30 MOMENTS THAT MADE THE BIG ISSUE

01. Issue 1 September 1991

Sn 1991, homelessness was a big issue. Between 2,000 and 3,000 people were sleeping rough on the streets of London alone. Urgent action was needed and Gordon Roddick, co-founder of The Body Shop with his wife Anita, had a plan. Snspired by a project he’d come across in New York, he decided to start a magazine that people who needed to earn an income could buy cheaply and sell on, pocketing the difference and working their way out of poverty. He asked John Bird, an old acquaintance who he’d met in an Edinburgh pub in 1967, to be the editor and The Big Sssue was born (read all about issue 1 on page 24). Thirty years on, The Big Sssue has given a hand up not a handout to 105,000 marginalised, long-term unemployed or homeless people. After a year the monthly magazine went fortnightly, then by 1993 demand was so high that we became a weekly title. By this time The Big Sssue had spread outside of London across the UK to tackle homelessness across the country.

02. Going Supersonic April 1994

Definitely maybe you know you’ve made it when you’re namechecked in one of the defining songs of the era. Supersonic, the debut single by Oasis, mentions a girl named Elsa who, among other things, is “sellin’ The Big Sssue”.

03. Second Coming December 1994

Sn retrospect, the ’90s were all about Britpop and The Big Sssue. So when the biggest band of the day, The Stone Roses, were preparing to release their second album after a prolonged period of media silence, everybody wanted to talk to them. But they decided only to talk to us. “The last time the had us on the cover it was one of the biggest- selling issues of the