Were selling more than 200 million magazines in a quarter of a century of trading and helping countless tens of thousands of disadvantaged and vulnerable people get a foothold in life not all reward enough, a new level of mission-affirming achievement has been unlocked for The Big Issue of late and it’s this: Jimmy Cricket has written a song about us. Yes, the very same bow-tied, silly-hatted, half-mast-trousered portly Irish giant of the golden age of Seventies and Eighties British light entertainment. Don’t remember him? Ask your mum and dad. Under 20? Forget it – you’ll never understand.
Yes, the very same bow-tied, silly-hatted, half-mast-trousered portly Irish giant of the golden age of Seventies and Eighties British light entertainment.
It was following an evidently moving interview with Big Issue features editor Steven MacKenzie last year that Cricket felt inspired to pen his heartfelt tribute to the world’s most widely distributed street paper and its tireless vendors, titled simply: Have a Big Issue. In his own charmingly wonky way, he’s done an impressive job of distilling the magazine’s raison d’être into a catchy two-and-a-bit minutes.
“Have a Big Issue-ishew / all you wish yourself,” he burbles, over a breezy end-of-the-pier accordion wheeze, “have a Big Issue-ishew / good fortune and good health”. Cricket correctly draws attention to the fact that vendors derive not just satisfaction but money directly from every sale, and even tidily wraps in a lyric cribbed from the mag’s tagline “a hand up, not a handout”. Steps are being taken to ensure that the song plays as soon as anyone lands on The Big Issue website.
Everyone at Big Issue towers is flattered, naturally, and at least one staff member seemed to be on verge of tears upon first listen, although that just as likely could have been because deadline was approaching. But not to brag or anything – well, maybe a small brag – it’s not the first time that this magazine has featured in a song. The Big Issue has in fact throughout its 28-year lifetime frequently proven a source of inspiration to the great and the good and the sometimes half-decent of the music world. Well, occasionally it has, anyway. There are a few other vague examples.
Like The Big Issue itself, it all began in the early 1990s. A time when the world was ripe to be won over by five unsmiling Mancunians with anthemic gibberish rock classics such as Supersonic. “She’s sniffing in a tissue, selling The Big Issue,” boomed Oasis’s Liam Gallagher, in a lyric which despite being like most Oasis lyrics, thoroughly meaningless, nonetheless helped triumphantly enshrine the magazine’s arrival as an identifiable force in British culture and society. If you’ve ever met The Big Issue’s long-time editor and resident Oasis superfan Paul McNamee, particularly back in his feathercut and parka-sporting days, then you’ll appreciate that there may have been some kind of omen in all of this.
From one titan of Britpop to another: Chumbawamba – the politically right-on anarcho punk-pop band who, like spring-loaded bollards and Theresa May, always seem to get back up again. Back in 1997, shortly before their chucking-water-over-John-Prescott-at-the-Brits notoriety (milkshakes hadn’t yet been invented), the Lancashire mob were at the fleeting peak of their powers, fired by the multimillion-selling album Tubthumper. Track four on which is titled, yes, The Big Issue. The lyrics don’t reference the magazine per se, but do seem to sketch a down-and-out character in need of direction who sounds like she could easily find purpose in the famous red tabard. Thus, we’re having it.
