Topless in a church with a popstar

Welcome back to Inside the Big Issue. I’m senior reporter Greg Barradale . This week, the tale of how one of the UK's biggest pop stars ended up topless during our interview.

I expected a few things when I met Tom Grennan: some discussion of his new music, an insight into his life story, and perhaps some detail about the Gilette advert. I wasn’t expecting him to take his top off halfway through the interview.

But he did. In fairness, there was good reason. He was ill, powering through, and paracetamol and water hadn’t hit the spot. Going topless was one last gambit.

We were speaking in a clammy room in the crypt of a central London church, muggy in the way only late-summer rain can achieve. The pop star had just been posing for the photos you’ll see on the cover, and inside, this week’s Big Issue magazine. For this edition of the Inside the Big Issue newsletter, I’m giving you an exclusive look at some of Grennan’s quotes and comments which didn’t fit into the final cut.?

That first attempt at the interview was abandoned shortly after Grennan took his top off. When we reconvened, this time outside, he told me how he paid his parent’s mortgage off with the money Gilette paid him for singing the now-familiar jingle: “Gilette! The best a man can get.”

“They were talking about moving house and shit, because they couldn’t afford their mortgage,” he said. “This is getting deep into my mum and dad personal shit.

“And I was like, 'Well, I’ll pay it'. And I did. And now they’re not moving house and staying where they have worked so hard to be in.”

He added: “What do you expect, man? They were buzzing. They were delighted. My mum and dad have worked their bums off forever.”

It’s always interesting talking to people who are successful and famous. What’s it like? How does it change you?

By any measure, Tom Grennan is. All three of his albums have charted in the UK top five. His two most recent albums, Evering Road and What Ifs & Maybes were number ones. He has had four top 10 singles. Two singles from Evering Road were in the top three most played songs of 2021, by the PPL measure. But he didn’t seem satisfied.

On a personal level, he’s changed his lifestyle, seeming to take music more seriously. “I was taking advantage. I was taking it for granted, and I could have lost it quickly,” he told me, saying he was “plodding along”. What kind of world was he in? “You’ve probably got a world in your head. Think about it, and that’s the world.”

Musically, he’s looking to new horizons. “I just felt like I was kind of slipping into something that I wasn’t in love with,” he told me of his old stuff. “I was just stupid back in the day. But I had to learn, and I had to grow up, and that’s just part of it,” he said.

“If I didn't do them things, then I don't know, maybe I wouldn't be making the music I'm doing now. Maybe I wouldn't be the person I'm now and have the mindset like I have now.”

Grennan was discovered while playing a gig in a London pub. Now he’s playing to crowds of tens of thousands of people. But for the Big Issue, he’s taking it back to his roots.

Keep an eye on Big Issue socials to find out details of his upcoming busk in Coventry city centre. He’ll be playing the hits in his adopted hometown.

Sitting outside the church, with the air a bit cooler and Grennan perking up, we got deep. “I think I’m a bit scared of dying. Yeah. It’s a scary thought, innit,” he said.

“It’s more like how am I going to die, innit. I don’t want to be, like, old and shit. I’d rather die an exciting death.”

Inside this week's Big Issue

?? An artist floats passengers down a canal on their backs. “It’s a really weird thing to do with a stranger,” he admits.

?? Nadhim Zahawi tells his life story in this week’s Letter to My Younger Self - from flirting with football hooliganism, to his regrets over his undeclared tax settlement.

?? Our complete guide to student life, with what you need to know about finances, renting, socialising, and more. Essential for anybody you know starting uni.

From the Big Issue archives

This is the first edition of the newsletter since the 23rd anniversary of 9/11. The human tragedy itself is well-defined, well spoken-for. The political legacy has shaped the past two decades. But the cultural impact is equally tangible: we now have whole swathes of art defined as “post-9/11”.

That’s where we’re going in this week’s look through the Big Issue archives.

In 2015, filmmaker Anton Corbijn spoke about his film A Most Wanted Man, and his desire to explore whether the reactions after the attacks were the right ones. “In the world we live in, the post-9/11 world, everything has changed so quickly in how we speak to other people and judge other people,” he said.

“The world is led by America to treat people immediately with an attitude almost like… they kill people until they are proven innocent.”

In 2017, we spoke to fellow archive-digger Adam Curtis, whose documentaries trace much of the post-9/11 weirdness and myopia. “I think people look at the Middle East and Isis and think what is happening there is just too weird and frightening for them, so they’ve given up and gone back to Russia as a reinvented enemy,” Curtis said.

Then there is Chris Morris, whose 2019 film The Day Shall Come spoke to the anxieties of the era. But in an interview with Adrian Lobb, he found himself running up against the limitations of satire.

“I have realised at a ripe old age that if you run into the room and give everybody a bollocking or say that everyone who doesn’t agree with you is an idiot, then you’re going to preach to the converted,” Morris said.

“You make a lot of jokes about the thing that everybody already agreed with. Sure, the libtards love it. But I got bored of that a long time ago. 9/11 really just called time on it.”

My Pitch

Alongside selling the mag, Stuart works in the Big Issue office in Cardiff. It gives him a chance to help other vendors

“They come and say something like, ‘I can’t afford my gas’ and I say, ‘Listen, whatever you want, just ask’,” he says.

He also leads a tour with Invisible Cities, an organisation allowing tourists to see the side of the city experienced by those on the streets.

“I thoroughly enjoy that because I love history. I usually suffer with anxiety but I’m fine on a Thursday because I look forward to it,” says Stuart.

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Thanks for reading. See you next week.