The movie-buff vendor and the glasses that changed everything

Stuart Drucker is a film buff. And not a casual one. He watches three films a day, every day, and he doesn’t bother with television at all.

“I’m addicted to films,” he says. “Love them. Horrors, sci-fi – westerns are my favourite.”

He loves ’80s horror icons like John Carpenter and Wes Craven, and particularly enjoys gangster films – his all-time favourite is Scarface. But ask him about westerns and he’ll talk for hours: The Shootist, Audie Murphy, all of them. He collects old DVDs and picks them up cheap wherever he can.

He knows his stuff, too. Get him started on True Grit and you’ll get a detailed comparison of the 1969 Henry Hathaway original and the more realistic 2010 remake.

“Wayne’s film, it’s a glorified western,” he says. “The Jeff Bridges one was down to earth. They were struggling. They were stinking all the time. That’s how it was.”

For a long time, though, Stuart hadn’t been able to properly see the films he was watching.

“It’s not good watching them blurry, is it?” he says.

It was especially frustrating because he enjoys films with subtitles. It’s hard to follow a foreign-language film when you can’t read the dialogue.

At the same time, he had been suffering from severe migraines that forced him to stop selling the magazine for days at a stretch.

“I was getting headaches, I was having dizzy spells. I didn’t want to pass out or fall or anything like that in front of people.”

He was also conscious of how that might look. Big Issue vendors often face assumptions.

“Vendors are labelled,” he says. “People think they’re either on drugs or drinking. And I’m none of that.”

Stuart has been clean for 12 years.

He sells at Roath and Riverside markets in Cardiff at weekends, but his other role is less visible. Every Monday, he comes into Big Issue’s Cardiff office to handle the magazine’s subscription mailouts – packing copies, sticking address labels, checking names and signing the backs.

It’s detailed work that depends on being able to read small print accurately.

“Glasses are pretty important in that,” he says, “because I’ve got to check the labels all the time. If it’s a cock-up, I’m the first to spot it. It’s a lot easier now.”

He inherited the role from a friend who had been doing the subscriptions before falling ill and passing away. The job matters to him, not just as work but as a point of pride. He’s someone people can rely on.

When a Specsavers pop-up clinic was arranged at the Cardiff office, Stuart went to get tested. The glasses made an immediate difference. The migraines eased. The dizzy spells stopped.

Suddenly, two parts of his life he values most – the Monday mailouts and his nightly film marathons – came back into focus.

Since November 2022, Specsavers’ partnership with Big Issue has offered all vendors free eye tests, glasses and ear care, with no fixed address required, no paperwork and no cost. Pop-up clinics like the one in Cardiff bring the service directly to vendors who might not otherwise walk into a high street optician.

Back at home in the evenings, Stuart cues up his films, picking from his DVD collection and working through the classics when the mood takes him. Three a day, every day.

“It’s always films. I don’t watch telly,” he says, before pausing.

“Well… unless the rugby’s on.”

For a Welshman, some things are non-negotiable.