Jack Monroe Wiki

An Introduction to Jack Monroe

Jack Monroe is a writer and anti-poverty campaigner with several bestselling cookery books, who has been widely featured in the media. She first became known in 2012 for her blog, where she shared budget recipes and wrote about her experiences of poverty. More recently, she has been criticised for claiming donations with no transparency as to how much money she received, and what she has done with it.

Wiki guide:

• Page 1 gives an introduction to Jack and her history.
• Page 2 describes notable chaoi of 2012-21 and Jack's antics in 2022.
• Page 3 describes Jack's antics in 2023.
• Page 4 describes Jack's antics in 2024.
• Page 5 is a timeline of events prior to 2022.
• Page 6 covers other lies and tall tales from Jack
• Page 7 features writings by and about Jack, and a list of the words that she misuses.
• Page 8 includes extras such as Jack's possessions, coming soons, jobs, and thread in-jokes.
• Page 9 features the canal's literary works of Christmas 2022.
• Jack Monroe Memes is, obviously, memes about Jack.
• Slopalong was an initiative to try out Jack's recipes.

Some common terms explained for newbies:

Canal of Hausfraus: One of Jack’s followers once referred to Tattlers as sad hausfraus and Jack herself has likened us to a cabal. Therefore we have become the Cabal of Hausfraus™️ (this has been amended to Canal as we understand the first term has antisemitic association). She has also referred to us as "gossip mavens" (so, we are gossip trusted experts). Other terms of endearment she has used for Tattle: conspiracy wankers, obsessive groups of completely unhinged bullies, bullying ninnies, mavens of manifesting misery, and malign, vicious bullies.

To "GrunkaLunka" or "Grunk" your way through a thread means to catch up on posts. Named after a member who rather epically caught up on many threads in a short period of time (and is also a fearless pioneer of the space-time continuum. She really was here both Now and Then).

A "squig" is someone on social media whose name and account handle we have "squiggled" out for privacy. We do this with most people unless they have a verified account, or are a known figure with at least 10,000 followers or so.

"Guest" is Jack herself. So-called because in 2023 she attended Dame Kelly Holmes' birthday party (an invitation she seemingly got through her old friend Linda Riley, not Dame Kelly herself) and the Daily Mail published a press photo referring to her as a "guest" - seemingly, whoever wrote the article did not recognise her. We think this is a perfect representation of how drastically Jack's star has fallen.

Triangulation or : Jack once threatened to use her Liam Neeson skills to TRIANGULATE online via IP addresses (when you see the red triangle/watermelon in posts - this is what we're referring to) our whereabouts in order to intimidate us. She may also threaten to take us to court - do not be afraid, this is not the first time and it won’t be the last.

A "sockpuppet"/"sock" is a fake social media account used by Jack. Tattlers have identified lots of these in the past. She has had some of them for a long time - just because an account has a long history, don't assume it isn't Jack.

"Comments Club" refers to Jack's policy of only allowing Twitter comments from people she follows, so that all responses will be positive (she can't control QRTs though.) She encourages her fans to join the "comments club" by privately messaging her so she can verify they're not TROLLS/haters/canal. There is some speculation as to whether Jack runs a private account, WhatsApp group, Discord server etc. for her "Comments Club", perhaps explaining why she maintains a loyal Patreon following despite no longer posting on social media.

For other common terms, see "In jokes" on page 5. See below for a list of notable Jack events that are often referenced on the threads.

If you are new to Jack on Tattle, you may find this glossary or media gallery useful, as well as




Jack turned up on Tattle on thread 31 to clear her name. Read for yourself to see what happened.

A potted history

• Jack is from a middle class family known locally as well to do. Her father held senior roles in the Fire Service and is now a landlord
  
  
• In November 2011, she left her well-paid job as a call handler in the Fire Service - ostensibly because they wouldn't allow flexible working around the needs of her young son. Subsequently, she could not get work, and fell on hard times. For whatever reason (she's given conflicting stories), her parents and her son's father did not or could not help her financially.
  
  
• She began blogging about local politics, her day to day life, and budget recipes. In summer 2012 she shared a post called "Hunger Hurts" about how she couldn't afford to feed herself or her then two-year-old son. The post went viral, and she gained a new audience and continued sharing recipes on her blog.
  
  
• In early 2013, an interview with Jack in the Telegraph effectively launched her career in the public eye and she was quickly offered writing and media work. Over the next year she released recipe books, was given brand deals, and became fairly well known as a writer and campaigner
  
  
• Jack had a relationship with the millionaire restaurant founder Allegra McEvedy. When they broke up Jack claimed that she was still poor and had just £20 a week for food, even though her social media showed evidence of lavish spending. She gave different reasons as to why she was struggling financially, such as saying that her agent stole book royalties from her, and that she couldn't work for more than a year whilst pursuing a libel suit against Katie Hopkins.
  
  
• Jack changed her story to say that she was actually from a poor working-class family. She also came out with conflicting accounts about her time in poverty, alcoholism, and many other things. She told more and more lies and caught herself out.
  
  
• In 2020 she aggressively promoted her Patreon, saying that she had lost a year's worth of work because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost 3 years later, she still hasn't produced the promised rewards for her sponsors. She admitted in a Guardian interview that she had spent Patreon donations on alcohol and designer furniture. There have been several other instances of crowdfunding, fundraising, or asking for donations where it wasn't clear how much she had raised or what happened to the money.
  
  
• In 2022 she posted a follow-up to "Hunger Hurts" on the 10th anniversary of the original post. She said that after a decade of working in the media, she was still struggling financially and could not afford shower gel or electric lighting. Meanwhile her social media showed that she'd recently had lip fillers, multiple holidays, and bought a designer puppy. Questions began to be asked, in part because of Tattle and anonymous Twitter accounts drawing attention to Jack's many self-contradictions.
  
  
• Jack came under a lot of scrutiny when, after asking for PayPal donations to fund a lawsuit against Lee Anderson MP, she failed to file the case before the deadline. She said the money had been donated to a food bank, and showed a redacted receipt - but a closer look at the receipt shows she gave the money to her church, not directly to the food bank it runs. It's also not clear if the amount donated was the full total of donations she received
  
  
• Because of the backlash she has received, Jack is reduced to occasional appearances in the media or at festivals and no longer shares recipes or does any "campaigning." Her "career" will likely never resume, as there are now many more people writing about budget cooking/thrift and making a far better job of it than she does.

Background

Birth: Jack was born on 17 March 1988 in Southend, Essex. Her birth name was Melissa "Mel" Hadjicostas, legally changed to Jack Monroe in 2012. We do not use her former name on Tattle, however it is not a "deadname" - Jack herself has said she's fond of it and has considered publishing a book as Melissa Hadjicostas. She also sometimes calls herself Jack Xatzinikolas (a name from her father's side of the family, who are Greek Cypriot.)

Family: Jack was brought up by a high-ranking firefighter father and a motheho was a nurse until she became disabled and could no longer work. Jack's parents were foster carers for over 20 years, and her father received an MBE for his services to fostering. He has done a number of media pieces about the difficulties of fostering, with emphasis on the financial impact it’s had on him, having to extend his owned property and replace front doors. Jack was published in the Guardian criticising their foster children, calling them feral. She has three siblings: an older brother who is/was in the RAF, and a much younger adopted brother and sister.

Grandad: Jack’s paternal Grandad was a landlord who owned a number of properties and restaurants around Essex, including the BellaPais Southend, not to be confused with the current one in Colchester. In his will he left an estate worth £1.8million upon his death in 2012. Included in this were a row of houses (at least 3, possibly 4 as per this sign), rented out as 'villa guest houses' to tenants on benefits. According to a local Southend news article, the properties were extremely run-down, had not been maintained since the 60s, and had to be completely renovated after they were sold.

When Jack pretended to be working class during a televised debate, Edwina Currie pointed out that Jack's grandfather was wealthy. Jack screamed “My Grandfather is DEAD” in place of an actual rebuttal (from about 32:00 in this clip). Then she wrote a whingey open letter as a response a few days later. Jack likes to hint at her status as a "third generation immigrant" on her grandfather's side; and will occasionally announce an attempt to "reclaim" her Greek-Cypriot heritage.

His wife, Jack's grandmother, may be a Nazi and the late June Whitfield portrayed her in a BBC radio drama.

Middle class roots? Jack's parents have a detached five bedroom house in an affluent part of Southend. Her father describes his occupation as a landlord on Companies House. The family’s Land Rover was navy blue. Jack used to describe her upbringing as middle class in her earlier blogs. In Hunger Hurts she references a £4-5k Omega Seamaster watch gifted to her by the family for her 21st birthday.

Despite this, Jack now says she is from a poor, working class background. See wiki page 5 for her changing stories over time.

School: Jack went to a grammar school (Westcliff High School for Girls). After receiving 4.5 GCSEs (the half GCSE is in RE), she left school in 2004. She has given multiple different accounts of why she left when she did, see wiki page 6 for more on that.

Jack claims that she was intelligent and studious, but that her ADHD left her completely unable to follow rules, and the school destroyed her academic potential by failing to accommodate her. See wiki page 6 "Alleged illnesses": Jack says she was either diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, or as a child but she was not told and her parents did nothing about it. Either way, how was the school supposed to know? When Jack went there in the late 90s-early 2000s, there was little awareness about neurodiversity, especially in girls.

Hunting for fame? In 2007 when Jack was aged 19, a profile in her previous name appeared on the StarNow talent hub. She described herself as having a "sunny personality" (questionable!), looking like Keira Knightley and Natalie Portman, and being told that she should be a model or on TV. She didn't mention particular skills or talents, or looking for any specific kind of performing work - seemingly she was open to anything that would get her attention.

Around this time, Jack tried out acting (she took classes at a performing arts school, mentioned on her StarNow profile), music (writing songs and appearing in a photoshoot for what looks like a girl band), and modelling (she had photos taken for a portfolio.) She claims she auditioned for The X-Factor. After her son was born, she continued to perform at open mic nights and began trying to establish herself in local politics. All of this leads us to suspect that she just wanted to be famous by any means possible - it was never really about campaigning against poverty.

First jobs: Jack went through a large number of casual jobs after leaving school. A detailed list can be seen in "Jack's Jobs" on wiki page 8. She has said she worked in a chip shop, department store, supermarket, warehouse, and at various cafés and bars during this time.

After a few years of temp jobs, Jack somehow (read: Daddy) got a job in the control room for the fire service in 2007. She revealed during a talk at the Edinburgh Book Festival that she failed her first interview but was then given an opportunity to sit in the control room and observe how the job worked, following which she passed a second interview "with flying colours." It's unclear whether all potential candidates are afforded this opportunity or if this is a privilege reserved for relatives of the Head of Fire Investigation. The role was a highly paid one for someone in their early twenties with no qualifications. She's repeatedly stated that she earned £27k (see here in "Hunger Hurts")

When Grenfell happened she cosplayed as an ex-firefighter who helped on the ground ("I've seen a lot of fucking fires"), as detailed in her since deleted blog post. She has also claimed she was training as a firefighter before she left the Fire Service, but this is doubtful because she says she can't swim and has no driving licence, which are prerequisites for the job.

Pregnancy: Jack got pregnant with her son, known as SB ("Small Boy") in 2009. She states that at that time, aged 21, she was working three jobs and earning almost £40k a year. SB's father is an old friend with whom she had a brief fling; Jack has repeatedly described him as a committed co-parent. As is common with Jack, she has given many varying stories, including suggesting that her son was actually born through sex work.

November 2011 - leaving the fire service: Jack has given multiple reasons as to why she left her job, and here are some from the comments section BTL in the Guardian 2013. Her story ranges from being forced to leave because they would not accommodate her requests for flexible working (as per her comments in the article), or that she was dismissed. In a newspaper interview she said her son was in childcare but she insisted on removing him, as she feared it would be "traumatic" for him. In February 2021, she tweeted that after a mental health breakdown she resigned from her hospital bed and then immediately rescinded her resignation. She claims to have had the full support of everyone, but the fire service upheld her resignation and she lost her job.

The start of the poverty (2011/ 2012): At some point between late 2011 and early 2012, Jack became poor and was living on benefits. She could not afford utilities or food. She has said that SB's father was working full time, but didn't pay her child support - this is the same man she has frequently described as supportive, and even wrote a Guardian article thanking him. She also did not ask her parents for help, and has given several different stories as to why (she was "too proud" / her parents are actually poor / they couldn't afford to help because they had two young children of their own / Jack was afraid social services would take her son into care.) Instead, she allowed herself and her baby son to go hungry for between six months and two years.

Jack finally told her parents in summer 2012 that she was poor and struggling. She sold a lot of her possessions at a garage sale and raised over £3000, which she spent on clearing her debts and putting down a deposit on a cheaper rented flat. She has given multiple conflicting stories of how she came to start using a food bank (either in Spring 2012, out of desperation after a mental breakdown; or in October 2012 after being referred by Sure Start staff) and whether she used the food bank once or repeatedly.

Early blogging: Jack had been running a blog since 2011, originally called "Our Southend" and about local politics. Early blog entries suggest she had a goal of becoming a town councillor and helping Labour win Southend West (her local seat.) She began writing about her daily life and budget recipes as a way of showing how she was affected by austerity measures and cuts to local services. Jack wasn't too proud, or too scared of losing her son, to tell her story on a public blog or to publicise her situation through a friend who happened to be a local journalist.

In July 2012, Jack's blog post "Hunger Hurts" went viral and her story of woe gained a lot of traction. The best known quote described her then two-year-old son going hungry: "Poverty is the sinking feeling when your small boy finishes his one weetabix and says ‘more mummy, bread and jam please mummy’ as you’re wondering whether to take the TV or the guitar to the pawn shop first, and how to tell him that there is no bread or jam."

Becoming well known: With "Hunger Hurts" gaining attention, Jack realised she could become better known as a sad single mother in poverty than as a plucky campaigner saving Southend from the Tories. She capitalised on this to the max and was increasingly given writing work and media exposure. By 2013, Jack had begun receiving corporate sponsorships, awards for her work, and a publishing deal for her first book. She was also hired by her local newspaper (the Southend Echo) and gained a regular column in the Guardian.

Cracks began to show in her armour early on when, in an interview with the Guardian, she made offensive generalisations about the working class. She has since defended this by saying that the journalist misrepresented her words when she was naïve to the media. This is false, as it was a direct quote from a speech she'd previously given to the House of Commons. At the time of the article's publication, she herself was working as a journalist for the Echo.

Despite Jack's success in 2013, and saying in her blog at the time that her situation had improved, she's since said that she was dependent on sex work and shoplifting to survive during the year.

First book: Jack's first published book, A Girl Called Jack, was released in February 2014. She says it was written on her "Jurassic mobile phone" as she couldn't afford a laptop or to travel to her publisher's office in London. It took her a long time to write the book, as she still had just £10 a week for food and no money left over for extra ingredients to test the recipes with. If you're wondering what happened to her advance from the publisher (which is intended for the author to live on whilst they write), it allegedly took so long to come through that she had already finished the manuscript by then.

The book is a collection of 100 budget recipes, also including some of Jack's blog posts, descriptions of The Poverty, photos she'd taken, and tips on budget grocery shopping. A Girl Called Jack was adapted into a BBC Radio 4 drama starring Jaime Winstone as Jack.

Well-known partners: Jack moved in with millionaire chef Allegra McEvedy in February 2014 and began to rub shoulders with the West London media set, losing a £5,000 deposit on a flat in Southend due to the move. The relationship lasted less than a year and a half, and she moved back to Southend after they broke up. In 2017, Jack started a relationship with Louisa Compton, head of news at Channel 4. She continued to get TV work, writing jobs, and book deals; despite her brief stint in poverty being increasingly irrelevant given spreading disadvantage and the rollout of Universal Credit.

Tattle threads start (Jan 2020 onwards): In March 2020, at the start of lockdown, despite living with a very well paid partner in a large detached property, she posted an extended freak out about loss of income and aggressively posted links to her PayPal and Patreon for donations. She implied that she would become destitute if she didn't receive donations and that she was planning to use the money for some kind of fund to help others - which never materialised.

When Jamie Oliver ("That Man") got commissioned for a lockdown cookery show by Channel 4, Jack was angry and complained the show should have gone to her because budget cooking is her "niche genre." Here's a link to the Lime Goss article, which explains what happened in detail. Her Twitter campaign quickly led to her being booked for Daily Kitchen Live which she was consistently underprepared for. She threatened to sue Tattle posters for saying she was not very good on the telly.

Pandemic finances: During 2020 and 2021, Jack secured several corporate partnerships, including Hellmann's, Del Monte, Linda McCartney's and Netflix. She also wrote for the Express, the Guardian, and GQ. Despite continuing to work, Jack regularly complained about being part of the "3 Million Excluded" freelancers who are not able to receive financial help from the government. She conveniently ignored the fact that the reason she was excluded is because she didn't file her taxes on time AND was unlikely to be entitled to much help, as she had been able to continue to work and even got her two-week BBC job due to the pandemic.

In May 2020, her partner Louisa broke up with her. Jack rattled the tip jar again, saying that she was now trapped in a very expensive lease on the house they had shared together and could not get out of the contract.

Continued poverty? As late as 2020 she claimed to "earn £8 an hour", even though she is a freelancer who doesn't have an hourly wage. She had a now-dissolved business listed on Companies House (note that her date of birth is wrongly listed - it should be 1988, typo) so if she only pays herself £8 an hour that is a very different scenario to being paid £8 an hour.

Jack owns a large number of high end items, including a Burberry scarf, expensive crockery, an Emin (which is hung in her toilet), several Cotswolds sideboards, a Mulberry bag, designer coats, high end make-up and lots of tech. None of this is a problem in itself, however, she claims that most of these items were presents or "found" in markets, charity shops, etc. Even saying one of the Burberry scarves was found in a puddle. At the same time, she can't afford to buy food or pay her rent, and is in permanent fear of being destitute.

She claims to still live on a strict budget of just £20 a week for food, which feeds a family of three (herself, her partner, and SB). This is evidently not true as the £20 does not cover toiletries, cleaning products, pet food, or a lot of what appears in the photos she shares on social media. Meanwhile, Tattle uncovered an apparent private Twitter account of Jack's where she showed off regular food deliveries from Ocado. (See below.)

By July 2022 she was back to being poor again, blogging that she could not afford shampoo or shower gel and had to turn off her boiler, use solar powered garden lights in the house, and type out job applications on her phone. Amazingly, in the time frame she wrote about, she also managed a tattoo, a designer puppy, lip fillers and a couple of foreign mini-breaks.

The end? Jack has become an increasingly tarnished "brand." This is largely because of:

• Her ongoing refusal (for well over two years) to produce Patreon rewards or return donations
• Bad publicity for various reasons, including her book Thrifty Kitchen (see wiki page 3 for more details), and questions over a large sum of money she raised to sue Lee Anderson MP for libel but then did not file the suit before the statute of limitations expired.
• Becoming irrelevant due to the ongoing financial crisis and income inequality
• Failing to adjust her content to the times.

She no longer updates her blog (the domain name has now expired) or shares recipes, and since mid-2022 has had only one corporate sponsorship; a brand deal with Currys in October 2023, which ended swiftly after she gave the dangerous advice to pour water into your air fryer. Her current output seems limited to speaking at various festivals/events.

A summary of “tip jar rattling” 2017-2022

Timelines

Jobs and Poverty timeline 2011-2014

***Primarily from this excellent post here ***
Sourced timeline of Jack's poverty experience. Obviously journalists may make mistakes, but Jack herself wrote that she sold pretty much everything of value before the "yard sale".

2011

Oct 2011: Jack moves into a 2-bedroom flat after ending a relationship (4) The breakup was not with her son's father as they were never together.

Nov 2011: Jack resigns from fire service. Her son is 18 months old by this time

Nov 2011: Jack sells Omega Seamaster watch (1)

Dec 2011: Jack turns off heating (1)

11 December 2011: Jack posts in a Southend family group on FB, inviting people round for cakes, toys and chat.

25 December 2011: Jack spends Christmas Day sitting in the dark with no food or lightbulbs while her son stays with his father

2012

Link to what is left of Jack's 'A Girl Called Jack' archived blog from February 2012 to August 2013 (unfortunately many posts deleted - therefore not fully complete).

In 2012: Jack is unable to move to a cheaper flat as she can't afford a deposit (3)
Jack sells iPhone for a quarter of its original price (1)
Jack unplugs everything (1) and claims fridge stays unplugged for two years (7)
Jack takes lightbulbs out (1)
Jack sells DVDs, netbook, camera, and all belongings except two plates, two bowls, two mugs, two glasses, two forks, two knives and two spoons (1)
Jack sells her "Ford Kia" (2) (presumably she meant Ka.) She apparently had a car despite later saying that she never learned to drive because her autism/ADHD causes a lack of spatial awareness.

12 March 2012: Jack shares her first known recipe on the blog - for "springtime blondies." The recipe uses expensive ingredients: matcha (which she suggests she uses often), macadamia nuts, vanilla pods, and lots of butter.

13 March 2012: Jack trials a new job at a pub and posts a recipe for roasted tomato with kale, stating that she gets regular veg box deliveries (again expensive)

20 March 2012: Jack has completed trial shifts for the pub job and waits to hear whether she'll be hired. She references having a degree despite having left school at age 16. She has since attempted to explain this by saying that at the time she was on an Open University course, but had to leave because she couldn't afford it.

22 March 2012: The Southend Echo publishes a letter from Jack, giving her address as Plaza, Royal Mews, Southend - where she wrote Hunger Hurts and was living in poverty (it appears she was here from November 2011 until November 2012). This is an upmarket building in an affluent area and rents are high.

27 March 2012: Jack is now working at the pub but struggling to find childcare for her son and provide the right information she needs to give to continue receiving certain benefits.

2 May 2012: Jack has had to leave the pub job or she would have lost her top-up benefits. Her landlord is now threatening her with "Section 21" (a "no-fault" eviction where the landlord doesn't have to give a reason) because she has two weeks' worth of rent arrears.

16 May 2012: Jack shares an update saying she found a job in a coffee shop just days after leaving the pub, but has just been fired with no reason given. As a single parent of a young child, Jack is not expected to look for work and won't lose her benefits for failing to find a job. Despite this, she makes disparaging comments suggesting that living on benefits is an easy/lazy option.

18 May 2012: an early reader of Jack's blog sees the light! Perhaps this frau or herr is with us now on Tattle!

19 June 2012: Jack is on holiday (confirmed in a letter to the Southend Echo as well.) So she either paid for this herself, or someone (family/friend/son's father) knows about her financial difficulties and paid for her.

29 June 2012: Jack mentions going into the office. It appears she is volunteering as a PA, which she later says she's doing full time. This again suggests that she can either afford childcare, or that her family/her son's father know about her situation and are caring for him.

Jul 2012: Jack comes out as poor (3)

30 Jul 2012: Hunger Hurts #1 appears: Jack sells guitar and TV (1), (4)

3-4 Aug 2012: Jack advertises her upcoming yard sale in the local newspaper and on Facebook. She has been planning this for long enough that it had time to get into the paper. However, a decade later she will claim that "Hunger Hurts" (which she had published just four days earlier) was intended as (warning - discussion of suicide) a suicide note, and that she had tried to end her life immediately after writing it. In a comment on the Facebook post she states she's not eligible for council housing because she isn't "homeless, disabled, pregnant, or overcrowded."

18 Aug 2012: Jack has her famous "yard sale" and sells everything including toy dinosaur, piano, two more guitars, Denby and Wedgwood crockery, curtains, clothes, her iPhone again, armchairs, coffee table and bathroom storage units (4). Also sells a ticket for V festival that she says she bought whilst still in the Fire Service. This was clearly not true, as she'd left the Fire Service in November 2011 but tickets for V did not go on sale until March 2012. Even though she has a baby at home, she publicly shares her address on Facebook for the world to see.

She raises 3k, then ostensibly moves to a cheaper house share (3). The flyer for the yard sale is here. Jack is also being offered donations on top of the proceeds of the sale. She is interviewed on local radio about the sale and her experience of poverty.

19 August 2012: Jack's mum comments on a post about the yard sale asking her not to sell her camera. Indicates parents were fully aware of Jack's life situation.

7 September 2012: Jack confirms on her blog that she has a new job. Posts here and here from her old IG account suggest she was working in a shop or warehouse.

22 September 2012: Jack is still receiving an Abel and Cole veg box (expensive) whilst in the height of the poverty. Confirmed in a now deleted post on her old blog.

24 September 2012: Jack shares a song/poem she wrote, about her interview on local radio regarding the yard sale. In the poem she describes herself as middle class and fallen on hard times. The poem also shows that she places a great deal of importance on material goods.

2 October 2012: Jack is looking for a new home. She can afford the £725 monthly rent on her current flat but feels it's not good value for money as the current one has no garden or parking (but she does have a lavender bush.) She is seemingly living with her son and two cats in their own apartment, not in a house share.

8 October 2012: Jack has found a new home to rent. She confirms that she's been living in Royal Mews and has to leave as she is still being threatened with eviction. The new flat is close by, i.e. still in an affluent part of town. Jack originally planned to apply for supported housing but then found this property. Supported housing is normally for people who have physical disabilities, learning difficulties, mental health problems, and so on - we are not sure on what grounds Jack would have qualified, as she ostensibly hadn't been diagnosed with autism/ADHD by this time. She describes the new apartment as nice, but two years later will say it was small and mouldy.

13 October 2012: Jack announces that her craft business Bread and Jam will be based out of a local gallery where she will have a shop and studio space. She describes the business as a social/non-profit enterprise and says that all profits will be reinvested into the local community through "micro-grants."

26 November 2012: Jack has left her stable job and regular income to become self-employed and sell through Bread and Jam, which is now for profit. She has enough income that she can afford to pay for her son to attend nursery.

Dec 2012: Jack is living on a tenner a week and will be spending Christmas with her parents. She earns £250 a month from Bread and Jam alongside her benefits. Her new home costs £675 a month in rent (2)

NYE December 2012: Jack is feeling positive about the coming year in her blog (post deleted) and is apparently debt free after a year of poverty. She again promotes Bread and Jam as her own for-profit business.

2013

In 2013: Jack is in prostitution and stealing to survive(7)

Feb 2013: Jack starts writing for her local newspaper, the Southend Echo (5) She is campaigning against poverty and featured in the Telegraph and still selling her crafts and photography. However, due to government cuts she is no longer exempt from Council Tax and as a result cannot afford to send her son to nursery school.

March 2013: Jack takes part in an outside sleepover to raise awareness of homelessness. She blogs about it. She states that she has never been homeless. In later accounts she claims to have slept rough for two years.

May 2013: Jack wins a prize from Fortnum & Mason (5) She proudly accepts this despite the fact that six months previously, she had promoted a campaign by Caroline Lucas MP to stop Fortnum & Mason selling foie gras. The relevant blog post was swiftly deleted. Meanwhile she moves into a shared house to save money so that she can keep her job and afford nursery fees.

July 2013: Jack is still living in a shared house with five others and her son (6) but her fridge must still be switched off, as she switched it off at the earliest in December 2011 (see above) and says it stayed off for two years (December 2013 at the earliest). (7)

July 2013: Jack is first published in the Guardian (8)

At some point between July and November 2013: Jack moves in with her fiancée.

November 2013: Jack and her fiancée end their relationship. She moves into a temporary flat but needs to quickly find a permanent home, as January is the deadline to register her son for a place at school.

At some point between December 2013 and July 2014: Jack switches on her fridge (1 and 7)

2014

Jan 2014: Poverty over? Jack works for Sainsburys, signs book deal, goes to Tanzania, etc. (3)

Jan 2014: Jack has moved to a new flat (3)

May 2014: Jack is now living with millionaire girlfriend Allegra McEvedy, who publicly confirms the relationship (9) The following year they will state in Diva magazine that Jack moved in only a week or so after their first date in February/March 2014. Therefore, Jack uprooted her son and moved him to London just weeks after their last move in December-January.

SOURCES:
1 https://web.archive.org/web/20130201235747/http://agirlcalledjack.com/2012/07/30/hunger-hurts/
2 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/young-mum-turns-off-heating-so-she-can-1502710.amp
3 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/...-has-become-britains-austerity-celebrity.html
4 https://web.archive.org/web/2013020...oyed-mum-sells-off-belongings-essex-enquirer/
5 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jul/23/jack-monroe-face-modern-poverty
6 https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jul/20/10-pound-food-shop-blog
7 https://tattle.life/threads/jack-mo...dessicated-olive-and-grape.15760/post-3995885
8 https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...und-a-week-recipes?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
9 https://www.theresident.co.uk/food-and-drink/features/allegra-mcevedy-life-west-london-8866280

Kitten timeline (summer 2020)

*** The sad timeline of the kitten here ***

(Long/short) Covid-19 timeline (autumn/winter 2020/21)

On December 27, 2020, Jack strongly implies that she has long Covid-19. She never explicitly states it in her first tweet of many but soon also starts asking the #LongCovidCommunity for help.

If we take this at face value, she would have had Covid-19 since somewhere between October 4 and November 1 (it is generally accepted that you have to have had symptoms for 8 – 12 weeks before you get diagnosed with long COVID-19).

October takes us back to the heady days of what we refer to as Krishmateday, when she tried to instigate a pile on on Krishnan Guru-Murthy and calls him 'Krish, mate' to demonstrate her particular brand of #bekind

It also is in the heyday of her £20 shop, where she merrily scampers off to Asda multiple times a day to spend £20 on lard. It is clear from her extensive tweeting that she has no symptoms and is not self-isolating. One can only conclude she didn’t have Covid-19 then.

BUT, things are different in December. She clarified on December 27 that her symptoms started three weeks ago. She posted a "pyjama selfie" for sympathy on December 28 2020.

This is alarming, as that would take us to somewhere between December 6 and December 13. Yet, in that time period she went to an important meeting dressed as a school boy, foraged for mushrooms in her local Tesco, and (as any respectable left-winger would) bought three copies of the Daily Express. The last two actions also seem to coincide with her Bubble Buddy (BB) Louisa being symptomatic and self-isolating in JM’s rented bungalow. A full timeline of that shitshow

When some of her followers started questioning the timeline of her illness, Jack went on a mass tweet delete spree.

Jack's Books

Jack is the author of the following books:

A Girl Called Jack (2014)
A Year in 120 Recipes (2014)
Cooking on a Bootstrap (2018)
Tin Can Cook (2019) aka Tin Can't Cook or Tin Can Crook - here's an independent review of one of the recipes - 'Beefy Boozy' from September 2023 (start watching at 09:00 in)
Vegan(ish) (2019)
Good Food for Bad Days (2020) aka Depressipes. Jack actually tried to trademark "Depressipes" but was refused.
Thrifty Kitchen (2023) aka Grifty Kitchen

They are all recipe books that include personal stories and recycled blog posts. Thrifty Kitchen received a negative response because it contains a number of household tips that are actively dangerous and risk causing injuries, fires, food poisoning, etc. See wiki page 3 for more on this.

Books Jack has said she's writing but appear unlikely to ever materialise:

• A memoir - she said in early 2023 that she had signed a deal to publish it. Given her frequently changing accounts of her past, we question if the book will be written in a "Choose Your Own Adventure" style.
• A book provisionally titled The Hunger Names, seemingly a political polemic based around real stories of people who have gone hungry under Tory "austerity" policies.
• A cookbook provisionally titled Recipes For Recovery, based on Jack's experiences of recovery from drug/alcohol abuse.
• A Greek cookbook that she may publish under her birth name for "authenticity" (stated at the Edinburgh Festival on 14 August 2023)

Kickstarter campaign (December 2015 until 2018)

Jack Monroe ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund her third book, Cooking on a Bootstrap. She raised close to £70,000 but due to a lack of transparency and delays caused by her inability to complete any task, many of her backers ended up turning on her. The link to the campaign and comments is here: Kickstarter and our discussion is here in thread 124-125.

A brief summary:

• Jack fundraised for a book in December 2015 that was only to be available via the Kickstarter.
• She promised a delivery deadline of May 2016.
• Thousands of people pledged money to buy a copy for the book for themselves and another one for a foodbank.
• The book did not materialise in May 2016.
• Backers did eventually receive self-published black and white copies in summer 2018, after the same book was already available in colour on Amazon.

For how Jack treated people who gave her money to fund this project, go to the Kickstarter link above and read the comments.

BBC Daily Kitchen Live (April 2020)

After her Twitter outburst claiming she deserved a programme during lockdown above Jamie Oliver, Jack landed a BBC gig, co-presenting Daily Kitchen Live with Matt Tebbutt. Links to all the episodes are below:

• Matt Tebbutt muttering terrible at Jack during the Daily Live Kitchen BBC Show
• Daily Kitchen Live Episode #1
• Daily Kitchen Live Episode #2
• Daily Kitchen Live Episode #3
• Daily Kitchen Live Episode #4
• Daily Kitchen Live Episode #5
• Daily Kitchen Live Episode #6
• Daily Kitchen Live Episode #7
• Daily Kitchen Live Episode #8
• Daily Kitchen Live Episode #9
• Daily Kitchen Live Episode #10
• Jack Monroe On Self-Care and Social Change at Edinburgh Book Festival
• This Morning Lingreenie clip

What to do if you have been taken in by Jack

Credit to @Hunsgraveyard for this advice

Have you been scammed by Jack Monroe? If so here's some places you can report it (we're seeing a lot of new frauen joining, who've previously given money to her):

- Action Fraud
- Essex Trading Standards
- Paypal Fraud Reporting
- Patreon 'Report a Creator' (it appears Patreon has recently partially refunded a £44 per month donator as of Sept 22 - only 1 month's worth of payments though).

Reporting via these channels will help put the brakes on Jack's grift.

Have you been taken in by one of Jack Monroe's recipes? If so you are not alone...seven books full of slop and very little actually works. She frequently underestimates costs and portion sizes as well. See the Slopalong for more info.

If you don't have much cash in this cost of living crisis, please don't buy a Jack Monroe book. There are many free resources on the internet that you can turn to instead.

Jack's Tax

Jack's limited company, On a Bootstrap Ltd, was dissolved via compulsory strike-off on 26 July 2022.

A limited company must file two documents with Companies House each year: a confirmation statement and a set of accounts. The company was incorporated on 16 March 2018 and with a year end of 31 March, should have filed its first accounts by 31 December 2019. No accounts were filed and a first gazette notice for compulsory strike-off was given on 11 February 2020, which was discontinued on 29 February 2020. The first accounts for year ending 31 March 2019 were eventually filed on 16th June 2020, nearly six months late.

The accounts for year ending 31 March 2020 benefited from the three-month filing extension given to all companies by Companies House because of COVID and so weren't due to be filed until 31 March 2021. Neither the accounts nor the confirmation statement were filed and another first gazette notice for compulsory strike-off was given on 8 June 2021. This was discontinued on 18 June 2021 after the confirmation statement was filed on 17 June 2021.

A further six months passed with no accounts submitted and a third first gazette notice for compulsory strike-off was given on 14 December. Accounts for year ending March 2021 were due to be filed by 31 December 2021, but were not.

On 8 January 2022 a notice stating compulsory strike-off had been suspended. The most usual reason for this is that a creditor of the company, normally HMRC, has been notified of the strike-off and believes that there are assets or funds within the company that can be used to settle the amount owed.

In April 2022 Jack admitted in a Tweet that she was 'dealing with the situation' and that the unpaid tax was due to disorganisation and severe depression (and possibly ADHD). An attempt was made to estimate the level of fines that might have accumulated due to her failure to file the required documents on time.

On 2 July 2022 Jack tweeted that she would be speaking to HMRC the following Tuesday and on 26 July 2022 the company was dissolved by compulsory strike-off. The obvious assumption to make is that Jack and HMRC came to an agreement over how much the company owed and the amount was settled to HMRC's satisfaction, allowing the strike-off to proceed.

Jack is not disqualified from acting as a company director and therefore could set up a new company if she wished, but she can also choose to work as a sole trader, filling in a self-assessment form each year to declare her income, which means her financial situation will not be publicly-available information like the company's accounts were.

Patreon and other begging

Despite seven books and myriad lucrative brand deals, Jack Monroe struggles to make ends meet. She regularly turns to her audience to financial assistance via Twitter, pointing towards her long standing Patreon account or her PayPal link frequenting her bio.

The first recorded (currently) mentions of Patreon and the Tipjar functionality appear in 2017.

As soon as Twitter introduced their tip jar functionality, Jack turned hers on.

Some receipts of blatant begging are helpfully screenshot

Many of these requests for donations have been made shortly before or after a significant and unnecessary expense (e.g. a city break in Edinburgh, a new SMEG fridge, £100 on vintage spoons from Ebay). The most egregious example came on the same day she tweeted that she had paid her wedding deposit.

At least one person has felt compelled to donate their winter fuel allowance to Jack following her povertyfishing.

She has a long standing Patreon with circa 700 (as of Feb 2022) Patrons, yet still tweets implying that she can't afford to turn her heating on. In late January 2022, Nigella Lawson signal-boosted the Patreon to her huge following, resulting in an increase in Patrons from around 250 to more than 700.

Assuming that everyone is signed up to the lowest £3.50 tier (many will have pledged more), this is estimated to earn Jack at least £2,200 a month, but the true figure may be much higher.

Despite passively receiving more Patreon cash each month than many people earn working full time (and having multiple other income streams besides), within a week of gaining 500 new Patrons she was shaking her begging tin yet again, asking for donations to fix her website.

Historically she offered no goods or services in return for her Patrons' sponsorship. Outright suggesting that she is so hard up their donations will be used to keep her fed - a far cry from her actual lifestyle.

As of September 2022, there is mounting evidence from subscribers on Twitter that Jack has not provided any of the promised benefits or physical rewards for almost two years, despite the subscription money continuing to go into her account every month (Patreon offers a function for creators to pause subscriber payments if they are unable to honour rewards for a period of time - it seems Jack has not thought to do this).

People who have contacted her on her public social media asking for refunds (having failed to be granted the courtesy of a response when contacting Jack privately) have been blocked and dismissed as "trolls.". She has also ignored repeated requests for her monthly income to be made visible, which is recommended by Patreon themselves - stating on one occasion that "It doesn't matter what the figure is." This seems at odds for someone so rigorously honest and keen on transparency, particularly where the financial interests of other public figures are concerned.

On the rare occasions Jack deigns to acknowledge the Patreon issue, she has promised an update is "coming soon" (no update has transpired) and claimed to be behind on "outstanding admin" (which seems a rather understated description of taking payments from hundreds of people for two years without providing anything in return).

In January 2023, Jack claimed in the Guardian that she had now fulfilled all Patreon rewards. However she did not post any update on her Patreon itself and squigs continued to report they had received nothing.

Jack's Patreon was hacked in December 2023, and figures of her apparent income from Patreon were published on social media. In January 2022 she earned the highest figure, of almost £11,000 a year; this was due to her getting a boost from Nigella, and a number of people paying for a year upfront. Over the course of the next two years the subscribers steadily fell, although she averaged around £3k-£4k a month. By the time of the hack she was down to £1,214 which still would cover most of her rent (Jack has repeatedly said her rent is £1,300.)

Thrifty Shades of Beige/ Postcards

Jack set up a Patreon around Aug 2020, and shortly after invented the basic level (pay £3 per month to Jack and you will be rewarded with “a sense of well-being” however pay £10 per month and Jack will send an exclusive high quality recipe photo card of British comfort food each week, as well as a monthly discount code for the Jack shop. Discount codes were posted on 2 or 3 months in late 2020. As at September 2022, no word on anyone ever having received ANY postcards AT ALL, though Jack has now stated she will be sending everyone all the rewards due (which may mean some Patrons receive 100 postcards at once).

Recipes and food shopping

One of Jack's most consistent claims is that she spends only around £20 a week on food shopping, and it's possible to feed a family for a similarly low sum of money. See "Bad politics" below regarding the hypocrisy of her criticising the Tories for similar comments.

She first came to public attention with the angle that she could make nutritious, filling meals for just £10 a week. (It's since increased to £20 with inflation.) In 2013, the Guardian published what Jack said was a typical week's menu for her and her son, with a £10 food shop that provided three meals a day for two people. Most of the meals shown wouldn't be nutritionally adequate for an adult and maybe not even a young child. For example, given the ingredients, the mushroom soup would come to around 100 calories or less for the whole thing much less a serving for just one person. It's surprising none of this seems to have been checked before it went to print.

Here's an example of a more recent grocery shop, which Jack says cost £18. Notice the tricksy wording - she talks about having an active household and how many meals they eat, but doesn't specifically say this shop covers all those meals. 42 meals a week amounts to two meals a day per person, so either that's all they eat in a day (including Jack's son), or they each buy one meal a day from a shop/cafe etc. which is not exactly living frugally. Evidently, these groceries wouldn't provide balanced meals for a week. See here for an estimate of the calorie count - it wouldn't provide even half the recommended intake for three people. Several people pointed out on Twitter that this also doesn't include other things you would normally include in a household grocery shop such as pet food and cleaning products.
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Jack has often been challenged over her recipes. The "Slopalong" (where the canal tried out her recipes for ourselves) showed that they rarely turned out the way she said they would - see Slopalong wiki thread. Here are some common issues:

• Instructions often don't work and the food turns out undercooked or overcooked, even when the recipe is followed exactly.
  
  
• Inaccurate costing. Jack estimates costs based on how much of an ingredient it uses e.g. half an onion or a pinch of herbs. But you can't buy just that, and would need to buy a whole onion or a box of herbs. Jack says this should be negligible because you would use the rest to make other meals - but for a recipe she claimed costs 24p per portion, it certainly adds up.
  
  
• Many recipes come with a low calorie count that may not be enough for an adult.
  
  
• Very small portion sizes. Jack says that all her recipes allow for "generous" portions - but they don't, or at least not for as many people as the recipe supposedly serves. It's very telling that when Jack posts a recipe she often says she ate the whole thing that was supposed to "generously" serve several people!
  
  
• She rarely uses spices or seasoning (or very little of them), resulting in very bland food.

See this review by food writer Andy Lynes for a detailed criticism of one of her cookbooks.

On several occasions, Jack has shared photos of food that she claims she cooked, but was evidently shop-bought. There is an obvious difference in quality between the recipes she shares online or publishes in her books, and the food she shows off as being served at her home or at family events. During the Slopalong, we began to suspect that even some of her published recipes may not be something she has actually made herself, and are in fact accompanied by a picture of shop-bought food. Here are some examples.

Bad politics

Unsurprisingly for the self professed bootstrapper and daughter of a multi-property landlord, Jack often undermines her anti-Tory, champion of the working class stance. We aren't criticising anyone's political leanings; just her blatant hypocrisy.

Political stance

Jack has alternately said that she is either a Labour, Lib Dem, or Greens voter; or that she spoils her ballot; or that she tactically votes to keep the Tories out. When she briefly ran as an independent candidate for MP for Southend West in 2017, she was criticised because she risked splitting the left-wing vote in a key seat; the Green Party had already agreed not to run in order to give Labour a chance. You would expect her to be conscious of something like this before she ran for office.

Despite frequently saying she hates the Tories and would never vote for them, Jack has worked with the conservative think tank Bright Blue.

Jack appears to have commented (under her birth name) on a Lib Dem website, asking “but what about the Christians?” in response to a post about Tim Farron MP sending good wishes to Muslim constituents. She may have used her birth name because that's how a lot of local people still know her; and/or she didn't want her comments to be associated with Jack Monroe's public image.

Jack has written several times for the Daily Express, a right-wing, very pro-Tory tabloid which supports austerity and is extremely critical of immigration and LGBT people, i.e. the polar opposite of her professed values. And she bought three copies of an issue that had her face on the front cover. On one occasion she and her dad had a very performative conversation on Facebook about how they would never buy the Daily Mail. At the exact same time, she was promoting her latest feature in the Express, which is very similar to the Mail in content and political opinions.

Jack used the murder of Jo Cox MP for attention by having her son pose with her for photos laying flowers at the scene; and making an over-the-top Instagram post. When an actual friend of Jo got upset about the post, Jack gave a patronising and self-righteous response. She thought this behaviour was appropriate even though she didn't know Jo, and wasn't even a member/supporter of the Labour Party at the time (she says she only came back after Jo was killed.) In 2021, Jack's local MP David Amess was also murdered. She was one of his constituents and had personally met him - but funnily enough, she managed to not use his tragic murder to draw attention to herself. So why was it OK for her to milk Jo's death for publicity?

Comments on poverty

Jack portrays an alarmist and often misleading image of poverty. In the words of journalist Katie Roche: "Why frighten people needlessly into thinking their life will be ruined if they fall on hard times? What effect would that have on your mental health, thinking this will be your life soon, unable to afford to even have your fridge turned on and having to sell your child’s toys? Of course, for most people on Universal Credit, that’s not what it’s like (...) Very few live in the type of poverty Monroe describes experiencing. Furthermore, Monroe gives the appearance that poverty never ends. (...) In reality, many have recovered from financial hardship. Even where debts are involved."

See "Food shopping and recipes" above: Jack has repeatedly said that she lives on a food budget of £20 a week for herself and her son and partner. She plays into the narrative that if people are not getting by, it's because they don't budget properly or cook for themselves. Also saying that poor people would have more money if they switched to the very cheapest food - as if they're not doing that already. This is another classic line used against those in poverty: "everyone could afford nice things if they cut out LUXURIES." At the same time, she complained about the government using her as proof that you can feed a family on next to nothing. Jack has argued with and threatened to sue Lee Anderson MP, who controversially claims that no one really needs to use a food bank. But, as he's pointed out, some of her comments are very similar to his; yet she is praised while he is lambasted in the press.

Another problem with this is that a lot of her "anti-poverty campaigning" is based around the idea of pushing for supermarkets to keep prices as low as possible and keep stocking budget ranges. But cheap food has a huge negative impact on the environment, workers, and animals. Jack has not acknowledged any of these issues apart from a phase where she was briefly vegan and talked about animal rights (she's since reverted to eating lots of cheap meat and dairy.) Complaining that a 48p bag of pasta is now 75p does basically nothing to help people living in poverty.

She talks about her "immigrant grandfather" as if being an immigrant equates to poverty (example here.) In fact, her grandfather owned property that was valued at almost £2 million after he passed away; see Katie Roche's investigation into Jack for more on that.

Stigmatising and stereotyping poor/working class people

Jack has made a career out of her experience of poverty, and describes herself as "proudly working class." Despite this, she's often let slip her very middle-class and prejudiced view of people who are poor or on benefits.

Jack claimed she frequently gets hate mail saying she's "too pretty to be poor." What does she think a poor person looks like?

In a speech she gave at the House of Commons in 2013, Jack made appalling and judgemental generalisations about the working class, stating "I had a £27 grand (£27,000) a year job. I've not been brought up on benefits and a tracksuit watching Jeremy Kyle. I'm a middle class, well educated young woman who fell a bit by the way side. You think it doesn't happen to normal people, and you think we are all scumbags, eating burgers and watching day time TV. It can happen to anyone." The same quote appeared in an interview with the Guardian. Jack later claimed that the journalist essentially told her to say this to fit a narrative, and she naively went along with it. But the words were being quoted from her own earlier speech - made at a time when Jack herself had worked as a journalist. Speech (quote at 4:30). Article.

Similar examples of Jack emphasising a distinction between "middle class" poor people vs "Jeremy Kyle" include a 2018 speech she gave to the Baptist Union of Great Britain: "(poverty is) not always what you think of from TV shows like Benefits Street or Jeremy Kyle. Nice, middle-class people can find themselves homeless through a small series of unfortunate circumstances."

Over the years, she has changed her story and now says she had an impoverished, working class childhood. She often mentions that she attended a primary school in "special measures" and most of her classmates came from local council estates. (Special measures means that the school was found to be inadequate, and had been given notice to improve.) See wiki page 6 - her primary school is indeed in a very poor area, and has consistently received Good ratings from OFSTED, including in 1998 when Jack was still there. OFSTED inspections began in 1993, so if the school started out in special measures, it must have improved quite quickly. Why, then, is she lying about this and playing on the idea that poor children = failing school?

In 2012, when Jack was poor, she wrote on her blog about struggling to find work. She said: "I could stay off work, claim my Housing Benefit, Child Support, Child Tax Credit, Income Support and Council Tax Benefit but I'm not going to. My small boy, aged only two, knows ‘Mummy work’ and knows he goes to ‘Sammys house’ because ‘Mummy work.’ Mummy work. Mummy will work, son. Mummy will set you a good example and Mummy will bring home the bacon." In other words, she was better than those scroungers who don't work - even though she'd experienced why people don't always have a choice (she'd recently had to leave her part time job so she wouldn't lose her top-up benefits.) As a single parent of a child too young to have started school, she was not expected to look for work while claiming benefits. The system recognises that parents are already doing an important job!

She posted on Mumsnet about an unpleasant encounter with a woman who supposedly stole Jack's wallet in a pub beer garden. Notice how Jack describes the wallet-stealing "little scrunge"; very much your stereotype of a "chav" single mother who gets drunk and abuses her kids. You'd expect this to be written by a middle class Mumsnet user rather than someone who is supposedly a working class single mum herself.

On December 18, 2023, Jack was invited on Times Radio to discuss the subject of obesity. She happily accepted, despite having previously called the Times a "right-wing conservative-supported capitalist hellrag." On the show, she publicly named a local council estate (which she called "infamous") and suggested its residents live on ready meals and alcohol because that's all that is available in the Tesco Express next to the estate. She failed to mention that there is a nearby Lidl that sells fresh food, which is where most local people do their regular shopping. You can find a transcript here.

Other

Here's an example of Jack making a nasty, stigmatising "joke" about sexually transmitted infections. She posted this from her public account that she uses for work; yet complained that she lost out on opportunities because TV execs found her "too coarse and common." Maybe it wasn't her accent or supposed working-class background that they had an issue with?

In her essay "You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal", Jack tried to score cheap political points by making a very offensive analogy comparing poverty to sexual assault. She attempted to justify this by saying (warning: link discusses child sexual abuse) that she had experienced sexual assault and the comparison wasn't meant for shock value. Apparently, all that matters is that Jack is happy with it, not how her audience might be affected. The post did not contain any warning or mention of subject matter.

Jack's friends include:

• Sarah Vine, Tory "Westminster WAG" who publicly stigmatises the poor and calls for benefits to be cut
• Former Tory MP Anna Soubry. See here for Anna's voting record as an MP, which includes consistently voting for "austerity" measures
• Comedian Janey Godley, who often uses racist slurs and "jokes", both in her act and on social media.
• Liz Jones, who is also racist, is a COVID conspiracy theorist, and supports cutting benefits and not giving workers sickness/maternity leave.

Jack has partnered with Del Monte, which has been implicated in multiple cases of fraud, murder, assault, and crimes against humanity - as you'll see if you Google them. It's also hypocritical of her to work with a brand whose canned fruit is considerably more expensive than supermarket own, when she touts canned food as essential for budget cooking.

Other issues

Animal welfare

As well as her disabled kitten (see wiki page 1), Jack has had a number of other animals that died, were neglected, and/or "mysteriously" went missing. These include Dash the bunny, which she claims was stolen during a burglary. Surely his disappearance was nothing to do with being kept in a damp and crowded shed, in a garden that had foxes in it. She also had two guinea pigs that were shut in a cupboard and quickly died. Jack said they were killed in a carbon monoxide leak, but a Tattler who claimed to be an old acquaintance (and seems to be legit) said the guinea pigs died from the cold. Squigs have expressed concern over Jack's current dog Laurie, a long-haired breed with a visibly matted coat. Jack says Laurie is just shaggy, despite vets commenting on her posts to say otherwise.

Child welfare

Jack has often written about her son having an unstable home life due to poverty. This includes frequent house moves, often staying in unsuitable accommodation (cold, damp, mouldy, etc.), and being unable to afford utilities or enough food and clothes for him. She has also said that he was affected by her alcoholism and mental health problems, and was used to seeing her have depressive episodes or pass out from drinking. On top of this, she says she has had multiple stalkers, and frequently receives death threats.

None of these things makes Jack a bad parent, but they all present a risk to SB's welfare. If what she's saying is true, you would expect her to be known to social services. SB is at increased risk because she shares a huge amount of personal information online, enough that strangers were able to find her house. She also shares a lot of sensitive information about him including his mental health, puberty, and other medical concerns.

Jack no longer shares photos of her son but did share a lot of pictures when he was younger. In 2015, she announced in a magazine article (published on 16 February) that she had "embargoed press pictures" of him now that he had started school, and that SB's father did not want photos of him published in the press. But only a day before, she and Allegra had appeared in a published Guardian feature (15 February 2015) in which SB had his face clearly shown while Allegra's daughter was covered up. He also appeared in Jack's 2019 "open letter" thanking his father - the same father who had asked to keep him out of the press!

She has repeatedly made mean-spirited "jokes" about SB being a financial inconvenience (such as here, here, and here) and has made spiteful comments about him during media appearances. E.g. in an interview with BBC Good Food she said that having a baby had turned her into a "bedraggled (...) single mother" and suggested it was his fault she could not get work after leaving the Fire Service.

She has moved SB between many different homes and schools due to her changing relationships or getting into financial trouble. Jack admitted this caused disruption to his life. In 2012-16, between the ages of four and six, he moved house nine times including moving in with his father and then back to Jack. He also went to three different schools in the space of two years, and had two different stepmothers (to whom Jack was engaged and lived with) in just one year. Most of these house moves were related to Jack's personal life and not because of poverty or eviction as she claims. See wiki page 5 for links and more information.

Relationships

Jack shares a lot of information online, and in the press, about her various relationships and partners and displays some concerning behaviour. Private business is less so when you have chosen to tell the world about it.

Her relationships often move very quickly. See above and wiki page 5: in 2013-2014 she was engaged to two different people in the space of seven months and this resulted in multiple house moves and changes of school for her then very young son. More recently, in 2022 Jack had an around six-month relationship with a man ("OH") with whom she was pushing for marriage and buying a house together in a very short space of time. It came across as predatory because he was evidently quite wealthy and had elderly parents he could expect to inherit from.

She is often over-familiar with her partners and makes out the relationship to be serious very early on. Examples include repeatedly calling her ex Louisa her "wife" when they weren't married, and referring to OH's parents as her "in-laws" after a very short time. She talks about other people's children as if they were hers, including Allegra McEvedy's daughter, and SB's father's children with his ex-wife. For example, this is how she wrote about Allegra's daughter when they had been together for just three months! Behaviour like this is a well known warning sign in relationships and is often part of "lovebombing."

Another of Jack's common behaviours is to change things about herself to fit her current partner. E.g. when she was with Allegra (a professional chef) Jack tried to present herself as a serious chef; with Louisa (Head of News at Channel 4) as a serious journalist; and with OH as a middle class housewife. It was most noticeable with Allegra; Jack began dressing like her, taking up some of Allegra's hobbies, and got her son to start calling her "Mama" because that's what Allegra's daughter calls her. When they broke up, she organised her new kitchen to look like Allegra's.

Jack often patronised and criticised Louisa, complaining that she cannot cook, she cannot iron, she cannot clean the television properly, she left the hose out and it got eaten by a fox, and she doesn’t know the difference between wet and dry ingredients. It was also mentioned that on multiple occasions, Louisa had to leave work or social events because Jack was drinking or had "done a chaos." Shortly before they broke up, Jack started appearing on DKL and was clearly unprepared with a poor wifi connection, which she tried to blame on Louisa - who probably got her the job in the first place. When the relationship ended, Jack claimed that Louisa had left her to pay off the lease on their house, and that she could not get out of the contract and was struggling to afford the payments. Again very publicly making Louisa look bad to others.

Jack has often posted about her sex life on her public Twitter account, which she says her son reads.

Attitude to fostering

Jack's parents were foster carers for over 20 years. They are known for this in the local community, and her dad has an MBE for his services to fostering. Jack has spoken negatively in the press about their foster children, some of whom she called "feral". She also described children who lived with them for a decade or more as just taking up "an extra bit of room at the table" rather than being part of her family. On the Happy Mum, Happy Baby podcast she referred to her parents' foster children as "difficult" and "a revolving door of troubled children" - a phrase she has repeatedly used elsewhere as well. She made ignorant comments in a newspaper interview, saying she had not wanted to put her son in daycare because she feared he would grow up traumatised like the foster children. Again, this is the same woman who had no problem moving him around multiple homes, schools, towns, and stepfamilies in a short space of time.

Jack has indicated that she resents the amount of attention her parents gave their foster children when she was growing up. Her mother has also said that the family often took in children with complex medical needs. While this must have been difficult for Jack, she could nevertheless be more sympathetic in how she talks about their foster children publicly.

Using tragedies for attention

Jack demonstrates a pattern of using tragedies to draw attention to herself - even those that have nothing to do with her. As well as the infamous Grenfell blog, other examples include inserting herself into Jo Cox's murder (see "Bad politics" above) and the Pulse nightclub shooting, and trying to prove a point by name-dropping people who died after having their benefits cut. She tries to "win" arguments with squigs by casually referencing tragic events like pregnancy loss or a friend's suicide (WARNING for subject matter.)

Mental health and threats of suicide

Fake Twitter accounts

Jack uses a lot of alternate ("sockpuppet") accounts to defend herself or argue with others when her main account is quiet/deactivated. She once admitted that she'd had nine alternate accounts on the go so she could argue her political views without being identified as Jack Monroe. She has had some of these accounts for a long time, e.g. she had at least one in 2014 to discuss the EU referendum.

Jack can have as many Twitter accounts as she wants, but it's disingenuous to lie about it and try to use them to manipulate the narrative. In one instance Tattle identified one of Jack's many accounts (which her own family and girlfriend followed) where she was showing off regular, expensive food deliveries, while claiming on her main account that she lived on a strict budget of £20 a week for food.