What Mr Skelly can teach us about the housing crisis

If you’re anxious about public speaking, the advice is to picture your audience in their underwear. What if we unpeeled that thinking further and remembered that whoever we are, wherever we’re from, we’re all just a similar collection of bones doing our best to keep it together?

The artist Christian Watson has stripped humans down to their elements. His character Mr Skelly, navigating his way through a world punctuated with hopeful, assuring aphorisms, is a reminder of our fragile but eternal nature. It may be Halloween season – at the same time we’re collectively obsessing over who’ll be the next murder victim on Celebrity Traitors – but Watson’s skeletons don’t represent death or anything particularly spooky beyond the constant thrilling terror of being alive.

Mr Skelly has become unbelievably popular with millions of followers around the world, helping people gain a fresh perspective on the problems they face to let a little light into the darkness.

Watson’s debut book How Lucky Am I became an international bestseller and we’re delighted he has helped us create this week’s special cover and the artwork you’ll find in the middle of the magazine. Read my interview with him and check to see if he’s appearing at a bookshop near you for a signing this week.

The words on the cover: ‘If you keep carrying old bricks, you’ll keep building the same house’ can be applied to ourselves but also any big issue, personal or societal, we’re trying to tackle. We can’t repeat the same methods of fixing a problem that have failed in the past and expect different results.

Take housing. Bricks can often be useful there. Burnham’s rebooted government has made positive noises about easing the housing crisis and addressing rough sleeping. Build more. Get everyone in off the streets. But they are not the first new government to make such promises. We at Big Issue will continue to analyse the government’s plans and spotlight solutions that could make a real change. We even help make them happen. Read about initiatives, backed by Big Issue Invest, converting disused garage sites into affordable homes.

Read more:

• Homelessness facts and statistics: The numbers you need to know in 2026
• How Labour’s housebuilding target of 1.5 million new homes hinges on just six private companies
• Building more social and affordable housing could save taxpayers £1.5 billion a year, academics say

We also mark 60 years since Cathy Come Home, Ken Loach’s seminal film that brought homelessness and its accompanying issues into the nation’s living rooms. Turns out six decades later, there are plenty of Cathys still out there waiting for a home for themselves and their families to call their own.

Housing provides the foundation from which we build the rest of our lives. Despite this – and because of it – the topic has become a faultline in the political divide. If there’s a discussion, it isn’t about solutions but how to exploit the issue to appeal to a certain voting group. Over the page, the story of how we got there and what we can do about it all kicks off.

Often the debate isn’t about how and where to build but who is deserving of a safe and secure home. Seeing all prospective house buyers as skeletons trying to find a place to rest their bones makes the question easier to answer. Imagine estate agents, landlords and politicians the same way and you might give them a little more sympathy too.

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

Change a vendor’s life.

Buy from your local Big Issue vendor every week – and always take the magazine. It’s how vendors earn with dignity and move forward.

You can also support online:
Subscribe to the magazine or support our work with a monthly gift. Your support helps vendors earn, learn and thrive while strengthening our frontline services.

Thank you for standing with Big Issue vendors.