John Bird interview

I want you to emphasise that I’m not just a rogue.  I haven’t been in a fight for years.  I’m actually extremely cultured.  Honestly!
Tony O Reilly and the forklift truck.
Absolutely starving.  But won’t eat any of my sandwich because it looks too fancy.  Wants ham and cheese, with pickle.  They don’t have any pickle, though.  Has to make do with plain ham and cheese.  When it arrives, the crusts have been removed.
Aw luvvely.  Gaw bless you.
The book is very sad.
There’s a famous Icelandic saying which says that there is only one thing better than losing a parent and that is losing two.  What they are really saying is that if you want a good preparation for life, so you aren’t going to get ground down, you need a bit of a rough tie to start off with.  Like an inoculation.  And I had tremendous sadness in my life, but it has not made me a sad person.
Are you naturally optimistic?
I’m reckless.  I go for it.  And recklessness can be very damaging.  I am up for anything, I really am, I could jump in a boat right now and go to Argentina.
But you came from a background which was very insecure, there didn’t seem to be any certainty about…anything.  Your parents abandoned you in an orphanage.  Most people would have emerged from that very insecure and would latch onto anything that seemed remotely safe.  What was different about you?
I know I have my mother’s Irish temperament, as opposed to my father’s Protestant English one.  My mother was a very charismatic woman, a great elaborator of the truth.  But I always felt that she was on a kind of voyage.  I don’t think she ever accepted the subjugation of just being a slum mother with six children.  I think she always had a great imagination.  She wanted a bit more.  My father was a working machine, he was a stoic.  And I’m more like my mum. I inherited her belief in the potentiality of things.  I’ve never been frightened of taking risks.
But your mother had a disastrous time.
It’s been disastrous for me, too.  I’ve got four broken noses!  I’ve been in a lot of fights, for sticking my nose in other people’s business.  I’ve had a disastrous business life, even though I’m successful now.  And I’m a very internalised person.  I remember when I was in the orphanage, I was lying in bed, really, really upset.  And realising that it was adults who had done this.  I remember quite consciously saying to myself that never again would I rely on people.  It’s a double-edged sword, though, because you lose people.  They say that I don’t let them in.  My children say to me ‘We love you, Dad, but the lights are on and there’s nobody in.’  I do love my children, but they tell me that I never share my problems with them.  I think that goes with the turf and that’s where I get my solidity from.  I don’t think I will ever really rely on anybody to do certain things.  This is getting very psychological.  In terms of my philosophy, I am totally convinced that I was chosen for really, really big things.  And I am sure that if I ever spoke to a psychiatrist about it, they would say that it comes from feeling inadequate and that it’s a coping mechanism, but so what?  I have always believed that I’ve got the answer, I’ve got the key and I’ve just got to convince the right people.  Gradually, over the last ten years, I’ve managed to convince a reasonable amount of people that it’s true.  But I am not Mahatma Gandhi, nor am I a Christ-like figure.  I’m just a very, very practical person who wants to bring practicality back!
The Big Issue is great because it makes people feel like they are doing something, but you have to look at the reasons why people end up homeless in the first place, and you would seem to confound the theories.  What can be done to teach other people what you have learned?
I’m notorious for arriving at the wrong airport at the right time, or the right airport, without a ticket.  And I’ve always used myself as a yardstick for change.  So I started something called Dr Checkoff.  We have ways of making you organised.  Whenever you are making decisions, you will need the help of an expert, which we will provide.  I’m interested in empowering people.  Giving people the confidence and self-esteem to make their own decisions.  Things to do in a crisis: coping with bereavement, suicide, the menopause, divorce.  I’m very good at detail.
When you were homeless was it very difficult to get yourself back on track?
No.  I’ve always been a beggar.  And I’m still a beggar.  My mother always had me out begging, and I was always very good at it.  I had no problem if anyone told me to piss off.  I was never ashamed of it, or embarrassed. 

My book is a demonstration of someone who is part of a problem and who becomes a part of the solution. 
I am bold enough to say that we have got Democracy wrong.  If I said to you I will meet you outside the Shelbourne at seven in the morning and I will drive you to Cork and then you arrive and get in the car and ask me how long I’ve been driving and I say “I’ve never driven before.  But I know people who’ve driven.  And in May 1997, Anthony Blair, who had never run a fish and chip shop before was given the biggest fish and chip shop in Britain to run.  Why do we expect it to work? 
What about this bank?
I write a regular article for the Big Issue, every week.  But a lot of my ideas wouldn’t necessarily be the ideas of the Big Issue, which is now a very serious organisation.  When I started it, there was no one telling us what to do.  I came up with the idea of the Big Issue, and Gordon Roddick put up the money.  At that time, homelessness was one of the major issues in London.  Now it’s traffic.
My background wasn’t editorial, I published art magazines.  I was a Marxist and I wanted to mix art and culture with social change.  I made a living, but I’m not much of a businessman.  I used to come up with ideas that people didn’t think would work, but I would say ‘There’s nobody watching us.  We can fill the magazine with noughts and crosses, if we like.”  It’s a very unique position to be in.  But within a matter of six months, there was a Big Issue way of doing things.
Did people buy it anyway, just to support you?
Of course.  Once, on Hammersmith Broadway, I was talking to a vendor and he was selling very well.  And I followed somebody who had just bought a copy and there was a bin full of Big Issues, in the station and he dumped his in there.  So I brought them all back to the vendor and he sold them again.  What we were trying to do was get people working and because of that, we were happy to experiment.  But very soon people like Nick Davis of the Guardian were saying that we were the last bastion of committed journalism.  But that wasn’t our intention, we just wanted to produce a magazine that the public were pleased to buy and the vendors were proud to sell.
One of the things I was very proud of doing was a prison issue, in which we named the prisons who were doing good things for the prisoners, in order to shame the ones who weren’t.
You were in prison.
Yes.
Secret of your success?
I’m inordinately good at forgiving people, myself, especially.