Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
SPECIAL PRICE: Just £9.99 for your next 8 magazines
Subscribe today
News

'I was homeless at 16': DJ Charlie Sloth on rough sleeping and living in poverty as a young father

The ex-BBC Radio 1Extra DJ opens up about his struggles pre-fame in an exclusive chat with Big Issue

Image: PR supplied

Best known for creating and fronting popular freestyle rap format Fire in the Booth, Camden’s Charlie Sloth has shared his experience rough sleeping in his local park when he was aged just 16.

In a new interview exclusive to this week’s Big Issue, Sloth reveals he found himself “sleeping on park benches” after leaving home following a family fallout.

“I was homeless at 16. I struggled with rules and discipline and order. I was a very chaotic youth,” Sloth tells us in the new Big Issue, on sale now. “My parents didn’t want me in the house. For the first few weeks I was couch surfing, but that can only last so long.

“Stubbornness kicked in. I was like, I’m not going home, and started sleeping on park benches. I never told anyone that’s what I was doing. There was a park in Camden called St Martin’s Gardens which closed every night, and I used to climb the fence and sleep in there.

Read more:

“One night I got drunk and didn’t wake up till 11 o’clock. Obviously, there’s people walking past and seeing this kid sleeping on the bench. A woman started talking to me who worked for a charity called Centrepoint. They stepped in, got involved and were instrumental in turning my life around and giving me the support system to help me move out of the situation that I was in.

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty

“Sometimes it’s very difficult to believe in yourself when things aren’t going well, but all it takes is one person to put a bit of belief in you, for you to realise that anything is possible.”

Charlie Sloth also describes struggling to make ends meet after becoming a father at 22. “By the time I got to 22, I’d become a father,” he says. “That was a massive turning point in terms of responsibility. I had to put my dreams on the back burner, and concentrate on making money, which was super difficult.

“We were living in a garden shed where there was no sanitation and I was working long hours every day for not very much money. I was struggling to buy nappies and milk. But my experience of homelessness was a motivator, not wanting to go back to that.”

Sloth said his personal experiences have left him with a deep admiration of the Big Issue and the earning opportunity it offers to people in extreme poverty.

“There is someone who’s in an identical situation to the one I was in, who hasn’t met that person who believed in them yet to give them that belief, to go on and fulfil their dreams.

“Big Issue were the first to do that for homeless people. It’s not just, ‘Here you go, take that.’ It’s like, ‘We’re going to give you a product and an infrastructure, go out and do it yourself. We believe you can do it. Go out and earn your money.’

“I fucking love it. I just got goosebumps saying it, but to this day, any time I’m in London, I’ll stop for every Big Issue seller, I’ll have a chat. I’ll buy the magazine, and I’ll leave London, I kid you not, with five or six copies in my car.”

Charlie Sloth is interviewed in this week’s special edition fronted by fellow DJ James Hype and featuring news of an exciting new gig in aid of Bristol’s homeless community. For more information, buy the magazine from your local vendor or buy from Big Issue Shop.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more

It’s helping people with disabilities. 

It’s creating safer living conditions for renters.

It’s getting answers for the most vulnerable.

Big Issue brings you trustworthy journalism that drives real change. 

If this article gave you something to think about, help us keep doing this work from £5 a month.

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty

READER-SUPPORTED SINCE 1991

Reader-supported journalism that doesn’t just report problems, it helps solve them.

Recommended for you

View all
The DWP is implicated in the deaths of hundreds of disabled people. Here's how to overhaul it
New work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden in the House of Commons
Benefits

The DWP is implicated in the deaths of hundreds of disabled people. Here's how to overhaul it

Here's when people will get their benefits from the DWP over Christmas in 2025
dwp benefits christmas/ bauble
Christmas

Here's when people will get their benefits from the DWP over Christmas in 2025

How did net zero get so politically toxic?
Net Zero

How did net zero get so politically toxic?

There's no trust left in the world. How can we get it back?
Trust

There's no trust left in the world. How can we get it back?