Innholdsfortegnelse for 14-11-2016 i The Big Issue

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The sadness felt at somebody like Cohen dying is really a complex thing. The world feeling a little darker, intelligence dimmed We all measure out our lives in coffee spoons. That’s not bad or sad, it’s just how it is. There are things of little interest that need to be attended to. It’s the grace notes in-between that come to define us. And it’s where we choose to allow the grace notes to collect that we find others like us. In response to the death of Leonard Cohen, some folk said, well he’s old and he wasn’t a family member, so why feel such sadness? It’s a bogus question, really. There are people, a small number of people, who are navigators. They see things, plot the course, and we hitch…

MONA VAMPIRE BY MICHAEL CROSSWAITE After years spent travelling and squatting, Michael ended up homeless in London with a drug habit. He’s now clean and has a Peabody flat. “Taken from Leonardo’s amazing Mona Lisa, this has none of the original’s sublime subtly,” he says of this painting. “Instead we find our Mona in a strange alien landscape looking like a vampire.” HER BY DELE OLADEJI Hi, I’m inviting you on a trip To Paris – I thought about us the other day, I’m in love still, I think, I hope you’re In love too… May it be – I don’t mean to marry me But let’s just work things out For us, for them, for the world to see, On this our lovers trip to Paris we’ll Find ourselves…

“David Bowie and I performed at the same time. He joked afterwards I should turn the noise down next time” The 16-year-old Carl was into football, music and girls. It was a happy time. I was never a loner, always had my friends. We were a family. We’d go to a lot of nightclubs, take coaches to Canvey Island, dressing up older to get in. The girlfriend situation, though… that was a confusing time. Did they like me? Did they want to talk to me? My family first came to Manchester from Barbados in the late 1960s. They were always very working-class people Their values made me who I am today. We never had much money. Before I was a DJ, I learned my trade as a scaffolder, before that…

Ron Perlman’s response to Donald Trump’s shock win was swift. He tweeted: “I am hereby using my immense Twitter presence to announce my candidacy for President of United States, 2020.” The 66-year-old actor, best known as devilish comic book hero Hellboy, was probably jesting – though who can tell these days? – but the point was that he, along with millions of other disenfranchised voters, knew this was the time to re-engage with the political system instead of retreating. But with all the turbulence and uncertainty that heralds Trump, surely the timing of Fantastic Beasts, in which Perlman plays Gnarlack, a goblin, could not be better as audiences seek escapism. Do we need fantasy films more now than ever? “I think we need more culture,” Perlman says. “We need more…

From unfortunate silverback Harambe, who met his sorry end after a small boy clambered into his enclosure at Cincinnati Zoo, to wily Kumbuka, London Zoo’s jailbreak gorilla, we have a deep-rooted desire to get closer to our primate cousins. The thoughtful gaze of great apes with spookily human features, ponderous orangutans, nimble, naughty lemurs: monkey magic fascinates us like nothing else. At the new exhibition Monkey Business, we can meet them face to face – see more than 50 spectacular taxidermy specimens and articulated skeletons showing just how closely related we are.…

Most lovers of chamber music probably consider the string quartet to be the ultimate instrumental configuration. The sound of two violins, a viola and a cello blend so deliciously, each instrument an extension of the other, sharing a common source: bow, string, wood. The wind quintet is a different kettle of fish. I’m not saying music for flute, oboe, clarinet, French horn and bassoon cannot be beautiful but its quality lies in the difference between the sounds, rather than their similarity. It’s no surprise, then, that Jewish-Hungarian composer György Ligeti was attracted to the wind quintet. One of the most extraordinary musical voices of the 20th century, Ligeti’s output is a continuous exploration of timbres and textures, as a new CD from French ensemble Les Siècles demonstrates. Two works for…

Crafty cat Bob I’m a big fan of James and Bob and it’s wonderful what you do with your Big Issue magazine. Right now I’m in London for the movie A Street Cat Named Bob and so the mother of my friend made a little puppet... Ester Inga Oppermann, Hamburg Cracks in the church So Andrew Brown delivered his ‘judgment’ on the Church of England, using the rather pretentious title That was the Church That Was – [Books, Oct 31–Nov 6]. However, he completely misses the point that the C of E is essentially a spiritual organisation with its fair quota of very great saints – and slobs. What has happened in recent years was a flight from unity in terms of doctrine. Since when has heterodoxy lit the way…

Big Issue founder John Bird has urged the government to intervene to save under-threat libraries and independent bookshops across Britain. Using his position in the Lords to agitate on behalf of those without a voice, Bird has written to Lord Ashton of Hyde, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, recommending the Westminster government provide emergency relief funding for local authorities struggling to keep libraries open. “I believe there is an urgent need to stem and reverse the worrying waves of library closures across the UK,” said Bird. “These closures are clearly incompatible with the urgent necessity of improving the nation’s [often] poor literacy rates.” As part of The Big Issue Literacy push, Bird also called for “appropriately staffed and equipped libraries in all…

“The sense of disconnect, disquiet and division I have seen in the United States this week is something else” Downtown Washington is like a CGI creation from the slightly disappointing Star Wars prequels. The buildings in the square mile that encompasses Capitol Hill and the White House are alarmingly pristine and shiny. The streets are quiet and sedate. On Monday morning, when I arrived to broadcast the first of four specials of my drive time show on Talk Radio, it felt like a sleepy Sunday morning. It was not how I expected the beating heart of American democracy to look like just 24 hours before one of the most seismic elections in its history. That’s because everyone in this square mile is a member of the political classes. The strategists,…

“Love is difficult. All loves are difficult. But they also make living worthwhile” The great Irish novelist Robert McLiam Wilson once said that all stories are love stories. It’s more than a neat line. The more stories you read, the more you understand its truth. An arctic tale of survival, an account of a near-thing in Helmand, the discovery of a new insect species in Papua New Guinea – none of them matter if there isn’t someone to tell, someone who cares, someone somewhere who loves you. The same conviction drives the thought-provoking work of feted Chinese-American writer Ken Liu, best known for his multi award-winning short story collection The Paper Menagerie and ‘silkpunk’ Game of Thrones-esque epic novels, the second of which, The Wall of Storms, was published last…

I first saw Iain Lee in an Edinburgh comedy club, duetting with Mackenzie Crook on an easy-listening version of the Only Fools and Horses theme tune. Not long afterwards, he won the role of host on Channel 4’s high-profile comedy news series The 11 O’Clock Show. While members of the supporting cast and writing team, including Ricky Gervais, Sacha Baron Cohen and Charlie Brooker, would go on to international success, some may consider this to have been Lee’s peak – but only if you judge TV as the arbiter of fortune. The spite and sneering dismissal of that show is far from Iain Lee’s voice now. He was brilliantly quick-witted when most are barely able to correctly aim a toasty soldier into a boiled egg on Channel 4’s breakfast show…

1. What was Abba’s final UK No1 single from 1980? And what was their last album, from November the following year? 2. Dick Dale and the Deltones’ surf rock gained more fans when Misirlou was included on the soundtrack to which 1994 film? Who wrote Urge Overkill’s Girl You’ll Be a Woman Soon from the same soundtrack? 3. When Rod Stewart mimed to Maggie May on Top of the Pops in 1971, who pretended to play mandolin? Maggie May was originally the single’s B-side but received more airplay than the purported A-side: what was it? 4. What was the only Elvis UK number one with the word ‘love’ in its title? 5. It was 1980 before a solo female artist had a number one album in the UK. Who broke…

Thank you for your excellent ethical finance supplement [October 31–November 6]. How heartening to read of Martin Lewis’ Money and Mental Health Policy Unit, which crucially highlights the thick black line connecting debt to mental health problems. It’s precisely because of this link that firms that profit from lending to people who are struggling for cash, such as payday lenders or rent-to-own firms, need to be very strictly monitored. I hope Mr Lewis works with CEOs of such firms and arranges for them to sit down with and have face-to-face conversations with people who are trapped in debt and people who have succeeded in getting themselves debt-free. When I was in my early 20s, one of my housemates committed suicide at the end of a long and hard battle with…

“All you have to be is different, loud, mouthy, rude, politically clumsy... you will come across as real” The only time I met Trump was in a dream. He came up to me and said: “You look like a bright man, here’s a million US dollars.” I said: “That greatly helps my cash flow, and you are a kind and loving man who cares deeply about those people who have nothing; and all you want to do is lift them up in the world.” In this dream, set in a large apartment with top-dollar furnishings, he shook my hand and said: “Now if you ever find that you’re in need, or you haven’t got a job, or some big elitist is having a go at you, you just ring me…

Interviewing Alan Bennett feels as if you’re a walk-on in one of his plays. We are chatting in what his mam would have called “the parlour” of the Primrose Hill home where he’s lived for a decade with his partner Rupert Thomas. Paintings line the walls and the furnishings are antique yet the room feels lived-in rather than fancy, despite the fact Thomas edits World of Interiors. Theirs is among the least flashy houses in the crescent – in the colour-washed villas opposite, Bennett tells me, Paddington was filmed, the crew causing more chaos than the bear himself. Like Paddington, Bennett is seen as a national treasure but he’s not cosy enough for the role. Far from it. Much of his writing, plays and prose is deeply unsettling as, in…

1. BLOODY FOREIGNERS Robert Winder This breezy history of successive waves of arrivals onto British Islands – from homo sapiens to Huguenots to more recent groups – presents immigration as fact, seeing Britain as a place, not a race. 2. THE LONELY LONDONERS Sam Selvon Darkly comic novel charting the passage of optimistic West Indian immigrants from cheerful arrival through harsh disillusion to uneasy acceptance of the travails of living in 1950s Britain. 3. BECOMING BRITISH Thom Brooks This clear, concise guide – by an American law professor, now a British citizen – to the grim realities of the immigration process should be required reading for those who believe it’s easy for so-called “chancers” to take advantage of the arcane process of becoming a British resident. 4. ANITA AND ME…

In cheery remake news, Max Landis is to write and direct a new take on his father’s film, An American Werewolf in London. Meanwhile, Disney’s plans to remake The Black Hole earlier this decade were, according to screenwriter Jon Spaihts, effectively derailed because it bought the Star Wars franchise. That dampened its enthusiasm for having another big space epic on the production slate. Problems continue in the world of Warner Bros’ DC Comics-based films. Specifically The Flash. Earlier this year, original director Seth Grahame-Smith parted ways. Now, Rick Famuyiwa has left too, citing “creative differences”. Star Ezra Miller has described the fact that a second director has left the project as “a tragic relay race”. The film’s March 2018 release date is under scrutiny. JRR Tolkien is to get his…