Jack Monroe 5 Wiki

Jack's family is known locally as well to do - see wiki page 1 for more about her background. Her grandfather owned a property portfolio that was valued at almost £2 million after his death. Her parents fostered for more than 20 years, and her father is a landlord who previously held well-paid senior roles in the Fire Service.

Jack first came to public attention in July 2012 when she published a blog post called "Hunger Hurts" about her life in poverty with her then two-year-old son. After being featured in the national press, she became known as a food writer and anti-poverty campaigner.

Initially, Jack said she was middle class and this proved that no one was safe from poverty:

• When she was a child, her mother owned a Land Rover, and the family spent summer holidays at an aunt's "large and sprawling" house with a big garden (Blog post, June 2012)
  
  
• Describing herself as "a middle class voice with (...) a story of survival" (Song/poem, September 2012.) Jack wrote this about herself after she had been interviewed on local radio about her experience of poverty. At that time, she didn't yet have an audience to play to. She was 24 when she wrote this, contrary to her later saying that she first realised her family was working class when she went to grammar school.
  
  
• "I'm a middle class, well educated young woman who fell a bit by the wayside (... Poverty) can happen to anyone." (Speech in the Houses of Parliament and a Guardian article, June 2013) But a month later, she was the "working-class girl who won a place at a posh grammar school." (Guardian article, July 2013) in the exact same newspaper.
  
  
• "The rain isn’t miraculously any less wet when you don’t have a coat with a hood, or an umbrella, or three quid for the bus, just because Mummy and Daddy are still married, or you went to a grammar school." (Blog post, August 2013. Warning for graphic discussion of suicide.) Jack wrote this in response to the opinion that she presented a "middle class" image of poverty. She did not deny that she was middle class, just said that it didn't make poverty any less gruelling.
  
  
• "My parents are still together, they’ve always worked, I’ve always worked, I had a decent well-paid job." "There is no simple tale here about a broken home, bad schools, drugs or racial prejudice, no familiarity in her path into poverty. As one of her neighbors in this seaside town in southern England put it, 'She could be anybody’s daughter.'" (The New York Times, January 2014.)
  
  
• As a teenager she studied both ballet and martial arts - so evidently, her parents could afford this (Blog post, October 2015.)

In February 2014, Jack began a relationship with the professional chef Allegra McEvedy, who is a millionaire (likely multi-millionaire) from generational wealth. This marked a change in Jack's story and she began saying that she was working class and had grown up in poverty. Examples:

• Jack couldn't join in cookery classes at school because her parents could not afford the ingredients: "I knew we weren’t well off. (...) We had so many mouths to feed." Meanwhile, all the other students had designer clothes and parents who drove expensive cars. She was able to rejoin the class when her teacher paid for ingredients, including a bottle of vermouth that Jack wanted to use in a recipe. Most schools would have serious concerns over a teacher who brought in alcohol for an underage student, even for cooking. (Blog post, April 2014.)
  
  
• "As a working class girl with few social graces of my own ..." (Evening Standard, August 2017. Warning: link discusses sexual assault)
  
  
• After "fitting in marvellously" at primary school with children from a nearby council estate, Jack moved on to grammar school, where she was "the poor kid." While her classmates had designer clothes and went on holidays abroad, Jack and her brother would be driven to school in her father's van, and walk six and a half miles home because their parents could not pay the bus fare. Jack's parents often could not afford to eat dinner, and her father had to hitchhike to work. Her mother became disabled when Jack was four, and was on "pittance benefits" because Disability Living Allowance didn't exist yet. (Unfiltered podcast, February 2018.)
  
  These descriptions raise obvious questions. Jack was four in 1992, the same year Disability Living Allowance was introduced. Under English and Welsh law, most secondary school aged children who live more than three miles away from their school must be provided with free transport. Why would her father have needed to hitchhike if he had a van and Jack's mother had a Land Rover?
  
  
• Jack grew up in a home where her family often missed meals or survived on very little food. They lived in "a flat so small for 4 of us it now can't be legally let as a dwelling." They had holidays, but only in a cheap rented caravan or a relative's overcrowded house. Her father hitchhiked to work and had three jobs so his family could survive. Her parents were not paid for fostering, and struggled until Jack's grandfather died "relatively young" and left his guest house to her father. (Twitter thread, August 2022)
  
  She later said in tweets that her father inherited only one flat from her grandfather, it is "the size of a fucking cupboard", and was the first home Jack lived in. (At this time, her grandfather was still alive, so presumably her family rented it.) She's also since said that her father now rents the flat to a formerly homeless person. How can that be the case if the flat is too small to legally rent as a dwelling?
  
  
• "Class, (Jack) says, has always confused her – it changes, depending on who you mix with. As a child, she didn’t realise her parents were struggling for money much of the time." "I only realised what middle class looked like when I lived with Allegra." (Guardian interview, January 2023.) Allegra is middle class in the sense that her family isn't aristocracy; but that doesn't mean she is "what middle class looks like" or that anyone less privileged than she must be working class.
  
  
• "I was the poor kid at the grammar school (...) My tights would rip, my shoes would wear through, the strap on my bag would break." (University College London podcast, March 2023)
  
  
• Jack grew up believing she was middle class because her parents were careful to hide their poverty - "We always had dinner on the table, but my parents didn't always eat with us. We always had clothes, but those clothes came in bin bags from people from the local church." (Greenbelt Festival, August 2023)

Jack's grandfather passed away in November 2012 at the age of 75, as confirmed by his obituary in local press. Prior to this, in 2006, her father gave an interview about foster care. He said that by then he had been fostering for almost 14 years (starting when Jack was 3-4), and owned a 5-bedroom house and big car to accommodate the children. He estimated he'd spent around £100,000 of his own money on the expenses of fostering. Although he and his wife received some payment from the local authorities, it wasn't enough, and he had to make up the shortfall himself. All of this directly contradicts what Jack has said. Furthermore, foster carers are strictly vetted. It would raise serious questions if a couple who could barely afford to feed their own family were regularly taking in vulnerable children.

It is also questionable as to how everyone at Jack's grammar school was wealthy while she was "the poor kid." In the UK, grammar schools are academically selective state schools. Admission is through the 11+ selection exam, which is open to children regardless of background. Like most grammar schools, Jack's old school attracts affluent parents who can afford coaching to help their child pass the 11+; but also has a mix of ordinary middle class and working class students. Her description makes it sound more as if she were a poor scholarship student at an expensive fee-paying school, where you would expect her classmates to be from rich families.

Jack's parents chose to spend their money on fostering, which is probably why she didn't have holidays abroad and designer clothes as a child. She may well have seen herself as "poor" next to some of her classmates, or thought of Allegra as ordinary middle class. But there is a vast difference between saying that "class depends on context" or that you aren't well off in comparison with a wealthy person, vs the impoverished upbringing Jack describes. She has also made stigmatising and ignorant comments that you wouldn't expect from someone who grew up poor and working class; see "Bad politics" on wiki page 1.

Jack's son, known as "SB" (Small Boy), was born in April 2010 after she had a brief fling with a friend. She's given at least six different versions of events around this:

• She and her son's father were using Depo-Provera, but it failed (Comment on a Guardian article, October 2013.) Implying they were in a relationship, since Depo-Provera is prescribed as a long term contraceptive.
  
  
• Her son was actually born after she did sex work in 2009 (suggested in an interview in 2016 - see 2016 section.)
  
  
• She had a one night stand with her son's father after they got drunk at a wedding (Greenbelt festival, August 2017 - around 40:10 in the audio. Also Unfiltered podcast, February 2018 - around 28:35 in the audio.) In the Greenbelt discussion, she specifies that it was her sister's wedding. Jack has one sister, who was a young child when SB was born; so presumably she means one of her former foster sisters.
  
  
• Her relationship with her son's father was "a last hurrah" before coming out as gay (Vogue, January 2021.) Despite saying before (The Guardian, July 2016) and since (Greenbelt Festival, August 2023) that she was 15 when she came out. She says in this article that she "fell pregnant", despite saying in the Depo-Provera story that she hated that term.
  
  
• Jack was being stalked at her workplace and her son's father stepped in to protect her. They grew close and had a relationship (Twitter, April 2021.) Her reference to "people who've attempted to come between us" is a spiteful attack on his ex-wife, who had a good relationship with Jack's son.
  
  
• "Far too many poppy seeds that I thought were nigella seeds in the curry, and, you know, they made us both feel a little bit weird for a few hours and now I have a 13-year-old." (Greenbelt Festival, August 2023.) Making the bizarre claim that her son was conceived because poppy seeds in a curry had a narcotic effect on her and his father. She thought it appropriate to tell this story at a religious event in response to a child asking about her career! In the same speech she again says she came out at 15 years of age, and as a result was expelled from her church.

When she got pregnant, she earned almost £40,000 a year from her three jobs, and could afford designer furniture and a three-bedroom apartment. Her main job was in the Fire Service where she was employed as a call handler. But she's also claimed she was training as a firefighter (on her blog in October 2015 and in a Twitter thread in April 2022 - Part 1, Part 2, warning for discussion of eating disorders and CSA.) In a blog post about the Grenfell Tower fire, Jack deliberately gave the impression she was an experienced firefighter. To be a firefighter or train to be one, she would be required to hold a full driving licence and be able to swim. But she's repeatedly said that she has never learned to drive or taken the test (see page 6), and cannot swim.

While Jack was pregnant, she was living with a girlfriend who abused her. See 2016 section for more on this.

Jack's descent into poverty ostensibly began in November 2011 when she left her job in the Fire Service. She's stated (warning - links discuss suicide):

• "My choices were: 1. Have a mental breakdown because trying to organise childcare for night shifts 30 miles from your home is bloody impossible." (Comments on a Guardian article, October 2013). Also saying she'd requested many different options such as flexible working, job share, or transferring closer to home, but was refused each time.
  
  
• "I returned from maternity leave to find that working two day shifts and two night shifts, on different days and nights every week, with an 18 month old boy to look after, was next to impossible by myself." "I resigned from a hospital bed at 2 o'clock in the morning. My GP had signed me off sick with stress a fortnight before." "I (...) decided that my health and my son’s welfare came before trying to cling on to a £27,000 salary." (Conservative Party conference speech, October 2013.)
  
  Jack's son was born in April 2010. If she went back to work when he was 18 months, this would be October 2011 - only a month before she resigned. Together with being signed off, she would have spent no more than a couple of weeks trying to juggle shift work and childcare. That would also give her very little time to request flexible working or other options.
  
  
• "The problem was that no one would look after a child during her night shifts — which were hard to predict, week-to-week. (...) Her attempts to negotiate flexible working hours and alternative positions came to nothing." "I woke up in Southend Hospital and thought: that’s enough. This has to stop." (Evening Standard, November 2013.)
  
  
• "(Jack) wrote her resignation letter from a hospital bed (...) because she didn’t know how to both earn money and raise a child as a single parent." (The Times, November 2015)
  
  
• "Eighteen months later, I resigned from my job from a hospital bed, not coping with the demands of a rolling shift system, 15-hour nights, a baby, and working 30 miles from home." (Vogue, January 2021)
  
  
• "He'd decided it wasn't in the best interests of the service to rescind my notice (that I had written from an A&E bed with a psychiatrist sitting on the end of it weeks before." (Twitter, February 2021.) In this version Jack appealed her previous resignation with the support of senior colleagues and Occupational Health, but the Fire Service declined and she lost her job.

She's also suggested at different times that she was sacked (again mentioning a senior colleague trying to save her job), or was about to go into the RAF before she got pregnant. Court documents presented during her libel trial against Katie Hopkins state that Jack applied for the RAF at the same time as her brother, but wasn't accepted.

In December 2011, a few weeks after leaving the Fire Service, Jack invited other parents to a coffee morning at her home. She advertised in a local Facebook group: "cake provided for Mummies and Daddies and lots of toys and CBeebies for kids." Yet, when Jack published "Hunger Hurts" in July 2012, she stated she had to turn off her heating at the mains in December 2011. Later, she described Christmas 2011 as follows: "I was alone in a freezing cold flat with no television, no presents and no food in the fridge (...) I had no tree, no decorations (...) I was unemployed, broke, and broken. I hadn’t bought a single present for my one-year-old son and, instead, let him go to his father’s for the day, knowing I could not give him a Christmas myself." (The Mirror, December 2013.)

In response to a blogger asking how Jack could host a coffee morning in December 2011 yet be destitute a couple of weeks later, Jack said she "had been in a well paid job til that point, so wasn't instantly flat broke." She accused the blogger of being "weird" and "creeping" on old posts. If Jack has chosen to share something publicly, on the internet or in print, then she should expect that others may find it and ask questions. Her interview with Simon Hattenstone in January 2023 again referred to this particular contradiction, suggesting that questioning her is mean-spirited trolling and nitpicking. When she has repeatedly used tales of poverty to build a public platform and make money, it's perfectly fair to ask why those stories don't add up.

In 2012, Jack ended up in desperate poverty, was using a food bank, and had no heating or utilities. She's given conflicting stories as to why her parents, who live in the same town, did not help her:

• "Her parents dropped off bags of food and clothes, and berated her for not telling them sooner. But with two young adopted children to feed, they could only help so much." (The New York Times, January 2014)
  
  
• "Too proud to ask her family for help, she turned off the heating, sold her furniture, television, her son's toys, tried to avoid the landlord and queued up for the first time at a food bank." (The Guardian, February 2014)
  
  
• "I didn't ask for help because I was terrified that in the middle of the night, a social worker would come and take my child away." (Greenbelt Festival, 10:10 in the audio, August 2017.) Having financial help would have made this less, not more, of a risk. If there were any possibility that her son was going to be taken into care, she would have been informed, and social services would first consider if he could live with his father or grandparents. Jack's parents would know this, as they were experienced foster carers.
  
  
• "(My parents) get dragged through comment sections, 'ooh, where were you when she was starving, where were -' I didn't tell them, that's where they were!" (Unfiltered podcast, February 2018.)

Jack lives near her parents and siblings in Southend and describes them as a close family. It seems strange they wouldn't notice she was living in very poor circumstances, especially if (as she's often said) her son had to wear ragged clothes or shoes that didn't fit him. She has also stated that her son's father didn't support her financially and that she refused to let SB live with him, even temporarily.

• "(Her son's) father, who is in a new relationship, does not pay child support despite being in full-time employment. But he looks after his son two nights a week as well as buying him shoes and clothes. Jackie feels her ex does all he can." (The Mirror, December 2012.) This story doesn't explain why Jack has repeatedly spoken about how her son had to wear hand-me-downs or shoes that were falling apart.
  
  
• "Why did I not just put (my son) in care and be done with it? What on earth was I thinking, not wanting to be separated from my child?" (Comment on a Guardian article, October 2013.) This was in response to someone asking why her son could not have lived with his father temporarily until Jack's situation improved. Seemingly, she felt he was better off in a home with no food, heating, or utilities.
  
  
• "(Her son's) father looks after him two days a week in lieu of maintenance." (The Guardian, February 2014). That's a strange way to describe a joint custody agreement, which is a separate matter from maintenance.

Despite this, she wrote an article in the Guardian to thank her son's father for being a supportive co-parent. She called him "the most decent man (she's) ever met." That's not how most people would describe a man who seemingly didn't pay her child support, and let his toddler-aged son go without food or heating! In 2014 a poster on Mumsnet - ostensibly either SB's father or someone who knows him - alleged that he did pay maintenance and supported Jack while she was struggling, but for the sake of their son he hasn't challenged her narrative publicly. Tattle doesn't allow linking to Mumsnet but the post text can be found here.

Key events

A detailed timeline of the poverty years can be found on wiki page 1. Here are some key events:

• March 2012: Jack began a blog, initially called "Our Southend" and focused on local politics. She has said she was inspired to write after the chairwoman of the local Conservatives Association blamed "druggies, drunks, and single mums" for Southend's economic woes. In the same month she started her blog, she shared recipes for blondies containing matcha and macadamia nuts (which are not cheap ingredients), and a soup made with leftovers from her Abel & Cole veg box. She got a job in a pub, but had trouble with finding childcare and dealing with Job Centre bureaucracy.
  
  
• May 2012: Jack had to leave the pub job or she would have lost her top-up benefits. Days later, she got another job in a coffee shop, only to be dismissed with no explanation. She took part in "Live Below the Line", a challenge to live on just £1 a day for food (equivalent to extreme poverty) to raise money for charity.
  
  
• June 2012: Jack went on holiday, suggesting her family/friends knew about her situation and were willing to pay. She was now volunteering full time.
  
  
• July 2012: Jack shared a blog post titled "Hunger Hurts" about the plight she found herself in. She talked about having no heating or utilities, being hounded for rent arrears, and her two-year-old son going hungry. The post went viral and she started getting attention in the press.
  
  
• August 2012: Jack held an "Open House Sale" (see wiki page 1) in an effort to clear her debts. She sold: "Everything. My sons bed. My own shoes. Almost all of my books, clothes, crockery, the light fittings, everything. And my beautiful, wooden, upright piano." The light fittings weren't hers (she lived in a rented apartment) - we wonder what the landlord had to say about that?She was interviewed in local press and on the radio about the sale.
  
  She's not sure whether she sold:
  • Her crockery. According to "Hunger Hurts" she "pare(d) back" to just two plates, knives, forks, spoons, and glasses because any more would be "an indulgence." But in 2013 she shared this photo of a collection of crockery she said she'd had for years and had used in a photoshoot. (Who would buy used crockery for more than a few pennies anyway, unless it's designer/valuable? You can get brand new crockery in pound shops or on Amazon for very little.)
    
    
  • Her bed. She either sold it (warning: link discusses suicide) and was left to share a mattress with her toddler, or didn't manage to sell it because no one wanted it.
    
    
  • Her guitar, which was either one of the first things she sold when in poverty, or was still with her in December 2013 after numerous house moves.
    
    
  • Her camera. Did she sell it in 2011 to pay for "a few days rent and some food" (sic) or did she still have it in 2012 at the time of the sale, when her mother asked her to keep the camera?
• September 2012: Jack was still receiving Abel & Cole veg boxes, which are expensive; at that time they cost around £10, the same as her food budget for a week. She got another job and "threw (her) son at anyone who would have him" while she was working. That's a far cry from the previous year when part of the reason for leaving the Fire Service was that he was being "passed around like a package" and she was worried he would be traumatised by being in childcare.
  
  
• October 2012: Jack had been living in Royal Mews, an upscale building in an affluent part of Southend, since before her son was born. She now wanted to move, saying on her blog that she could afford her £725 monthly rent but it wasn't good value for money. Later in the month she announced she had found a new home which was "cheaper, but nicer" and very close to Royal Mews. She was leaving partly because her landlord at Royal Mews had threatened her with eviction.
  
  
• November 2012: Jack had been hired as a columnist for two local newspapers. She had left her job to become a freelance writer and sell crafts and photography through her business "The Bread and Jam Foundation."
  
  
• December 2012: In an interview with the Sunday People (now the Mirror), Jack spoke about living in poverty with her son. She stated on her blog that after a year of not having hot water, heating, or enough food, she was no longer in serious hardship: "I may be missing the luxuries of a broadband connection or a TV license, but gone are the bailiffs, and gone is the fear of losing everything. Thanks to stringent budgeting, a £10 a week food shop and an Excel spreadsheet, I’m managing." She stated she spent Christmas with her parents and could afford heating and some treats from her fee for the Mirror article.

However, over the years, her account of events has changed considerably from what she documented on her blog at the time.

Eviction

When Jack left her Royal Mews apartment in October 2012, she mentioned on her blog that she had been threatened with eviction - see this post and this one. (In the UK, Section 21 is a controversial "no-fault" eviction where the landlord isn't obliged to give a reason.) Jack indicated she had fallen into rent arrears when her benefits were delayed, and even after she repaid the money, her landlord still threatened to evict her.

Since then, she has been unable to make up her mind whether she was threatened with eviction or actually evicted, when and how many times this happened:

• "When the BBC reported that she would be paid £25,000 for her book deal, the housing benefit office suspended payments until it saw her book contract, nearly causing her to be evicted" (Guardian article, July 2013) In situations like these, local authorities are expected to make decisions based on proof of income - not reports in the media. She would almost certainly have been asked for details before they decided what to do about her benefits.
  
  
• "The friend who paid my rent instead of having work done on her house when I was under threat of eviction." (Facebook post, April 2016.) This post, in which Jack spoke about buying a bike for an autistic teenager in order to repay other people's past kindnesses to her, went viral. She has deleted the original, but it's been circulated many times. Notice how she mentions someone buying her son shoes when Jack couldn't afford "a new one" (rather than "new ones") - did she originally write a different version of events and then change it? Why couldn't her son's father buy him shoes, since Jack said that was their arrangement?
  
  
• "(In July 2012) I took myself into my bathroom, with my eviction notice from my flat that I was getting kicked out of because I couldn't pay the rent any more." (Greenbelt Festival, 18:13 in the audio, August 2017.) Warning - this part of the speech discusses suicide in detail.
  
  
• "I was evicted from my flat with a toddler when my Housing Benefit was suspended because I was deemed to have made myself deliberately unemployed by having a baby within the confines of a job whose flexible working patterns were a paper policy rather than a reality." (Blog post, July 2020.) Again, after leaving the Fire Service, Jack stayed in her home for almost a year and then chose to move after being threatened with eviction. As a single parent with a child too young to have started school, she would not lose her benefits for leaving her job. She herself said at the time that the local authorities considered her "exempt" from work!
  
  
• "I’ve rented 22 properties in my short lifetime, and several of them I was served No-Fault eviction notices – Section 21 notices – for no fault of my own. Some of them just didn’t want a tenant who used benefits." (Evidence given to the Work and Pensions Committee, March 2022)
  
  
• "I had my housing benefit withdrawn almost a dozen times in 1 year alone (... and) ended up being evicted because of it." (Twitter, May 2022). Jack did not mention this on her old blog, so it's not clear when it happened. She's likely talking about 2011-12, which is when she was seemingly threatened with eviction over rent arrears. In this time period she legally changed her name, and changed jobs several times, all of which could have caused delays while her benefit claim was re-evaluated.

Food bank

Similarly, she isn't sure when she first visited a food bank, despite having told the story many times. (Warning - links discuss suicide)

• Describing her own story and how she first went to the food bank after a failed suicide attempt: "you go to queue at the food bank with your son in tow. You can’t cope any longer." "That was February, just gone." (Blog post, August 2013) So, the first time she visited a food bank was in February 2013.
  
  
• "I was referred to my local food bank by a Sure Start children’s centre that I attended with my son on a Wednesday (...) I was reluctant to go at first, reluctant to admit that I had hit rock bottom – but I couldn’t afford not to. So one morning in October 2012, I finally went." (The Mirror, December 2013)
  
  
• "In July 2012 (...) I picked up my son. We walked to the local food bank." (Greenbelt Festival, 17:47 in the audio, August 2017.) Jack again said she made a failed suicide attempt, telling a completely different story as to what happened and what method she used. Therefore, she began using a food bank some time before July 2012.
  
  
• "My food writing was an accident, dredged from (...) a scrabbled together soup from a food bank parcel." "That was the 31st of July, 2012. There were 100,000 food bank users in the UK at the time (...) the queue that snaked around the block 100 deep, every day, at the one I went to." (Twitter, April 2022 - Part 1, Part 2.) This is the same story from the Greenbelt Festival, and again places her first use of a food bank before July 2012.

Fridge

Jack has repeatedly said that while in poverty she could not afford electricity and had to keep her fridge unplugged

• "I think back to this time last year. When you've got to the point where you have unplugged your fridge and you have unscrewed your light bulbs and you have sold everything you own ..." (The Guardian, July 2013)
  
  
• "I didn't mind putting an extra jumper on if I had food in the fridge. It was the point where I had an extra jumper on and no food in the fridge that I realised things had gone badly wrong." (The Guardian, October 2013)
  
  
• "I don't imagine the chief executives of any of the big six (energy companies) called before MPs on Tuesday has ever had to unplug their fridge because they simply can't afford to run it." (The Guardian, October 2013.) Yes, that's two different stories in the same paper within the same month! In the same article she says, "It wasn't too long ago myself that I was sitting with my back to my front door, hissing at my toddler to be quiet because there was a man on the other side of it hammering with his fist." If you didn't want someone to know you were there, why would you sit right next to the door?
  
  
• "I unplugged my fridge and put furniture in front of the storage heaters so that I wasn't even tempted to turn them on." (Huffington Post, November 2017.)
  
  
• "My worst year, I didn’t have a tree, didn’t have any decorations, I couldn’t buy any presents, I had unplugged the fridge, turned the heating off, taken out the light bulbs." (The Independent, December 2017.) She's ostensibly referring to December 2011 - just a couple of weeks after she was hosting a coffee morning at home.
  
  
• "I lived with (...) no fridge for TWO YEARS." (Twitter, December 2019)
  
  
• "When I was in a similar situation, I unplugged my fridge and freezer because I couldn’t afford to run them." (Grazia, September 2020)
  
  
• "I unscrewed the lightbulbs, unplugged the empty fridge, sold my son’s shoes and drank his formula milk." (PoliticsHome, February 2021)

But at the time, back in 2012, she wrote on her blog:

• "I’ve got seven sweet potato beanie bakes in the freezer, and small boy likes them, so I tell myself that we’ll be okay." (May 2012.) At this time, she had lost two jobs in quick succession but was claiming benefits and evidently able to keep the fridge and freezer running.
  
  
• "(My son)'s been known to help himself to (fromage frais) from the fridge." (December 2012.) She did have work by then, but evidently, her fridge wasn't off for two years.

Even if she did turn her fridge off at some point, it evidently wasn't for long, and certainly not for as much as two years. Especially since in 2012 she often posted recipes using perishable food that needs to be kept in a fridge.

Key events

• January 2013: Jack told the local newspaper that her £10 a week food budget was enough to feed her and her son comfortably and even have friends over for dinner regularly.
  
  
• February 2013: Jack began a full time job as a trainee journalist with her local newspaper after continued financial difficulties that ultimately forced her to withdraw her son from nursery.
  
  
• March 2013: The Telegraph sent writer Xanthe Clay over to interview Jack and have lunch with her. The article, "My 49p lunch with a girl called Jack", brought her to national attention and she credits it for kick-starting her career in the media and being offered her book deal.
  
  Jack took part in a sponsored event for charity to sleep outside in aid of homeless people. On her blog and in a promotional video for the charity, she said she had never been homeless, but realised that she was lucky not to have ended up on the streets.
  
  Jack wrote that she could finally afford to celebrate her and her son's birthdays now that her circumstances had improved.
  
  
• May 2013: Jack announced she had signed a book deal with Penguin.
  
  She won a prestigious award from Fortnum & Mason for her blog.
  
  She again took part in "Live Below the Line". She repeated this in 2014, and 2015, and shared photos of her meals and food shopping throughout the challenge. Each time, she said she found it difficult and that even though she was poor, she didn't normally live like this. Live Below the Line lasts five days, and Jack stated she had £10 a week for food, so she was living on half her usual budget.
  
  
• July 2013: A year after she wrote "Hunger Hurts", Jack gave an update on her blog. She said that in the last year her situation had improved and she was now in work. She stated that she still lived on £10 a week for food, and that she had spent Christmas 2011 sitting alone in the dark with no heating or lights.
  
  She told the Guardian that she was almost evicted earlier in the year because her benefits were suspended after her book advance came through, but had ultimately remained in her home.
  
  
• September 2013: Jack began a job as a full time columnist for the Guardian. At this time she left the Southend Echo because she'd received an influx of other writing and media work.
  
  
• November 2013: Richard Littlejohn published a hit piece about Jack in the Daily Mail. Littlejohn falsely suggested that Jack had chosen to leave her Fire Service job as it was easier to live on benefits; and that her son's father was not in the picture. Jack published a response where, among other things, she admitted she made some money from advertising on her blog. She's since repeatedly denied making any money from the blog. She also said in this response that it took her 18 months to find work after leaving the Fire Service. In fact it was 15 months, as she started working for the Southend Echo in February 2013. See 2012 section: she also had a full time job that she left to become self-employed.
  
  
• December 2013: Jack appeared in a Sainsbury's ad campaign for Christmas but was criticised for "selling out." She claimed she had only paid herself the living wage for the campaign, and had donated the rest of the money to Oxfam and her local food bank. Here's a promotional video she made for them.
  
  Jack wrote a blog post saying that she was grateful to no longer be in poverty, and could afford a Christmas tree, food, and presents for her son. (Warning - link discusses suicide.) In the Mirror, she repeated the story that she spent Christmas 2011 alone in her dark, freezing flat with no food or utilities.
  
  For New Year's Eve, she shared a blog post about her success in 2013 including writing and media work, audiences with politicians, her book deal, and the Fortnum & Mason award.

By all appearances, Jack still had some financial troubles in 2013, but the worst was over. Her financial situation improved and she became increasingly successful. But in retrospect, she's since described 2013 as a year when she was still desperately poor.

• "The past few Christmases had been all over the place for my little family, and 2013 was the first year I felt able to establish my own small traditions (...) although I didn’t have a tree." (The Guardian, December 2014.) She did have a Christmas tree in 2013 and had shared pictures on her blog!
  
  
• "(I was in) prostitution and stealing food to survive, 2013 (...) Evicted from my flat with my three-year-old." (Twitter, December 2019. Warning - link discusses suicide.) Her son was three in April 2013, so she would have had to be evicted at some point between then and April 2014. See below: she's alternately said that in spring 2013 she was either evicted from her home, or had to leave after cuts to her benefits.
  
  
• "I've been homeless, lived in dogshit poverty." (Facebook, March 2021.) It's unclear when this supposedly was. In March 2013 she said she had never been homeless; since then, she has had a successful media career and always had a home.
  
  
• See 2020 section: In a blog post titled "You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal", Jack shared photos taken when she was doing "Live Below the Line" and living on an amount equivalent to extreme poverty for charity; but claimed this was what her everyday life in poverty was like and that she lived like this for months or years.
  
  
• "I spent consecutive days missing meals for a two year period of my life, so I don't really get hunger cues." (Twitter, June 2022.) In other words, saying the poverty lasted into 2013.

Housing situation

Jack announced on her blog in May 2013 that due to changes to the benefits system, she had lost most of her Tax Credits. She had decided to leave her home and move into a house share so she could continue to afford her son's nursery fees. But on July 23rd, she featured in an article in the Guardian. It gave a completely different story as to why she'd moved, saying that after the media reported on her receiving a £25,000 book advance, she had her Housing Benefit suspended and was almost evicted. Her previous blog post didn't mention eviction. If authorities have reason to believe your income has changed, they will normally contact you for evidence first, not make decisions based on claims in the media.

Jack had said on July 3rd that she had been in the house share for a month. But the Guardian article came with a photo of her in her old apartment. It was seemingly taken some time in June, judging by her hairstyle (she had a haircut in early June) and the timing of the article. We think it is more likely she moved later in June or in July, and the following year, Jack herself said she had moved in July 2013. If she didn't move until July, why did she say at the time that it was earlier?

Jack says she was living with a group of Polish women. Living with strangers is hardly suitable for a 3-year-old, and for obvious reasons, most people wouldn't want a housemate with a toddler. Jack's blog indicated that she'd spent at least two weeks testing recipes for her book, which would be difficult in a shared kitchen. We therefore question if she lived in a house share at all.

An interview with Jack in an Australian publication came with a photo of her and her son at home in their bedroom, which was an attic room with a skylight. Her parents' house has an attic skylight the same size and shape, as you can see from Google Street View or photos. (Their address is on public record because her father uses it for business.) Did she in fact move back in with her parents? The address being public might have been a reason for her to lie about where she lived/when she moved, but then why make up stories instead of simply not giving details?

In August 2013, Jack announced she was engaged to her girlfriend and would be moving in with her. She had been with her partner for between two and seven months, at some point between mid-January (when Jack published a newspaper column saying she was single and online dating) and June (when she shared a blog post about being judged for her lesbian relationship.) That's a very short time to introduce a stepmother into her child's life, get engaged, and move in together. The relationship ended in October 2013. By the time this article was published in mid-November, Jack and her son had moved out into a temporary rental property that they couldn't stay in for long because it was being sold. In the space of just one year, she and her son had moved between four different homes.

By 2018 Jack's version of events had changed again. She now said that when she was poor she had to move from a nice apartment into a mouldy one, then sleep on a friend's sofa, then live in a house share. (Warning - link discusses suicide.) Back in 2013, she never mentioned sleeping on a friend's sofa; and if she did do this, it would have been for a very short period. In the same article she stated that living in a house share negatively affected her mental health: "I made myself minimal, I hid in my room." If we take it at face value that Jack moved into a house share at the beginning of June 2013, then she lived there for less than three months and by her own admission, she often stayed over with her girlfriend during that time.

Once again, the issue here is her frequently changing stories. Remember that in 2013, Jack had an increasing amount of writing and media work, a book deal, and a financially stable partner who owned a home. She did not have to pay rent for around two months while living with her partner (and longer if she did move in with her parents.) At this stage, she probably still wasn't well off - but nor was she desperately poor. At best, she did live in a house share for a month or two, but now exaggerates this in order to make it sound like she was in dire poverty. At worst, she made up lies for sympathy/publicity and to maintain the image of a poor single mother that first brought her to public attention.

2014

In January 2014, Jack was hired by Oxfam to travel to Tanzania as a guest blogger and write about community projects that Oxfam funds there. Her blogs reflected a stereotypical and rather patronising view of Tanzania and its people, and she publicly equated her own poverty with the situation of people in poor parts of Africa who may not even have safe drinking water.

In the same month she announced she had moved into a new home. After breaking up with her partner in late 2013, she and her son had stayed in a friend's property temporarily; but she had now found a home and planned to stay there and give him some stability. However, she had failed credit checks and needed a guarantor for the new house. She stated that after leaving Royal Mews, she'd moved into a cheaper flat that was "a bit mouldy round the edges with a few alarming cracks in walls and ceilings" and on the other side of town. Back when she moved there in 2012, she had said it was "cheaper, but nicer" than Royal Mews and still very close by. See 2012 section.

In February, Jack began dating Allegra McEvedy, who is a restaurant owner and chef. Jack relocated to London with her son and moved in with Allegra. According to an interview they gave in Diva magazine the following year, Jack moved in less than a week into the relationship, and lost the deposit she had just paid for her new home. Jack and Allegra were already engaged by mid-March when Jack could be seen wearing her engagement ring (a plain rose gold band) at her book launch party.

Throughout 2014, Jack continued to get writing and media work. She published two books: A Girl Called Jack in February and A Year in 120 Recipes in October. But in November, she was criticised over a Tweet stating that then-Prime Minister David Cameron "uses stories about his dead son as misty-eyed rhetoric to legitimise selling our NHS to his friends." (Cameron had a severely disabled son who passed away at six years of age.) It was subsequently reported that Sainsbury's had terminated their contract with her. She denied this and maintained that she was only ever contracted for six weeks' work in 2013.

2015

In May 2015, Jack told the Evening Standard that she had recently lost her column with the Guardian and suggested this was because of criticism from readers. She stated she had received death threats and carried a knife - why would you publicly admit to carrying an illegal weapon? This didn't stop her arguing with others in comments on the Guardian website, including saying that Allegra was not a millionaire and did not own a restaurant. It was on public record that Allegra owned a restaurant in London; and she certainly did have a net worth in the millions, as she owns a very valuable house and sold the restaurant chain Leon for a large sum.

In June, Jack and Allegra ended their relationship and Jack returned to Southend. She may or may not have been in financial hardship after this:

• "Money, these days, is tight again," "I had to borrow money from a friend this month for my rent," "One of the reasons I moved back was to (...) cut my outgoings. To have a bit of financial security," "Everything I own is pretty much in this room." (The Times, November 2015.) She confirmed in this article that the breakup with Allegra was in June.
  
  
• "Finally, finally, the last box out of 3 luton vans and 7 estate cars is unpacked from a moving operation that started in June." (Instagram, January 2016.) She claimed here, and again on social media repeatedly, that she lived in a one-bedroom flat. But the Times interview confirms it had two bedrooms.
  
  
• "She loved living in London but (...) seems to have had a growing sense of unease about it." (The Guardian, July 2016). Jack suggested she could have remained in London (i.e. could have afforded it), but chose to return to Southend because Allegra's friends made her feel unwelcome and she did not quite fit in.

Jack appeared on an episode of The Week and debated with former MP Michael Portillo about poverty. Subsequently saying he had told her she "should have kept her legs shut" and not got pregnant. This was false; what he actually said was that social policy shouldn't encourage people to have more children than they can afford (a typical argument you would expect from a Tory.) See a transcript here.

By her own admission, Jack bought a Burberry trench coat and Burberry Brit jacket in a shopping spree in 2015 - costing approximately between £6k-£7k. She also went on holiday to the USA with her friend Linda Riley and got several tattoos. But at Christmas, she wrote that she spent less than £10 on her son's Christmas presents because she wanted him to understand the value of money! Also saying they were "shit-poor" for the first three Christmases of his life. This includes Christmas 2010 (when she was either working for the Fire Service or still on paid maternity leave), 2011 (when she'd only just left her job and recently hosted a coffee morning), and 2012.

Gender transition

In February 2015 Jack shared this photo in response to critics suggesting she was "cis" (not transgender.) Her wording implied that people should assume her to be trans/non-binary because she had short hair and tattoos. Many trans people dislike this kind of stereotyping, and reject the idea that being trans is just being gender non-conforming.

Later that year, Jack came out as non-binary via her blog in October 2015. She announced she used they/them pronouns and the title Mx (she now mostly uses she/her.) In the blog post, she stated that:

• She wore a binder and wanted to use hormones and have top surgery
  
  
• One of her past relationships ended because her fiancée didn't like the idea of her transitioning. Jack said this wasn't recently or with someone in the public eye; so presumably, it was the policewoman she was engaged to in 2013.
  
  
• She had been shaving her hair and wearing boys' clothes from an early age, but also had a feminine side and liked to wear dresses and lipstick. Again, it is unhelpful and reductive to equate being gender non-conforming to being trans/non-binary. Also note how she'd previously described herself as a girly child who liked teddy bears and wanted a princess themed birthday party.
  
  
• Jack did not find the Fire Service accommodating to LGBT people, and was pressured to wear a skirt at her "passing out" ceremony in 2008. She began training to become a firefighter, and felt more comfortable with her body as she grew muscles. She then left the Fire Service and finally felt able to change her name and adopt a more masculine style.
  
  As a public sector body, the Fire Service has many initiatives to accommodate LGBT staff, including gender-neutral uniforms. Jack would not have had a passing out ceremony, which are for firefighters, not support staff. See 2010 and 2011 sections; she wouldn't have been accepted for training as a firefighter because she can't drive or swim. She has also suggested that she returned from maternity leave only around six weeks before she left her job, that she spent some of this time signed off sick, and had to commute for several hours a day. That wouldn't have left her with much time for training.
  
  
• Her family had been mostly supportive, apart from an uncle who called her a homophobic slur and said she looked like a gay man because she wore a suit to her brother's wedding.

The blog post linked to two photographs that she asked media outlets use in any future articles about her - also saying they must contact her for hi-res copies and pay the photographer, her friend Fox Fisher (a trans/non-binary activist.) Why was she using her transition to sell photographs?

Over the next couple of years, her stories changed again. E.g. she was either thinking about a breast reduction, or definitely wanted full top surgery. Or she wasn't intending to transition to male, but her genitals were going to change.

• "The Disney Belle dress she tried to wear for Hallowe’en but couldn’t (due to testosterone therapy and working out to make her physique more masculine.)" "Surgery to remove her breasts is what she wants most. She is already on testosterone, and seeing changes to her voice and stamina." (The Times, November 2015) Jack bought, and wore, the dress the previous June.
  
  
• "She wears a chest binder most days – a tight neoprene vest – and is contemplating a chest reduction." "Monroe is taking testosterone." "'She' is fine (...) I’m not transitioning to male. So I don’t feel I need to be referred to as 'he.'" (The Guardian, June 2016)
  
  
• "(Jack) prefers the gender-neutral pronoun 'they' and title 'Mx.'" "Monroe has worn a chest binder for years and is considering a breast reduction", "(Jack) started taking testosterone and now reports feeling 'much happier and more balanced” than before", "I have facial hair now." "I'm not going into the ins and outs (to my son) about how my genitals are going to change." (Huffington Post, September 2016) In this article she says she had a hormone imbalance that was cured when she started taking testosterone. But in a July 2016 Q&A on Mumsnet she stated she naturally had "alarmingly high" testosterone, heavily implying she was intersex. If she has high testosterone why would she need to take more?

Without questioning anyone's gender identity, these are just further examples of inconsistencies in her stories. She later said in 2020 that she was on testosterone for 6-9 months yet this doesn't fit with what she stated in interviews. (By October 2015 she'd apparently been taking it for at least a couple of months, long enough to see serious physical changes; and in September 2016 said she was still on testosterone.) Her social media and TV appearances didn't show some of the changes she said she'd experienced such as facial hair or bigger muscles.

Frequent house moves

Over the course of 2012-2015, Jack moved house a number of times; she's said that this was largely due to poverty and eviction. But was it? See 2012 and 2013 sections for more details:

• October 2012: Still during the poverty days, Jack moved into cheaper apartment under threat of eviction. At the time, she said it was nicer than her old home at Royal Mews; but now describes it as mouldy.
  
  
• June/July 2013: Jack ostensibly moved into house share but may in fact have moved back in with her parents (see 2013 section)
  
  
• August 2013: Jack moved in with her partner, who she had been dating for between 2 and 7 months
  
  
• October 2013: Broke up with her partner and moved into temporary accommodation; the property was about to be sold so she couldn't stay long
  
  
• January 2014: Moved into new flat
  
  
• February 2014: Moved to London to live with Allegra just a week into their relationship
  
  
• September 2014: SB started school in London with Allegra's daughter
  
  
• June 2015: Relationship with Allegra ended, Jack and SB moved back to Southend
  
  
• October 2015: Finding SB a school place had been difficult because they moved so late in the school year. Ultimately, he went to live with his father in a nearby town and went to school there - as was apparent from the father's public social media. Jack continued to claim she was his primary caretaker.
  
  
• June 2016: SB went back to live with Jack and moved to a school near her in Southend.

That's seven house moves for Jack, and nine for her son, in less than four years. SB also attended three schools in two years. Only two of these house moves were due to financial hardship; in October 2012 when she said she was threatened with eviction over rent arrears, and in June/July 2013 when she was affected by changes to the Tax Credits system (a benefit paid to working parents.) All her other house moves resulted from her deciding to very quickly get engaged and move in with a new partner, only for the relationship not to last long. While she may have been unlucky, it's dishonest to portray this as her being forced to move because of poverty or eviction.

Kickstarter

In December 2015, Jack had opened a Kickstarter to self-publish her third book Cooking on a Bootstrap. Her initial target was £8000 but she ultimately raised almost £70,000. Many people also paid to buy an extra copy, supposedly to be donated to a food bank or school. It was announced in February 2016 that Bluebird had bought the rights to publish the book, but the Kickstarter continued and Jack initially promised an April 2016 release date. This was repeatedly delayed, with Jack giving various excuses such as illness, logistical problems, and being busy with childcare. At one point she said she was "writing in a freezing cold flat without even a sodding table to sit at", as if nothing had changed for her after several years of having a successful career in the media.

Jack's backers became more and more frustrated, and when they started asking for refunds or where the money had gone to, she either didn't answer or snapped at them. She guilt-tripped those who had asked where the book was, posting that they were hurting her and affecting her mental health. Some were told she had refunded their money because they were "bullying" and "harassing" her by asking where the product they paid for was! After one person speculated as to whether she had bought a house with the money, she threatened to sue and suggested that she was being terrorised by stalking and domestic abuse behind the scenes. She said she had taken no money for herself at all, as she was paying a team of artists and an admin assistant in addition to the costs of postage and printing.

The book did not materialise until published by Bluebird in spring 2018. A few months later, some backers received their self-published copies in black and white and with no illustrations - by this time, the published, illustrated, full-colour edition was in print and widely available. Others never received a copy at all.

For the full saga, and how Jack responded to the people who donated money, see the Kickstarter here.

On-off sobriety

Jack first spoke about being an alcoholic around 2014-15 after being criticised for her comments about David Cameron's son (see 2014 section.) But in 2016-17, she went back and forwards on her social media about whether she was drinking again, trying to cut down, or Sober:

• January 2016: Jack did "Dry January"
• February 2016: Drinking gin
• August 2016: On 3rd August, Jack had been sober for all of four days and said she was feeling much better. By 20th August she was drinking with friends.
• September 2016: On 15th September Jack was limiting herself to one drink a day but on 28th went gin tasting "for work."
• October 2016: Jack announced she "used to" have a drink problem but had now "cracked" it after just two weeks of a "Go Sober" challenge for charity: "From alcoholic to don't-fucking-need-it in two weeks." All with no withdrawal symptoms, and she was confident that she would be in total control of her drinking from now on.
• December 2016: Infusing her own gin
• March 2017: On 4th March Jack gave up alcohol for Lent, now saying that in October she was "just" doing Go Sober for charity rather than recovering from alcoholism. By 11th March, when Lent was ongoing, she was drinking wine.
• April 2017: Celebrating 11 days sober and later 17 days
• May 2017: She had made it to 37 days again with no withdrawal symptoms or health issues.
• October 2017: Jack was beginning "a new period of sobriety" and was re-using her liquor bottles as candle holders.
• December 2017: Drinking champagne to celebrate finishing her self-published book.

Needless to say, it's irresponsible to give the impression that alcoholism can be instantly "cured" through going cold turkey with no side effects.

Diva column

Jack was given a column for Diva magazine where she wrote about her experiences as a trans/non-binary parent. Columns can be seen here. Notably, at one point she claimed that her son had an hour's train ride each way to school and back, implying (without outright stating) that they had to do this every day from her home. He was actually living with his father in a nearby town and going to school there - as was apparent from the father's public social media account. Despite this, Jack continued to insist she was the main custodial parent, was busy with full time childcare, and needed money to provide for him.

Mrs Gloss & the Goss

Mrs Gloss & the Goss is a popular Facebook group about fashion and beauty. Jack joined in 2016, posting as Jack Xatzinikolas (apparently an old family name.) She frequently shared photos of new clothes, haircuts, and designer makeup in the group - including a collection of "77 lipsticks, 14 foundations and 40+ eyeliners." On one occasion she posted about her new perm, only to share the same photo on Instagram and say her hair had naturally dried that way. It apparently did not occur to Jack that people might follow her across multiple platforms. She was adored in the group because she was "famous", and made so many comments on her own posts that mods would often close comments to give others a chance to post. The group is a popular place for people to ask for advice, and Jack's posts always being near the top made it harder for other posts to be seen.

Here's an archive of most of her posts in the group: 2016, 2017-2019. She often mentioned using expensive designer makeup (Chanel, Urban Decay, Benefit, Smashbox, etc.) and owning hundreds of makeup products! She would also post pictures that were clearly filtered but say it was just makeup, see wiki page 8 for other examples of this. At the same time, Jack continued telling her Kickstarter backers that she was struggling and didn't have utilities. She was also saying in the press that she used testosterone, wore a binder, and had worked out to build a more masculine figure (see 2015 section) - none of which was apparent from the photos she regularly shared in Mrs Gloss.

Abuse and sex work disclosures

In June 2016, Jack was interviewed for a Buzzfeed article about domestic abuse in LGBT relationships. She was pseudonymously referred to as "Sam", but later confirmed to Pink News that she was the person being referred to. In the interview, Jack described her experience of living with a violent girlfriend whilst pregnant. The article stated: "Some deemed her not a 'real' lesbian because of the Pregnancy. They did not know that Sam had previously, briefly, worked as a prostitute to try and survive financially." This suggests Jack's son was born as a result of sex work, evidently not true as his father is Jack's old friend. He was born in April 2010, so that would mean she was poor when he was conceived in 2009 - at a time she says she had three jobs and earned almost £40,000 a year.

This is one of many conflicting stories Jack has given about doing sex work and when:

• In 2009, leading to her son's conception (Buzzfeed article, June 2016)
• "Hooker (...) former SW (...) former prostitute (...) bona fide whore." (Twitter, April 2017.) Saying that multiple exes had threatened to expose her to the press and she eventually told the Daily Mail about her past sex work. At no point has the Mail ever run a story about this.
• "(I was in) prostitution and stealing food to survive, 2013." (Twitter, December 2019)
• "I worked in (a brothel.)" (Twitter, July 2022) - again doesn't mention when she supposedly did this
• "I went on to work briefly in the s*x industry" (Twitter, August 2022). Indicating it was in her late teens/early 20s before she joined the Fire Service or had her son.

I, Daniel Blake

Ken Loach released the film I, Daniel Blake about a man whose life is destroyed by the bureaucracy of the benefits system. Jack was interviewed about the film and published an article about it. She claimed that researchers working on the film had contacted her and she had given them permission to use material from her blog. This supposedly included a scene in which the main characters use tea lights under a flower pot to heat the room when they have no electricity - something Jack said she had written about in 2013. There is no such post on her blog nor does the Wayback Machine show evidence of any relevant deleted posts. Perhaps not surprising given that in 2013, Jack had a full time job, an influx of media work, and a financially stable partner! She also stated she "barely left the house" when she was poor, which doesn't explain why her blog at the time described her volunteering, supported by friends, and regularly attending local council meetings. See 2012 section.

Heather and Jack

Jack announced that she and a friend had set up a shop called Heather and Jack to sell their artwork and photos. She referenced giving up photography when she was poor and had to sell her camera - even though she evidently had one in November 2012, when she became self-employed selling photography. Heather and Jack held a sale to raise money for the families of the victims of the Pulse Nightclub Shooting but Jack did not show proof of donation or reveal how much was raised.

From 2016 until 2023, Heather and Jack's shop remained open, including a print in aid of the charity Broken Rainbow - which closed in 2017. Why was this sold for years after Broken Rainbow closed? Did anyone buy it in that time and if so, where did the profits go?

Libel case

In 2015, Jack sued Katie Hopkins for defamation because Hopkins falsely alleged on Twitter that Jack had defaced a war memorial. (She confused Jack for the writer Laurie Penny, who had expressed support for protesters that defaced the Cenotaph.) In spring 2017, Jack won and was awarded £24,000 in damages plus the cost of her legal fees.

Much of her case was based on the argument that she had been harassed and received death threats because of Hopkins' comments, causing her mental health to deteriorate. However, the judge noted that Jack didn't provide strong evidence to support this, and she had not helped her argument by deleting a large number of her own Tweets. After the case concluded, Jack told the BBC that Hopkins' actions had driven her to a breakdown and caused her relationship with Allegra to fall apart. But only seven months before, she'd said in the Guardian that her breakdown was because of gender dysphoria. Later in 2017 she stated at the Greenbelt Festival (11:10 in the audio) that her breakdown and the end of her relationship were caused by tabloids printing lies about her (transcript)

Jack was invited to discuss the libel case on The Victoria Derbyshire Show, where she met the TV exec Louisa Compton and they began dating. At the time, Louisa was in a senior role at the BBC; she's now the Head of News at Channel 4. She is estimated to earn £250,000 a year and would still have been on a high six-figure salary when she and Jack got together.

Patreon

On 7th April 2017, Jack posted on Twitter about having ruined her that she had ruined her favourite Mulberry bag by spilling whiskey over it, and was devastated that she couldn't afford another one. The bag was purchased in 2013 with her first book advance, but she also mentioned that her Samsung phone (seemingly a gift from a brand promotion she had done with them) and a lot of designer makeup had been ruined. The following day she stated that her credit was very poor and she had almost had a breakdown after her card was declined for £15 worth of groceries. The Mulberry bag apparently made a miraculous recovery, as it resurfaced in 2021.

Later that day, on 8th April, Jack announced she had opened a Patreon. She asked for donations, saying "I work 80hr weeks and right now can't afford to pay my rent." This is despite her having recently been able to afford an expensive phone and makeup. She claimed it had been "harder to come out as 'still skint' than it was to come out as a disabled vegan non-binary transgender lesbian." According to Jack, she didn't have access to the damages money Katie Hopkins had paid, because Hopkins was planning to appeal the verdict. When others criticised Jack for asking for more money after the Kickstarter disaster, she accused them of expecting her to "work for free." In another tweet she pondered about whether she could crowdfund for a house. She later said in a 2019 interview (at around 52:57) that she had wanted to do this but her then-partner (Louisa) found it "mortifying."

At the same time Jack was claiming she could not pay her rent, she was still posting regularly on Mrs Gloss & the Goss with high-end makeup and new clothes and hairstyles. She also displayed other expensive possessions on her social media, such as a large collection of crockery (supposedly from charity shops, but this would still add up to a lot of money) and designer furniture. In an interview with the Evening Standard around this time, she said she drank 122 units of alcohol a week during the worst of her alcoholism, and was a member of the Groucho Club, which costs several thousand pounds a year in membership fees.

Grenfell blog post

Jack shared a blog post about the Grenfell Tower fire, which she used as an opportunity to draw attention to herself and present false credibility. She gave the impression that she was an experienced firefighter; and told an implausible story of being waved through a police cordon, somehow acquiring plans for the building, and being in contact with lawyers and architects about the official investigation. See 2010 section - Jack can't drive or swim, so she would not be accepted for training as a firefighter. The post contains a photo of her supposedly in uniform, but the obvious poor fit suggests it may have been taken at a charity event or taster day where civilian staff can try on a uniform and pose with the fire equipment.

Political campaign

Jack ran as an independent MP for Southend West (her local ward) in 2017. She stated in the Evening Standard interview that she had wanted to run for office for years but put it off because her son was too young. She received a lot of backlash from voters in the area, who accused her of self-promotion and were concerned she would split the left-wing vote. The NHS was a key issue for local people and the Green Party had already agreed not to run against Labour, who stood the best chance of winning the seat. She subsequently withdrew from the race, citing harassment (as always) and poor health.

At this time, Jack was still in a relationship with Louisa Compton. Jack downplayed Louisa's wealth, saying in a February 2018 blog post that "my partner has not had a working cooker for two and a half years." That's disingenuous when Louisa earns a six-figure salary and could clearly afford a cooker if she wanted one! Jack announced her engagement to Louisa in January 2019.

She admitted in a 2018 interview that she was addicted to social media and had at least nine anonymous Twitter accounts for political arguments.

Jack began to give increasingly extreme accounts of her past poverty in 2018-19, examples include:

• "I lived rough for two years, with six months relying on the food bank." (Washington Post, December 2018.) It's not clear if she was trying to say she was homeless or simply poor - but she was not poor for two years. She also stated in March 2013 that she had never been homeless.
  
  
• "(I was) unemployed in 2011. Selling everything I owned in 2012. Prostitution and stealing food to survive, 2013 (...) Evicted from my flat with my three-year-old (...) I lived with no heat and no LIGHTBULBS and no carpets and no fridge for TWO YEARS." (Twitter, December 2019. Warning - link discusses suicide.)

All this has been contradicted many times; see 2012-13 sections.

In August 2018, Jack became interested in landing a job on TV. She asked her fans to express support for her to be given her own show, then announced that she had paid to train in TV presenting and film a pilot. She asked for donations to help with the costs of training and to help fund a YouTube show of her own if her pilot wasn't picked up for TV. She said "Am funding the pilot myself as I'm not a pisstaker" in the same tweet as she asked others to "help!" This was at least her second request for donations during the year.

Alleged royalties theft

In 2018, Jack claimed on Twitter that her former agent had withheld "around £20k" of book royalties from her and as a result she had made no money at all from her first two books, despite working "7 days a week." She said she was reluctantly going public with this after failing to resolve it privately, and asked for help in finding a suitable "pro bono" lawyer. (Jack doesn't appear to understand the difference between pro bono and no win no fee.)

She subsequently repeated this claim in a blog post, now saying she was actually owed between £30k-£50k in unpaid royalties and had not received a penny on any copies of her first two books sold since 2015. (Her first book was actually published in 2014.) She said that for legal reasons she could not name anyone, but was preparing a legal case against the offender. Jack further claimed that she had been unable to work for 20 months while her legal case against Katie Hopkins was in progress - how, then, could she have been working 80-hour weeks the previous year and still writing professionally? (See 2017 section.) She said that the £24,000 she received in damages did not even begin to cover her lost income.

Because of these financial problems, Jack fell behind on energy payments, and the company sent bailiffs to force the locks when she was not at home. As a result, her mental health was severely affected, and she no longer felt safe in her home and was forced to move. In England and Wales, bailiffs may not force doors. In some circumstances they can get a lockmith to open the door - but not for a debt on energy bills. Jack ended the blog post with a plea for donations for her legal case and expenses in moving house. A while later she gave an update saying she had recovered a third of the royalties, but still needed money for her legal case against the former agent.

Her agent at the start of her career was Adrian Sington, then the CEO of DCD Publishing. This is who she was with when her first two books (A Girl Called Jack and A Year in 120 Recipes) were released. She publicly thanked him many times, and said that they had an excellent working relationship. Here's what happened afterwards:

• February 2016: Jack had moved to United Agents (a larger, more prestigious agency) by this time.
  
  
• July 2020: On her blog (warning: link discusses suicide and sexual assault) Jack repeated the story that her agent had not paid royalties for her books. She said that her new agent (United) had "fought a lengthy and frustrating battle to get some of (the royalties) back to me", and the previous agent had "stonewalled" her and denied she was ever on their books. DCD Publishing was dissolved in January 2018 so she would have had to raise the matter directly with Adrian or another representative.
  
  
• December 2022: Jack left United and went back to Adrian, who now works at Kruger Cowne. Why would she go back to an agent that she could not trust to pay her?
  
  
• August 2023: At the 2023 Greenbelt Festival, while still represented by Adrian, she repeated the story that "my former agent did a runner with the royalties." See here for a transcript.

Jack's publisher states that her first book, A Girl Called Jack, sold almost 60,000 copies. She said in her 2018 blog post that she made around 39p in profit on a sale of a £12.99 book. Presuming her first two books sold 60,000 copies each, she would have made £46,800 in royalties. It would be less than this, since her first book didn't quite sell 60,000 copies, and the second did less well. But it would still be more than enough that Jack would have good grounds to sue and could go to the press with what had happened. She had friends in the media on her side. A publisher withholding royalties from a new author would have been a scandal that would be widely reported on, and even the threat of exposing them would have helped get the money back.

Autism

Jack first discussed having autism in a newspaper interview in February 2019. Compare her accounts:

• "Monroe only got her diagnosis of autism a few years’ back, prompted by her inability to learn to drive." "The doctor tested me and said I have 99 per cent of the qualities of classic autism and there are ADHD qualities to it." (The Scotsman, February 2019.)
  
  
• "An educational psychiatrist appointed by my high school recommended that I attend a school for 'gifted and talented' children. There was no further information given, and I thought no more about it, until I was sitting in my doctor’s surgery three years ago following a breakdown (...) The doctor looked back through my notes and asked me if anyone had ever told me I was autistic. I sat and stared at her as she passed me a handful of resources to research." (The Guardian, July 2019.)
  .
• "I was diagnosed as a child (...) I was 11 years old (...) He came to our house and did a load of tests, some written, some observational, some chat with me, some chat with my parents. I then had a follow-up visit that I remember very little about, and he recommended to my parents that I go to a different school. It was never discussed in my family again. A few years ago I went to my GP about something else and she was scrolling back through my notes to check if I was an overdose risk before prescribing a certain medication. She asked me if I had ever followed up on my childhood autism diagnosis. (...) That was hatched down and edited into two lines in a Guardian article." (Tattle, June 2020.)
  
  
• "She had been diagnosed with autism at school and ADHD as an adult, and she was a barely functioning alcoholic." (The Guardian, January 2023.) In response to a question on Twitter, Jack again said she was 11-12 years of age when diagnosed.

There are several obvious errors/inconsistencies here. Jack would have been diagnosed in 1999-2000 - when little was known about how autism expresses itself in girls, and very few were diagnosed. There is no such thing as an educational psychiatrist. Being gifted and talented doesn't necessarily correlate to autism (this is a stereotype) and if Jack needed extra support because of her condition, it would be more usual to recommend a school for SEN or autistic children. Initially she implied she had been diagnosed by her GP, which they do not do; she'd have to join a long NHS waiting list or pay for a private assessment. When this was pointed out to her she then said that the GP had actually informed her she was diagnosed as a child.

See here for more about what Jack has said about autism and her fundamental misunderstanding of the condition. Ironically, she claims she "literally can't lie!" because of autism!

"Year of sobriety"

In January 2019, Jack was interviewed about her alcoholism in the Guardian, supposedly speaking publicly about it for the first time. She said that she began to abuse alcohol in her teens due to social anxiety, and later quit, but the problem began again when she moved to London in 2014. She said she had now been sober for a week, and this had vastly enhanced her creativity and improved her life. At the end of the year, in December 2019, she provided an update saying she was still sober (warning: link discusses sexual assault) with the help of her family, friends, publisher, and Alcoholics Anonymous.

In both the January and December articles, there were a lot of implausibilities/inconsistencies:

• Jack had already spoken about her alcoholism in the Evening Standard in 2017, where she claimed to drink 122 units of alcohol a week. In that article she stated she began drinking when she was poor and "never quite stopped", whereas in the Guardian she was "absolutely certain" she did not drink when she was poor. (See 2012 section - she also told the Mirror in 2012 that she didn't drink.)
  
  
• She stated she stopped drinking when she was working three jobs (including in a cocktail bar) because "(I) needed my wits about me to pull off my 60-hour working weeks." Subsequently, when she became poor she could not afford to drink.
  
  
• She described the owner of her local corner shop recognising her from the January article, and her asking him not to serve her alcohol. But she later gave a different version of the corner shop story in Diva magazine.
  
  
• Jack said she had taken baskets full of alcohol to the till in shops and then handed the cashier a piece of paper asking them not to serve her. Why would you pick up the alcohol in the first place, only to ask not to be served? This doesn't usually stop an alcoholic and they will go elsewhere if someone won't serve them.
  
  
• She credits Alcoholics Anonymous for helping her manage her addiction the whole time. AA teaches you, the drinker, to take responsibility for your addiction - not place it on others by asking them not to serve you alcohol.
  
  
• In both articles she said she was struggling with temptation to drink but felt better almost instantly, seemingly with no withdrawal symptoms. That's not very likely for someone who was previously drinking 122 units a week.

Tin Can Cook fundraiser

Jack opened a GoFundMe and raised almost £45,000 to donate copies of her book Tin Can Cook to food banks. The funds seemingly went to her personal PayPal - making it difficult to distinguish what was for the fundraiser and what was a donation to her. It's also strange that she set up a fundraiser (which was to pay for her publisher to buy copies for food banks - incurring the costs of admin, postage, etc.) rather than simply asking people to donate money/books directly to their local food bank.

Soliciting donations

In March 2020, Jack used Twitter to beg for donations (part 1, part 2) and job offers, saying she had lost work and had no money coming in because of the COVID-19 pandemic. She was living with Louisa, who was now the very well paid Head of News for Channel 4. Jack said she and Louisa shared bills and rent equally, but that she spent just £20 a week for food, suggesting Louisa didn't contribute money for groceries. This is hardly a fair arrangement if Jack had so little while Louisa was on a high six-figure salary (Jack claimed not to know what Louisa earned.) Louisa owns a house in London, and they were renting because Jack wanted to stay in Southend.

Jack also had a regular income from Patreon; when her Patreon was hacked in December 2023, figures indicated she received around £1000 a month in 2020. Her parents have money and she should have been receiving child support from her son's father if he is the non-custodial parent. At the same time as asking for money because she had no work coming in, Jack still insisted she worked 90 hours a week (doing what is unclear.)

She publicly described her house as a "shabby" and "shitty" bungalow - at one point complaining that it was all she could afford because she was so short of money. Again, this was when she was living with a wealthy partner who owns another house. This didn't stop Jack appearing in a Sunday Times feature that made it apparent the "shabby bungalow" is actually rather nice. She later gave herself away by inadvertently mentioning on Twitter that the house had stairs and a downstairs toilet. If it has two floors it is not a bungalow!

COVID

At the start of the pandemic, Jack claimed to be immunocompromised and unable to leave the house, and said this was having a serious impact on her mental health. Yet, around a week later, she admitted to breaking lockdown laws by going out to buy unnecessary goods.

She refused to download the NHS Track & Trace App, claiming that she had a huge amount of sensitive personal data (including the data of "thousands of vulnerable people", such as benefits claimants and political prisoners) on her phone. Even telling an absurd story about how, when she had to hand over her phone on a visit to Downing Street, she "defiantly" took out the SIM card and put it in her bra! When criticised for this she said she barely left the house unless for work, and had not even gone out when having "an actual mental breakdown" (implied to be caused by Louisa leaving her at the beginning of May.)

At the end of December 2020, Jack began hinting that she had long COVID. Long COVID is generally agreed to be when illness persists for at least 8-12 weeks, but Jack said her symptoms started three weeks ago. Eight weeks previously was in October 2020 when, as was apparent from her social media, she had been going out as normal and was not ill. Three weeks ago was the beginning of December, but in fact Jack hadn't mentioned being ill until the 17th. See an approximate timeline here. (At this time, Louisa had briefly moved back in with Jack under new regulations allowing households to form a "bubble.") When people began questioning Jack's story and timeline, she hastily deleted a lot of her tweets on the subject.

Jamie Oliver

Jack lashed out at Jamie Oliver after he was given a show about cooking on a budget during the pandemic. She felt this was her peronal "niche genre" and the job should have gone to her; and ranted on Twitter about it (Part 1, Part 2.) Jamie is an experienced chef and TV presenter who owns a TV production company, making him an ideal choice to put out a show at short notice. Jack was a food blogger with no presenting experience other than a day course she had seemingly done in 2018. Despite this, she felt she had a right to be the only person talking about budget cooking, something she neither invented nor brought anything new and original to.

She encouraged her fans to attack/criticise Jamie, and this gained her a lot of followers and attention. Jack started trying to "compete" with him by holding a daily event on Twitter where she would give others advice on how to use up leftovers or what to make with store cupboard ingredients. She also implied to others that Jamie was profiting off of her recipes. Hypocritically, she accused him of deleting posts and blocking people to protect his image - something Jack has repeatedly done herself.

Ultimately, she published an insincere apology on Twitter (bear in mind that Jamie probably doesn't even read his official Twitter), and attempted to blame ADHD and the press for her behaviour. She was largely not criticised for anything she'd said about Jamie. What reaction do you think he would have got if he'd called Jack "her" and "that woman", encouraged others to pile on her, and accused her of stealing work from him?

Daily Kitchen Live

Jack landed a job as a co-presenter on Daily Kitchen Live; a two-week daily spin-off of Saturday Kitchen Live. (Even this didn't stop her making spiteful comments about Jamie!) Jack couldn't decide if the reason she hadn't presented a TV show before was because she lacked confidence or because TV execs thought she was "too common."

She had to film the first week at home because she was quarantining with possible COVID symptoms. Jack was clearly underprepared, with poor sound and internet connection and a jerky webcam. She tried to blame this on Louisa, which would have made them both look extremely unprofessional to others. Later she filmed from a makeshift "kitchen" in her garden shed using a camping stove. This is obviously dangerous; carbon monoxide builds up quickly in an enclosed space, and the shed was made of wood and was flammable. While the show was ongoing, Jack monitored social media and Tattle obsessively, and led her followers into pile-ons against anyone critical of her - many examples can be seen in her early threads. She was caught on camera checking her phone while live on air, and posted tweets while the show was live.

She said that filming her brief appearance in each episode was 20 hours' work for her and she "earned £8 an hour." Later clarifying that this was actually what she took for herself from her fee - as she was a freelancer with no guarantee of income, and also had to pay her admin assistant (Caroline.) Choosing to take £8 an hour from your considerably higher earnings is very different from only earning £8 an hour!

See wiki page 1 for links to all episodes.

Hellman's/Black Lives Matter

Jack had a brand deal to promote Hellman's mayonnaise, and did an Instagram live with them every week. In the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, she made a YouTube video in support of Black Lives Matter. The video is no longer available after she deleted her YouTube channel, however screenshots show that she stated she would donate all proceeds from the video to the Minnesota Freedom Fund. She never provided any evidence of a donation or mentioned it again.

Jack was criticised for her lack of transparency over any supposed donation, and describing herself as "white as mayo" - seen as an attempt to plug Hellman's. She responded to this by trying to suggest she herself experiences racism because her father is half-Greek.

Jack was due to host one of the Hellman's Instalives on June 2, 2020. Hellman's had invited a social media user (N.) to take part in the live. N. was on Tattle but didn't know much about Jack. June 2 was then designated as "Blackout Tuesday" - an initiative for people to stop posting on social media for 24 hours, in protest against racism and police brutality. N. expected that the live would be cancelled for Blackout Tuesday, but when she didn't hear from Hellman's, she contacted them to check. They said they would get back to her, and confirmed the live was cancelled. N. was left with the impression that neither Jack nor Hellman's knew about Blackout Tuesday, and had hastily cancelled the live after N. told them. She spoke about this experience on Tattle and her social media.

Jack tweeted about the cancelled live more than an hour after Hellman's confirmed to N. that it was cancelled. If she had wanted to express her support for Blackout Tuesday she would have done so when it was first announced/when she found out, not at the last minute on the day of the live. She insisted she did know about Blackout Tuesday and had asked for the live to be cancelled, both in support for victims of racism and to avoid putting N. (who is a woman of colour) in a difficult position. When accused of "bandwagon jumping", Jack stated that it was her duty to bring awareness to important causes and that she had "risked a five-figure contract" with Hellman's. Note the vague language here; she deliberately didn't say that Hellman's had threatened to sack her or that she'd said/done anything in particular.

This drew the attention of Alexis Adjei, a food/lifestyle influencer. Alexis shared her experience of how she had allegedly shot a commercial for Hellman's, but she and a Black colleague received racist treatment and their scenes were then edited out of the finished product - which didn't happen to any of the non-Black people featured. She challenged Jack to confirm that she'd almost lost the contract. Jack replied that Hellman's had always supported her, but that she had "risked" the contract by speaking up in the first place. The postponed live eventually went ahead, but Hellman's only allowed pre-approved contributions.

Tattle battle

Jack's first Tattle thread began in March 2020. Tattlers commented on her hypocrisy and obvious untruths, and her behaviour towards Jamie and on Daily Kitchen Live. A poster also alleged they were doxxed by Jack who had criticised her on another site.

On social media, Jack suggested that Tattle posters:

• Tried to find out where she lived and get the deeds to her house. This is false; what actually happened was that a poster said it wouldn't be wise for Jack to lie about whether she rented, because anyone who knew her address could check the owner via the Land Registry.
  
  
• Published "defamatory, libellous, slanderous claims, outright lies, and ridiculous allegations" about Jack and her family. By definition, slander is a spoken statement; no spoken word about Jack had been posted on Tattle. She claimed to have screenshots and print-outs of every thread on Tattle, and threatened to sue unless her threads were deleted. This is the same woman who publicly accused Jamie Oliver of stealing/profiting from her work, and other statements for which he could have sued her.
  
  
• Were "trying to put in CPS reports about my son, find my home address, harrass (sic) my employers, make fraudulent claims about my finances, campaign for me to lose my job, and harrass (sic) my family." Tattle didn't do any of this. By "CPS", she probably meant Child Protective Services, the US equivalent of social services (in the UK, CPS normally stands for the Crown Prosecution Service.) Social services need quite a lot of information before they can act on a child safeguarding concern - if anyone did report Jack, it was probably someone who knows her offline.

She joined Tattle in thread 31 in response to N. posting about Jack's Hellman's live. Jack gave N.'s real name, accused her of libel, and threatened to sue her. Jack didn't stay long but did give her version of events.

David Walliams

Jack attacked David Walliams on social media after her son brought home Walliams' book The World's Worst Parents. He had come back from his dad's and we suspect that his stepmother had bought him the book and/or had read it to him and his siblings - making Jack jealous. She accused Walliams of “sneering classist fatshaming nonsense” and described his books as "like Little Britain for kids." In particular, she criticised two of the stories in The World's Worst Parents:

• "Supermum": Jack insisted this story about a working-class mum who cleans toilets for a living was making fun of poor people. In context of the story, Supermum's children find her embarrassing because she pretends to be a superhero in public, not because of her job or how much money she earns. She does get to be a hero at the end. Jack appeared to have not even read the story in question.
  
  
• "Miss Tutelage": Jack said the character of Miss Tutelage was a racist stereotype of a Black woman because she is described as having frizzy hair and someone calls her "Desmond Tutu." Tutelage is a real word that means instruction or tuition, and Miss Tutelage is intended to be white - confirmed by the publisher. See this illustration from the book and compare Harriet Hurry, who is a Black character.

When someone mentioned Walliams giving an interview about his "writing process", Jack shared a meme of Henry Hoover snorting white powder - implying Walliams takes cocaine. She also said that he doesn't write the books; and then went after the Director of Comms of a major publishing company, who had worked with Walliams and said that he does write them. She fairly quickly deleted the Henry Hoover tweet, and later said it wasn't aimed at Walliams but was "poking fun at (her) own industry." Jack was confident that her lawyer in Israel could handle it if she were sued, and her followers offered to donate money if she needed to fund a legal defence. She also "jokingly" threatened to assault Walliams and appeared to be digging for damaging information on him.

Walliams didn't respond to her directly but his publisher issued a statement in support of him. Jack gained some Twitter followers and was featured in the news; but ultimately, nothing changed, and Walliams is still a bestselling author. But in 2021, the host of a small podcast successfully petitioned Walliams' publisher to remove a story from another of his books as it was offensive to Chinese people. Jack has far more of a platform, yet her crusade against Walliams didn't achieve anything.

Edinburgh trip

Jack had hard times in May-July 2020 which included her relationship with Louisa ending, and losing her disabled kitten after she had ignored a vet's advice to have the kitten put to sleep. See here for more about this - warning for detailed descriptions of animal cruelty. Jack said she had received death threats over the kitten and was struggling emotionally. Ultimately, she decided to "recover" by going on a trip to Edinburgh, her favourite city (at that time, Scotland had just relaxed COVID restrictions.) Jack insisted it was not a holiday but was for "healing" and she would have to "(go) away involuntarily" if she hadn't gone to Edinburgh.

Jack took the train to Edinburgh, which would have cost around £80-£95 for a one-way ticket; saying she hadn't booked a return and had no idea how long she would stay. She posted on Instagram about what she'd packed, which included a Nutribullet, two sets of AirPods (retailing at £99 each), Beats headphones, photo/video equipment, and lots of other tech. Upon arrival in Edinburgh she immediately gave away her location by sharing a photo of the view from her rented apartment. If you were being threatened, why would you make it easy for others to find you? The apartment was in an affluent area, and Tattlers discovered (again, from Jack herself freely sharing her location) that it cost over £250 a night. She bought lots of things for the apartment, including plants and so much kitchen equipment that she couldn't take it back to Southend with her and offered to donate it to a local charity.

Jack went out to various public places and restaurants including Dishoom - leading to her infamous "in restaurant parlance it's not a chain" tweet. She announced she was healing and felt great; only to rant and verbally abuse someone who had asked why her son wasn't with her. She returned to Southend less than two weeks after going to Edinburgh, saying there had been "unexpected circumstances." On the way home she complained that LNER (train company) hadn't respected reserved seating arrangements to protect against COVID; resulting in some of her fans criticising LNER on Jack's behalf. COVID didn't seem to bother her when she was eating out and socialising in Edinburgh.

Evidently, Jack had no problem spending thousands of pounds on the trip at a time when she claimed to be under huge financial stress and to have recently lost a year's worth of work due to the pandemic. Or engaging in unnecessary travel, putting herself and others at risk of COVID.

"You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal"

On July 30 2020, Jack published a blog post originally titled "The Price of Potatoes and the Value of Compassion." (Warning - link discusses suicide in detail.) She later retitled it, "You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal." The original title referred to comments by Annunziata Rees-Mogg that no one should be starving or obese when raw potatoes are cheaper than oven chips.

In the blog post, Jack gave a heartbreaking account of the lifelong effects poverty has had on her; leaving her unable to open her front door or open letters, and forced to frequently move house because she didn't feel safe there. The blog post tried to suggest that she spent longer in poverty than she did (it was roughly between November 2011 and March 2013 - not two years or more), and that it was far more severe than she described at the time. Again, see 2012 section and compare her blog posts from that time with what she says here.

Here are some of the claims she made in "You Don't Batch Cook ..."

• "I was evicted from my flat with a toddler when my Housing Benefit was suspended because I was deemed to have made myself deliberately unemployed by having a baby within the confines of a job whose flexible working patterns were a paper policy rather than a reality." See 2012 section: Jack remained in her home for almost a year after leaving the Fire Service. She was threatened with eviction over rent arrears, but managed to find another home quite quickly, and a few months later was in work again with her media career taking off. She was also considered "exempt from work" because she had a young child, and would not have had her benefits suspended because she left her job.
  
  
• She currently used a GoHenry card for her daily shopping, as she needed its spending control feature to ensure she wouldn't go over budget. GoHenry is intended for under-18s and an adult can't sign up; there are also cards available for adults that have spending controls. See 2021 section for what happened when she continued telling this story!
  
  
• She was forced out of education because she didn't have enough GCSE grades to continue to sixth form - as her school had a policy of not enrolling students in the exam for any subject where they were predicted below a B. See wiki page 6 for other, conflicting stories Jack has given about her leaving school.
  
  
• Her agent stole book royalties from her (see 2018 section)
  
  
• "I wrote the majority of A Girl Called Jack by email on a Nokia E72." "(My editor) cleared a desk for me at their enormous great big office (...) and insisted I come and work there to finish the manuscript. I had to wait for my signature payment to come through before I could afford the train fare." "I produced a handwritten notebook of recipes and tried to hand it in as a completed manuscript, thinking that that was how real authors did things."
  
  In a now-deleted blog entry from 2013, she refers to typing up her recipes. A Nokia E72 was a premium business smartphone and cost around £500 - as much as the then-current iPhone 3. Aside from the fact that it would be very difficult to type up an entire book on a phone, there's also photographic evidence that she had a laptop!
  
  
• "A flat I was refused a viewing on, to rent, because I was on benefits. October 2012. I still remember how humiliated I was standing in their office being told I wasn’t the kind of tenant they wanted." Jack posted about this in October 2012 on her blog and said she simply called the estate agent and was told they didn't accept tenants on benefits - which is common in the UK.

Jack also shared several pictures of what were supposedly her everyday meals when she was poor, suggesting she lived like this for weeks or months. All these photos were taken in 2013 during the "Live Below the Line" challenge (see 2013 section.) See below for the original blog posts they came from:

• "My lunch, April 2013"
• "Rice with lemon curd, chicken stock and mixed frozen vegetables."
• "Another measly receipt, 2013 this time."
• "Another variation on rice with mixed frozen veg, 2013. That measly bowl was lunch and dinner." (She did have a separate lunch and dinner)
• "F*ck me this is a bit repetitive. And that’s the point."
• "Here we go again! My god there’s a reason I barely eat rice any more."
• "More rice and veg. 2013. And an apple. The sheer profligacy of it all."

Her meals were insubstantial and repetitive because she was living on £1 a day for food (less than half what she says was her usual food budget) for a short time to raise money for charity! She didn't ask for donations in this post, but did promote her Patreon on her Twitter account.

Anonymous Twitter account

Tattlers suspected a Twitter account called @Peeky_Mink was a "sockpuppet"/alternate account of Jack's. Signs included Louisa and Jack's mother following the account; the account also following/commenting on Louisa's tweets; writing "thankyou" as one word the way Jack does; misusing words the way Jack does; listing the location as Edinburgh; and using a cartoon avatar from an image that Jack had previously posted on Facebook. @Peeky_Mink posted about having expensive Ocado deliveries at a time when Jack was saying on her main account that she was struggling. The account was quickly locked and then deleted after Tattle identified it.

Linda McCartney/Veganuary

Jack landed a brand deal with Linda McCartney and they appointed her the face of their campaign for Veganuary (an initiative for people to adopt a vegan lifestyle during January.) Vegans were not happy with this because Jack isn't a vegan, wasn't doing Veganuary herself, and uses cheap meat wiih low welfare standards. They began complaining to Linda McCartney and also looking over Jack's social media, leading them to question the many inconsistencies in her stories. We refer to these critics as "viggles" (vegan squiggles - where a squiggle, or squig, is an anonymous person on social media.)

The viggles then began questioning Jack's claim that she "only works with brands that agree to charity donations." They repeatedly asked what charity she had donated to (or asked Linda McCartney to donate to), highlighting other instances when she claimed to have donated money but never shown proof - such as from her monetised Black Lives Matter video. Jack never addressed this or showed any proof of a donation.

GoHenry

GoHenry provides a bank account for children under 18. The account comes with a spending control feature in order to teach kids how to manage money. Jack had previously claimed in one of her blog posts ("You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal" - see 2020 section) that she lied about her age and signed up for a GoHenry card so she could use the spending limit to keep to her very strict budget. She repeated this several times in 2021 on her social media.

Shortly afterwards, she alleged someone had impersonated her and got her son's savings account shut down - saying she would report them to police. She again told the story that this was part of a harassment campaign which included trying to get her fired from her job and making false "CPS" reports against her. GoHenry confirmed that an account had been closed.

A Twitter user stated that they had safety concerns about an adult being able to sign up for a GoHenry account, and had sent screenshots from Jack's Twitter to GoHenry, who then closed the account. That's not "impersonating" or harassing Jack. Later, when she shared shopping receipts, Tattlers noticed that Jack had paid with Visa, whereas GoHenry uses MasterCard. So it appears her son's account did get shut down through her own actions. Why did Jack want to give the impression she was so poor she needed a child's bank card to stick to her budget? There are services for adults that have spending control features.

Relapse

In spring 2021, Jack disappeared from social media for a while and later returned, sharing photos of her stay in an "aparthotel." Tattlers speculated that she had been in rehab.

Jack subsequently appeared in the November 2021 essay of Diva magazine with an essay about her struggle with addiction, saying she had relapsed after Daily Kitchen Live and had to go into rehab. Jack stated:

• An "obsessive team of anti-fans" (apparently meaning Tattle) had terrorised her during Daily Kitchen Live. Yet again giving the false story that Tattle had tried to get her fired from her job, sent hateful messages to her, and made malicious false reports about her to multiple authorities.
  
  
• As a result, she "fell off the wagon" and relapsed into alcoholism, later also becoming addicted to tranquilisers and sleeping tablets. She realised she needed help, and entered a nearby rehab facility.
  
  
• Jack stayed for four months (longer than anyone else), made lots of friends, and was admired for her cooking. She became "the mother hen of the group, the one they all gravitated to for a laugh, an ear, a shoulder, a confidence."
  
  
• She initially lied to her family and friends that she'd gone away to film Strictly Come Dancing, but over time admitted that she was in rehab. This was harder than having to tell them she was gay, pregnant, transgender, or no longer vegan
  
  
• She'd had a cancer scare but managed to get through it without substance abuse
  
  
• She was now fully recovered and was enjoying life, writing and cooking again, taking care of her appearance, and getting proper help for her various medical conditions including arthritis and ADHD.
  
  
• She was studying for a bachelor's degree in nutritional science and hoped to work with a new unit at the rehab facility. If Jack has only four and a half GCSEs, most universities would not accept her onto an undergraduate course unless she first took other qualifications such as A-levels, a BTEC or NVQ, or a foundation course. The Open University accepts people without traditional qualifications but does not offer a course in nutritional science. Jack hasn't mentioned studying for a degree since.

There were also descriptions of her new friends gushing "we wish you could see yourself the way we see you!" and her 11-year-old son thanking the therapist for "making Mama well again." The whole article came across as Jack humblebragging and wanting praise. She had also previously said in October 2020 that she was "22 months sober." That wouldn't be the case if she had relapsed after DKL (around May 2020.)

Rental contract crisis

In the UK, a fixed term rental contract normally lasts 6 months to a year. After this, the tenant may sign up for another fixed term, or enter a "rolling" contract. Jack and Louisa moved into the supposed bungalow in February 2019, and their relationship ended in May 2020. But around November 2021, Jack began saying that she was still committed to a rental contract she had taken out with Louisa. This would mean the contract was over two and a half years long - not impossible, but unlikely.

The following year, in 2022, Jack said on Twitter that she had a year left to go on the contract; suggesting it was four years long with no break clause. Such a contract would likely not be legally enforceable, and if Louisa's name were on the tenancy with Jack, she'd continue to be liable unless Jack signed a new contract just for herself. Jack said she had tried and failed to get out of the contract and couldn't take in a lodger. This left her solely liable for the rent, bills, and council tax, which took up 94% of her monthly wage. Jack gave the impression that Louisa had selfishly left her in this situation - even though Louisa had returned to live with her as part of her "bubble", and Jack had also said they were still on good terms and that Louisa still sometimes looked after SB.

Jack apparently found a way around the restriction on lodgers, since later in the year she mentioned a new housemate; seemingly not her partner, as she had just started seeing someone at that time. She could have got free advice from her local council, Citizen's Advice Bureau, or Shelter ... or she could have made up the whole story about being locked in an interminable contract and left poor.