Two weeks before his 17th birthday, Stephen Woodhouse’s mum died of cancer. “We knew she was dying,” he says. “They gave her six months. She lasted five.” Still in mourning, he and his sister – just two years older, but classed as an adult – were left to fend for themselves. “She ended up getting a council flat to look after me,” remembers Woodhouse. “However, she was dealing with grief as well. It just didn’t go very well.”
Still a minor, Woodhouse found himself homeless. In the 30-year “roller-coaster” since, he’s often been without a place to call his own. “Every time I managed to get a job and got myself off the streets, something else has happened,” he explains. But thanks to his guitar – and the help of The Big Issue, which he says has saved his life three times – he’s found community, cycled thousands of miles across Europe, and recently recorded his first
