At the end of January 2020, Bolton-born performer Joe Leather was working on a show in Shanghai when he decided to come back to the UK for a couple of weeks. Little did he know that the pandemic would lead to that fortnight’s holiday becoming a little more permanent than imagined.
Without a job back home - and clubs, bars and theatres all shut due to social distancing measures - Joe, 33, decided to look for something else. Realising that refuse loading would still be a thing during the pandemic, he applied for a position in Crewe near his dad’s house and got the job.
“I’ve always been a performer but during Covid, I had to find something else to do,” Joe tells the M.E.N. “I ended up moving to my dad’s in Crewe and I was trying to get a job and earn some money. I was trying to apply for loads of stuff and I realised that refuse loading wasn’t really going to go anywhere so I applied for it.
