitive and I have a

Denis Lawson’s book The Actor and the Camera

is out now in paperback. New Tricks is on BBC

One, Mondays at 9pm.

INTERVIEW BY ADRIAN LOBB

Photo: Rex Features

great affection for him. My main impression is of being quite insecure but knowing what I was going to do without having any clue how to do it. I still haven’t worked that one out because making the decision to be a performer from my background was curious.

I would tell my younger self not to worry about his love life. It will all work out in the end. Just hang on in there. I think we all need that advice.

All actors have to be prepared for rejec-tion. And when I was younger, it was tough not getting a role you were up for. When you go for an audition you have to commit your-self fully and really see yourself in the role. So it was hard when they came back with a no. You do develop a much thicker skin. If one job doesn’t work out, fine, what’s next?

Acting is a curiously transient profes-sion. You have to make sure you have good friends around you. This was very hard at the beginning. You do jobs, meet other actors and because of the nature of what we do – playing off each other emotionally – become very connected very quickly. But I used to finish a job and couldn’t understand why the people would never get in touch and I wouldn’t see them for a year. Along the way you make certain friends that stay with you and they are very important. Make sure you hold onto those friends for the long term.

We imagine actors to be extrovert but we are often quiet and shy. Being an actor can be an escape from life in general – you can hide behind someone else. And you know what? It works very well, thank you very much.

If I could go back to one day it would be the day I got into drama school. It was also the morning of my sister’s wedding. I had been for my second audition at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow (the first was my first bit of rejection), so I was waiting for this envelope. I took it into the bathroom, locked the door, opened it and had got in. I came out and my mother, father and sister were all there and so thrilled for me. A few minutes later, everybody left and I just fell on the floor in complete hysterics – it was wonderful. And then my sister got married. So it was a bit of a day, that one. A real life changer. O

DENIS LAWSONActor and local hero

AGED 66“THE LOVE LIFE WILL WORK OUT IN THE END... JUST HANG ON IN THERE. I THINK WE ALL NEED THAT ADVICE”

John F Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas / A tsunami in Pakistan and Bangladesh kills 22,000 / The Great Train Robbery takes place in Buckinghamshire / Martin Luther King Jr delivers his “I have a dream” speech

More Younger Self:

No-longer Christian

actor Eddie Marsan

is born again and

again… bigissue.com

IN 1963, THE YEAR DENIS LAWSON TURNS 16…


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She ’s got ever y t h i ng : she ’s personable, beautiful, talented and yet she has a layer on top of that of sheer originality. She’s a one-off. Her work is magical. I love her voice, I love her piano-playing, I love her com-position and ideas. Her records ta ke you to a nother place. My favourite album of recent

times is A Sky of Honey, the second disc on Aerial, which has birdsong all the way through, tracking a day with birdsong. I love the song on there, Somewhere In Between, it works as a piece of pop music but it’s in the middle of this concept album. There’s no one else in the whole world who would have thought of doing this. 50 Words for Snow, those long songs, just her at the piano; she does exactly what she wants to do and has the confidence to carry it through.

From a very early age she could make the music industry bend to her will, whereas the other way around was the norm. She then took time off to be a mother to her son, even though she was kind of working but not at any particularly great rate in those years.

Kate Bush is that old-fashioned thing, she’s an artist – she creates this music and a by-product is people want to know about her personal life. And she doesn’t want to tell them. She doesn’t want to put it on Facebook, it’s her private life. What she prizes over all else is being able to live a normal life with her family.

The thing I found most surprising when I met her was that she was completely normal, she’s a really friendly, chatty, welcoming, working mum. The first time I went to her house she hadn’t had time to make any food so she’s got this cheese f lan from the supermarket, she hadn’t made any particular effort in what she was wearing, she was just going about her day and that day happened to include me as well as taking her son Bertie to school and whatever else she was doing.

She’s absolutely not crazy (despite tabloid clichés). It’s not for me to speak for her but I don’t think she’s wildly overconcerned, my impression was she finds it quite funny that they think she swans around in a k

H E L LO E A R T H : T H E M I G H T Y

B U S H I S B AC K !FA N S A R E AT F E V E R P I T C H A S K AT E B U S H G E T S R E A D Y

T O R A I S E T H E C U R TA I N O N H E R F I R S T F U L L S H O W S

S I N C E 1 9 7 9 . D J M A R K R A D C L I F F E , H E R FAV O U R I T E

I N T E R V I E W E R , U N R AV E L S T H E M Y S T E R Y O F H E R M A G I C

Phot

o: A

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WARNING!PLEASE ONLY USE THIS SERVICE IF YOU’RE NOT GETTING IT REGULARLYJohn Bird, The Big Issue founder

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FEATURE LABEL

batwing dress in a gothic castle. She’s picking up cheese flans from the supermarket! I never thought I would get the chance to see her play live, I didn’t see her one and only tour and I just never thought it would happen. When I’ve interviewed her I’ve always asked about it and she always said “I’ve not ruled it out” but I never took that as an indication she was really serious about it. So it was quite a big surprise when she announced the dates.

I would be very surprised if it was anything other than quite theatrical, dramatic and well designed with some overarching concept to it but I’m guessing. That picture of her in the lifejacket; water has cropped up in her work quite a lot, I don’t know whether there’s some aquatic theme. Will she dance or sit behind the piano or both? Will she talk or will it be a sculpted whole piece? I would be amazed if she bounded on and said “Hello

Sa ra h Had la nd reinvented Kate’s Wuthering Heights for the Horrible Histories generation: She’s not a singer where you go, “Who’s that?” The instant you hear her vocal you know it’s Kate Bush. She is original, unique and it always felt there was a psychological element. Her videos were very melodramatic and had great narratives. They were really different, new and theat-rical. That’s what Kate Bush has in spades.

Paul Muldoon, the great modern Irish poet: Take a first-rate musical intelligence. Add a first-rate lyric intelligence. Then throw in a voice from who knows where. That’s why Kate Bush is out on her own.

John Robb, writer, Goldblade power-house and first-wave Kate Bush fan: There are few moments of total pop genius…

when something sounds so original you are stopped in your tracks. Wuthering Heights was just that. The fact it came out in the middle of punk only added to its brilliance. We were slaver-ing droogs hooked to the noisy stuff. Ostensibly Kate was a mainstream artist, maybe EMI perceived her as a return to the rustic mid-’70s when things were fine before the phlegm-

encrusted punk thing crashed in and rewrote the rule book. That mattered little with a

record this startlingly original – it FELT like a punk record in spirit because it was an uncompromising piece of art even though it sounded like there were 100 chords in it. She was startlingly original-looking as well. Her rare mix of English rose with a glint of Irish blood and a no-future starkness rolled into one made her photogenic – but above all it was her artistic vision and no-compro-mise spirit that was more powerfully attractive.

Lucy Benson-Brown stars in ob-sessive fan-inspired show Cut-

ting Off Kate Bush: My show is about a girl who discovers a

box of old Kate Bush records when she is having a crisis and starts putting videos on-line, emoting through her

music. She speaks to a young generation be-cause her music is honest. It doesn’t matter what age you discover her. My grandmother was telling me about her, and I’m going to see her with my mum. Her music is theatrical: it lends itself well to theatre, in a genuine way unlike Lady Gaga. I don’t think you can ever predict what she’s going to do, she’s not in the hands of the music industry – she makes her own rules.

Graeme Thomson wrote acclaimed biography Under the Ivy, The Life and Music of Kate Bush: People recognise somebody who’s a completely free spirit in the best sense. She was laughed at by a huge proportion of the male music press and it took a long time to get a handle on her: she was a posh hippy girl who pranced about. It’s been great to hear the whispers about the shows. We’ve heard she’s doing The Ninth Wave [second part of The Hounds of Love record], it’s a conceptual suite, it will be fascinating to see how she presents that. I won’t expect her to carry the show phys-ically like she did 35 years ago, I’d be happy with just her and a piano. The ‘reclusive’ label is reductive but she doesn’t appear in public very often, it’s not something she’s entirely comfortable with. Walking out to this enormous wave of adulation is a massive thing for her to embrace. O

A new exhibition, Kate Bush: photographs by

Gered Mankowitz and Guido Harari, is at Snap

Gallery, London, August 26–September 2;

snapgalleries.com

HOW SHE KEEPS SCALING THOSE WUTHERING HEIGHTS…

Gered Mankowitz, the photographer with Kate Bush in his eyes, who shot the iconic Wuthering Heights image and captured Kate in 1978-79: I was brought in to create the launch image for Wuthering Heights. She was very young, 19, when it came out and was wonderful to work with. Very frenetic, quite difficult to get her to focus on making an idea work, she wasn’t very experienced in having her photograph taken, which was part of the challenge. Her individuality shone through. I knew I had to be at the top of my game to produce an image that was going to complement this extraor-dinary talent. She was very much in control of the way she looked. When she stepped out of the dressing room and I saw her for the first time, ready for the camera, I was blown away and knew it was going to be something special. We did the famous leotard pictures. I chose the leotards to make a visual link with dance, which was clearly very important to her. We did four big sessions between January 1978 and April 1979. She could just look at the camera and you would melt. The pink leotard Wuthering Heights picture is one of those pictures that became iconic and represents so much. It has a life of its own and it has energy. It’s a beautiful portrait of a very beautiful young woman.

Hammersmith!”. Keeping the shows under wraps is her way in everything, really. My feeling is not that it’s an overwhelming desire for secrecy. She’s lived outside showbusiness and her way of doing things is to just get on with it without distraction. She cares very much about what people think about the work. She always asks you very carefully about it. She is interested, and the reaction to records is very important to her – she pours her heart and soul into them. She is wildly imaginative and creative, and she’s fantastically single-minded, quite pragmatic about what needs done, it’s not an airy-fairy flighty idea: it’s work, it’s art, the process of creation. She takes all that very seriously. She has meticulous control over the music and artwork. She’s a one-off, a true original. And she’s fantastically

good humoured and giggly and smiley. O

“I like Kate Bush

because she didn’t

do what she was

told and as a wom-

an in the music in-

dustry at the time

she started, that

was revolutionary”JO BRAND, COMEDIAN, WHO CHOSE KATE BUSH’S OH ENGLAND MY LIONHEART AS THE RECORD SHE’D SAVE FROM THE WAVES ON DESERT ISLAND DISCS

Clockwise: performing 30

years ago; receiving an award

from Michael Palin in 1979;

picking up a gong for her 2011

album 50 Words For Snow; a

press image from Before the

Dawn, her new 22-date show;

in her Babooshka video

Phot

o: R

ex F

eatu

res


WorldMags.net




The prisoner approached me with a broad smile. “Don’t bother about trying to move me to another prison,” he said. “I’ve decided to go back on heroin instead. Any time you want some, let me know.”

All sorts of drugs are available in prisons but cost about seven times more than they do on the street. Prison staff do their best to stop both dealers and users but are handicapped because there are not enough of them to do the

necessary high number of searches. I know this because for nearly 10 years I was a

member of the watchdog body, the Independent Monitor-ing Board (IMB) – the last three as chairperson – at Wormwood Scrubs in London. It is the most well-known prison in the country. Famous former inmates include the spy George Blake, the musician Pete Doherty and Rolling Stone Keith Richards. The Scrubs, as it is usually called, is a local prison holding up to 1,279 convicted and remand male inmates aged 18 and upwards, plus detainees awaiting deportation. As an IMB member I could go into the prison at any time, was given keys and went round unaccompanied.

Aside from the drug-taking, what shocked me most was the number of seriously mentally ill prisoners kept in the jail. These men are society’s hidden people. Although there is a legal requirement that they are moved on to a secure specialist establishment within two weeks, these are so full they remain locked away often for months on end. Many were unpredictable and prone to violence and when one prison has had too much of them, they are swapped for another difficult prisoner from another jail.

“They might be just as bad but at least it makes a change,” a member of staff confided. Both groups plus

alcoholics should, in my view, not be kept in jail but treated in special units where they can be helped rather than just monitored. In prison heroin addicts, for example, are given substitute drugs like methadone, itself incredibly addictive, rather than encouraged to go cold turkey to prevent them overdosing on drugs once they are released. One prisoner was furious. “I’ve come into jail to get clean,” he said, “but they are just dosing me up.”

Treating some prisoners in special units would help with the overcrowding. The grim fact is that at the beginning of this month there were 81,866 male prisoners in jail, with some prisons operating at nearly 200 per cent above their recommended capacity. Since October 2013 when the Coalition’s draconian cuts came into effect, there simply has not been enough prison staff to deal with them. Wormwood Scrubs, for example, lost 20 per cent of its budget and 128 out of 585 staff. In the immediate after-math there were as few as five officers running a wing of well over 200 inmates. The only way they could keep con-trol was to lock them up – sometimes up to 23 hours a day.

The way officers worked also significantly changed last October. Instead of being assigned to one wing, they were now expected to be troubleshooters and sent to three different wings a day. This didn’t make sense. The role of an officer today is part social worker as well as law enforcer. Prisons are potentially volatile places. Officers who know the inmates on their wing can more effectively handle troublemakers and stop rows exploding into violence or a riot. It’s no surprise that violence in the prison estate shot up by 67 per cent for the year ending March 2014. One prisoner was angry. “If they treat me as an animal I’ll behave like one,” he said.

Being familiar with a wing also meant officers could keep a watchful eye on troubled prisoners and those at risk

LESS THAN A YEAR

ELECTION, POLITICIANS

SHOWING AN ENLIGH

L

THEY SHOULD – IT ’S VITAL


WorldMags.net



INSIDE WORMWOOD SCRUBS


FROM A GENERAL

WON’ T BELIEVE THAT

TENED APPROACH TO

L WIN MANY VOTES. BUT

L , ARGUES ANGELA LEVIN

of suicide. It is no coincidence that as staff numbers went down and time in cells shot up, incidents of self-harming increased by 750 to 23,478 over the past year, and suicides by 88 – the highest number since 2005. Next year’s results are bound to be worse. Prior to October 2013 the Min-istry of Justice talked enthusiastically about giving prisoners a work ethic and education. The buzz word was rehabilit-ation. The reality was that Wormwood Scrubs’ prisoners were lucky if they were unlocked to go to a workshop or a course for two hours a day and often had to choose between that and taking a shower. Lying on their cell beds for much of the day makes prisoners less rather than more likely to cope with the outside world and more than 50 per cent of those with a short sentence end up homeless and reoffend within a year.

Earlier this month the Ministry of Justice’s own statistics revealed that 28 prisons including Wormwood Scrubs were classified as being a ‘cause for concern’. They have spent £5m on redundancy and are now desperately recruiting many of the same officers back on short-term contracts.

With the 2015 election approaching, funding for prisons is not going to be a vote winner for any party. Savings could be made by cutting back on bloated bureaucracy and not giving companies long-term contracts with no penalty clauses for running services including transport, telephones and the prison shop.

It also makes sense to abandon the enormous titan prisons the Ministry of Justice wants to build, and use the

money more productively on special units for the mentally ill and addicts. Detainees, of whom there are hun-dreds in the Scrubs, should be in prisons in a less pop-ulated part of the country where their special needs can be dealt with. There would then be an opportunity to work with fewer men with fewer officers. Many come from dysfunctional families and have no male role models and a back-ground of crime. One recidivist told me his mother threw him out of the house when he was 11 and he survived on the

street. These men need to be motivated, need to take plenty of exercise and need to be helped to build up their self-esteem, to learn to read and write and take responsi-bility for what they do.

Art and music can help. One of the most moving afternoons I spent in the prison was watching a group of difficult prisoners put on a rap concert from start to finish in a week, helped by the charity Music in Prisons. Afterwards one of the group said it had opened his eyes to the possibilities of working as a team. Another said he realised how much his mother had suffered from his criminal behaviour. Most of all it gave them hope and pride. It was something the audience of mainly prison staff hoped they could hang on to. O

Angela Levin is an award-winning journalist, author and

former prison watchdog. Her new book, Wormwood Scrubs:

The Inside Story, is out now in paperback and on Kindle

LEVIN’S LAW

• End the obsession with building super-prisons and use the money in better ways.• As staff numbers fall, prisoners’ cell hours rise. Come good on rehabilitation promises by increasing officer numbers.• Ease overcrowding by providing more specialist mental illness and addiction units. Help these prisoners rather than just warehouse them.


WorldMags.net




Most of us get rid of our rubbish as soon as we can. And as soon as we chuck it away, we never want to think about it again. Artist Joshua Sofaer is a bit different. His obsession with rubbish dates back to an exhibition at the Tate Mod-ern where he asked visitors to go on a treasure hunt and

bring select items of junk back to the gallery.Since then he has visited Brazil to join

human scavengers (the catadores) at work and journeyed to Japan where recycling is an elaborate social ritual. Both trips inform his latest project at the Science Museum – The Rubbish Collection – a bold attempt to engage the British public in the management of their own waste.

Visitors to the museum’s basement have been asked to help sort through the bags of rubbish coming down from upstairs, identify-ing any interesting or unusual objects that might be reused or perhaps go on display. “We hate carrying our rubbish around. But when you throw it away, it’s not disappearing,” says Sofaer. “But rubbish needn’t all be bad news – the circular economy is an important thing for people to think about.

“In Brazil the scavenging is so well organised, unof-ficially, that there is a strata of people sifting and sorting and selling things on privately,” the artist says. “They’ve started to form unions to get agreed market rates for what they’re selling on. It’s not ideal, obviously, because it splits society between the reveller throwing away a can and the poor picking the can up.

“And in Japan there is real social pressure to recycle properly,” he adds. “They have different coloured bins with little windows so your neighbours can see what you’re

A D A M F O R R E S T G E T S H I S R U B B E R

G L O V E S O N A N D G O E S S C A V E N G I N G

A T T H E S C I E N C E M U S E U M

WHAT I LEARNED

FROM RAKING THROUGH

BINS

The museum’s electronic waste includes

kettles, fax machines and PC monitors:

all can be recycled.

Breeze block bricks made from ash

formed in the waste incineration

process, now on display.

An unwanted plastic

bomb from a museum

demonstration.

Food from the museum’s café mixed

in with paper and plastic. Even a

tiny bit of yogurt contaminates a

bag earmarked for recycling.


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THE RUBBISH

COLLECTION


Phot

os: ©

Sci

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Mus

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and

© K

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throwing out or recycling. People wash their rubbish and throw it out correctly.”

When I put on some rubber gloves and joined Sofaer to sort through a few bags of rubbish, I’m not sure I thought there was very much to be learned. But it turned out to be an enlightening (if slightly smelly) experience. The first thing you understand is how easily food contamination occurs. A collection of empty plastic bottles in a bag marked “recyclables” is covered in a few pots of kids’ yogurt, and so it must be bagged back up and chucked in with the general waste.

Like anywhere else, the Science Museum can be fined for sending contaminated waste to the recycling plant, so unless visitors have placed things in separate bins as they’re supposed to, it remains easier to send it with the general waste for incineration. Apart from sanitary waste and nappies (which go to landfill) everything that cannot be recycled goes to an incineration plant.

By the end of the first part of the experiment, Sofaer and his team will have sorted through and taken photo-graphs of around 32 tonnes of rubbish: the average amount of waste that goes through the museum on a monthly basis. The second part involves the creation of an exhibition of discarded objects.

Sofaer shows me t he su it s, t ies a nd dresses people have dumped in the muse-

um’s bins, now neatly piled up in display cabinets. There are also 16-and-a-half pairs of discarded shoes now sitting in a row. A small pile of money – £40.16 of coins and notes – had accidently been thrown out, and there is a intriguing teenage love letter that begins: “I know I said I like you, but…”

There are also 18 tonnes of material on display that have partially gone through the recycling process: recycled paper bales, piles of ash, steel ingots, compacted cubes of aluminium and flakes of old plastic bottles waiting to be made into new plastic bottles. It’s all there to show visitors just how much waste can be transformed into something useful without dumping it all in landfill or burning it.

“In the fascination with looking at all the rubbish that’s come through this building, hopefully it provokes a thought process and maybe some behaviour change,” says Sofaer. “Believe it or not, I’m actually someone who likes sorting through things and keeping things neat and tidy. So for a very clean and tidy person, rubbish is an opportunity.” O

The Rubbish Collection, Science Museum, London, is on

display until September 14

410g bales of aluminium cans

that have come back from the

recycling plant to go on display.

200 litres of cooking oil from

the museum restaurant.

A collection of stationary,

toiletries and medicines dumped

by the museum’s visitors.


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Just imagine…a unique cycling

challenge exploring

amazing India, and

seeing our life-changing

work fi rsthand.

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8S½RHSYXQSVIZMWMXwww.lepra.org.ukIQEMPevents@lepra.org.ukSVGEPPLizzie 01206 216737

Challenge highlights include:

20th February - 3rd March 2015

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Human WritesThe hand of friendship.

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there are people thousands of miles away who care enough

to befriend us.”


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Illus

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Jon

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It’s the biggest decision in generations and could change the face of Britain forever – but neither side in the Scottish referendum debate is engaging with the poorest despite claiming to represent the best interests of those at the margins of society.

That’s the view of charities, politicians and political commentators following our Vendorendum

poll. Last week, we revealed the results of a poll we held for Big Issue vendors across Scotland, asking them how they’d vote. It showed a small majority (50 per cent to 46 per cent) in favour of Scotland remaining part of the UK. However, despite us showing how those taking part feel excluded from the debate, the response from Yes Scotland and Better Together has been casual.

They issued brief statements though neither camp has stepped up to actively connect with the country’s most disenfranchised men and women. The volume is rising, insisting they do more. “Those in society who are experiencing a difficult time in their lives must get a voice and have an opportunity to express their opinion,” said Graeme Brown, chief executive of Shelter Scotland. The homeless charity recently launched a campaign with the Electoral Commission to encourage registration.

“The two opposing camps are doing a lot of knocking on doors but are they visiting hostels, bedsit accommod-ation, day-centres? Have they visited Big Issue vendors when they’re picking up their magazines first thing in the morning? That would be a good place to start.”

It has been estimated there are some 35,000 homeless people in Scotland. If they all engaged with the vote on September 18, they could play a significant part in the outcome. David Torrance, columnist and director of Five Million Questions, a website designed to explain many as-pects of the referendum, said there has been a naïve out-look on this proportion of the electorate from both sides.

“If they are serious about engaging with that section of the electorate then it’s too late to develop any proper strategy,” he said. “If you think about people who are homeless or people who sell The Big Issue, you probably have an impression in your head they don’t have a fixed address and therefore they can’t vote. My suspicion is that they didn’t think there were many votes there.”

B O T H S I D E S I N T H E S C O T T I S H

R E F E R E N D U M D E B AT E H AV E B E E N

S L A M M E D F O R PAY I N G L I P - S E R V I C E

T O T H E P O O R E S T I N S O C I E T Y,

A S A N D R E W B U R N S R E P O R T S Labour activist Duncan Hothersall added: “I can’t hand-on-heart point at any instance of an explicit attempt to engage with the homeless. I think it’s a missed opportunity.”

Playwright and Yes campaigner Alan Bissett highlight-ed the “complacency” of mainstream politicians in engag-ing with the poorest in society. “The people at the top don’t really stop to consider those at the bottom because they think ‘they don’t vote’,” he said. “They don’t vote because they are not being targeted. We have to reach out to people who have been alienated from the system. If the poorest people in society started making their voices heard and became politically active, that’s when we would see real change. That’s what the Establishment fears.”

He added that grassroots movement Radical Independ-ence was “getting out there and trying to get people registered that maybe haven’t voted before or have been locked out of the political discussion”.

Stevie Pryce sells The Big Issue in Edinburgh and has lived in Scotland for 20 years. The Newcastle-born vendor, 37, feels disconnected from the politics of the country he now calls home. “If I do vote, I’ll probably vote yes because I think Scotland should have its own say but ultimately it doesn’t really matter, does it?” he said. “The government is going to do what they want to do. They all take us for fools.”

Glasgow City Mission, which provides support to more than 200 homeless and vulnerable adults every day, will host a special hustings event for its clients later this month to try to include the homeless in the debate. “Many of our clients are extremely marginalised and are living at the fringes of society,” said City Mission chief executive Grant Campbell. “We want to ensure they are included within the debate and have the information they need for one of the biggest political decisions the country has seen.”

“I do think the country’s homeless and poorest have been overlooked,” added SNP MSP Sandra White. “A collective effort is required from all sides to engage the country’s most disenfranchised. It is shameful that such a large proportion of the population feels disconnected.”

“The clock is ticking,” said The Big Issue editor Paul McNamee. “If both sides want to genuinely show they are doing more than paying lip-service to those at the margins of society, to build a genuinely inclusive future, they need to step up now.” O

BRITAIN’S FUTURE: WHO’S IN?

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T H E E N L I G H T E N M E N T

F I L M / T V / B O O K S / M U S I C

I’ll have a large popcorn please… Glasgow-based artist Mick Peter’s Popcorn Plaza juxtaposes cement block

structures with the odd, random and massively enlarged shapes of popcorn kernels. Perhaps it represents the frustration of dropping snacks down the side of the sofa. Make your own mind up, as the work is on display at Edinburgh’s wondrous Jupiter Artland as part of Edinburgh Art Festival. OUntil September 28; jupiterartland.org

SALTY OR SWEET?


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You mustn’t cr y,” the lead character of T W O D A Y S , O N E

NIGHT tells herself, only min-utes into the film. Sandra has

just awoken from a deep sleep and is now in the kitchen of the modest flat she shares with her husband and two kids. She’s on the phone to her pal from work, and in a state of tremulous dis-tress. Moments later she’s in the bathroom, gulping down pills of anti-depressants and looking at her blurry self in the mirror. She is, I should add, crying.

Welcome to the world of Belgian writer-direc-tor pair, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne. The brothers have, since the mid-1990s, made com-mandingly naturalistic dramas about the lives of work-ing-class Belgians. Their films are compassionate, sometimes harrowing portraits of people on the margins of society, pushed to desperate extremes, and Two Days is no different.

Sandra is about to lose her job at a local factory. Redundancy will force her family on to the breadline. What makes the news even harder to digest is the fact that 14 of her 16 colleagues voted for her to go. Faced with keeping Sandra on staff or a €1000 bonus, the majority of them opted for

TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT Directors: Luc &

Jean-Pierre Dardenne (15)

CHARULATADirector: Satyajit Ray (U)

Both in cinemas August 22

the cash – a brutal blow to her self-confidence as she’s fragile from a ner vous brea kdow n. But she has a second chance: the boss agrees to a fresh ballot on Monday; she has a weekend to persuade her colleagues to vote another way.

The set-up is typical of the brothers’ films in the way it pro-vides urgent dramatic form to

the stark options that an unfair economic system confronts us w it h . W h at m a ke s Two Days, One Night different from their o t h e r f i l m s i s t h e actress playing San-dra: Marion Cotillard.

W her e a s t he y h a v e relied in the past on relatively little-known

actors, Cotillard is a star, and an impossibly glamorous one at that, winner of an Oscar, spokeswom-an for Dior fashion house, the face of countless Vogue covers.

She’s not the kind of person I’d associate with committed social realist dramas about Bel-gians fighting unemployment – but that, frankly, says more about my prejudice than anything else.

A mong other things, T wo Days strips away the white noise of fame and lets us see Cotillard for the terrific actress she is. Early on, Sandra hesitantly

telephones her colleag ue to request he vote for her: Cotil-lard’s face, shot in a single take, flickers with emotion, from fear, then uncertainty, to wordless triumph when her workmate finally agrees. It’s a magnificent performance.

From here we’re off, as San-dra chases down her colleagues to ask the impossible: that they sacrifice their bonus for her employment. In Cotillard’s look of quiet desperation, you realise the threat Sandra faces is as much about dignity as financial concerns. This is a defiantly political film about solidarity, l o y a l t y t o w or k m a t e s a n d presenting a common front when jobs are threatened.

I can think of a bunch of peo-ple with annual remuneration packages that dwarf the €1000 offered to Sandra’s colleagues who could learn a few things here. The price of admission to Two Days, One Night is a drop in the ocean of a banker’s bonus – but of far greater value. O

JUST THE JOB

AND ANOTHER THING…The work of director Satyajit Ray has fallen out of fashion since his death but the re-release of his 1964 film CHARUL ATA , a majestic study of a woman in an unhappy marriage in late 19th-century India, reminds us why he was considered one of the world’s greatest directors.

Charulata: Satyajit Ray’s

portrait of a woman

FILM

EDWARD

LAWRENSON


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This is 2014. Why do we need superheroes in our lives? CM: It is the new mythology – a structure of characters and situations that allow people to test moral quandaries.SM: It’s a genre we do well. We used to do Westerns well and every studio put out a tonne of Westerns. This is a genre where you have nice clear lines of good guys and bad guys. Then we move in to murk that up.

The last two Marvel films, Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, have had very different tones. How can the same franchise have

such varying styles?SM: In Captain America 2 we wanted to occupy the gritty, adult space in Marvel franchises. The tone you saw is where we’ll live to separate ourselves from Iron Man, Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Captain America 2 is quite political. Was it important to include a message?CM: You have a guy walking around named Captain America and he has a red, white and blue outfit. If it doesn’t become political you’re avoiding the question.SM: Given that he’s come from 1945 we have the chance to look at the country with fresh eyes. What’s changed morally and ethically? How many little decisions have there been in the last 70 years to get to where we are now, with helicarriers watching your every move?

How much of your story comes from yourselves and how much is part of the studio’s grand plan? CM: A little of both. You don’t initially think, let’s tear down the giant organisation that is the backbone to the entire Marvel universe. But Kevin [Feige, president of Marvel Studios] enjoys doing this – he’s done it on Avengers 2 as well but I won’t tell you what he did.

If you did give away a spoiler, what would the punishment be? CM: There would be a phone call…

Is it more difficult to write a script knowing you have to keep in mind what’s happening elsewhere in the Marvel universe?CM: It generally makes it easier in that you have a rock to tack towards in your rowboat. You don’t feel lost, even if the rock isn’t all that important to where you’re going.SM: Chris has broken out a new metaphor I have not heard him use before!CM: Yes, rowboats. I got a whole new thing about rowboats that I’m working on.

I’m looking forward to that profound speech in Captain America 3.CM: “America’s like a rowboat, Bucky…”

The comic books tell us that Bucky, aka The Winter Soldier, will one day become Captain America. Sure you don’t have any spoilers for us?SM: Everybody becomes Captain America eventually!CM: Having this big an interconnected movie universe go on this long is uncharted territory. What do you do when the actors get too old? These are amazing problems to have if Marvel winds up having them. Where this is going, I don’t think anybody knows. O

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is out on Blu-ray and DVD

INTERVIEW BY STEVEN MACKENZIE @stevenmackenzie

STEPHENMCFEELY & CHRISTOPHER MARKUSSCREENWRITING SUPERHEROES FOR MARVEL

MACKENZIE

MEETS…

BROADCAST REVIEW

SAM DELANEY

“I have often said that the sole cause of a man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room”

The French philosopher Pascal Blaise wrote that in the 17th century. And bear in mind that back then there wasn’t nearly as much distraction to tempt a man from his room as there is nowadays. I know next

to nothing about the 17th century but I bet there weren’t any decent gastro pubs. If it was hard to sit quietly in a room in 1650 then we’ve got no chance today.

For a start, there’s the cacophony of social media, enticing us to live better, faster, sexier lives; implying that our friends and neighbours are experiencing all manner of extravagant hoop-la while we sit idling in a dreary pit of ennui. But it is rare that actually getting off your arse and leaving the house winds up with you partying with sexy ladies on a yacht like social media implies it does. More often than not you just end up getting rained on, stepping in dog shit or having an argument with someone about football.

Last week, too much work and not enough sitting quietly in my room caught up with me and I woke up all shivery and ill. The doc ordered me to take some time off. It’s been great. I’m sat on the bed writing this, laptop propped up on a pillow. Tracksuit bottoms on, unshaven face and four cups of tea down before midday – I feel like the king of fucking Spain.

I have also had time to read an awful lot of comment on the sad death of Robin Williams. When a celebrity commits suicide it brings out the worst in social media. Everyone is suddenly the deceased’s biggest fan and an expert on the vast complexities of mental health. I’ve got no problem with sympathy and kind words but there’s something so synthetic and insulting about the mawkish enthusiasm with which people respond to this sort of tragedy. So much of the professed sympathy reads more like a transparent statement about the author themselves.

Anyway, poor old Robin Williams. I bloody loved Mork and Mindy. But how the hell did the writer get the pitch past the studio execs? “It’s a sitcom about a suburban woman having a sexually ambiguous relationship with a wise-cracking extra terrestrial.” More imaginative times, I suppose. O

@delaneyman

WE’RE ALL ALIENS ON PLANET PERFECTION


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It was only after I started writing plays that I realised how many of my favourite books were about the theatre. As a girl

I’d loved reading about the orphaned Fossil girls getting to grips with greasepaint in Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes (1936). As a teenager I’d fan-cied Zooey, reading scripts in the bath, in JD Salinger’s Franny and Zooey (1961); later I (over)identified with the eponymous heroine of Her-man Wouk’s 1955 doorstopper Marjorie Morningstar, who shocks her conventional par-ents by becoming an actress. But why are so many writers attracted to the stage?

Streatfeild did 10 years as a jobbing actress. Before the joyous, breezy Ballet Shoes, she wrote The Whicharts, which portrays theatre as venal, exploitative and cyn-ical. Once she’d exorcised her ghosts, she was able to write something more hopeful. Though not mindlessly so; Ballet Shoes is honest about how tough young actors and dancers have to be.

Playwright Mikhail Bulgakov was also looking back in anger when he wrote Black Snow, a bitchy, absurdist satire about his bruising experiences with the Moscow Art Theatre.

FALLOUT

Sadie Jones, out now in hardback

(Chatto and Windus, £14.99)

OLIVIA’S CURTAIN CALL Lyn Gardner, out now in paperback

(Nosy Crow, 6.99)

ALL CHANGE Elizabeth Jane Howard, out now

in paperback (Pan, £7.99)

MAN AT THE HELM Nina Stibbe, out August 28 in

hardback (Viking, £12.99)

STATION ELEVEN Emily St John Mandel, out

September 10 in hardback

(Picador, £12.99)

Sadie Jones flirted with thea-tre before becoming a novelist, and her affection for it shines

through FA L L OU T. Her hero, a damaged playwright, has a painful affair with a fragile actress, while not realising he may be in love with a stage manager. Set in the 1970s, the novel captures, better than anything I’ve read, theatre’s febrile, ephemeral intensity.

Writing from the other side of the curtain are theatre critics Lyn Gardner, whose charming OLIVIA series is set at a stage school and full of her own passion for theatre, and Charles Spencer whose fic-tional avatar Will Benson is an alcoholic, crime-solving… theatre critic.

With paradoxical combi-nations of high stakes and thin sk ins, g la mour a nd sleaze, rivalry and camarade-

rie, the stage is fertile ground for fiction. Torrid romances often feature – as in Elizabeth Jane How a rd ’s A L L C H A N G E . I w a s thrilled that the heroine – gauche, unhappy Clary – had become a playwright but less delighted that she was dallying with her leading man.

Playwrights come off even less well in Nina Stibbe’s debut, MAN AT

THE HELM, in which a divorcee uses

playwriting as ersatz therapy, writing hilarious revenge plays about her ex-husband and getting her children to act them out. And Eleanor Catton took the idea of playing games with truth and illusion to an existential level in her 2008 debut The Rehearsal.

But Emily St John Mandel’s STATION ELEVEN gives a more heart-felt explanation for why theatre is such a good theme. Station Eleven opens in the midst of King Lear. The star has a heart attack on stage and medics try to revive him, fake snow still falling. From here the novel skips 20 years to a world where epidemic flu has made civilisation collapse, and a band of survivors travel across Nor th A mer ica per for m ing Shakespeare by candlelight, “the age of electricity having been and gone”. This breathtaking high-wire act argues theatre is primal – an instinct to tell and act out stories, to come together to exp-erience art. Who wouldn’t want to write novels about that? O

ALL THE BOOKS ARE A STAGE

AND ANOTHER THING…What is going on with Penguin’s new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory cover? The girl, presumably Veruca

Salt or Violet Beauregarde, is in feathers and lipstick, an image so creepy and sexualised it would be more appropriate for Lolita.

Illus

trat

ion:

Mitc

h Bl

unt


Playwright Samantha Ellis’ How to be a Heroine (Chatto & Windus, £16.99) is out in hardback

GUEST

COLUMNIST

SAMANTHA

ELLIS


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My brother Juan was killed with a shotgun by the manager of his farm in the gulf of Urabá, in northern Colombia, one night in April 1977. He died at 36. Juan and I had a close friendship; my affection for him was boundless. Words cannot measure the grief I felt at his death.

At the time I was 26 years old, and more or less regularly for eight years I had been writing. I was working on a book of short stories I never tried to publish, a collection of poems that also remained unpublished and a short novel that ultimately did not work and which, years later, I rewrote and published as a long short story. I had developed a certain aptitude for seeing the literary possibilities in those events that we call real and perhaps this is why I quickly realised that Juan’s death had the qualities of a tragedy. The aesthetic qualities, I mean. That was all it took.

Although I was devastated by his death, I studied it coldly, as a craftsman might study a fallen tree and calculate the size and shape of the canoe that might be made from it. Obviously I had qualms before I started to write the novel, since it meant exploiting family tragedy to create literature; nevertheless I started to write.

Thirty-seven years have passed since Juan’s death; 31 since In the Beginning was the Sea was first published. After so much time it is difficult to know which details in the novel are taken from life and which are incidents or places that I had to imagine, invent or infer from other events in order that the novel could take form and become real. With the passing years, the facts which, though simple, had been difficult to comprehend even at that time, in that place, gradually disintegrated and crumbled, losing their reality. The novel, by contrast, has survived – kept alive by readers – and it could be said that it is more truthful or more real than the events that prompted it.

Over the years many people read the novel, which was regularly reprinted. Perhaps it will continue to find readers for some years yet and come to be the sole trace of what happened on that night in April 1977 on a beautiful beach hemmed in by sea and forest just south of Panama.

The novel was my attempt to prevent everything being swept away by the wind. I no longer have any qualms of conscience about having written it. Now, it seems obvious to me that literary works stem, and have always stemmed, from memories – whether recent or remote, whether our own or those of others. Where else could they originate?

I believe that it is impossible for human beings to fashion out of whole cloth, still less to create – that only nature, or God, can create and we are left to work with what already exists: recreating, reinventing, that is to say recalling it in all its horror and its harmony.

It is our safeguard against death.

The Year 1977

The gulls walked along the beachinscribing track marks in the sand.Then once again flew out to seaand left their track marks in the sand.How brutally it fell, that year, the tragedy!Then came the water, sea-spray, silk,and washed away the tracks. Inland the palm trees, mangos, acacias.*

* From the collection of poems Mangrove. O

In the Beginning was the Sea by Tomás González, translated

by Frank Wynne, is out in paperback (Pushkin Press, £12)

“I STUDIED JUAN’S DEATH COLDLY, AS A CRAFTSMAN MIGHT STUDY A FALLEN TREE TO MAKE A CANOE”

AUTHOR

FIRST PERSON

TOMÁS GONZÁLEZ

GILES ANDREAE

5 BOOKS. . .

1 TEN TALL TALES Dr Seuss A beguiling collection of

fables that shine an affectionate yet uncompromising spotlight on some of the absurdities of human behaviour, told with characteristic anarchy and zest.

2 PETER PAN JM Barrie

Don’t watch the film – read the book! They are chalk and cheese. Barrie’s acute and beautifully phrased character portraits are a delight for grown-ups, prefacing the sophistication and knowing tone of recent Pixar films. And for children… pirates, red Indians, fairies, flying… what’s not to like?

3 UTTERLY ME, CLARICE BEAN Lauren Child

Child’s narrative voice is as unique as her illustrative style. Her first novel has an overwhelming charm as well as great insight into modern family life. Child can make you laugh and cry at virtually every page.

4 FAIRY TALES Oscar Wilde The artful, mandarin tone of

Wilde’s narrative style sets off perfectly the poignance and richness of emotion contained in these stories. Wilde is the master of paradox: beautiful yet tragic, short yet sophisticated, simple yet profound. It’s extraordinary to think so many of the fairy stories we now consider to be standards came from the pen of one man.

5 WHEN I TALK TO YOU Michael Leunig

Not strictly a children’s book but accessible to everyone of any age. Although Leunig would be categorised as a cartoonist, he is the most insightful yet lightfooted philosopher that I know. His deep compassion and understanding of the human condition are matched only by the grace and playfulness of his drawing pen. This is a collection of his prayers.

Giles Andreae’s Sir Scallywag

and the Deadly Dragon Poo

(Puffin, £6.99), illustrated

by Korky Paul, is out now in

paperback

Keeping the memory of his murdered brother alive

Award-winning author of Rumble in the Jungle and Giraffes Can’t Dance

E VERY YOUNG

SCALLY WAG SHOULD RE AD


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Rock bands might be rarefied b e a s t s on t o d a y ’s p o p - dominated planet but on the plus side it means the

best ones ca n sta nd out a ll the more. Brighton boys ROYAL BLOOD are becoming hard to miss with their tightly-clipped protru-sions of prickly fuzz and volume. And that’s just their beards.

Striking a fine balance between precision and power, the best songs on their self-titled debut album are like works of k e y hole s u r g er y p er -formed with a pneumatic drill. More impressive still, and this may be the secret to their tightness, there are only two of them in the band – bassist and singer Mike Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher. Clever application of the bass through an octave effects unit – duplicating Kerr’s parts at higher frequency for added guitar-y thickness – gives the duo both distorted grit and the thudding low-end many two-piece rock ensembles tend to lack. Think a weightier W hite Stripes or a more bowel-shaking Black Keys.

Their economical setup has its limitations – like a lot of their songs, opener Out of the Black recalls a pocket Muse with its

MUSIC

ROCK & POP

MALCOLM

JACK

ROYAL BLOODRoyal Blood (Warner Bros)

LUKE SITAL SINGHThe Fire Inside (Parlophone UK)

JAMES YORKSTON The Cellardyke Recording and

Wassailing Society (Domino)

speedy, savage riff and high ra nge a nd climbing voca ls. B ut Roy a l Blo o d s t i l l f i nd plenty of minor variations on their signature sound.

The stoner-blues of Figure It Out boils the s pi r it of fel lo w r e g a l hard-rockers Queens of the Stone Age down to base elements. Careless borrows the rhy thmic, almost half-rapped vocal style from Jack White’s The Dead Weather while indulging in some metal-quality deathly bleakness with lines such as “I hope you know we’re digging o u r o w n g r a v e s f o r your mistakes”. Better

Strangers slips bursts of weird pitch-shifted noise and harmon-ic feedback among heavy chords. A ll told, plenty of reason to appreciate why Arctic Monkeys – whom Royal Blood supported this yea r – have been voca l backers of a band whose fans are soon to number many.

LUKE SITA L SINGH is something of a fixture alongside Royal Blood in top-of-the-year tips lists. He also makes his debut with The Fire Inside, although his arrival could hardly be more different in sentiment. Where the other lot pummel you around the head, this singer-songwriter

cups your face affectionately and sings into your eyes over a polite ripple of ambient acoustica and c h i m i n g R a d i o s - 1 - a n d - 2 - targeted alt-folk with residual indie cred, guiding him into the slipstream of other such contem-porary troubadours as Bon Iver and Ben Howard.

T he Fire Inside follows a string of EPs which, while strong trailers for the full-length set, have been loaded with spoilers. Little here tops rousing opener Nothing Stays the Same, a song that ha s been in the public sphere for a year. On I Have Been a Fire, Singh betrays a tendency t o s l ip i nt o s upr a - e a r ne s t over-emoting. But one listener’s dull drip is another’s dreamy r o m a n t i c . A r m e d w i t h a n undoubtedly f ine voice a nd songs including the A-grade tear-jerking Fail For You, Singh stands to mean a great deal to at least a few spooning couples out there, if no one else.O

BLOOD BROTHERS

AND ANOTHER THING…There’s a familial warmth to Fife alt-folk singer-songwriter JAMES

YORKS TON ’s excellent sixth album, produced by Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor. It features contributions from KT Tunstall and The Pictish Trail. Hear the harmonies on Fellow Man and feel the glow.


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“Apt, scintillating and always on point. Dettmann does it again and again.” - Hyponik

Forthcoming in the series:

Erol Alkan, Raresh, Illum Sphere

www.fabriclondon.com

DJ at Berghain’s forerunner Ostgut from

the late 90s, and now resident at the

world-renowned Berlin institution for

a decade, Marcel Dettmann inhabits

techno’s top tier. fabric 77 is a well-

balanced selection of current techno in a

master’s hands. Incorporating unreleased

material from his own MDR label, unheard

Marcel Dettmann remixes, and such

masters of the genre as Terence Fixmer

and Robert Hood, the mix may surprise

some listeners with its vibrancy, delicacy

and range.

MarcelDettmannfabric 77

Join hundreds of people to walk, jog or run the streets of London to

help save an endangered species from extinction

Register and get your very own gorilla

suit to keep! Go to greatgorillarun.org

or call 0207 916 4974

#GGR14

... in a gorilla suit

8k of urban terrain

JOIN THE

The Nation’s favourite pop night

Clubdefromage.com

Every Sat 0 Academy Islington2

Special Guest 7 Sept

Hot Dub Time Machine

Special 2 hour set!


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WHAT’S ON

LONDON

“raver’s knee” the following week. Undoubtedly the hot-test run of gigs in London this year, K ATE BUSH kicks off her 22-night BEFORE THE DAWN residency at the Hammersmith Apollo. Tickets sold out in seconds so, unless you were inexplicably lucky, don’t expect to get in. But you can console yourself with other likeminded people at the Kate Bush Night alternative party (August 26, Hackney; amygrimehouse.com) where they’ll revel in her music, videos and choreography as everyone tries to forget they’re not seeing her first shows since 1979.

Another arty musical residency happens this week at the Roundhouse with IMOGEN HEAP’S REVERB (August 21-24, Camden; roundhouse.org.uk) where she will, in her own words, take the audience “on an exploration of living contemporary composers who have heavy leanings toward technology”. She will be performing her latest album (deploying her special gloves built to trigger music and sounds) and there will also be talks, workshops, inter- active sound installations and an improvising orchestra.

This summer has been pretty good in London, aside from a few powerful thunderstorms, and you can toast its remaining weeks with cocktails that you have learned to make yourself. The self-explanatory COCKTAIL MASTERCLASS

CL ASS (August 23-27, Southbank; southbankcentre.co.uk) is run by the Department Of Good Cheer and its bartend-ers will aim to make you “cocktail literate” in an hour.

It wouldn’t be a summer Bank Holiday without a new episode of Doctor Who and you can watch DOC T OR W HO:

DEEP BREATH (August 23, Barbican; barbican.org.uk) on the big screen with fellow Whovians but the biggest draw is surely the Q&A with Peter Capaldi, the box-fresh twelfth Doctor, afterwards. Also for adults who refuse to leave their childhood behind them, DINO SNORES FOR GROWN-UPS (August 22, 25, 27, South Kensington; nhm.ac.uk) allows you to spend the night in the Natural History Museum. Food is provided as are science shows, edible insect tasting, comedy, music, quizzes and monster film screenings for insomniacs. Tickets cost (a terrifying) £175 each and only those over 18 can attend. O

WORDS: EAMONN FORDE

D I A R Y : 1 8 . 0 8 . 1 4 - 2 4 . 0 8 . 1 4

Trust him... he’s a Doctor! Shake your thing at Notting Hill. Crave even more shake? Master the art of mixology

The last Bank Holiday weekend of the summer trad-itionally sees a frantic two-way dynamic whereby Lon-doners flee to the coast or the countryside and tourists flood in, with the net result being the capital remains

just as crowded. On the downside, there are more people blocking Underground tunnels as they try to make sense of maps Londoners have hardwired into their DNA; on the plus side, there are noticeably fewer people harrumphing from the toil of trekking across London on a daily basis and their faces are lit up with the energy, excitement and exhilaration of being in the big city for a few days.

The big draw, of course, this weekend is the NOT TING

HILL CARNIVAL (August 24&25, Notting Hill and surround-ing areas; thenottinghillcarnival.com). It has been going since 1966 and celebrates the West Indian community that changed the shape of London since the last century. Across its two days it draws one million people in to see the parades, eat the food and listen to the booming sound systems. Needless to say, the streets will be incredibly busy so pick your spot and expect not to stray too far.

There are lots of music events (beyond Carnival) this week, ostensibly aimed at people looking to make the most of the good weather and three-day weekend. GREEN W ICH

MUSIC TIME (August 20-23, Greenwich; greenwichmusic-time.co.uk) takes place in the stunning grounds of the Old Royal Naval College and, leaning towards a slightly older audience, its four headliners this year are The Australian Pink Floyd, Goldfrapp, Russell Watson and Jools Holland.

Those who are younger in body or spirit can head to SW4 for, well, SOUTH WEST FOUR (August 23&24, Clapham Common; southwestfour.com) and two days of genteel raving. It has a hugely impressive line up across multiple stages including deadmau5, Above & Beyond, Pusha T, Laurent Garnier, Sasha, Skream, Gorgon City and Josh Wink. Expect spikes in the number of sufferers of


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Write Your Way To A New Career!Writers Bureau Celebrates Twenty-five Years

of Helping New Writers

by Nick Daws

Hazel

McHaffie

Tim Skelton

“My writingcareer took offexponentially.”

How ToBecome A Successful Writer!

Michael Foley, Essex

“Completing The Writers Bureau course has made itpossible for me to attain my life-long ambition ofbecoming a published writer. The level of success I haveachieved has far outweighed what I was hoping for whenbeginning the course. I have now had seventeen bookspublished with two more under publication at the moment.”

Members of The British Institute for Learning and Development and ABCC

POST CODE

www.facebook.com/writersbureauwww.twitter.com/writersbureau

Hannah Evans, Winchester

“I’ve been published in The Guardian and Good Lifeearning £400. And now I’ve got my first book

published by Bloomsbury called MOB Rule: LessonsLearned by a Mother of Boys. The Writers Bureaucourse provided me with structure, stopped myprocrastination but most importantly it provided the

impetus to try something different.”

Jane Isaac, NorthamptonshireWhen I started the Writers Bureau course, I wantedto explore avenues for my writing and develop andstrengthen my personal style. I had no idea that itwould lead to me being a published writer of novelsand short stories. I still pinch myself when I receiveemails and messages from readers who’ve enjoyed

my work or when I give talks to book clubs and visit bookstores to dosignings. These are magical moments that have changed my life – my dreamhas come true.”

WritersBureau

Years ofSuccess25

Quote:

SZ18814


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To win a Chambers Dictionary, send completed crosswords(either cryptic or quick) to: The Big Issue Crossword (1116), Second Floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 1HW by August 26. Don’t forget to include your name, address and phone number. Issue 1114 winner is Marlene Milne from Plymouth.

There is just one simple rule in sudoku: each row, column and 3 x 3 box must contain the numbers one to nine. This is a logic puzzle and you should not need to guess. The solution will be revealed next week.

ACROSS

2. Place accommodating

a friend (3)

5. Look to see if huts

have collapsed (6)

7. Quite troubled

before end of day

by fairness (6)

9. Too thorough

when suffering

ocular fever (11)

10. Clown to mock

good man inside (6)

11. Force Ruth amended,

by the way (6)

13. Edward accepted a

team that had travelled

on the runway (6)

16. British tanker’s

heater (6)

18. Twinkle and

hide surprisingly

rapidly (4,3,4)

19. A zero movement

south of the

islands (6)

20. You stopped short

of returning basket

with curdled food (6)

21. Part of foot oddly

left at home (3)

DOWN

1. Metal coming

from capital city

church first (6)

2. Claw’s military

movement? (6)

3. Found out about

revised rental (6)

4. In all honesty

lustfulness gets

the needle (6)

6. One having

priceless ideas? (11)

8. Harsh and

severe when not

pardoning (11)

10. Spray coming

from aeroplane (3)

12. Rubbish built

up to a height (3)

14. A fire burning

brightly (6)

15. Dislike having notes

for examination (6)

16. Extras, two said

cheerio (3-3)

17. Last to finish on river

in Yorkshire (6)

ACROSS

2. Triangular sail (3)

5. Forces (anag.) (6)

7. Astonished (6)

9. Business enterprise (11)

10. Award (6)

11. ------ schnitzel (6)

13. Fan chaff from grain (6)

16. Money order (6)

18. Sharp corner

in road (7,4)

19. Series of steps (6)

20. Range (6)

21. Climbing plant (3)

DOWN

1. Excessively (music) (6)

2. Carpenter (6)

3. Hand-propelled cart (6)

4. Water sprite (6)

6. Ambient (11)

8. Feat (11)

10. In what way? (3)

12. Regret (3)

14. Breathe in (6)

15. North American

deer (6)

16. Transmit,

communicate (6)

17. Not fastened (6)

ISSUE 1115 SOLUTION

CRYPTIC CLUES QUICK CLUES

PRIZE CROSSWORD

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

SUDOKU

ISSUE 1115 SOLUTION

CRYPTIC: Across – 1 Nosebag; 8 Amphora; 9 Xeroxed; 10 Garment; 11 Brummie;

12 Tripoli; 14 Turning; 18 Almanac; 20 Hipster; 21 Reclaim; 22 Nutcase; 23 Tendril.

Down – 1 Next best thing; 2 Shroud; 3 Buxom; 4 Gadget; 5 Upbraid; 6 Bolero;

7 Bactrian camel; 13 Mistral; 15 Repute; 16 Garret; 17 Unfair; 19 Mâcon.

QUICK: Across – 1 Politic; 8 Reptile; 9 Crackle; 10 Well-off; 11 Unhinge; 12 Legroom;

14 Warrior; 18 Emperor; 20 Niagara; 21 Stamina; 22 Ontario; 23 Neglect. Down –

1 Picture window; 2 Loathe; 3 Token; 4 Crewel; 5 Apology; 6 Gigolo; 7 Self-important;

13 Bizarre; 15 Rialto; 16 Reason; 17 Bruise; 19 Prang.

George Michael’s chart-topping Symphonica album, his ninth number one record, will be released as a double-gatefold vinyl album on September 1.The 14-track album, which topped the charts when it was released in March, has produced three singles. The third single, Feeling Good (with a video featuring burlesque star Dita Von Teese), is out now.

We have one copy of the gatefold vinyl version of Symphonica to be won, and four runner-up prizes of CDs of the album. To be in with a chance of winning, answer this question: Which burlesque artist features in the Feeling Good video?

Send answers, with SYMPHOINICA written in the subject line, to: [email protected] or post entries to The Big Issue, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 1HW. Don’t forget to give us your name and address. Closing date is August 26. Please include OPT OUT on your competition entry if you would prefer not to receive any future information or updates from The Big Issue. We will not pass on your details to any third party. Only one entry per competition is accepted, multiple entries will be disqualified along with any entries submitted via agencies or third parties.

GEORGE MICHAEL’S NEW ALBUM SYMPHONICA LIMITED EDITION GATEFOLD VINYL VERSION


PUZZLES

WIN!


WorldMags.net



EST 1991


STREETLIGHTSThe work on this page is mostly by homeless, ex-homeless and vulnerably housed people.

Much of it is produced by groups supported by The Big Issue.

FOUNDERS John Bird & Gordon Roddick

Group chairman

Nigel Kershaw

Group chief executive

Jim Mullan

EDITORIALEditor

Paul McNameeDeputy editor

Vicky Carroll Senior reporter

Adam Forrest Features writer

Steven MacKenzieWeb content manager

Theo HooperStaff writer

Andrew Burns Office manager

Robert WhiteProduction journalist

Sarah Reid

PRODUCTION Art director Scott Maclean

Production editor Ross McKinnon Designer Jim Ladbury

Assistant production editor

Rosanna FarrellCentral advertising

production co-ordinator Terry Cimini

ADVERTISING020 7907 6633

Advertising director Steve Nicolaou Advertising manager Ciaran Scarry Senior sales executive Esme Collins Sales executive Richard Staplehurst

Classified and Recruitment

020 7907 6635

Jenny Bryan & Brad Beaver

Marketing and

communications director Lara McCullagh

Commercial and development director

Mark Reen

THE BIG ISSUE FOUNDATIONChief executive

Stephen Robertson020 7526 3456

Editorial

Second Floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 1HW

0141 352 [email protected]

Distribution

London: 020 7526 3200

Printed at BGP. Published weekly by The Big Issue,

1-5 Wandsworth Road, London SW8 2LN

British Editor of the Year (Lifestyle) 2013 Paul McNamee

PPA Scotland Awards 2013Editor of the Year – Paul McNamee

Feature Writer – Adam ForrestBackstage Star – Robert White

P O E T R Y

THE BOY AND THE FLY BY EDWARD MCHUGHBorn in Dundee, the late Edward McHugh was a Big Issue vendor

in St Andrews around 14 years ago. His poetry was brought to

StreetLights’ attention by Christine Band, a friend of Iain Thompson,

to whom Edward left all of his poetry when he died of a brain tumour.

Edward’s last wish was that some of his writing be published.

Christine and Iain believe this to be Edward’s best poem, the

meaning of which they describe as being “open to interpretation”.

A R T

BY JOHN SHEEHYJohn, 67, is a regular

contributor to StreetLights

and lives in London. He has

experienced homelessness

over the last 50 years and

credits The Big Issue with

first helping him discover his

enjoyment of being creative.

An exhibition of his work,

titled The Colours Choose

Me, will take place at the

House Gallery in Camberwell,

London, from Aug 20-27.

Here are two selections from

the exhibition. For more info

see house-gallery.co.uk.


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If you have anything to contribute to StreetLights email

[email protected] or post to The Big Issue,

Second Floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 1HW

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK


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MY PITCH

A BIG THANK YOUOne of my customers is so nice – he bought me a bicycle. It’s been great. Another customer got me a new pair of glasses because my last pair were stuck together with Blu-Tack. What wonderful people.

PARK STREET

BRISTOL

mind admitting it. I’ve been a Dungeon Master since I was about 11 years old. My nephew and I came up with our own campaign world we’ve been working on for almost two decades. You start creating a small world and before you know it you’ve magicked up two moons, new legal systems, islands floating in the sky and races of people like the Slantaginets alongside your elves and dwarves.

Back in the real world I’m hoping to pick up where I left off with my Open University degree in sociology and psychology. I’ve done one year so the credits should count. The money I make from The Big Issue should help me finish the degree. It’s such an amazing opportunity this organisation gives you – you get out there and sell a product you genuinely believe in. And you’re not only making money for yourself but you’re part of something helping other people in the same situation. OINTERVIEW BY ADAM FORREST

Photo: Sean Malyon

JACK RICHARDSONAGE 36

“I’M A FULL-ON NERD – I’VE BEEN A DUNGEON MASTER SINCE I WAS 11. BACK IN THE REAL WORLD I’M HOPING TO CONTINUE WITH MY DEGREE”

I’ve been selling the magazine in Bristol for the last six months. I came here from Cornwall when I got involved

in a very intense relationship, so I came here to move in with her. But the relationship exploded. So I ended up without anywhere to live. You know the drill: without a local connection, the council won’t rehouse you.

I got a place in the Salvation Army and now I’m staying at a friend’s place. Selling the magazine has been great – it turns out I’m really good at it. I use little rhymes and poems that get people smiling. Things like: “When the sky is bright and blue and the weather is warm and sunny/The mighty Big Issue is honest and true and also great value for money.”

I do love Bristol. I’ve lived all over the country – as far north as Orkney, as far south as Penzance, and I don’t think there’s anywhere as welcoming and friendly as Bristol. People only need the slightest excuse to get together: getting involved in politics, culture, music and poetry slams. I speak to everyone from single mothers to artists putting on shows. It’s the sort of place where people strike up conversations very easily at the bus stop.

I’m a full-on nerd and I don’t

NEXT WEEK

ON SALEAUGUST 25

RISE OF THE GOLDEN ARCHESIs McDonald’s the new global peacemaker?

I’m outside the Boston Tea Party on Park Street. They’re lovely – always

bringing me cups of tea. I’m a bit of a tea connoisseur – I love

my Assam tea.

#celebrateyourvendor

ON MY PITCH… I’m there from 7am to about 5pm and I

might stop for some lunch about 2pm.


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the big issue 18 august 2014

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