Life can go down as well as up. Miranda Jessop meets Drew Goodall, a social entrepreneur who beat despair to become a shoe-in for success
As a self-confessed landlubber, I change my mind about meeting Drew Goodall at his houseboat in Twickenham the moment he emails me about the ladders. Several of them, apparently, all quite tricky to negotiate. The local cafe sounds more my cup of tea.
As Drew walks in, the contrast between his highly polished black brogues and my slightly scuffed trainers is undeniably stark. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised: this, after all, is the man who runs ethical shoeshine company, Sunshine Shoeshine. What may be more unexpected, however – given his dapper appearance today – is that Drew once spent six perilous months living rough on the streets of London at a time when he was down on his luck.
The road to penury led through stage school and the West End, but the seed was innocently sown at Ipswich, in his parents’ pub.
“Living there, from a very young age I found that I was continually in the public eye. You’re always performing, in a way, and that’s why I wanted to go into acting,” explains Drew. “It was all I ever wanted to do.”
And so he took a course at a local college, from where he won a place at The London Academy of Performing Arts.
“When I went off to drama school, it was a really big deal; my parents threw a big party and my dad decorated the pub with bunting. I was the great hope.”
Having graduated in the late 1990s, Drew took on a variety of roles in TV, theatre and film, even appearing in crime comedy Snatch alongside Brad Pitt. It was after this, however, that things started to go wrong.
“I was performing in Marat/Sade in the West End and I was really badly reviewed after the press night. I will never forget it: it was a national newspaper and I was singled out by name.”
Drew finished the run, but when he started another play, he found that the experience had completely knocked him.
“I’d lost my confidence,” he admits. “I just wasn’t enjoying acting anymore and I decided to give it up there and then.”
But what else to do? That was the question.
“All my life had been geared towards acting and, now I wasn’t doing that, I had completely lost my identity. I didn’t know who I was, or what I was doing, or where I wanted to go.”
With no income, Drew’s money soon ran out and he had to move from where he was living. Initially, he slept on friends’ sofas, but the goodwill didn’t last long. Moreover, Drew was still no closer to knowing what he was actually going to do with his life. Slowly, the streets began to beckon.
“It started with the odd night, but it turned into another, and then another, and so on.”
Gravitating towards the area where he had been at drama school, Drew ended up in Parsons Green.
“I managed to get a job at a pizza takeaway, but that ended after a week when the manager realised I was sleeping in the toppings cupboard and eating all the slices of pepperoni.”
The lowest point?
“Two drunks came out of the pub and set on me for no reason. It was terrifying. I had to take myself off to hospital.”
For all the dark moments, however, Drew never turned to drink or drugs.
“Because of my childhood in the pub, I have never touched a drop of alcohol in my life and, in hindsight, I think that helped. My life could so easily have spiralled downwards even further.”
In fact, the tide was about to turn, thanks to a chance conversation with a commuter whom Drew used to see crossing Parsons Green each day.
“He told me that people went into Central London to clean shoes and I made a snap decision to try it. I scraped what little money I had off the pavement, went into a shoe repair shop, bought some polish and brushes and off I went.”
What he had failed to realise was that it was illegal to set up on a street corner without a licence.
“For several months I was chased around by the authorities, a bit like Del Boy. I soon got sick of that though, so I started talking my way into offices and shining shoes that way.
“For the first time in ages, I was earning proper money and I managed to find a place to live. Then someone said they had a shoeshiner who used to come into the office, but who hadn’t been in for a while. Would I like to take his place? I had my first official corporate client.”
Soon there were lots of them and Drew couldn’t cope with the workload. So he drafted in various friends to help him, one of whom had special needs.
“Despite his needs, my friend could still do the job as well as anyone else. I saw how it completely turned his life around, while the clients loved the idea that they were helping someone.”
And so, in 2012, Sunshine Shoeshine was born: an ethical shoeshine business which employs disadvantaged shoeshiners known as ‘sunshiners’.
Today there are eight of them, some with special needs, others having experienced extreme hardship. With over 60 corporate clients across Mayfair, the City and Canary Wharf – including big names such as Barclays Investment Bank, McKinsey and HSBC – Sunshine Shoeshine goes into each one weekly and some of the money earned is used for charitable purposes.
Drew himself has little time these days for polishing. Instead, he concentrates on liaising with the clients and overseeing his team of staff. A challenging role at times, but Drew is content with how his life has worked out.
“Yes, I am happy,” he reflects. “I don’t think there is necessarily one path for everyone. I didn’t leave school thinking I was going to run a shoeshine business, but I’ve definitely made it work for me.”
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