Inside the Big Issue: KSI's got talent

He has 43.5 million YouTube subscribers and a multimillion-pound business empire. But KSI is also now the proud part-owner of Dagenham & Redbridge FC, located in Barking and Dagenham, one of the country’s most deprived boroughs. Hoping to revive the sixth-tier team from footballing doldrums, KSI’s wider goal is to bring investment, youth opportunities and, most of all, hope back to a long-neglected community. He’s excited for the new season.

“We can go all the way up,” he tells Big Issue. “I don’t know if it’ll be as fast as Wrexham did it. But it’s football. You never know. We’re definitely making sure the foundations are good enough so that when we do eventually get promoted, we don’t just fall right back down.”

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What else is in this week’s Big Issue?

Mick Foley’s Letter to my Younger Self interview

The wrestling legend had his heart broken in school – and bones broken in the ring. Now he’s just breaking the mould as Santa Claus.

“I’m a big believer in the handwritten letter. I write probably 40 letters a year as Santa,” he tells Big Issue.

Out-of-area placements are leaving vulnerable households far from home

Thousands of households are caught up in the temporary accommodation crisis, many in unsuitable, cramped, makeshift properties living out of suitcases or boxes and dreaming of a stable place to live. But for more than 40,000 households in England, there is the added problem of being placed in temporary accommodation out of area, far from where they used to call home.

How boxing is changing lives in Dagenham

At four o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, Dan O’Sullivan unlocks the doors of Dagenham amateur boxing club, and waits. The first teenagers usually arrive within minutes.

Before joining the Metropolitan Police, this was not how O’Sullivan imagined retirement. After decades responding to crime and supporting youth offenders, he now spends two evenings a week trying to prevent it before the police get involved.

“I’ve done more for my local community through this boxing club than I ever did walking around in a police uniform,” he says.

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