AJ Odudu is supposed to be sorting tins. The Big Brother host is lending a hand at her local food bank in Blackburn. She’s been put on the packaging station: divvying non-perishables between parcels and checking expiration dates. But she keeps seeing people she knows – and she wants to catch up.
“Oh yeah, a few people,” she explains later, duties complete. “One of the volunteers here does a keep fit class with my mum down at the local leisure centre. She was asking, ‘How’s your mum? Heard that she had a knee replacement, send her my love.’
“And I saw someone who was in the year below me at secondary school, she came in with her three kids to donate… there’s people who recognise me from the local church or the local school or things like that.”
It’s a nice place, AJ Odudu says, to “have a natter with anyone,” sitting upstairs at Trussell (formerly the Trussell Trust) donation centre.
Odudu is busy. She’s about to be on our screens most nights – Big Brother returns this week. It’s a huge gig; last year, more than 2.5 mil- lion people tuned into the launch of the reboot. The presenter recently wrapped on Dress the Nation, a new reality show documenting the search for a Marks & Spencer’s designer, and her diary is filled with commitments like guest-judging on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK and attending the National Television Awards. The night before her interview with Big Issue she was “up until 3am” updating her mum with the gossip from her whirlwind schedule.
But AJ Odudu is “never too busy” to come back home to Blackburn. And “never too busy” to visit the food bank. Read all about her visit in this week’s issue.
