JW: I come from a family of both parents being alcoholic and my mother stopped drinking half a century ago and never went back. My father died of it. What happens if vendors who struggled with a similar thing go back on the booze or the drugs?
LW: For me, personally, I understand if people slip up because I’ve learned addiction is not so black and white as I thought it was. I’ve been quite lucky in life. I did a lot of my silly stuff when I was younger and I haven’t really got any addictions, except maybe to chicken. I don’t mind if my vendors fall, it’s about getting back on the horse. That is what I try and teach them. As a guy who has failed quite a lot in life, I teach people to get off your high horse in life and get yourself a pony – when you fall off it doesn’t hurt as much.
JW: I couldn’t agree more, I think that’s really good. I shall use that!
LW: I’ll be honest, you doing this is really going to help me get my voice out there. We really need to change the way we think as a society.
JW: We need to change the way we think, we really do.
LW: We’ve spoken about this and it’s in your book [Reimagining Britain]. We don’t want to go back to normal because normal didn’t work, did it? We want to have a better life now and we’ve got a chance of starting something.
Big Issue vendor Lee Welham struck up a friendship with Archbishop of Canterbury @JustinWelby – and hatched a plan to get him to don a tabard, sell the magazine and sit down for a wide-ranging chat. https://t.co/f1XpbmU6uv
— The Big Issue (@BigIssue) June 21, 2021