FEATURING PHOTOGRAPHER AND ADVOCATE SAM SINGLETON

What happens when you have a full-time job, a regular wage and a perfectly ordinary working life, but suddenly find yourself without a home? Photographer, advocate and writer Sam Singleton joins me to share the story behind No Fixed Address, a deeply personal photographic record of 23 nights spent living first in his car and then in a tent, while continuing to work as a mechanic. We talk about the practical and emotional realities of hidden homelessness, the assumptions we make about people facing difficult circumstances, and why Sam chose to document his experience through photographs and words. His work has since appeared in The Big Issue, Invisible People and The i Paper, and his story offers a rather different perspective on what homelessness can look like.

The Friday mailbag returns after our travels through Mongolia, with more of your photographic whys from Simon Blakesley, Drew Brown and Alex Mealin. Richard Oldroyd tries to bring some order to my life, Bill Rigby shares a moving story about who he would choose to shoot his portrait, Glenn Sowerby makes a persuasive case for a journey north, and Gary Williams and Kim Frank share memorable moments from photography and life.

Email your stories, thoughts, and pictures to the show. If you can optimise/resize photos to 2,500 pixels wide, we'd really appreciate it. If you’d like to support this show and have access to further content and the midweek Extra Mile show, we’d welcome you as an EXTRA MILER. There’s also our Facebook group, a safe place to meet and talk with photographers of all interests, the Photowalk YouTube channel, plus the show is featured on Instagram and Substack.

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MORE ABOUT names, words, THE MUSIC and places FROM TODAY’S SHOW

A friendly reminder: The links on this page will take you to external websites and platforms, and while I only point you towards places I think are worth your time, I have no control over their content and can't be held responsible for whatever you find when you get there.

Join us in Venice for the Venice ‘26 retreat, photographing a city built on water, light, and ritual as winter settles across the lagoon. Together we’ll wander through early-morning markets, quiet canal edges, hidden monasteries, and the weathered backstreets of Castello and Cannaregio, with time to slow down, take photographs, and build creative confidence in a city that reveals itself gently when the crowds disappear. Places limited.

In Tom Wolfe's 1998 novel A Man in Full, a young man called Conrad Hensley finds himself caught in a miserable chain of events after losing his job. A parking ticket, a towed car and mounting costs turn an already difficult financial situation into something far more serious. It's a fictional story, but it illustrates how quickly a relatively small problem can escalate when there's little money to fall back on.

Invisible People is an independent media organisation that shares the stories of people experiencing homelessness, largely through first-hand interviews and documentary films. Founded by Mark Horvath in 2008, it gives people the opportunity to describe their own experiences, while challenging some of the assumptions made about homelessness and the circumstances that lead to it.

The Big Issue is a British street newspaper founded in 1991 by John Bird and Gordon Roddick to help people experiencing homelessness and poverty earn an income. Vendors buy copies of the magazine at a reduced price and sell them to the public, keeping the difference. Alongside its journalism covering social issues, culture and current affairs, The Big Issue has grown into a wider social enterprise supporting people facing poverty and exclusion.

See more of William Rigby’s work on his Instagram, and read more about Rankin’s project ‘Alive in the face of death,’ shared within the last letter of the show.

First published in 1998, Simplicity is a book by Edward de Bono, the thinker who introduced the concept of lateral thinking. His argument is that simplicity rarely happens by accident; it takes deliberate thought and creativity to make complicated things easier to understand and use. Through ten rules, he explores how simplifying our everyday lives, working practices and decision-making can save time, reduce frustration and help us think more clearly.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a psychological phenomenon in which people with limited knowledge or ability in a particular subject can overestimate how much they actually know. First described by psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999, the theory suggests that a lack of expertise can also make it harder for someone to recognise their own mistakes or limitations. The effect has since become a widely discussed idea in psychology, particularly in relation to confidence and self-awareness.

MUSIC LINKS: Music on the show is sourced primarily from Artlist and also features in Michael Brennan’s Spotify playlist GoFoto. For Apple Music users, follow this playlist.

Kelvin Brown’s flickr Photowalk inspired group - join by invite by clicking on to THIS LINK.