Emilia Clarke has spoken exclusively to the Big Issue about the incredible strength it took to survive and recover after two brain injuries.

Clarke suffered two life-threatening brain haemorrhages while starring as Daenerys Targaryen in HBO series Game of Thrones.

“When you have a brain injury, because it alters your sense of self on such a dramatic level, all of the insecurities you have going into the workplace quadruple overnight,” Emilia Clarke told the Big Issue. “The first fear we all had was: ‘Oh my God, am I going to get fired? Am I going to get fired because they think I’m not capable of completing the job?’”

She has been interviewed in this week’s Big Issue, out today (10 June), about the difficulties of returning to work after experiencing a brain injury.

Meanwhile polling from the Big Issue Group and brain injury charity SameYou found that a third of people felt they did not feel ready to return to their jobs after their brain injuries. Of these, more than half (53%) of survivors said they had to return to work for financial reasons.

Read more in this week’s magazine!

What else is in this week’s Big Issue?

Malala Yousafzai has a harrowing story to tell, with help from Jennifer Lawrence

Nobel Prize-winning activist Malala Yousafzai talks to Big Issue about her new documentary, Bread & Roses, which shows the brutal realities of life for Afghanistan’s women under the Taliban.

“Most people know me as an advocate for girls’ education. I started producing films and working in the entertainment space because I believe that storytelling is the soul of activism,” she said.

The next government must prioritise ending poverty. And there’s a straightforward way to do it.

“We’re already more than two weeks into this election campaign, yet the silence around poverty has so far been deafening,” writes Cass Francis, campaigns co-ordinator at Southend Foodbank. “At the time of writing, no party has even mentioned the issue, let alone put forward policies to support the ever-increasing number of people who are struggling to get by.”

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

Our books special features a festival guide, summer read tips and a belated celebration of a literary legend

Book festivals have a flattering reputation for camaraderie and intellectual exchange. Here’s where you can get involved this summer, from Edinburgh to Hay.

Bradley Riches is excited to be back on stage in Babies, a new British coming-of-age musical, because the theatre is where he first found “my people”. The 22-year-old actor is best known for Netflix’s hit coming-of-age drama Heartstopper, in which he plays James, a character who, like him, is queer and autistic. Riches also boosted his profile with a recent reality TV stint. “I walked past some builders the other day and they were like, ‘You’re the lad from Celebrity Big Brother,'” he says, still sounding surprised.

But before that, he trained in musical theatre at Emil Dale Academy in Hitchin. “I did some stage shows when I was younger, but then my voice broke,” Riches says, speaking over Zoom from a “cubby hole” at his Buckinghamshire home. “So I had to work out my lower vocal range. Then I graduated and obviously went into TV. So this is my adult professional stage debut.”

Babies, which has just opened at London’s The Other Palace theatre, definitely presents Riches with a fresh challenge. Written by rising stars Jack Godfrey and Martha Geelan – who also directs – it follows nine Year 11 classmates who are tasked with keeping a fake baby alive for a week.

“That might sound a bit ridiculous,” Riches says with a laugh. “But the show is really about growing up and finding out who you are.” He plays Toby, a gay student who shares his simulated baby with Jacob, the school’s “typical popular boy” played by Nathan Johnston. “They go on a bit of a journey together,” Riches says teasingly.

One of Toby’s classmates is negotiating a fraught relationship with her own mother; another is grappling with their gender identity. Babies explores these multifarious teen experiences in perky original songs that draw from contemporary pop. “Some have a rocky vibe and others are sadder – a little more Olivia Rodrigo,” Riches says.

Growing up in Surrey, Bradley Riches found his own voice at after-school acting classes. He began taking them aged nine because his parents thought, correctly as it turned out, that the creative environment might boost his confidence.

“I didn’t go in thinking I wanted to act for a living – it was just a hobby,” he says. “But as I gained in confidence and started auditioning for roles, I was like: ‘This is helping me in so ways.'” At 14, Riches signed with an agent and began acting in Off West End productions including Disaster!, a musical spoof of Hollywood disaster movies.

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Nine was also a milestone age for Riches because he was diagnosed with autism. “My parents were slowly understanding why I did things in certain ways, but I didn’t really understand what being autistic was,” he says. At secondary school, he only told “very close friends” he was neurodivergent.

“There’s a stigma and shame around autism,” he says. “So I would always mask it and dim myself. I was like, ‘Yeah, I know I am [autistic]. But let’s just ignore it and keep going.'”

Thankfully, as he entered his late-teens, Riches felt able to be “very open about my sexuality”. This in turn helped him to embrace his autism. “I began to understand ‘me’ with regards to being gay and being autistic. It helped me feel more confident and kind of solidified who I was,” he says.

At drama school, Riches was warned by a neurodivergent teacher that no one in the industry would “really care” about his specific needs as an autistic person. He expected to have to “grin and bear it”, but after being cast in Heartstopper in 2022, he received an email from producers asking how they could make filming easier for him. “That was incredible,” he says.

Some of his audition experiences have been less positive. “It feels like they never want to give too much away in case it gives you the upper hand,” he says. “One time I was auditioning for an autistic role and they literally just said: ‘Meet here at 2pm.’ I had to ask for more information because often I need to get to the audition space three hours early just so I can find the door and know 100% where everything is.”

It would be relatively easy for the industry to improve, he says. “Just being sent a photo of the audition space in advance and being told who’s going to greet you are little things they could do – but generally don’t – to make it more accessible.”

Riches describes Heartstopper, which returns for its third season in October, as an “amazing first job” that gave him a gateway into advocacy work. Because Heartstopper centres on a varied array of LGBTQ+ characters, it turned Riches and castmates Joe Locke, Kit Connor and Yasmin Finney into role models. He is now an ambassador for the campaigning and research charity Autistica.

With author James A Lyons, he has co-written a children’s book, “A” Different Kind of Superpower, that reframes autism as something to be celebrated. When Riches entered the Celebrity Big Brother house in March, he was comfortable enough to show himself “stimming”: using repetitive movements to dispel anxious energy from his body.

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

He also opened up to housemate Marisha Wallace, a fellow musical theatre performer, about some of the ways in which his autism shows up. “I lie there in bed and it’s like, god, how am I going to greet everyone in the morning,” Riches told her.

But after he left the house, Riches received comments from trolls who claimed his autism was somehow disingenuous. He used this as a teachable moment, writing on Instagram: “We have always been presented by stereotypes in the media telling us how autistic people are meant to look, behave and present. Just because I don’t fit into what you have seen before and fit into what you think ‘being autistic’ is, doesn’t mean I am not autistic.”

Bradley Riches says the routine of appearing in Babies suits him – he arranges his day “like a school timetable” to manage his autism. And he has straightforward advice for anyone still getting to grips with their own neurodivergence: “Give yourself time. You don’t need to learn every single thing about what it means for you straight away. Like every part of finding out who you are, it’s an ongoing process.”

Bradley Riches stars in Babies at The Other Palace, London, until 14 July.

As the latest general election polls show the Labour Party on track to beat their 1997 landslide, former Conservative cabinet minister and The Rest is Politics podcast co-host Rory Stewart says the Tories brought the calamity on themselves by electing Boris Johnson and Liz Truss as leaders.

“I feel the Conservative Party is getting its just deserts,” he told Big Issue. “It’s ultimately getting punished for the profound cynicism involved in endorsing Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. There was no happy ending to that. It was about putting power above seriousness, principle and policy. And so in a sense, they deserve what’s happening.”

Rory Stewart was the Conservative MP for Penrith and the Border from 2010 to 2019, and between 2015 and 2019 served as a minister in four departments of the British government, including heading up the prison service. He was secretary of state for international development from May to July 2019, but quit politics after being beaten in the Conservative leadership election by Boris Johnson.

Though he has little sympathy for his former colleagues, who are predicted to lose as many as 225 seats in the upcoming election, Stewart expressed concern that an incoming Labour government may be unable to change the trajectory of UK politics.

“The question is: is Labour going to rise to the challenge? Are they going to be able to really be more serious? Or is this lack of seriousness embedded now so deeply in the British political game – and media and social media and party politics – that they’re not going to be able to find a way of being honest and brave?”

Since leaving politics, Rory Stewart has written a bestselling memoir, Politics on the Edge, which details his frustrations at the “shameful state” to which parliament has fallen. He also launched The Rest Is Politics podcast with Alastair Campbell. But some of his most impactful work has been away from party politics.

From 2022 to 2023, Stewart was the president of GiveDirectly – a charity that helps families living in extreme poverty in the developing world by making unconditional cash transfers to them via mobile phone. He believes the next government should do something very similar to tackle “shameful” extreme poverty in the UK.

“The evidence is: the major reason people are poor, is they don’t have money. And if you give them money, they’re less poor,” he said. “Most people in poverty actually spend the money reasonably sensibly.

“The thing that saddens me most about the Labour platform, as we can read it now, is the lack of care for the most vulnerable. Fundamentally, what is shameful about Britain? Not the stuff that we usually talk about. It’s the way that we neglect prisoners, the homeless, the extreme poor. That’s the problem in British society.”

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Rory Stewart endorsed Big Issue founder Lord John Bird’s laser focus on eradicating poverty, the central pillar of the Big Issue’s Blueprint for Change.

“Extreme poverty is the biggest stain in our society,” he said, “and that should be our number one focus. And it’s a focus that needs full effort, full focus and as [Lord Bird] says, a very long-term approach. But not just a long-term approach – a short-term approach as well.

“I would get very frustrated in prisons where everyone was like, ‘Well, the only way of dealing with this is addressing child poverty.’ And I was like, that’s fine, but there are people in prison now having a horrible time. So by all means, address child poverty but also clean up this prison. Stop people getting violently assaulted. Don’t let the long term be an excuse for not tackling what you can today.”

At the moment, Rory Stewart said, the government is neither putting in place long term solutions nor dealing with the immediate concerns because as a nation we “fundamentally don’t care” about people living in extreme poverty.

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

“People are not getting out of bed in the morning thinking, this is horrible. We’re telling ourselves other sorts of stories,” he said.

“There’s a lot of things that are wrong. I’d like to really think about how we reform the NHS. There’s no bit of public life I don’t look at and say OK, we could definitely make this better. And a serious government would try to make all these things better.

“But the poverty bit is the shameful bit. That’s the bit that’s unforgivable, because we can absolutely afford for very little money, comparatively, to make the lives of the extreme poor immeasurably better. Starting today.

“And actually, it’s much easier to do that than reform the NHS, or even sort out education. You could do things immediately for people who are homeless, immediately for people in prison, for very little money.”

Rory Stewart was speaking to Big Issue for his Letter to My Younger Self, in which he also discussed how he’s coped with “the failure of [his] political career”; his relationship with his father, a former senior spy; and the bad poetry he wrote as a lovelorn teen. Read the full interview in the magazine soon.

Today, Johnny Harris, one of Britain’s best character actors, is looking very sharp. Tailored navy blazer, knitted silk yellow tie and light blue Brooks Brothers button-down. He’s making an effort, he says, “because it’s Weller”. Paul Weller joins us, a few floors up in a Central London club, looking tanned, tired (he’s just back from LA) and less formal (Lee cords, leather loafers). During the interview, his tailor will drop off some clothes for the shoot that is coming later. That feels very Weller. 

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

Paul Weller, or the idea of Paul Weller, has been a dominant thread in popular British culture for almost 50 years. He has just turned 66 and has been the Modfather longer than many of his fans have been alive. Through it all he signalled that the elements many people want him to remain locked into – hits of The Jam, a feather cut and Fred Perry top, music that is tied in the past – are not for him. Forward, never looking back; ever changing moods for the changing man. He has been clear and not spoken in code. His direction of travel was set 42 years ago. He split The Jam when they were dominant in the UK and on the cusp in the US. He was just 24.  

Harris and Weller first worked together almost eight years ago on Jawbone, the dark but redemptive movie written by Harris about a former boxing champion who is trying to lift himself back from alcoholism, homelessness and hopelessness. The film, which echoes some of Harris’s own story, saw Weller write his first soundtrack. The pair have been friends ever since.  

Harris’s own breakthrough came as Lol’s (Vicky McClure) monstrous father in This Is England ’86 and has seen him move through roles that varied from playing one of the dwarves in the big-budget Snow White and the Huntsman, to currently starring alongside Ewan McGregor in A Gentleman in Moscow. 

Today, he’s talking about his work as a director. He has created the video for Weller’s forthcoming single I Woke Up. Shot in black and white, it details a day in the life of a homeless man in London, told simply and without hyperbole, but ending with a call to help St Mungo’s, the charity primarily focused on getting rough sleepers into a bed.

“It was a strange mix in the song, a kind of an optimism and an acceptance at the same time. And that’s a rare combination,” says Harris. “There are many types of homelessness, we know that. And it would have been easy, I think, to go out and just present visceral images of homelessness – the most vicious stuff, suffering of addiction and physical suffering. And that’s been done and it’s been done powerfully.”

However, the challenge of making the point in a different way appealed to him. “I was intrigued. I thought we could do something that spoke to me, which was, there are incredible people out there, like St Mungo’s, trying to get solutions. I wanted to draw attention to that.” 

The Grass Arena, the autobiography of John Healy, the London-Irish memoirist, telling of his life drunk, dissolute and lost on the city streets for years, was in mind for Harris as he created the film.  

“If you watch the video, there’s a sequence where our character’s reading a book, just very quiet and peaceful in a little garden,” he says. “That’s actually the Grass Arena. That’s where all of that history took place there. The stairs that [the character] walked down to the place where he’s begging, that was the old cardboard city. There’s lots of that kind of stuff. I wanted to go around and kind of pay homage to that history. But there’s a sadness today, as you’re filming in those places, and you’re thinking it hasn’t really changed. They’ve moved the problem out and on but the statistics show a real spike recently. How is this happening, what is the root of this problem? I don’t really trust the politicians to have the answers. The answers lie within places like St Mungo’s, like The Big Issue.” 

It’s not the first time Johnny Harris has directed a video for Paul Weller. He also did Gravity, a simple moment but one of Weller’s most affecting late-period tracks, from 2018’s True Meanings.  

“I know he’s after the truth,” says Weller. “I’ve got absolute faith in him.” 

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I Woke Up wasn’t initially anything to do with homelessness. The decision to make a video looking at homelessness then calling for positive action is an overtly political act. Weller has always been a political artist, either in song, from The Eton Rifles and Town Called Malice or Walls Come Tumbling Down and The Whole Point of No Return, to his campaigning work with Red Wedge in the ’80s and backing for Corbyn in more recent years. Did he decide the time was now to clearly say, this is the state we’re in? 

“State is the operative word,” says Weller. “This country is run by idiots and fools. And it’s not like they even try to cover it up. It’s like all these grown-up posh kids have all been let loose in this asylum.

“With the matter of homelessness, it’s how do you fix this? You can’t just keep moving people off to another area. It’s sweeping it under the carpet. Why don’t we try and fix it? I’m not saying it’s an easy thing to fix. Some of the homeless people round my way, some I chat to, it’s a mixture of things – some have definitely got mental problems and they should be helped, some people have drug problems and could go through a programme. But then you need a support system so that once they go through that programme they can’t go back on the streets. They need work to help stop that. But that’s in an ideal world. Because of all the cuts, that’s not going to happen. It’s fucked.” 

With an election coming, does he have more hope if Keir Starmer becomes PM and changes things? 

“He’s just a slightly softer version of the Tory party, isn’t he?,” says Weller. “He’d be well served to remember who built the Labour Party, trade unions and communists. So, I don’t see much difference between him and Sunak and all that mob. The fact that he’s a Sir puts me off a little bit in the first place.” 

The political is not a dominant theme on Weller’s new album, 66 – and yes, this is a reference to his age. In fact, the album is reflective and mediative and at odds with the Weller only-ever-forward mantra. In many ways it’s Weller’s most significant record since Stanley Road, his great defining album of the ’90s. If that album was his call back to youth and the places that had made him, before really motoring forward (it was Stanley Road that carried The Changingman) then 66 is his long, at times gentle, and frequently sentimental pause at where life has brought him. Weller is asking big questions about why we’re here and where next. A very clear thread between the albums are the cover illustrations – both designed by British pop art king Sir Peter Blake.  

Though Weller isn’t allowing for such talk about considered links. 

“I’m just writing songs,” he says, smiling. “I got up to about 20 songs or more over the last two or three years, and I just thought, there’s an album there somewhere. I didn’t have any grand concept. Whether it’s a pivotal record for me, I wouldn’t be able to tell you until a couple of years’ time. I never know at the time. I don’t know what’s important or not.” 

Still, he mustered some heavy-duty resources to get this one finished. Quite a few old friends were called to help deliver. Bobby Gillespie, Suggs and Noel Gallagher bring lyrics (Noel returned his within 20 minutes of the request), while Richard Hawley plays lap steel guitar (on I Woke Up), great Northern Irish contemporary orchestrator and instrumentalist Hannah Peel brings a lushness to strings and Erland Cooper, the mighty Orcadian modern classical composer, collaborates, not for the first time, on a track.

Of Cooper, Weller says: “He’s an incredible artist. It’s lovely to see someone just doing exactly what they want, and then be successful doing that as well.” 

But there is something of a change going on. 66 feels like it could only have been made by an older man. Weller concedes he has mellowed. 

“I’m not just trying to be confrontational,” he says. “I don’t see the point in it anymore. I’m a different person than I was, 15 or 20 years ago, let alone 40. So I think life has softened me and my outlook has softened my view of things – up to a point anyway. I see a bigger picture now.” 

What has done this? Age? Becoming a grandfather (I’m still waiting to see the Modgrandfather as a moniker), or something else? Faith and the idea of faith is a motif on 66. On Soul Wandering he sings “there’s something greater than me”. 

Does Paul Weller believe in God? 

“Faith to me is multifaceted,” he says. “It’s got many faces. More spirituality has come into my life in recent years. Whether that’s an age thing or because I stopped drinking, however it works, it’s come to me. But I don’t particularly like any organised religions. If I picture it in my mind, it’s a big rock, and sometimes you get further away from that rock and lose faith, and then you come back to it and feel alright again. Whatever that is. 

“I can find it in a lot of things. I find it in love. I find it in kindness, in music, because music unites the world, it’s strong and powerful. Lots of little things that make me believe. What do I believe? I don’t know. When I say prayers, I’m not saying them to a Christian god or any other organised religion, I just praise and give thanks to this life and universe and why we’re here. Perhaps we haven’t got a purpose. If we’re lucky enough, while we’re here we get to enjoy it. A lot of people are living through a hell. And it’s hard to put those two strands together. It’s a belief that there is something better and something better within us.” 

Weller said his wife Hannah Andrews (they’ve now been married for 14 years), gave him an ultimatum – the booze or me. He hasn’t drunk since.

“I stopped drinking 14 years ago  – 1 July. Everything changed when I stopped drinking. It’s like night and day, it really is. First two years were hard. I didn’t have any relapses and I didn’t go to AA, though I would have done if I felt I needed to,” he says. He also says he “definitely” classed himself as an alcoholic. “It was something in my body that said, you’ve got to stop now. It was a bigger force than me just consciously saying ‘I’ve got to stop’, which I’d said many times. It was a much stronger force than that. It brings so much more clarity to your thinking and your actions, how you view the world. I’m glad I’ve got to this point in my life.  

“When you’re younger, you’re just a funny pisshead. Then you cross a line at a certain age and you’re just another old drunk. It’s a hard thing to admit but once you do, it gets easier.” 

Harris hasn’t had a drink in 17 years. He looks at Weller and takes a deep breath.

“It still blows my mind now. I was one of those who couldn’t stop. I don’t want to waffle on about this too much publicly. You just deal with these things.  “We have conversations [he looks again to Weller]. It’s a fascinating experience to go through. If you spend half your life out of your nut chasing that thing, whatever it is, then other things start becoming important in life, it’s a profound experience to go through, to experience peace and serenity in your heart.

“I didn’t know that was a real thing that was possible. Closest I got was when I poured that shit down my throat. It goes and you’re free. And you have friends going through the same thing. It’s like sharing about a great record you’ve heard.” 

Weller is looking forward to touring the record. He’s planning on following it soon with an album of covers and has already decided on what they’ll be. He’s keen to remain on the road for as long as he can. 

“It’s the most beautiful feeling in the world really,” he says. “Richard Hawley said to me that when he’s on stage it’s the most zen feeling in his life. And I get that. All the niggling things drop away and you have this connection and it’s a really beautiful thing. When that happens on a great night, with that complete communion with so many other people, all strangers, we’re all strangers in some way, this thing just grows and grows and grows. It’s beautiful. That will always call me back. It’s beyond ego, it’s something else.” 

Though he’ll always remain Weller, Britain’s boss of Mod. That fine Brooks Brothers shirt Johnny Harris was wearing for today? It is a gift from Weller.  

Saintly behaviour 

Before making the I Woke Up video, Johnny Harris called on some expert advice. “A dear friend of mine, Natalie Rose-Weir, works for St Mungo’s. I asked if she’d help with research. Her and a couple of her colleagues, David Roskin-Thomas and Marian Torres, were really helpful.”

The video depicts a day in the life of a person experiencing homeless in Central London: washing and dressing in a public toilet; walking alongside the Thames; moments of respite among the chaos of rush-hour; finding food and shelter. Shot in bleakly beautiful black and white, it’s as serious as its subject and never feels exploitative. 

The result is a tough and honest video that will move whoever sees it. “I think an artist’s job is to present the truth,” Harris says. “From that, whoever wants to take it up can. Whether it’s the people, whether it’s politicians – the supposed leaders. I’m more interested in dealing with people who are actively working on the solution.”

The video started a valuable relationship with St Mungo’s. Weller and his team asked for donations for the charity from their guest list attendees during his recent UK tour, raising over £4,200. Laura Herring, St Mungo’s director of fundraising, says: “We were delighted to be approached by Paul and Johnny. Their passion to represent those experiencing homelessness in an authentic, compassionate manner is appreciated by all of us at St Mungo’s. The situation is worsening, with a 33% increase in rough sleepers in the capital between January and March 2024, compared to last year, and a 37% increase in those sleeping rough for the first time.”

“Donations like this could help to fund our frontline workers, who are on the street every day connecting with people sleeping rough, to fund our hostels, emergency accommodation and our recovery programmes – all necessary to end homelessness
for good.”

Find out more about St Mungo’s here

Paul Weller’s new album 66 is out now. Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue. Read more of his columns here. Follow him on Twitter.

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

A version of this article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

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Music legend and ‘Modfather’ Paul Weller has said he “doesn’t see much difference” between Labour leader Keir Starmer and Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak.

Speaking exclusively to the Big Issue in the wake of the general election being called, Weller reflected on Starmer and the choice voters have when they go to the ballot box on 4 July: “He’s just a slightly softer version of the Tory party, isn’t he?”

Weller continued: “He’d be well served to remember who built the Labour party – trade unions and communists. So, I don’t see much difference between him and Sunak and all that mob. The fact that he’s a Sir puts me off a little bit in the first place.”

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Paul Weller appears on the cover of the Big Issue following the release of 66, his 17th solo album, and the release of his new music video “I Woke Up”, which explores the issue of homelessness in London.

Shot in black and white, the video details a day in the life of a homeless man. It’s told simply and without hyperbole. Made by actor Johnny Harris, of This Is England fame, and shot on the site of the old ‘cardboard city’ near Waterloo, it’s a powerful statement about the rough sleeping crisis escalating on the streets of London.

Asked why he chose to highlight homelessness in the video, Weller told the Big Issue: “This country is run by idiots and fools. And it’s not like they even try to cover it up. It’s like all these grown up posh kids have all been let loose in this asylum.

“With the matter of homelessness, it’s how do you fix this? You can’t just keep moving people off and to another area. It’s sweeping it under the carpet. Why don’t we try and fix it? I’m not saying it’s an easy thing to fix.

“Some of the homeless people round my way, some I chat to, it’s a mixture of things – some people have definitely got mental problems and they should be helped and looked after, some people have drug problems and could go through a programme. But then you need a support system so that once they go through that programme they can’t go back on the streets.

“They need work to help stop that. But that’s in an ideal world. Because of all the cuts, that’s not going to happen. It’s fucked.”

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

Johnny Harris also reflected on the decision to film the video for Paul Weller’s new single on the site of Waterloo’s infamous ‘cardboard city’, where hundreds of homeless people lived between the late ‘70s and ‘90s, saying: “The stairs that [the lead character in the music video] walked down to the place where he’s begging, that was the old cardboard city. There’s lots of that kind of stuff. I wanted to go around and kind of pay homage to that history.

“But there’s a sadness today, as you’re filming in those places, and you’re thinking it hasn’t really changed. They’ve moved the problem out and on but the statistics show a real spike recently. How is this happening, what is the root of this problem? I don’t really trust the politicians to have the answers. The answers lie within these places like St Mungo’s, like the Big Issue.”

To read the full interview with Paul Weller and Johnny Harris, buy this week’s Big Issue. You can find your local vendor to buy a copy, or subscribe online, at bigissue.com.

Paul Weller, or the idea of Paul Weller, has been a dominant thread in popular British culture for almost 50 years. He has just turned 66 and has been the Modfather longer than many of his fans have been alive. Through it all he signalled that the elements many people want him to remain locked into – hits of The Jam, a feather cut and Fred Perry top, music that is tied in the past – are not for him. Forward, never looking back; ever changing moods for the changing man.

Johnny Harris is one of Britain’s best character actors. Harris and Weller first worked together almost eight years ago on Jawbone, the dark but redemptive movie written by Harris about a former boxing champion who is trying to lift himself back from alcoholism, homelessness and hopelessness. The film, which echoes Harris’s own story, saw Weller write his first soundtrack. The pair have been friends ever since. 

This year, Harris has created the video for Weller’s forthcoming single “I Woke Up”. Shot in black and white, it details a day in the life of a homeless man in London, told simply and without hyperbole, but ending with a call to help St Mungo’s, the charity primarily focused on getting rough sleepers into a bed.

In this week’s issue of the Big Issue, Paul Weller and Johnny Harris reflects on the state of the nation, the ageing process and spirituality.

What else is in this week’s Big Issue?

Alan Rickman’s advice for his godson Tom Burke helped the Strike and Furiosa star figure out what really matters

Tom Burke was quickly bitten by the acting bug, but godfather Alan Rickman helped him keep his feet on the ground.

“It was a lesson in getting on with it and being grateful for the work, whatever it was, knowing you’re blessed to be getting paid to do something you love,” he says.

Our Blueprint for Change calls on the next government to pledge to end poverty

Talk about an impact. Just over a fortnight after we published our Blueprint for Change – our call on ALL political leaders to commit to ending poverty for good – prime minister Rishi Sunak announced a snap summer general election. You’re welcome.

It’s worth reiterating what the Big Issue Group Blueprint is all about. Read about it in this week’s issue.

Photographer Asmaa Waguih’s images tell the story of the ‘forgotten war’ in Yemen

The conflict in Yemen is often called ‘the forgotten war’. Egyptian photographer Asmaa Waguih asks why this might be and explains her determination to tell the stories that would otherwise be lost. “The goal was to share the human experiences,” she tells us.

Since Westerns first started weaving celluloid tales of cowboys and ‘Indians’ in the early 20th century, they have acted as a sort of origin story for the United States. “It’s a kind of justification” for the settlers’ treatment of Native American people, “and unbridled capitalism, as well, and lawlessness,” says actor and director Viggo Mortensen, best known as Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and for his starring role in David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence.

Relaxing in the plush foyer of a Glasgow hotel – having arrived to promote his own Western, The Dead Don’t Hurt, at the Glasgow Film Festival alongside co-star Solly McLeod – Mortensen admits he’s always been attracted to Westerns. “I grew up watching them,” he says. “I’m the first one to recognise that most Westerns are pretty simple and naive, and not terribly original stories, but occasionally, the best of the classic Westerns are on a level of the best poetry, the best tragedies written by human beings since ancient times.”

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It is to these heights Viggo Mortensen aspires with his brooding take on the Wild West. Set in the 1860s, The Dead Don’t Hurt stars Phantom Thread’s Vicky Krieps as fiercely independent French-Canadian woman Vivienne Le Coudy. She falls for Danish immigrant Holger Olsen (Mortensen) and the pair move to a frontier town in Nevada as the Civil War looms. When Holger decides to fight for the Union, Vivienne is left alone in a dangerous town, at the mercy of corrupt mayor (Danny Huston), his rancher business partner (Garret Dillahunt) and the rancher’s violent son (Solly McLeod). 

Mortensen not only stars in The Dead Don’t Hurt, he also wrote, directed and produced the film, as well as composing the score. He set out to be “respectful” of classic Westerns. “The story and the look of the people, the way they speak, the way they ride, the weapons – everything should feel real.” 

This meant meticulous attention to detail, and a crash revision course for his crew. “You must have sent me 30, 40, 50 films,” laughs McLeod. Just 24, the Orkney-born actor (previously seen as the eponymous hero in ITVX miniseries Tom Jones) grew up in a time when Westerns “just weren’t a thing”.

“I sent him a lot of movies saying, ‘I’m sorry, it’s really bad, you don’t have to watch all of it. But look at the way the guy puts on his hat, or how he rides a horse,’” Mortensen says. “Or to the set designer, I’d say, ‘Look at this. It’s a terrible movie but the saloon is amazing.’”

Its crew thus immersed in genre history, The Dead Don’t Hurt captures the dusty feel of the frontier, but it’s also quietly revolutionary. Viggo Mortensen has long been known for his political activism – he endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016 and recently signed an open letter to president Joe Biden calling for an Israeli ceasefire – so he was always going to kick against the more reactionary side of this all-American mythology.

The Dead Don’t Hurt paints a truer picture of the melting pot of the West, says Mortensen, “full of people that don’t even speak English, or that speak English with an accent from another language”. But most noticeably of all, it puts a woman’s story centre stage. 

“Not only that, but when her male companion goes off to war, we don’t see a second of that, we stay with her,” he adds. “The goal was to tell a story about an unusual woman, who’s very stubbornly independent and strong-willed.”

• Cowbois: This ‘big queer Western’ is subverting macho tropes and celebrating gender outlaws
• Crimes of the future: Surgery is the new sex in Cronenberg’s latest ick-flick

Viewing the world from a female perspective goes a long way to upend the power dynamic of the traditional Western. There’s as much homesteading as there is gunslinging. The human consequences of the era’s lawlessness are thrown in sharp relief. Viggo Mortensen shows the brutality inherent in America’s origin story, thus reframing how the US got to where it is now. 

“The power and the impunity,” of the corrupt men in charge holds a particular parallel to current leaders, he says. “It’s not too hard to compare to Donald Trump and his offspring. The way they speak and feel empowered to do and say whatever they want. As long as they continue to not really pay a price for it, they’ll keep doing it.

“But this happens anywhere. You could talk about Vladimir Putin, and his brutal ambition and grotesque corruption. Whether it’s Trump or Putin, what do you do? You could be a completely non-violent person, but at a certain point you have to defend yourself or you have to defend law.”

For Mortensen, the first step is to stay informed. He “makes it a daily exercise” to review a range of news – including “really right-wing sources” – to give himself the tools to make up his own mind. “If you make that effort, you can find out what really might be happening.”

The Dead Don’t Hurt is in cinemas from 7 June.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play

Alexander McCall Smith was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, to British parents. He moved to Edinburgh to study law, before teaching at Queen’s University, Belfast. In 1981, McCall Smith co-founded the law school at the University of Botswana, where he also taught.

His first published book was The White Hippo in 1980, which kickstarted a career writing childrens’ books. His breakthrough writing novels came with the publication of The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, which became a hit in Scotland (he had settled in Edinburgh with his family in 1984) and, after the third book in the series, in the US. To date, McCall Smith has published 24 volumes in the series, which has sold over 20 million worldwide. He is also the author of the popular 44 Scotland Street novels and the Isabel Dalhousie series, as well as many standalone novels and non-fiction titles.

In 2007 he received a CBE for services to literature and in 2011 was honoured by the President of Botswana for services through literature to the country. In 2015 he received the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction.

Speaking to the Big Issue for his Letter to My Younger Self, Alexander McCall Smith reflects on an awkward adolescence, being in Northern Ireland during The Troubles and the growing realisation he was going to make it as a writer.

I think I was the usual 16-year-old – any time between 14 and about 18 is a really bad time if you’re a boy. You think you know everything but actually you know very little. And the world doesn’t treat you as if you know everything, so it’s a very frustrating time. The adolescent brain is very badly wired. So at 16 I took myself terrifically seriously. And no one else did. 

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I lived in a town called Bulawayo, which was in Zimbabwe. It was very remote, a colonial territory in colonial days. I was at a boys’ school. It was a very quiet existence. I was very interested in writing. I had always written as a child. I had an article published in the local paper when I was about 16, a piece about Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. I don’t know why I chose to write about him. 

I think I was a pretty typical teenager. I read quite a lot. And I had a strong imaginative life. I spent quite a lot of time in my own company, thinking. I had the idea that I would love to write one day but it was very underdeveloped. I read a lot of poetry, which was probably atypical. And I had a pile of old copies of
The Listener magazine. I used to go through those time and time again. I was very self-consciously intellectual. I regarded myself as knowing more than the other boys at school. 

I decided that I would study law. So I went to Edinburgh university. Then I was offered the chance to study for a PhD. And in the course of that I was offered a job at Queen’s University of Belfast. So I went off to Belfast at a very difficult time. The Troubles were in a very serious state. It was a really significant time, living through a period of great sadness in a society that was torn by terrible divisions and basically a low-grade civil war. You heard explosions, you heard gunfire. But you just lived with it. There were moments when the situation was highly intriguing, and then there were other times when it was just tragic. I shall never forget that time. I was there for about a year and a half. And then I was offered a job back at Edinburgh. 

I started to write a bit more in Belfast and when I came back to Edinburgh the next major development in my writing life came. I entered a writing competition and was lucky enough to win the children’s fiction section. I then approached an agent in London and over the next few years I wrote a number of children’s books, which started to be published. And so that’s how I started. All the while I had the day job, and I ended up as professor of medical law at Edinburgh. I had a very interesting and satisfying career and was on a lot of government committees.  

And then I wrote the first novel, The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. When that took off in a big way internationally, I felt that I was under great pressure to do all sorts of things. So I thought I’d take a leave of absence of three years unpaid to concentrate on my writing. And after a while I realised the books had become all-consuming. 

I went back to Botswana in 1981 to set up a law school in the university. And I continued to have a close connection with Botswana over the years. Then in 1996 I sat down and wrote what I thought would be a single story – how wrong I was – I’ve just finished the 25th volume of… Detective Agency (which is set in Botswana). I was asked to write a sequel then a sequel to the sequel. Then the books were imported by Columbia University Press in New York. And very big publishers, Random House, said, Oh, we want to put these out in America. And then they took off in a pretty dramatic way. 

• From the archives: Salman Rushdie’s letter to his younger self
• Martin Amis: ‘The past gets bigger but the future shrinks’

I remember the moment I knew my life was going to change. I’d gone over to New York to meet my new editor. I went into their office thinking that I’d have a cup of coffee and then be shown the door. But they had a whole restaurant booked for lunch, and they had all these PR people there. And I remember going out of their office that afternoon thinking, my goodness, something is really happening here. I went out on Park Avenue, and I looked up at the sky, in the glittering canyon of the New York streets and I realised that life was going to be different. 

I’ve written about 75 books since then and I’m very grateful for how my life has gone. I’ve lived a total writer’s dream and I’m very conscious of my great fortune. 

If my younger self met me now and I told him what I had done he’d say, ‘Oh, my goodness. Is that true?’ The teenager would look at me and say, do you mean to say that you go all over the world and do these things? Because the sort of life I had as a teenager was very simple. I think he’d be rather overwhelmed. My job enables me to travel a lot. But usually where I really want to be is at home in Edinburgh. But I do know I’ve had experiences that I would otherwise never have had.

I didn’t think about being a dad when I was younger [he has two daughters with his wife Elizabeth]. There may be an interesting difference there between men and women. I think if you asked an 18-year-old woman she might say one day she’d like to be a mother. I think the maternal instinct is a very strong one, stronger than the paternal instinct. Women are much better carers. Women are much more inclined to nurture things and be concerned about others. Women keep friendships going much better than men do. Women are more concerned about the welfare of the broader family. Men just have an instinct to provide. 

I’d tell my younger self, try to think more about other people’s feelings and what they’re thinking. Be more aware of the feelings and sensitivities of others. I would also say very specifically, go talk to people much older than yourself. And listen to what they’ve got to say. That’s something I think we all suddenly realise. I think back to people, and I wish I’d gone to sit with a tape recorder and spoken to them about their experiences. 

I remember I occasionally bumped into the famous Hamish Henderson, who was a great folklorist. I used to be on a committee with Peter Higgs, the Nobel-winning physicist of Higgs boson fame. I had a great uncle who had been a doctor in the Battle of the Somme. I didn’t talk to any of them enough. 

If I could relive one moment it would probably be a conversation with my agent, when the writing really did begin to take off. I remember one conversation with one of the agents in London when I was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed. And she said, sit back and enjoy it. You’re about to have a really good experience. 

But actually, the absolute best conversation was probably when I was told my first book was accepted for publication. That’s it. Because never again do you get to have that thrill. 

The Conditions of Unconditional Love (Isabel Dalhousie book 27) by Alexander McCall Smith is out on 6 June (Abacus, £18.99). You can buy it from The Big Issue shop on Bookshop.org, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops.

Alexander McCall Smith will be at Borders Book Festival on Saturday 15 June at 3.45pm, and on Sunday 16 June at 5.15pm in a joint event with Alistair Moffat.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy! If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play

Visiting a sewer in Calcutta in the early ’90s left a lasting impression on Liam Fox. A minister in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office at the time, appointed by then-PM John Major, Fox remembers his sanitation revelation. 
 
“We were basically just putting in piping to stop sewage flowing down a street. It was the reaction of the people that struck me. We might as well have given them a goldmine because clearly it made such a difference to their quality of life. 

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“It stuck with me,” Fox continues. “And in my time as defence secretary I began to get seriously concerned about the potential for conflict over water. Everybody was talking about oil and yet for me, the one thing that people would really fight for is the one thing they have to have, which is water.” 
 
Liam Fox was David Cameron’s first defence secretary, serving from 2010 until he resigned in 2011, after controversy about being accompanied on official MoD trips by friend and lobbyist Adam Werrity. Fox would later return to Theresa May’s government, appointed secretary of state for international trade, wrestling with the post-Brexit political landscape. 
 
His time at the top of government provided insight into the biggest issues facing us today, and Fox has identified water as being the biggest of them all. 
 
It’s May’s successor Fox has to thank for pushing him to take action on the issue – but not from a senior position within government. 
 
“When Boris [Johnson] relieved me of my cabinet duties in 2019, I decided to spend some time doing quality reading on climate,” Fox says. “From my own position with a science background [Dr Fox was a GP before an MP], what did the science actually tell us?” 

Being out of the thick of it helped Fox appreciate the bigger picture. 
 
“It’s not so much being outside as having the time,” he adds. “Government is very siloed. We think of our economics in one place, we think of security and risk in another and so on. We need to learn to join the dots.” 
 
And Liam Fox has done just that in his new book. The Coming Storm tells the story of water from how it arrived on Earth eons ago to how it influenced our evolution. It also points out potential pressure points regarding scarcity, global security and its importance in healthcare and climate change. 
 
It contains simply staggering facts that put precipitation in perspective. Of all the water in the world, only 3% is fresh water. Only 0.3-0.5% is available for our use. The population has grown by 6.6 billion since the start of the last century, but the amount of water available to drink, power industry and agriculture remains the same. 
 
The potential for conflict over this most valuable natural resource was something that caused Fox concern when defence secretary. In the years since, have these boiled over? 
 
“Two places where you can see the progression,” he begins. “One of them is the Nile because the Ethiopians have now finished building the Grand Renaissance Dam, which Sudan and Egypt fear could be used as a weapon. If the Ethiopians wanted to stop the outflow of the Blue Nile they could do so.  

“More of a worry for me is Tibet. More than 40% of all the world’s population get either their drinking, agricultural or industrial water from a river that arises on the Tibetan Plateau – either the Indus, Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong, the Yellow or the Yangtze. China now has control over the headwaters of all those rivers. China is not interested in Tibet because of the Dalai Lama, China is interested in Tibet for its natural resources, number one being water.” 
 
Water supply has long been both a cause of and weapon waged in war. The Water Conflict Chronology website records incidents dating back to 2500BC to recent events such as the Kakhovka Dam on the Dnipro River being destroyed by Russian forces in Ukraine and Israel attacking water wells in Gaza this year – over half of Gaza water sites have been damaged or destroyed since Israel began military action last year. 
 
There is, Liam Fox says, a dire need for international law to be developed around water rights. “The only real law that applied to the Nile, for example, came from British colonial times when we had a water-sharing treaty,” he says. “We need to get a body of international law that’s justiciable and enforceable. You also need to ensure that you use technology to minimise the risk of dependency. In Gaza’s case, that will mean building up hugely their ability to desalinate and provide themselves with fresh water. 
 
“The good news on that is where there have been real efforts, real progress has been made. When countries determine their water use based on how much water they actually use and not abstract, territorial or sovereign claims then it’s possible to reach agreement.” 

A global problem

If you’re in the UK reading this, it’ll either be an unseasonal but welcome early summer, or it’ll be raining. Probably raining, which makes it hard to care about problems largely centred in faraway lands. But Fox writes that we are only enjoying “the illusion of water and food security”. How long can that illusion last? 
 
“Well, it will be stressed if the global population continues to rise at anything like the level that it has. Throw in unknown of the impacts of climate change. And if you get, as I rather suspect we will, big changes in water flows in South Asia, then you could get very big problems with famine and thirst and mass migration as a consequence. So if we think we can ignore this because it happens somewhere else, somewhere else can be over here quite quickly. 
 
“Global problems require global solutions. Don’t think you don’t have a responsibility, which I know is uncomfortable and some people will be in denial but look at the science. Get a grip and make your judgments based on reality and empiricism, not on instinct or prejudice. The data is there and unless we want to fall back into an anti-Enlightenment society, we better wake up and not smell the coffee but read the figures.”

So Liam Fox is woke on climate related issues which includes migration, a situation he notes in his book is “made worse by simplistic rhetoric”. 
 
Rhetoric from government focuses on demonising people coming to our shores… “Yeah, and not the causes,” he interjects. 
 
“When I was trade secretary, I used to warn that if the G20 increased their level of protectionism, then that would stop developing countries being able to trade their way out of poverty. And if I lived in a world where I couldn’t trade my way out of poverty, but I had a mobile phone and I could see what prosperity looked like, I know what I would do.” 
 
Since 2009, 0.7% of imports were covered by tariffs or other restrictive measures, in this decade it has increased to 10.3%. 
 
“In other words,” Fox explains, “more than a tenfold level of protectionism in the world’s richest economies. ‘Til I was blue in the face, I used to say to people – and I remember seeing it to the WTO in Buenos Aires [Liam Fox was a candidate to become its director-general in 2020, but didn’t make the final round] – you may be able to protect your rust belts, but watch your borders because you cannot take economic decisions in a vacuum.” 
 
“I still hear people on both the left and right of politics saying, ‘I don’t believe in globalisation.’ Well, that’s nice, that’s like saying, ‘I don’t believe in nighttime.’ In business they’ve understood globalisation much better than in the world of politics. Politicians don’t really like globalisation very much because it limits their ability to have an impact over their own domestic events.” 
 
Politicians, especially now, don’t like looking past what will get them through the next five or six months ahead of a potential election, when they should be making the decisions needed to get us through the next five or six decades. Is there a way to navigate that short-termism? 
 
“We have got to try to get our debate out of the weeds and start to focus on bigger issues, because those bigger issues will have a huge impact on us, whether we want to think about them or not.”

Our water footprint 

The good news, unless you like chocolate, is that we can bring our own solutions to the problem. Another staggering set of statistics in the book concerns our own water use. We all know it’s advisable to drink 6-8 glasses of water per day, around 1.2 litres, but that’s just a drop in the ocean of what we’re actually consuming. According to the WWF, each of us in the UK is responsible for using 4,645 litres of water every day. 
 
Let’s break that down. 3,400 litres will be needed to grow the food we eat (or to grow the food the food we eat eats) and make raw materials like cotton, which averages at 211 litres for each of us. When you drink a cup of coffee, you’re actually consuming the 140 litres of water it took to grow the coffee beans needed for that one cup. 
 
This makes up our water footprint, most of which stands on other countries, countries which may experience far greater pressures on their water supply than we do at home. 
 
In response to this, Liam Fox alongside Dr Linda Yueh, adjunct professor of economics at the London Business School and fellow in economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University have developed a concept of Comparative Ecological Advantage. It’s an extension of Adam Smith’s theory that countries should focus on goods and services they can produce themselves; countries should now produce crops or make products that don’t do environmental harm – and as consumers we should be aware of where items are sourced. 
 
“Why would you grow strawberries in Andalucía when there’s no water there?” Fox asks. “How do you find ways of encouraging people to grow cotton in wet places and not in Syria? I would love to see voluntary labelling of the fruit and clothes we buy to say this item comes from a sustainably tradable environment.” 

He believes we should be more aware of how much water is required to produce different products. For example, it takes 15,000 litres to produce 1kg of beef, but only 4,300 litres to produce 1kg of chicken. The stark news is it takes 17,196 litres to produce 1kg of chocolate. And I for one eat more chocolate than beef. 
 
“Well you’re Scottish so that’s alright,” Fox consoles. “If cocoa beans are being grown in tropical places where they’re inundated with rain that may not be a problem. There’s a difference between buying your strawberries from a place where they have plenty of water and a place where it’s exacerbating their natural shortages. The biggest issue we have is people are not aware of the scale of the problem.” 

WAVE OF SHOCK STATS 

• Only 3% of the world’s water is freshwater 

• Only 0.3-0.5% of that is available for our use 

• Around 2 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water 

• By 2030, around 47% of the world’s population will be living in areas of high-water stress 

• The irrigation of global cotton crops is equivalent to twice the total annual water footprint for the UK 

• It takes 10,000-20,000 litres to produce 1kg of cotton 

• It takes 15,000 litres to produce 1kg of beef 

• It takes 4,300 litres to produce 1kg of chicken 

• It takes 17,196 litres to produce 1kg of chocolate 

• 140 litres of water required to produce coffee for one cup 

• According to the WWF we use 4,645 litres per person per day 

• 62% of the UK’s total water footprint is accounted by the use of water in other countries

The Coming Storm by Liam Fox is out now (Biteback, £25). You can buy it from The Big Issue shop on Bookshop.org, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income.

To support our work buy a copy! If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue today or give a gift subscription to a friend or family member.

“There are people who follow me on Instagram and all they do is ask when season two of We Are Lady Parts is coming out.” 

Good news for Anjana Vasan’s band of social media followers. We now have the answer to a question that has dogged the actor for three long years. We Are Lady Parts, the most inventive and important comedy of recent times, is finally back on Channel 4. And the show, which follows the lives and misadventures of Muslim female punk band Lady Parts, is better than ever.  

“I didn’t want a show like this to only have one season. It didn’t feel right,” Vasan says. “Because it’s led by incredible women, it has five Black and brown women in the lead roles – and I didn’t want that show to just be a one-off. There was so much love for it and a real will to make it happen.” 

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We Are Lady Parts is written by Nida Manzoor, who also co-writes the music with her brothers and brother-in-law. In series one, punk anthems were shorn from the fabric of the characters’ lives and struggles. 

For Amina, played by Vasan, the series saw her struggle with the transition from folk and country music-loving, microbiology PhD student to punk guitarist, as well as her feelings for drummer Ayesha’s hot brother Ahsan. For Vasan, who also sings, this was a dream role.

“It was just by chance that this role came up, with Amina who, musically speaking, was so close to the kind of stuff I like,” she says. “When am I ever going to play a brown girl who loves Joan Baez and folk music? It felt like something the universe wanted to happen.”

But how do Lady Parts the band top songs like “Voldemort Under My Headscarf” and “Bashir with the Good Beard”? Vasan suggests Manzoor, who directed her debut film Polite Society between series one and two, had big plans from the get-go. 

“I remember when series one came out, I asked if she had any ideas for series two yet,” says Vasan. “All she had, she said, was a nugget of an idea. A song title that was something like “Malala Made Me Do It”.  I didn’t say it to her, but I remember thinking, ‘I bet she’ll find a way to get Malala in the show.’ Because if anyone can do it, then it’s her.” 

Sure enough, in episode two, the band unleash their new song namechecking the education activist and there she is. Malala Yousafzai herself. On screen. Astride a horse as the band dance and sing around her – the sort of surreal scene that punctuates the show, elevating the comedy and foregrounding the brilliant songs.

“It’s amazing,” Vasan grins. “Everyone was excited and nervous before her arrival. There was a big lead-up. ‘Oh my god, she’s coming on Thursday, we have to make sure everything is right.’ But she was so calm. I think she found us very funny. We were being very silly around her, coming up with dance moves, and she was so stoic on the horse. But I could hear her chuckle at the ridiculousness of what we were doing. And she liked the song!” 

Meera Syal also makes an appearance – as a punk pioneer. “Meera is amazing,” grins Vasan, who has worked with Syal twice on stage. “It’s so nice to have someone who is a pioneer in the industry playing someone in our fictional world who was also a pioneer. And she loves music. So it was a lot of fun for her.” 

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• Paapa Essiedu: ‘It’s hard for me not to be political in the work that I do’

By its very existence, We Are Lady Parts is a political show, as well as a heightened, visually innovative comedy. This labour of love was born of frustration – at the narrow and stereotypical representations of Muslim women across TV and film. 

“When series one came out, a lot of people were like, ‘I’ve never seen this before.’ Well, you don’t see this on TV, but in culture it exists,” says Vasan. “So TV is catching up with what’s already out there.  

“The biggest thing this series is an existential question around the band’s identity. There’s the collective question of what Lady Parts means to us and that perennial one of art and money, creativity and capitalism.” 

As the band wrestle with the complex conundrum of no longer being the only all-female Muslim band on the scene when more media savvy, younger band Second Wife compete for their audience, Amina – who, for viewers, is our window into the world – there is also complex feelings about a young troubadour.

“Of all the characters I’ve played, she’s the one person who is so open-hearted and warm, she just wears her heart on her sleeve,” says Vasan.

“She’s so vulnerable and beautiful that way. And it’s very rare you get to play completely uncynical characters So to play her is a real gift. I get to like be a clown. That’s how I approach her, almost like a clown.”

Returning to We Are Lady Parts was not so much a case of getting the band back together as interrupting the ongoing friendship with a filming schedule.  

“We were all genuinely friends, the whole cast, so we are in each other’s lives,” says Vasan. “Our WhatsApp group was going strong the whole time. So we didn’t have to find the chemistry again or go, what have you been up to?  

“We go a bit crazy when we are all together. Once we got into costume and were together for a group scene, the energy was as manic and chaotic as ever. It’s like we are on a sugar high. So after every day of filming we are exhausted, in the most wonderful way.” 

Between series of We Are Lady Parts, Anjana Vasan has been stealthily putting together one of the most eclectic CVs in the acting world. She went straight into series four of Killing Eve as trainee assassin Pam. Vasan went on to shoot Wicked Little Letters alongside Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman, causing a commotion as police officer Moss unveiled the phantom filth-writer of old Littlehampton Town.  

“I said yes faster than you could say Olivia Colman,” Vasan grins. “It was a masterclass every day – watching these beautiful actors and beautiful humans at work.

“My favourite memories are of whenever Eileen Atkins was on set. She has such great stories about people in the industry – that I’m not allowed to tell – and we would just assemble around her in a circle, just in awe of her, and her incredible career and life that paved the way for all of us.” 

This was followed by a long run in A Streetcar Named Desire, with Vasan winning an Olivier Award for her performance opposite Paul Mescal and Patsy Ferran.  

Vasan also received a second Bafta nomination, in the Best Actress category, for her killer performance alongside Paapa Essiedu in “Demon 79” – the Black Mirror episode that looked at the impacts of everyday racism through an unsettling lens. Her character Nida Huq (Vasan) went on a killing spree against a backdrop of anti-immigration policies and the rise of the National Front and under the influence of a demon dressed as Bobby Farrell from Boney M.

“I love the questions that it was asking within it,” she says. “Paapa is an exceptional actor and exceptional friend. I can be quite self-critical when I’m filming, but there was so much love and trust on set, that it was the one time I’ve been on a film set and not gone home thinking, ‘I should have done this or that differently.’ And I think that’s because I felt so held by everybody.”

What next? Vasan is not one, she says, for writing lists, making plans, or manifesting her next dream job. 

“I always want to exist in a different genre, a different world, or a different time period,” she says. “It’s about always trying to put yourself outside of your comfort zone. Maybe subconsciously it’s trying to stop yourself from being stereotyped or put in a box.  

“Because starting out in this industry, I felt very limited by the choices that were in front of me.” 

Big stardom is approaching for Anjana Vasan. But what is her Big Issue? She pauses, settling on the right choice of words, before explaining what was going through her head at the BAFTAs last week.

“I feel so lucky to be able to work as an actor in this country because it’s not my country,” says Vasan, who was born in Chennai, India and grew up in Singapore before moving to the UK to study at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in 2011.

“That I even have a career is incredible to me. I was thinking of all these things at the BAFTAs, because it is all very meaningful and symbolic. But it struck me that if I had to start that journey now, I don’t know if any of it would be possible. Because the policies are different. The rhetoric is different. The climate around immigration is different.

“This government is wanting to close its doors. But I think the country, and by extension, our industry, is strongest and at its best when it can look outwards and welcome people and their stories, and open its doors to immigrants, to asylum seekers, to dreamers, to hardworking people.”

We Are Lady Parts series two begins on Channel 4 on Thursday 30 May.