John Bird

Private Passions

Big Issue founder John Bird talks to Michael Berkeley about the role music played in transforming his life.

For two weeks in 1970 John Bird worked in the Houses of Parliament washing dishes; in 2015 he returned as a life peer.

To say he didn’t have a great start in life is something of an understatement. Born in 1946 in a Notting Hill slum, he was five when his family was made homeless and at seven he was taken into care. Much of his teens was spent in reform school, he slept rough, and he went to prison several times for stealing.

But John Bird turned his life around and has devoted it to fighting for social justice and particularly for homeless people, founding the Big Issue in 1991 with Gordon Roddick. Nearly thirty years on, and with over 200 million copies sold, it’s become a multi-million pound social investment enterprise, and has helped 92,000 vendors earn nearly £120 million pounds.

John tells Michael about the music that cut through his chaotic childhood, and we hear Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture, played to John's class by a beleaguered music teacher and which John has never forgotten.

Passionate about making classical music accessible to all and breaking down notions of elitism in music, John chooses works by Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Weber, Wagner and Steve Reich, music he has discovered on his extraordinary journey from reform school and prison to the House of Lords.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3