About this issue: Overview
When Jamie Morton’s dad retired he turned his attentions to long-suppressed passions, literally. Gary Ryan speaks to the team behind cult podcast My Dad Wrote A Porno – they’re Big Issue North’s cover stars this week.
Elsewhere on our feature pages Mark Metcalf provides a history lesson in football from Ashbourne in Derbyshire, where shopkeepers are boarding up their windows and doors when they should be selling pancake mix. He tells us how the game has changed vastly since medieval times when it featured hundreds of players on fields spanning miles – but not everywhere.
Kevin Edward Turner nearly lost his family and a promising career in dance when he suffered a severe mental breakdown and was sectioned. Instead he’s used his family’s experiences of it to create a new show. Kelly Mattison finds out how as she meets him, his mum, and sister.
Medication was part of Turner’s recovery but on our news pages we look at the over subscription of anti-psychotic drugs in the north. We also hear from a Manchester homelessness charity which is appealing for new premises.
In our arts section we round up the best things happening across the north next week, with special focus on a new show touring youth hostels and our expert reviewers find that veganism does not negate comedy and that Jarvis Cocker and Chilly Gonzales make quite good classical music.
We chat to author Martine McDonagh about how her background in the music industry helped her write a book about narcissism and Leeds author AJ Kirkby seeks redemption for his home city.
Ralf Little pens a funny and heartfelt letter to his 16-year-old self and we have our usual crossword and Sudoku alongside a competition to win copies of I, Daniel Blake.