When Bliss Cunneen dropped out of university to become a plumber in 2020, her parents were beside themselves with worry. Cunneen, 27, had taken social anthropology at Essex University with dreams of working in human rights. But after two years, she was falling behind and decided to leave.

“I loved the course, and I loved learning about it, but I wasn’t employable,” she reflects from her sofa in Clapham. “ I was due to leave with so much debt , and the thought of that was really uncomfortable.”

With delicately applied make-up and freshly blow-dried hair, Cunneen looks far from your stereotypical plumber. “I didn’t want to work in a shop,” she says. “ I wanted to have a proper career so I just took up plumbing.”

And so the well-spoken, former student started fixing leaks, fitting ta

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