The boot couldn't be fuller.

Three trolleys full of Big Issues have been loaded into the back of an R-registration Mondeo and five men, most in matching black leather jackets, are trying to figure out how they can squeeze some more in.

One, a little older than the others, holds the boot door open and looks inside for an age as if his staring would find more space.

It is the back of seven on Thursday morning. A lorry has just delivered this week's edition of Big Issue to the magazine's HQ next to Glasgow's Sheriff Court. Now cars, all driven by south-eastern Europeans and at least one with Irish plates, are arriving to pick them up.

The five men loading the Mondeo say they can't speak English. But asked where they are from, they first say "Romania", then "Roma". This is the new face of the Big Issue, families of Romanians, often gypsies, pooling together to bulk- buy the magazine once almost exclusively sold by the bagful to self-employed homeless Scots.

The Romanians, the Big Issue said, meet all the criteria for homelessness: they have no stable tenancy. But they clearly have the cash to buy magazines in bulk. Some Scots Big Issue vendors also have cars, or at least access to them for deliveries to outlying communities, Big Issue said.

But even magazine insiders admit bulk-buying on this scale is new.