To my left, the oboe sang the theme; it was taken up by the violins behind me. To the right, cellos danced atop the offbeat bassline. I couldn’t see the flutes, but I could clearly hear when it was their turn for the melody. It soared across the instrumentalists’ heads and around the cathedral.

As a reviewer, I’ve been privileged to have some excellent seats, stalls in some of the loveliest historic opera houses in Europe; that left-hand viewpoint in Wigmore Hall where you can perfectly see the pianist’s hands. And, as a fan, I’ve sat in different positions around the Barbican purely to hear how the acoustics change. I’m a regular purchaser of the bargainous (£8) – and vertiginous – balcony seats at the Royal Opera House. But all of these positions pale against Norwich Cathedral’s cold stone floor, where I sat as The Aurora Orchestra played the final two movements from Beethoven’s “Symphony No 3 (Eroica)”.

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When conductor Nicholas Collon invited audiences at Norfolk and Norwich Festival’s performance to sit among the ensemble, he wasn’t short of volunteers. The Aurora Orchestra has been playing in this immersive way for several years now – it’s made possible by learning symphonies off by heart. Not needing music stands allows the musicians the freedom to move around, as they did within Norwich Cathedral, encouraged to swap positions in between movements. The closing allegro molto – with its catchy motif, taught to us by Collon before the performance – gathered momentum around those brave enough to stand the spray from the French horn. “Sorry,” whispered the player, as she emptied what we will euphemistically refer to as moisture from her instrument. There was no apology necessary.

After the pandemic years – where musicians had to be two metres away from each other, and audiences even further – we couldn’t have been more delighted by the concert. The next day the congregation would be there for the usual Sunday services, though I’d already had my own near-religious experience. It’s the second time this year I’ve witnessed how Aurora’s physical approach to music can enhance the performance – as part of the ensemble’s collaboration with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, musicians played on the stairs of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. 

• How the Northern Ballet’s empty orchestra pit perfectly sums up UK’s arts crisis 
• Here’s one they played earlier: Pre-recorded orchestras spell trouble for live performance

I’m excited to hear what the group will do at this year’s Proms, when instrumentalists are joined by the BBC Singers and the National Youth Choir for Beethoven’s “Ninth by Heart” (Prom 42; 21 August).

Norwich Cathedral is one of the key venues for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, a 17-day series of events that runs across the city every May. Like Aurora, Laura Cannell used the distinctive architecture as part of her performance, positioning herself in the ‘crossing’ – the centre of the cross shape – surrounded by the audience. Her album Antiphony of the Trees – featuring melodies inspired by birdsong – took on an ethereal quality as live recorder figures were electronically looped, reverberating around the nave. Cannell’s creative use of playing two instruments simultaneously, alongside the recordings, gave the impression of an entire wind ensemble. Her swooping calls were enough to energise the peregrine falcons, who called in response from their nest on top of the spire. 

Opening up the cathedral in this way also brought a full house to hear a late-night recital by Cathedral Master of Music Ashley Grote, whose multifarious techniques in Messiaen’s ecstatic organ work L’Ascension was shared via large-screen projections across the building, allowing a rare inspection of the newly rebuilt organ, one of the largest in the UK.

Claire Jackson is a writer and editor.

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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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.

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.

• Half of all homeless people have a brain injury. This project provides essential support
• Emilia Clarke and her mum made MBEs for setting up brain injury charity

“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,” 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?’”

Clarke’s brain haemorrhages occurred between filming seasons, so only a handful of the team working on the show were told straight away, and she was back at work weeks after her first brain injury.

In front of thousands of people and cameras, she found herself fearing that she was dying of another brain haemorrhage because of the stress and pressure. She remembers thinking: “Well, if I’m going to die, I better die on live TV.”

Emilia Clarke and her mother founded their charity SameYou in 2019 to develop better mental health recovery for those who suffer brain injuries and advocate for change. The charity is now partnering with Big Issue Recruit to support survivors and their loved ones into work with the help of BIR specialist job coaches.

“Having a chronic condition that diminishes your confidence in this one thing you feel is your reason to live is so debilitating and so lonely,” Clarke, 37, recalls. “One of the biggest things I felt with a brain injury was profoundly alone. That is what we’re trying to overcome.”

In the interview, Clarke speaks candidly about how she felt she “couldn’t carry on” after a brain injury and how she asked medical staff to let her die, because she thought she would never act again. But she thrived since, and she knows others can too, saying: “It has given me a superpower.”

Read the full interview with Emilia Clarke in The Big Issue magazine on sale from today (June 10).

I’m not particularly a war photographer. However, my reporting has taken me into the middle of war many times.

I based myself in Iraq for three years as a freelance reporter after the fall of Baghdad. During my eight years as a news photographer for Reuters News Agency, I was twice embedded with US Marines in Afghanistan and documented the uprisings in Libya and Syria during the Arab Spring. Turning freelancer in 2016, I covered the conflict between forces fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. I also travelled to multiple cities in Yemen to photograph the two warring factions amid the civil war.

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From my Cairo base, I have visited Yemen a few times since 2016, reporting on the civil war between its internationally recognised government, backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the Houthi militia, a religious and political movement alleged to be receiving military support from Iran.

When I started to go to Yemen, I remember telling a friend, an American photographer based in Egypt, of my plan. He said, “Good luck, it’s all yours.” I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then I started to notice how only a small number of foreign journalists were keen to report on Yemen, despite the staggering scale of the war over the last decade.

Western news media call the conflict in Yemen (if they mention it at all) an ‘invisible war’ or ‘forgotten war’. I always wondered if this is because the foreign media neglected the proxy conflict on purpose, or if foreign journalists worry about being kidnapped as al-Qaeda members were still active, or because there was more attention given to other conflicts over the last decade, like the war in Syria, ISIS or, more recently, Ukraine.

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Nevertheless, I have made it my lifelong project to cover stories I’m interested in regardless of their importance worldwide. I didn’t focus on Yemen’s war-induced famine, I found even more pressing stories that had a wider impact on the people, like the landmines laid by Houthi forces that disproportionately affected civilian lives. The goal was to share the human experiences.

• Refugee wonders if it would be better to ‘stay in Yemen and die’ than go through UK asylum system
• ‘My dream is to be a photographer’: A day in Calais and Dunkirk with people waiting to cross the Channel

Women clutching children in the ruins of Barran Temple, near Marib, reputed to be the location of the Queen of Sheba’s throne and a UNESCO World Heritage Site

A government officer defuses a landmine inside the home of a Yemeni man in Taiz

Waguih (centre) sitting among pro-government forces who monitor frontline positions in Lahj City in Yemen.

Unfinished War: A Journey Through Civil War in Yemen by Asmaa Waguih is out on 15 June (Helion & Company, £25)

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.

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.

• Libby Scott: ‘My autism diagnosis stopped me hating myself’
• Kit Connor: ‘Heartstopper is a love story above all else’
• The pop culture milestones that helped shape LGBTQ+ history

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.

Tom Burke was born in June 1981 in London. His mother Anna Calder-Marshall is best known on screen for her Cordelia, opposite Laurence Olivier’s Emmy Award-winning King Lear. His father, David Burke, is fondly remembered as Dr Watson in The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes alongside Jeremy Brett. But both were more renowned for their work in the theatre. His godfather, the late, great Alan Rickman, was also a big influence on his early life and career choice.

Burke attended the National Youth Theatre, the Young Arden Theatre in Faversham and the Box Clever Theatre Company at the Marlowe, Canterbury, before being accepted at RADA at the age of 18. After small roles in TV shows including Casanova and The Trial Of Tony Blair, he caught the eye in the BBC’s 2011 adaptation of Great Expectations and the newsroom drama The Hour the following year. Recent years have seen him take a starring role in the BBC crime drama strike and stand-out film roles in Only God Forgives, The Souvenir (parts one and two), Mank and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

Speaking to the Big Issue for his Letter to My Younger Self, Tom Burke remembers an idyllic adolescence infatuated with films, his anger at being overlooked for roles and taking advice from Alan Rickman.

At 16, I was at a really idyllic little school. It was a Steiner school and was literally in a valley, so it was a very particular environment. We were quite sheltered and hermetic. And we didn’t know until after we left, but the other schools referred to us as the Rainbow Warriors. Partly because you could wear your own clothes, but there was also quite a hippy thing going on. I found those years quite tricky. It was like The Prisoner – everything was very bright and colourful, but I remember feeling a real want to get out of there. I was quite solitary. But talking to my friends, because we’re all still in touch, I think it’s just part of being that age. I did feel quite lonely for a time.

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I’d really fallen in love with the theatre and movies. I shared a real love of movies with my friends – we would talk in Quentin Tarantino or Trainspotting quotes for the whole lunch break. And that was supplemented with trips to the theatre. All my contemporaries at school were either into Blur or Oasis, apart from my best friend Tim who was very into Nirvana. I liked soul, which I’d come across via a freebie CD my mum had got with some Nivea products! So I was listening to The Chi-Lites.

When I went to the National Youth Theatre, I just remember feeling very loved. It wasn’t that everyone else was like me – it was a much more diverse group of people than I’d come across at school – but National Youth Theatre was like an Edenic honeymoon of a summer. And it definitely brought out something more social in me. I almost wish I’d taken that and gone to university rather than straight to drama school. Because I think that would have been quite good for me.

My impression of how one went about asking somebody out was from films. So I’d eventually work up the courage, but then do it in a very dramatic way. I’d say, ‘I need to talk to you! I have feelings for you!’ And then I’d turn on my heels and make this big exit, and leave them going ‘what!?’ And that was it done for me. I didn’t really need the cinema date. It was like I’d said it, so it was done and nothing will happen – I was very fatalistic about it. What was I thinking? I suppose in some way I thought they would run after me or the next week they’d go, where did you go? But I’d tell my younger self not to be afraid of starting conversations.

I grew up around actors and it was a really lovely thing. I remember feeling like I was part of the game – particularly when my parents [actors Anna Calder-Marshall and David Burke] spent a year in Stratford. There were an awful lot of parties, not just with the actors but the crew and costume lot. It felt like a really fun world. And my parents were going through all the things you go through unless you’re one of those people that steps out of drama school and never looks back. So I met all kinds of actors, from all different phases in their career, who all loved and supported each other. Alan Rickman [Tom Burke’s godfather] was always there. 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.

• Daniel Mays: ‘Becoming a dad made me a better person and a better actor, it galvanised me’
• Michael Sheen: ‘I’ve essentially turned myself into a social enterprise, a not-for-profit actor’

What would surprise my younger self about my life now? At one point I didn’t think I was ever going to not have the sensation that my head was like a washing machine, with stuff going round and around and round. I remember thinking that was something I was just going to have to live with. But that’s not the case. There is a solution. And it was about talking to the right people. Not necessarily in a professional sense, sometimes you find the right friends to chip away at that with or figure out how to deal with it. In my 20s I was jumping from one kind of retreat to the next – I’d spend five or six days somewhere, or doing something fairly extreme, then get back to London and go crazy again. They were wonderful experiences, I’m glad I had them. But I needed something a little more mundane.

Mel Gibson was one of my favourite actors, so my younger self would love to know I was going to do a Mad Max film. Richard Harris and Anton Lesser are the people who made me want to act. But I also loved Mel Gibson and Eddie Murphy. I remember watching Beverly Hills Cop with my dad and him going, ‘That man has poise.’ And he fucking does! I always knew I’d love to do an action film, and if you’re doing that, you want to be doing it with someone like [Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga director] George Miller. But you think, if I’m going to have that career, I’ve got to probably do a lot of not so good action films first to get in that sphere. And as a younger actor, I was like, I’d rather be in a Strindberg play, actually. That’s going to be more interesting. So it’s been a great surprise that it’s somehow led around to this.

I grew up in a Labour home – and in my personal life and my actions as a civilian, as a voter, that still feels like a massive chunk of my identity. In terms of politics in my work, I feel great stories are more akin to a Zen koan than a political slogan. I go to the theatre or the cinema to unravel – and I don’t mean that in a glib way. I mean it in a radical way. I’m not there to educate or be educated – I have a sense of what Louise Bourgeois meant when she said reason is the opposite of truth – and I’ve always felt protective of that. There’s an assumption that an actor is going to nail their colours to the mast. And when you don’t, it inevitably arouses suspicion and ire in some. But if I felt otherwise, I’d want to find a different vocation, a different medium.

It stung when someone said I didn’t have a face for ITV. And it stung because it was the second of two parts that had been my first sense – certainly on screen – of feeling I was born to play a role, and that some of the best work I’d done was just on an audition tape somewhere. I later found out my involvement in the other job had been vetoed by the same person when they were at a different channel. I didn’t know what to do with that feeling. I was so angry. But I had to let go of any expectation I might have had about what one might call the parts in the canon, you know, for men in theatre or on screen. I just went, OK, I have to see what’s out there, and more importantly, who’s out there who is willing to stick my mug in front of a camera. If I’m honest, there’s a bit of me that is glad I’ve proved them wrong. I’ve always had a very romantic streak in me, so being a ‘leading man’ has always had an appeal.

Working with Joanna Hogg on The Souvenir was punk rock, in a way. There’s a lot of research that goes into it, but learning that you can rock up and jump into it and just start making a film was so exciting. There is a blueprint. But it is not like a normal script. There is much room to explore and it’s improvised. So making films with her is very special. But there have been so many highlights. Filming Mank – I learnt a lot from [David] Fincher. I felt slightly out of my body on that film, which was the first one I’d done in America – and I was playing Orson Welles! I remember Fincher having to show me the monitor at one point because I was moving too much and he was like, this bit has to be still. So I realised I had work to do. But I’m enjoying work more than ever. There are moments I could have taken a more obvious path to ‘build a career’. But I just tried to follow my nose as much as possible. I really wanted to feel alive, you know? What jobs are going to make me feel alive?

Alan Rickman taught me so much. Thinking about a letter to my younger self, I was thinking about the advice he would always give. He would say to everyone, ‘Remember, it’s not a race, remember it’s not a race.’ I know people who do treat acting like it’s a race and that must be exhausting. There were a couple of near misses with roles that could have made a substantial difference to my career. But I just had to let go. It was like seeing people sprinting off ahead of you, many of whom are my friends. Most actors have that experience at some point. But I don’t want it to say ‘he made 200 movies’ on my gravestone – there is so much other stuff in my life to enjoy. I wonder when people are flying high if they ever have a moment to experience other stuff.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is in cinemas now.

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

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.

Empowering teen novels to give readers a helping hand through their potentially difficult adolescent years. Teacher-turned-author Rebecca Westcott picks her top five.

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

Reading this in 1981 was the first time I had ever encountered menstruation, bras or breasts in a book. More than half a century after publication, this coming-of-age book is still relevant.

Z For Zachariah by Robert C O’Brien

Sixteen-year-old Ann Burden has lived alone for an entire year, the last person alive in post-nuclear war America. Or so she thinks. When a scientist in a radiation suit arrives, she thinks that they can work together but things take a sinister turn, and the scientist is not who he seems. 

After The First Death by Robert Cormier

This book aimed at older readers tells the story of three very different teenagers, Miro, Kate and Ben, who are caught up in a challenging hostage situation. The teenage terrorist, the young bus driver and the general’s son – all with their own stakes in the game and all desperate to emerge alive. 

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E Lockhart

This is a brilliantly funny, thought-provoking read for anyone who wants to take back the power, announce their presence loudly and flick the bird to anyone who tells them that they can’t. 

Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu

Published in 2017 and made into a Netflix film in 2021, this is the story of Viv Carter and the power of ‘keeping your head up’ in the face of sexism, harassment, and cliques. Like my latest book, it’s about girls refusing to be put into boxes. 

Rebecca Westcott is co-author of the Can You See Me Now series

Like a Girl by Rebecca Westcott is out now (£8.99, Scholastic). These titles are available to buy or preorder 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.
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.

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. 

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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.” 

• This Is The Modern World: New exhibition showcases Paul Weller from The Jam to The Style Council
• Johnny Harris hails Jawbone’s redemptive power

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.

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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!

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

The title is stripped-down, like a sniper rifle ready to be concealed in a briefcase. But there are a lot of moving parts in the new movie from Richard Linklater, the veteran US indie filmmaker behind offbeat hits like School of Rock, Boyhood and the beloved romantic trilogy launched by Before Sunrise. Co-written by Linklater and his star Glen Powell, Hit Man is a literally killer comedy inspired by a 2001 magazine profile of a real guy from Houston, although it comes front-loaded with a ductile disclaimer: “Based on a somewhat true story.” 

When we first meet New Orleans college lecturer Gary (Powell), he is a faintly dorky dude with lank hair and glasses. He teaches psychology and philosophy to yawning students. His hobbies include birdwatching and electronics. He lives alone in the suburbs with two cats. It is certainly not the worst existence, but even Gary’s own voiceover narration seems aware that his life in the Big Easy lacks
much jazziness.

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Gary supplements his teaching income by maintaining surveillance equipment for the New Orleans police department. It is this side hustle which sets him on a surprising new trajectory. When a scuzzy undercover cop is suspended, his colleagues turn to Gary to take over in a sting. All he needs to do is pretend to be a hitman and elicit some damning testimony from the person who wants to hire him. 

How does a tech support guy pass as a stone-cold contract killer? Gary considers the many depictions of assassins-for-hire in pop culture and tries to “think hitman thoughts”. After a shaky start, it turns out he is a natural: smart and knowledgeable enough to sound like he can get away with murder, yet empathetic enough to put the “client” at ease. Arrests soar and suddenly Gary the dweeb is living an exciting double life.

Powell’s sculpted bod and jackknife grin were front and centre in Top Gun: Maverick and recent rom-com Anyone But You, so we know he can play sexy. But in Hit Man the Texan gets to show his range as well as his abs. 

His various killer personas include a gruff, bandana-sporting biker, a thickly-accented Eastern European heavy and just straight-up Christian Bale in American Psycho. Imagine Mr Benn if he only transformed into mugshot-ready murderers. His cop handlers are awed at Gary’s ability to convincingly embody badasses. “He’s like the Caucasian Idris,” one murmurs in admiration.

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But before you can say “he shoots, he scores”, Gary encounters a client who derails his winning streak. Madison (Adria Arjona) is desperately looking for a way to escape her abusive ex-husband, and murder feels like the only option. As slick, confident triggerman ‘Ron’, Gary manages to steer Madison away from incriminating herself, partly because he intuits she is a good person in a bad situation, and partly because they are flirting like crazy.

This is when Hit Man shifts gear again into rom-com territory, as Gary embarks on a relationship with Madison as cool lone wolf Ron while fretting that she would never be interested if she knew his true identity. For her part, Arjona plays Madison as someone who seems excited but a little perturbed to have clicked with a professional killer.

Things get complicated when the couple swap passionate private hook-ups for public socialising, risking bumping into people they know. When something unfortunate happens to Madison’s ex and she becomes a suspect, the film mutates again. Have we read the dynamics all wrong? Just who is playing who here? And just when you think you have a handle on this new situation, Hit Man shoots off in another direction.

Funny, sexy, surprising… this is what we used to call “a good time at the movies”. So it feels a shame that Hit Man is getting such a brief cinema release before it debuts on Netflix. But perhaps it will become such a palpable streaming hit that it inspires more movies in the same grown-up vein. Powell has already been announced as the lead in a reimagining of Warren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait. But the real killer move would be to reunite him and Arjona in a remake of steamy cat-and-mouse caper The Thomas Crown Affair. Hopefully some smart producer out there will pull the trigger.

Hit Man is in cinemas now and on Netflix from 7 June. Graeme Virtue is a film and TV critic.

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.

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour – which officially arrives in the UK this week starting with a three-night run in Edinburgh – is a statistician’s fever dream, with eye-bulging numbers raining down like a ticker tape parade. 

Pollstar, the live music business publication that tracks concert revenues, had already hailed it as the first billion-dollar tour for its US leg (running intermittently from March to August last year) where she sold 4.3 million tickets, with an average price of $238 (£190). Each show (typically to audiences of 72,000 people) grossed around $17m (£13.5m). Then add in $200m (£160m) in merchandise. It is like taking a hacked slot machine the size of Las Vegas on the road and watching as it spews out gold coins for miles around.  

This is all money that will go to the multiple business entities around Taylor Swift (the venues, the promoters, the ticketing companies, the merchandise companies) as well as, of course, to Swift herself.

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That is, however, just one part of the wider economic repercussions of a tour on this scale by the biggest solo artist in the world. The macro-economic impact – essentially the money fans spend on things that do not go directly into the bank account of Swift Inc, such as travel, accommodation and food – is staggering.  

Time projected in August 2023 that Swift’s tour could “generate close to $5bn in consumer spending” in the US. It mapped out the scale, suggesting that typically every $100 spent on live shows means $300 in ancillary local spending (notably travel, food and hotels); for Swift’s tour that ancillary spending per fan ballooned to $1,300-1,500.  

Measuring the economic impact of her tour has become a competitive sport for analysts. Her four Tokyo shows, to 220,000 fans, in February added ¥34.1bn (£183m) to the Japanese economy according to a report by the Economic Impact Research Laboratory.  

Each city she stops at is seemingly granted an economic jackpot. This is not trickle-down economics; this is Niagara economics.  

Ryan Herzog, associate professor of economics at Gonzaga University, told CNBC, “She is in and of herself an economic event.” It is likely this tour will be a case study on economics degrees for years to come.  

The tour has also become a hot-button issue in geopolitics. In early March, Swift performed six shows at the Singapore National Stadium, her only dates in Southeast Asia.  

Srettha Thavisin, the PM of Thailand, claimed Taylor Swift was offered subsidies of $2-3m per show to make her Singapore performances a regional exclusive. The Singaporean government disputed the amount, but did not outright deny the accusation of exclusivity economics. Erica Tay, director of macroeconomic research at Maybank, estimated the shows would boost the country’s economy by S$500m (£293m).  

The fiscal benefits to Swift herself are clear, but this move in Singapore, if true, feels incredibly anti-fan as those across the region wishing to go would have to add international travel costs to the ticket price. For example, because she had only Australian dates in Australasia, Air New Zealand had to add capacity for 2,000 extra seats to its network “to get fans across the ditch” for her seven shows in Melbourne and Sydney in February. Great for Air New Zealand, not so great for the economies of the country’s biggest cities.  

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Amid the blizzard of hyperbole (like music journalists boldly pronouncing we are “in the Taylor Swift cinematic universe”), calm and reason feel like the first casualties. A rolling story like this is catnip to economists and the business pages of the broadsheets, normally commenting on and analysing more staid businesses. A piece hitched to the earnings of a pop star turns a grey numbers story into a glamorous jamboree of wild speculation beyond the hard stats themselves.  

In parallel with stories about “the Taylor effect” and “the Swift lift” peppering Wall Street earnings calls, Si Ying Toh, global economist at financial services group Nomura, swam against the tide of hype (possibly being intentionally contrarian) by saying Swift’s tour might have “enchanted US economic analysts” but cautioning the “total macroeconomic effect is probably overstated”. 

There are similar, if slightly more muted, claims being thrown about around Beyoncé’s tour in 2023. “Beyoncé blamed for inflation surprise in Sweden,” ran a frenzied BBC headline last June. Her shows there saw surge pricing, an economic force more typically associated with Uber when the late-night bars close or airlines, restaurants and hotels in the run-up to Christmas. This, it was claimed, pushed inflation to a higher-than-expected 9.7% in the country.  

Visit Stockholm called it the “Beyoncé effect” and it was compared to what happens when a major sporting event comes to a city.  

Below the BBC headline, however, was a more measured interpretation by Danske Bank analyst Michael Grahn, who said he would not “blame” Beyoncé as the single contributory factor, reasoning that her shows “added a little to it”. A headline like “Beyoncé added a little to inflation in Sweden” does not have the same arresting impact.  

The other critical issue here is understanding if all this spending beyond tickets and merchandise is additive to the local economy (ie consumers extending beyond their normal spending) or diversionary (taking money that could have been spent on other things and relocating it).  

We are already seeing the impact in the UK – and Swift’s tour does not even begin until 7 June in Edinburgh. The Black Dog pub in Vauxhall, South London, has seen “overwhelming” footfall from fans as it provided the title for a track on the “Anthology” edition of her new album, The Tortured Poets Department.  

When The Rolling Stones toured, the cliché was they were the only show in town. They would arrive and spending in and around the venue would go through the roof. Yet that seems economically restrained compared to what is happening as Taylor Swift creates a new financial centre of gravity in every city she deigns to visit. And it is very much a city-based phenomenon. 

Glastonbury is perhaps one of the most economically studied music and culture events in the world. A 2020 House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee inquiry into UK festivals quoted research by the Association of Independent Festivals that found “a 5,000 capacity festival is worth £1.1m to the local area, while a 110,000 capacity festival can be worth over £27m”. This paled in comparison with Glastonbury which “generates over £100m into the economy of South West England each time it takes place”.  

The economic impact of festivals tends to lift the local economies in rural areas. Beyond transport and camping equipment, the bulk of attendees’ spending will be on, or very near, the festival site. The Swift tour is inherently urban in its impact, with hotels the immediate beneficiaries but also the wider tourism ecosystem.  

What the measurable economic uplift will be for Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cardiff and London when Taylor Swift does her latest victory lap around the UK this summer is currently in the realms of wild speculation. Even so, every other major city in the country will have new empathy with Srettha Thavisin and will be existentially asking themselves: why there but not here?  

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is in the UK 7-23 June, then 15-20 August.

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.

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Last year, when Ezra Collective won the Mercury Prize for their album Where I’m Meant to Be, it felt like the first time since the award’s inception that a win for the ‘token jazz’ nominee was not just likely but inevitable. The forward momentum of British jazz music had finally reached the point where its bearing on mainstream culture could no longer be ignored.

It’s not that prior nominees with jazz leanings were undeserving. I fell for the genre aged 11, watching Courtney Pine perform a track from his album Modern Day Jazz Stories at the Mercurys on TV in 1996, but it’s hard to imagine a group like Ezra Collective drawing huge crowds at Glastonbury a decade ago, or indeed a jazz-centric festival like We Out Here becoming one of the hottest tickets of the summer. 

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Courtney Pine, along with members of Ezra Collective, are among 86 important figures in the scene to give their account of the ascent of UK jazz in a new book by André Marmot, Unapologetic Expression: The Inside Story of the UK Jazz Explosion. Marmot is well placed to speak on this subject; as a booking agent for the nine-piece jazz and afrobeat group Nubiyan Twist and many other notable acts, he has watched this story unfold from the inside. Rather than employing just his own perspective however, Marmot has assembled many voices in this book, building an oral history from interviews with musicians, promoters, label bosses and DJs, and creating something which is closer to folklore than academia.  

“I’m old enough to remember the time in the mid-90s where if you said you were into jazz people would look at you disdainfully and say ‘niiiiiiiiiice’; this sketch from the The Fast Show which basically made out like all jazz lovers were super uncool, pretentious out of touch middle-aged white dudes.” Marmot tells me. “Of course this wasn’t true, even at the time, but it helped reinforce a general perception. But then in early 2019 there was a Vice article called ‘The Nu-Jazz Lad’, all about people who pretend to be into jazz in order to get girls, because by that point jazz was apparently so self-evidently cool. I just thought this was an amazing cultural shift, and those two media moments seemed to frame it nicely. The question was: how did jazz become cool again, and then how did it ever become uncool in the first place?”

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The process of trying to answer those two questions sees Marmot reaching back towards the roots of jazz itself, incorporating the Windrush generation and the effects of Caribbean and African migration not just on the UK music scene but on the country as a whole. During his research he encountered “appropriation, ownership, identity, social media, changes in the recording industry, the relationship between the music and the politics… there are a lot of ideas in there!”

That research, along with Marmot’s gentle curiosity, underpins the narrative, but the story itself is told by the interviewees. The informal, conversational style gives the book a credibility unlike anything else I’ve read on the subject. A quote from veteran vocalist Cleveland Watkiss in the introduction illustrates why the style is perfectly suited to its subject matter: “The idea of free form is the natural condition of the human being, being able to flow in the moment and let that moment be what it is… and here we are, you didn’t give me any questions beforehand, I like that because then it’s more real. In the moment, it’s raw, I feel like I can be more succinct and honest, I’ll speak from the gut and from the heart.” 

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“Conducting and then processing those interviews was honestly one of the deepest and most beautiful experiences of my whole life,” Marmot says. “I think that first-hand accounts in real time are super important, but also, I just think we’ve lived, and are living through, a really intense, difficult but important time. At one level it feels like a time of real change and progress, but at the other, there’s war everywhere, people literally fighting for survival, and the same old white male egos basically calling the shots. So it just feels like there’s a real urgency to discussing all of this, and this new wave of jazz massively intersects with all of that, in super-interesting ways.”

Unapologetic Expression is not solely a book about jazz, or even a nascent cultural shift; it’s a record of a pivotal moment in UK history.

Unapologetic Expression: The Inside Story of the UK Jazz Explosion by André Marmot is out now (Faber, £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 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.