How old were you when you went to school with Jameela? What started this for you? You seem like an interesting character..
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Age 7-11 (primary school). But as you've probably already gathered, our school was pretty crazy and used to mix up years willy nilly, so I was right there in class with her for three years.
I watched her rise to 'fame' but kept quiet for a long time, even though I knew she was lying about a lot of things (eg being 'almost fully deaf until age 12' - obviously I was there so I know that's not true). I made allowances for the fact that she was very messed up by her cruel mother.
It was the cancer lies that really pushed me over the edge because I have personal experience of losing someone very close to me to cancer. I realised she does too much harm lying about her health and co-opting vulnerable people's causes for her own glory, plus the BBC were starting to showcase her (Hardtalk interview) and no one was calling her out and seeing through her.
I also wanted to expose her mother, who is the ultimate cause of all of this, and has been spinning her own web of lies (eg about DV) that were even too much for Jameela.
Shireen’s replies to you only serve to confirm that you really did know her!
Had Jameela’s fantasism and compulsive lying started as early as primary school?
I have previously heard that at school, she was basically a nice girl, neither bully nor victim. However she had a pushy, unreasonable mother who worked at the private school and ensured that JJ was blatantly favoured.
Had Jameela’s fantasism and compulsive lying started as early as primary school?
I have previously heard that at school, she was basically a nice girl, neither bully nor victim. However she had a pushy, unreasonable mother who worked at the private school and ensured that JJ was blatantly favoured.
The way her mother is speaking to you is WOW! You’ve proved your credentials to me, she clearly knows you. Thank you for being brave enough to come forward and confirm the truth
Yes, the barely described homophobia/transphobia doesn't do Jameela's image any good! Her mother really is a hateful person to be thinking and saying those things about a child - she also treated her own daughter like a fetish to live through and didn't really love her. She also doesn't like that I've called out a classroom assistant she is still 'friends' with (Yvonne Stenzhorn), who physically attacked me and said disgusting things to me - especially because I reminded her how she used to talk about that person behind her back.The way her mother is speaking to you is WOW! You’ve proved your credentials to me, she clearly knows you. Thank you for being brave enough to come forward and confirm the truth
In answer to ShowMeYourFeline:
Shireen was already teaching Jameela how to lie/say and do anything for attention but it was more at an embryonic stage, like when everyone had a cold Jameela had to have 'glandular fever'. Also once someone threw a toilet roll vaguely in Jameela's direction and she paused, then fake-collapsed to the floor to get everyone to fuss round her. Jameela cultivated the image of a generally sickly child, with nothing specifically wrong but perfectly fragile - just lots of big bottles of water to drink throughout the school day (also to stave off hunger because her mum would be controlling what she ate).
Although she wasn't a bully, she wasn't perfectly 'woke' then either: She would sometimes laugh along with the psycho classroom assistant when she picked out kids with mental health problems to deride. She also didn't play with the black girl in our class (only one) and when this girl asked me to explain to the 'in' group of girls (including Jameela) that she felt they were ostracising her because of her race, Jameela was already unnaturally prepared with a whole speech about how 'humans should just say they come from planet earth, we're all one', etc (obviously she would use subtler tactics today).
Shireen was the receptionist at the school for the time Jameela was there, in lieu of paying the school fees. She didn't do much except occasionally deign to answer the door to the building and make hateful comments to/hold never-ending grudges against any child she perceived as having slighted her daughter in even the tiniest of ways. The leverage in making sure Jameela always got the main part was probably because the headmistress was also the proprietor of the school and 'employing' her, and also organised the school play. So Shireen probably made Jameela getting the main part a condition of her work as receptionist.
Yes I agree, Jameela was actually not a natural bully or victim and we got on quite well and went to each other's parties - everything came from her mother. She could have been a nice girl if she's had room to breathe, but she wasn't exceptionally talented like her mother insisted. When her mum gave her a withering look and told her 'I genuinely despair of you' when she got a subtraction calculation wrong, I tried to comfort her and said afterwards: 'Don't worry about what she says.' She gave me an exhausted, despairing look and said: 'Sometimes I just can't cope with it any more.' This is why I still actually feel deeply sorry for her (people never believe this) even though she is doing a lot of harm and that needs to be called out.
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*barely DISGUISED homophobia/transphobia. Talking about a child being 'in the closet' (aged 9!), saying they were 'caught red handed' trying on clothes (I don't even remember this), hopes they're 'happy now dressing like a girl'. She thinks they 'always were pathetic' and is resentful about a story they wrote that won a prize (because Jameela didn't get that accolade her mother refuses to believe that another child could have written it themselves).
If this is how Shireen, as an adult, thought and talks about another child in Jameela's class, imagine what she must have inflicted on her own children. Is it any wonder Jameela ended up like she is?
Hi OL, been loving your posts on here, welcome. I know you were only a child yourself so may not have known the ins and outs, but why didn’t the school just sack her mother from the receptionist job? Was her nasty behaviour known to the head and senior staff but ignored or was it done slyly and the important people at top just thought she was wonderful?
Hi, good question.
Obviously I'm not sure, but I think it was probably because in those days, the school couldn't afford to employ a receptionist in the usual manner, so she held a lot of sway. At the top it was really just one person running the show (proprietor who was also the headmistress). She was actually a really kind and good teacher, but she did exhibit poor judgement when it came to hiring staff and made some rather inexplicable decisions.
For example, there was the classroom assistant who used to make sexual comments to and around the children and physically attacked me. See this thread for what that person did and said to me - it's almost unbelievable but I swear it happened: Instead of realising that someone like that should be nowhere near children and sacking her on the spot, the headmistress organised so that we had to APOLOGISE TO EACH OTHER.
It's very difficult to describe my experience there, because as I say many of the teachers were also very kind and overall I have good memories of the place, but it certainly was run in a bizarre way that was very much of its time (Hampstead, 1990s) and wouldn't be acceptable nowadays. Look up Heathside Preparatory School and you'll see that it was ultimately forced into new management.
The headmistress and another of the teachers basically rebuilt the school from the ground up when the previous headteacher/proprietor was convicted of importing child pornography. There was some suggestion that he had been framed but I'm not clear because he was only at the school for the first six months I was there. They changed the name from Paragon Hill School to Heathside Preparatory School after that and became more focused on preparing students to take exams to gain places in selective secondary schools (like Queen's College where Jameela went afterwards).
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One thing I can't get over with Jameela that the Americans don't seem to have cottoned onto yet is just how incredibly average and untalented she is. I remember her presenting days on C4 and basically forgetting about her afterward because she was literally forgettable.
I just googled that persons name and came across this: https://www.tes.com/news/ms-stenzhorn-and-mr-bird-jameela-jamil-0
I’m not sure if you’ve read it or spoke about it previously - is any of it true, like the circles on hand part?
For a start, Yvonne Stenzhorn wasn't a teacher, she was a classroom assistant employed to help one child in particular, but she didn't have any qualifications - I actually asked her if she did, and she pointed at her breasts and said: 'Do you want to see my qualifications?'. She might have helped Jameela with maths occasionally but she wasn't a class teacher and not employed to help her, so I don't really remember anything like this or anything about circles on hands.
Maybe she could do basic maths but that story is just because Shireen is still 'friends' with her (birds of a feather, even though Shireen used to say how much she hated her behind her back) so she probably asked Jameela to talk her up as her 'favourite teacher'. This shows you how out of touch Jameela is with reality that she picked a dangerous child abuser (read the thread I linked in my previous post for exactly what she did and said to me - she knew I was vegetarian so she chose this language specifically).
In the end my parents made it clear to the head that they were not happy with her still being employed after what she did to me and then her continued hateful actions towards me (calling me a 'creep' when no one else was listening and telling me I was 'getting on her tits' - she was very sexually inappropriate around kids). She was finally sacked, but clearly Shireen has stayed in touch with her all these years and so that's the reason for Jameela plugging her.
I believe she has an Instagram https://www.instagram.com/yvonnestenzhorn/ with quite a lot of crude stuff on it and interestingly few pictures of her herself.
Also Jameela describes Heathside as being a school for kids with special needs, to fit her narrative of being disabled. It wasn't actually specifically, just had a higher number of kids with special needs but then gradually became more focused on preparing kids for entrance to selective secondary schools. Jameela never presented as disabled or having special needs - that would have been too much of an imperfection for Shireen. She just presented as perfect but perfectly fragile and generally sickly at the same time, if that makes sense.
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That circles on the hand part is so bizarre, I’m a teacher (albeit now to adults) and would never dream of doing this even when I used to teach children/ teenagers . Like branding them with their mistakes ?!
I don't think it's true, because she wasn't even a teacher so I don't remember her sitting next to Jameela. But then we are talking about a person who shook me hard by the shoulder when she was covering lunchtime when it was raining, and said this to me:
I know it sounds unbelievable that someone could get away with doing that to a child, which is why I've remembered it all these years. Jameela wasn't there at the time but she was there for other examples of this woman's disgusting behaviour. She has no understanding of what 'normal' behaviour is even supposed to look like, so of course she would be her favourite 'teacher'.
First noticed her on Freshley Squeezed in the mornings (also presented by Alexa Chung, Nick Grimshaw and Rick Edwards). Some awkward presenting skills here
I don’t think it does sound unbelievable for the time tbh, I went to a private primary school and a female teacher used to verbal harasss students ( she taught me at age 5 and I was always in trouble despite being very shy , and make students sit on her lap in front of the class as punishment for hours on end. Had she been at a state school I think she would have been sacked but nothing was done and she worked until retirement
This is what I mean when I say she was forgettable. She just has so little personality on screen. It could be that the writing on these shows wasn't great, but better actors than her can work with bad material.
As an aside, I HATED that “new crew” on T4 and that’s when I stopped watching it. The old gang like Miquita Oliver and Simon Amstell seemed cool to me (I was younger) but friendly and funny. The new gang like Nick, Alexa and Jameela tried to emulate them but they came across as arrogant and way too cool for you and like it was a bore and chore they had to be there
Mikita and Simon were amazing, the pop world interviews were hilarious!
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