Behind the scenes

Inside the Big Issue: AJ Odudu is watching you

Big Brother host AJ Odudu is ‘never too busy’ to come back home to Blackburn or to visit her local food bank

AJ Odudu is supposed to be sorting tins. The Big Brother host is lending a hand at her local food bank in Blackburn. She’s been put on the packaging station: divvying non-perishables between parcels and checking expiration dates. But she keeps seeing people she knows – and she wants to catch up.

“Oh yeah, a few people,” she explains later, duties complete. “One of the volunteers here does a keep fit class with my mum down at the local leisure centre. She was asking, ‘How’s your mum? Heard that she had a knee replacement, send her my love.’

“And I saw someone who was in the year below me at secondary school, she came in with her three kids to donate… there’s people who recognise me from the local church or the local school or things like that.”

It’s a nice place, AJ Odudu says, to “have a natter with anyone,” sitting upstairs at Trussell (formerly the Trussell Trust) donation centre.

Odudu is busy. She’s about to be on our screens most nights – Big Brother returns this week. It’s a huge gig; last year, more than 2.5 mil- lion people tuned into the launch of the reboot. The presenter recently wrapped on Dress the Nation, a new reality show documenting the search for a Marks & Spencer’s designer, and her diary is filled with commitments like guest-judging on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK and attending the National Television Awards. The night before her interview with Big Issue she was “up until 3am” updating her mum with the gossip from her whirlwind schedule.

But AJ Odudu is “never too busy” to come back home to Blackburn. And “never too busy” to visit the food bank. Read all about her visit in this week’s issue.

What else is in this week’s issue?

Back on the buses: 70 years of the Routemaster

This month sees the 70th birthday of arguably the most famous bus ever built – and one that was the product of paternalistic municipalism rather than market forces. All hail London’s iconic Routemaster bus.

How Matt Haig overcame the impossible

“When you’re in your early 20s you imagine things are going to stay that way forever. When you’re depressed, you can feel like you’re a burden on other people. So my main advice to my young self would be to hold on, and really have faith in change.”

The tearaway teen’s breakdown in his twenties changed everything, but the writing career he craved wasn’t far away.

Goals of all kinds scored at the Homeless World Cup

Every year The Salvation Army hosts an annual football tournament bringing together 30 teams made up of people experiencing homelessness. This year the charity invited Big Issue alongside a couple of football legends. Read all about it in this week’s issue.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. Big Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy of the magazine or get the app from the App Store or Google Play.

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