If you're here and you are new to Jack, please go to Wiki 1, where we have lots of info at the top for new frauen / herren.
Page 6 features curious contradictions, tall tales, and ludicrous lies that don't fit into the timeline on wiki page 5.
There is very little Jack won't lie about, from the pointless/trivial to the offensive. If you've ever followed her on social media or read news articles about her, changing stories or obviously implausible details will quickly become apparent. This page covers just a small selection of examples. Again, all of these are in her own words online or on print.
Types of lies
Here's an excellent post by Tattler Lucky Escape about the different varieties of lie you'll see from Jack. (See wiki page 5 for nickname used on the threads. SB is Jack's nickname for her son; Big Dave is her father; and LJC is her ex-partner Louisa Compton.)
"In general, I think she employs three broad types of lie:
1) Lies based on fantasy
I think she often invents or embellishes stories in her head which either feel true, or feel like they should be true. Maybe she's upset or ashamed or embarrassed about something that happened, and she comes up with a fantasy of how things would have played out if the upset hadn't occurred.
I think these are similar to pathological lies - and, at the time she tells them, she thinks they're so close to being true that she doesn't feel like she's lying at all. They're also the lies that are the easiest for other people to spot - and they've tripped her up often. "Big Dave fired his cannon in the street" is a good example of the type.
2) Lies based on obfuscating or deflecting or paltering
I suspect these are a learned reaction to being called out over the first type. So she tells a lie based on fantasy, and then reflexively covers it in a layer of tricksily-worded indirection. With these, there's often a possible interpretation of her words that contain a grain of truth, but it wouldn't be their natural meaning. She uses them to build 'gotcha' traps to pre-emptively discredit anyone who might call her out, and to give ammunition to her stans.
Although she tells these deliberately with an intent to deceive, she doesn't believe they're actually lies - and she gets extremely upset when people accuse her of lying because of them. "I've only ever had one cat" is a perfect example.
3) Lies that benefit her, or harm or upset a specific person
These are the nastiest, are often broadcast the most widely, and are the hardest for outsiders to see. Without specific knowledge, they look like they might well be true - and that specific knowledge might only be held by one or two people, who now can't say anything because it would bring them into conflict with literally millions of people who believe the lie. Basically an extreme form of gaslighting, and usually told deliberately.
I suspect her parents and SB's dad have been frequent targets. SB too, probably. Likely LJC during their relationship as well. Many stories about her childhood and upbringing would fit in this category, as would the 2019-era alcoholism stories in the Guardian, and aspects of HH2."
All three types of lie, and more, have/are/will be used by Jack to raise money via Patreon, donations, and fundraisers with no accountability as to where it's gone and what she has used it for.
Lies about her finances/spending
1. Jack has released seven books and has commissions, paid-for public events, had a popular website with adverts before she closed it, and generally a successful career; but claims to only pay herself the living wage and talks about financial struggles.
2. Jack insists she is, and has always been, the primary carer for her son. There is evidence this isn't the case - see wiki page 5 for one example (in 2016 she said he lived with her, when he was actually living with his father, as was apparent from the father's public social media.) In more recent years she's made several references to planned visits from SB in a way that indicates she's the non-custodial parent. This is relevant because she often asks for donations or pushes for sales by saying she has a child to feed, and/or wants to buy a "forever home" for him so she can offer him some stability.
3. She lives in a spacious three-bedroom house which she has described as a "shitty" and "shabby" bungalow, implying she couldn't afford to live anywhere better. She initially rented the house with her then-partner Louisa Compton, a wealthy TV exec who is estimated to earn over £200,000 a year as Head of News at Channel 4. Jack said they shared rent and bills equally; but that still suggests that between them they could afford a nice property. Jack herself stated on Twitter that the house has stairs and two floors, therefore it's not a bungalow. Here is a collection of photos she's shared on social media that clearly demonstrate she has a big house and garden.
4. See wiki page 1 regarding Jack's claims that she spends only £20 a week on her grocery shop. Notably, she tried to give the impression this was all her food for a week, despite it being less than half the recommended calorie intake for three people and including very little protein or fat. Just a day or two later, she posted about cooking with steak, blue cheese, and other ingredients not included in that food shop. So many people called her out that she eventually admitted it was a "top-up" shop but still insisted she didn't need more than £20 a week for groceries. Even when living with Louisa, Jack still said she lived on a £20 a week food budget. If she and Louisa shared expenses equally, why did Louisa seemingly not contribute any money for food?
We believe a Twitter user who spoke about their regular takeaways and Waitrose deliveries was an alt account of Jack - see wiki page 1 (@Peeky_Mink.) This is especially hypocritical given that she criticisedAlfie Deyes for "poverty tourism" because he can afford to shop at Waitrose.
5. Jack had a SMEG fridge which she said was a gift from a friend; it first appeared in 2015. In 2019, she said she had just started using it now that she had a kitchen big enough. By early 2020, she wanted to buy a 130v fridge as this would make considerable savings on her energy bills. Only to get another imported SMEG fridge, costing around £2500, a couple of months later in May 2020 - just a year after she had supposedly started using her original SMEG! See wiki 5; this was at a time when she had been asking for donations, saying she had lost a year's worth of work because of the pandemic.
6. Jack periodically hints at financial troubles, only to come out with something contradictory. Examples:
She tweeted about making scrambled eggs with mayonnaise because "her budget didn't stretch to butter." She could clearly afford to buy butter, as it could be seen in photos of her kitchen. When this was pointed out on Tattle, and by Twitter users, she made a sarcastic comment about "detractors" not wanting her to buy butter. No one cares if she does; we just don't like her twisting words to pretend she's struggling and angle for sympathy/donations.
She said she didn't have broadband or a TV subscription because she had "forgotten" to pay the bill. Just a few months later, that never happened and she had instead cancelled the contract because she was planning to move house (which she never actually did.)
7. In one of the many tweets sent around the time of her viral Twitter thread in January 2022, Jack claimed to have never bought a new TV. This is in direct contradiction to a previous Twitter rant in which she alleged a delivery driver had left her new TV on the doorstep.
8. Jack has often said that she buys very little for her son because she can't afford it and/or wants him to appreciate the value of money. But in recent years she has shared a number of photos in which he is wearing designer clothes, expensive trainers, or new football shirts - likely not from his dad, who has other children to provide for as well. She's also mentioned that her son owns expensive Lego sets and multiple games consoles; and some photos taken around her house show things like collectible figurines (presumably his) that aren't cheap.
9. In her infamous blog post The Curse Of The Poverty Hangover, Ten Years On Jack announced she was poor again and was back to pawning her belongings and renting a small one-bedroom home (in fact, she is still in the "bungalow" and never moved.) She claimed she could not afford to buy shampoo or shower gel, or use electric lighting, and had to resort to using solar lights meant for the garden. This was despite her having had a number of corporate sponsorships in the last year - including Superdrug, who were paying her to promote budget toiletries. In the months before the blog post, she had been seen to get lip fillers, a new tattoo, and an expensive pedigree dog. Until June she had been with a partner who was evidently well off, as he had (or so she said) bought her designer jewellery and several trips away. Jack again tried to excuse this in the Hattenstone article, saying she "had nothing" when she wrote the blog post, but was now solvent again after signing a book deal.
10. At the 2023 Edinburgh Festival, Jack said that she gets a maximum £5000 advance for each book deal and won't accept more because she would have to repay the publisher if she failed to out-earn her advance, and could get into debt. This is false; the only reason why an author would ever have to repay their advance is if they fail to deliver the book. Jack knows this after a decade of publishing books! Her advance for her first book was £25,000 and by her own logic, she'd have to get a lot more than £5k to be back on her feet after being so poor in July 2022 that she couldn't afford shower gel or lightbulbs.
11. She tweeted about her son needing a specialist for a health condition, and mentioned for the benefit of "trolls" that he was being treated on the NHS. So, she can't afford private healthcare for her son and/or doesn't think it a priority, while displaying thousands of pounds' worth of designer goods on social media?
12. A number of Google reviews on an old account of Jack's showed that in 2019-20 she had an expensive lifestyle which included regular meals/drinks out; membership of the exclusive private members' club Babington House; and staying in four- and five-star hotels. This continued into the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when she was asking for donations and saying she had lost a year's worth of work.
Jack owns a huge amount of stuff, see here for examples of photos that show that her house is very cluttered. Wiki page 2 contains a detailed list of verifiable items she has displayed on her social media. Jack will often justify having so many possessions by saying that they were gifts, handed down from friends/family, or bought from charity shops for very little money. Even with that, it's still apparent she buys a lot of things - often at times when she is asking for donations or saying she cannot afford necessities.
Here are some examples of her telling tall tales or outright lies about where her possessions came from/how much they cost:
After spending over £100 on battered old cutlery in January 2022 on eBay and claiming some of it was included by the seller for free, which the eBay listing disproved, Jack gave her grifting tin a rattle within the same week, saying she needed money to fix her website.
Cotswold furniture: According to Jack's now-infamous January 2023 interview with Simon Hattenstone, she had a habit of buying furniture in drunken online shopping binges at the worst of her alcoholism. She claimed she sent most of the furniture back when she sobered up, and she and Louisa would share the cost of whatever they decided to keep. She told a similar story when a follower asked about one of her Cotswold sideboards, saying that she'd bought it in a sale and convinced Louisa to pay for half. However, Jack had Cotswold furniture in her house before she moved in with Louisa; and posted about getting another sideboard (worth around £1000) delivered very shortly after they broke up.
Dickies boiler suit for her son's Halloween costume (£35-£50 new): Jack said it came from an Army & Navy store, however, they don't normally stock Dickies and would have had far cheaper options available.
Neon sign (around £150-£300 depending on retailer): Supposedly a gift that the delivery driver left in Jack's shed, and she didn't know it had arrived until weeks later when her AA sponsor found it in her shed. By then, "the paperwork was eaten by mice" so she has no idea where it came from. Did she expect people to believe this? She was probably counting on her followers not being able to tell the difference between this sign and a cheap one from Amazon etc.
Numerous goods she claims to have found in charity shops including a Magimix, new Le Creuset,Denbybowl, and Vivienne Westwood clothes. The bowl was new and still available online; it seemingly came from a dinner set costing around £200. Why would you buy this and donate it just a couple of weeks or months later?
Large number of shirts: Jack says she bought these from a "vintage thrift store", suggesting it is a charity shop and the shirts cost very little. In fact the store is a regular vintage clothing shop, sells clothes at a markup, and prices can be high.
Dress, seemingly Needle & Thread or a similar brand (around £250-£400): Present from a long-term reader of Jack's blog. She has stated many times on the blog that she rarely wears dresses or goes to formal events, so it seems strange that a fan would choose this for her and know her exact size and unexpectedly buy her an expensive gift.
Tiffany HardWear pearl hoop earrings (£1150) and Olive Leaf pearl studs (£550) - Initially said the hoops were Etsy "dupes", then admitted they were real and and said her then-boyfriend ("OH") bought her both pairs of earrings after she lost the dupes. This is the same man she claimed worked part time "in a little shop." As the owner maybe?
Russell & Bromley "Chester" loafers (£245): Alternately said that she "accidentally" walked out of a photoshoot still wearing them or that the stylist left them behind but let her keep them.
The issue here isn't "Jack is allowed to have nice things!" It's that she asks for donations, says she can't afford necessities, and preaches about poverty and wealth inequality - all while her obvious, conspicuous spending can be seen on her social media.
Food/poverty campaigning
1. On 19th Jan 2022, Jack tweeted that Asda had removed certain Smart Price items from her local branch in Shoebury. She claimed products such as 45p rice, 20p pasta and 22p beans weren’t available any more. A local Tattler went to check and these items were still on the shelves and in good stock. Photos of items in Shoebury Asda
2. Jack repeatedly claimed to have invented Healthy Start vouchers, a lie that has been repeated by her ex-partner Louisa Compton. However, the Healthy Start voucher scheme started in 2005 (p.11 of this review of the scheme from 2013). This means Jack was 17 when she invented and immediately implemented the scheme. It is essentially just a modern version of historical "milk tokens", "fruit and veg tokens" etc. that have been around since the 1940s!
3. Attendees at Jack's talk at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival have alleged she said that the reason she had failed to produce the Vimes Boots Index was that major supermarkets were lowering their prices to stop her publishing it. If she said this, she'd effectively be accusing them of fixing prices, and could be taken to court.
4. Jack claimed in an interview with the BBC that she had been working with the Office of National Statistics (ONS) in a "collaborative effort" to uncover the true effect of inflation on food prices. She has also said at least twice (at a talk in Glasgow and at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival) that the ONS had or would sign off the Vimes Boots Index. But in September 2022, the ONS confirmed in response to a Freedom of Information request that their only communication with Jack was a single informal discussion.
5. See wiki page 6: Jack is featured in the book The Truth Detectives by Tim Harford, which gives the false impression that the VBI really exists when it does not.
6. On multiple occasions, Jack has said she kept several ring binders full of coroners' reports for deaths caused by government austerity policies, implying she had access to confidential details. She claimed to be using these as research for a book, which has thus far not materialised. In a FOI request to the Chief Coroner's office, it was confirmed that they'd had no correspondence with Jack and she did not have access to any information that wasn't already in the public domain. We hope the whole story was a lie - it would be pretty ghoulish to print out coroners' reports about the deaths of strangers.
Threats/bullying/harassment
Warning: Jack likes to talk about being threatened, harassed, doxxed, etc. - often in extremely graphic and unpleasant detail. Expect links in this section to contain graphic descriptions of violence, abuse, uncensored slurs, death/rape threats, and discussion of suicide.
1. Jack regularly claims that she has been doxxed on Tattle, however, while many Tattlers have easily managed to find her house due to the many photos and bits of information she puts on her public social media channels, no one has ever put her address out publicly on this forum.
2. She says she is constantly discriminated against and shunned because she is a single mother. Saying her own brother rejected her over it, and she has often been verbally abused by strangers telling her to "shut her legs" or similar. She describes her son as "born out of wedlock" as if this is something shocking or unusual. But when criticised by right-wing press falsely suggesting her son's father isn't involved in his life, Jack has said each time that co-parenting families are now commonplace and no one else seems to have a problem with it.
3. In her Black Lives Matter video (see wiki page 7) she described herself as "white as mayo" and therefore lucky enough not to experience racism. When a commenter on the video replied that not all white people are pale, Jack tried to suggest that she does experience racism because her father is half-Greek. Comments about her "dirty hands" generally refer to the fact that in videos of her cooking, she often has visibly unwashed hands/nails - something that would be criticised in anyone whose job involves preparing food. On another occasion, she said in a blog post that she had been called slurs for Black people. This would be unlikely to say the least, as she's clearly not Black.
4. (Warning: links contain extremely graphic and offensive descriptions of harm, and references to suicide) In April 2022 Jack said she had received an email containing two very specific, graphic, and frightening threats. In January 2023 she said it was a separate message and newspaper comment, with slightly different wording (e.g. "burning acid" instead of "burning petrol.")
5. In 2016, Jack anonymously gave a Buzzfeed interview about her experience of abuse in a lesbian relationship when she was pregnant in 2009-10. (see wiki page 7.) Among other things she described her girlfriend making fun of her for "not being butch." Years later, in 2020, she gave a very similar story about Allegra saying the exact same things in 2015 when Jack bought a new Burberry jacket. (Britney Spears, who is hardly "butch", wore the same jacket in a music video.) Jack claimed she had never worn the jacket before today because Allegra's comments were so hurtful - even though she wore it in September 2016.
6. Some of her accounts of homophobia/transphobia:
She's often told she is "too pretty to be gay", and she has had to take a male friend to weddings as her date so that she wouldn't "upstage the bride." At the same time, she looks so masculine that she was punched by a skinhead who thought she was a gay man. (Blog post, June 2013)
When she came out as non-binary in October 2015, she made a blog post where she claimed she had been mistaken for a gay man and physically attacked (again.) And that on multiple occasions, airport staff in the USA had shouted "what ARE you?" at her because she had a masculine name and appearance but her passport said she was female. While she doesn't say when this supposedly occured, she'd made at least one trip to the USA the previous year. By the 2010s, there was enough awareness of trans rights that some states had laws allowing trans people to change the gender on their passport. Either way, it would obviously be offensive to say "what are you?" to someone. Does she think there are no masculine-looking women in the USA?
She gets asked to leave the women's toilets, gay men often flirt with her, and a gay man in Prowler (an "adult" shop) thought she was male and tried to grope her. (Mumsnet Q&A, July 2017. Tattle doesn't allow linking to Mumsnet, but the thread in question, titled "I'm Jack Monroe. Ask me anything" can be found through Google.) Prowler sells sex toys, but it is still a shop, not a bar or club where you might expect someone to try it on.
Her ex-boyfriend (OH) criticised her because her wardrobe made her "look like a lesbian." (Twitter, July 2022.) At the time she said this, they had broken up less than a month before. It seems strange if he didn't know that she had publicly identified as a lesbian for years before dating him.
7. Jack says that Essex Police have a department that monitors online threats to public figures, that police have come over unexpectedly for "welfare checks" when she has been harassed on social media, and someone was given a prison sentence for threatening her online. (See: Twitter, June 2022; Edinburgh International Book Festival, August 2022; Twitter, September 2022.) In response to a Freedom of Information request, Essex Police stated that while they have a team that deals with online threats/abuse generally, it doesn't monitor anyone's social media (and presumably is not just for public figures.) Since no one has ever seen an explicit threat to her on her social media, it would have to have been in her messages/emails, which she herself would have had to show to the police.
8. In a panel talk at the 2017 Greenbelt Festival (from 37:50) Jack said that Richard Littlejohn had published a "hatchet job" in which he made "unfounded allegations" about her, her son's father, her parents, and her private life; speculated on how she became pregnant when she is a lesbian; and included "unflattering photographs." She then responded with an open letter correcting 37 false statements Littlejohn had made about her. She implied he had targeted her because she was transgender - referencing Lucy Meadows, a trans woman in whose suicide Littlejohn was implicated due to an article he had published about her.
Jack is referring to this opinion piece by Littlejohn. It contains no photos of Jack and isn't even solely about her. It was published in October 2013, two years before she came out as non-binary/trans. While Littlejohn did falsely suggest SB's father wasn't involved, he did not comment on Jack's parents, partner, or anyone else in her family. Nor did he make any comment on her sexual orientation; in fact, Jack's response questioned why Littlejohn hadn't mentioned her being a lesbian!
9. After becoming a vegan, she received graphic death threats from other vegans because she had previously shared photos of seafood she cooked. Notice the similarity between this story and the many others she's told about various threats made against her.
10. In January 2013, Jack wrote in her column in the local newspaper that she had received death threats from the far right over an article she wrote the previous April. In April 2012 she was unknown, was working in a pub, and was not writing professionally - she was given her newpaper column later that year. Presumably she meant blog post, not published article; but then why did she only start getting threats nine months later? The Telegraph repeated this claim seemingly without fact-checking it.
Health
Alcoholism/addiction
Jack came out as an alcoholic immediately after making some pretty abhorrent comments about David Cameron’s recently deceased disabled son. It’s been a riddled journey ever since. Here's a brilliant timeline of her on again off again alcoholism and recovery. Also see wiki page 7 for more.
There are at least three different accounts of how Jack's drinking problem started. In one version she began drinking at age 14-15 to cope with her crippling shyness at parties. In another, her drinking started when she worked at a cocktail bar in her late teens and she was "mine-sweeping the bar." Anyone who's worked in a bar/pub would know why no one wants to "mine-sweep the bar!" Both these stories appeared in the Guardian along with a third article in which she said she didn't drink whilst working at the cocktail bar. She can't even keep track of what she's told the same newspaper.
Jack told the Evening Standard that she had consumed 122 units of alcohol in a week and was such a frequent regular at the Groucho Club (which costs thousands of pounds a year in membership fees) that they'd called to check in with her when she hadn't visited for a while. In the same month, she rattled the tip jar again, claiming she could not afford to pay her rent.
In yet another account of how her alcoholism began, she said she started drinking cheap lager when she was poor, and "never quite stopped." But in December 2012, Jack was interviewed in the Mirror and said that she could not afford to drink. In 2019 she told the Guardian she wanted to make it "absolutely clear" that she did not drink when she was poor.
In October 2020 Jack said in a Twitter thread that she was "22 months Sober", and dealing with the urge to drink by learning the piano. Subsequently, in spring 2021 she disappeared for a while and her social media later suggested she had been at a private "dayhab." She confirmed this in the November 2021 edition of Diva magazine, where she said she relapsed after her disastrous DKL appearance (so, April/May 2020) and entered a treatment programme. Was she 22 months sober in October 2020 or wasn't she?
This interesting tweet, which was attributed to her behind texting (as were another series of posts of gibberish that were in no way an attempt to acquire plausible deniability if challenged by any longsuffering family member, buddy or sponsor) from November 2020, might give a casual reader pause for thought. Although obviously observing correct punctuation mid evening with one's initial and then a common quantity/measurement of mass in certain circles is clearly exactly the same as the gibberish posts where she then hilariously changed her Twitter handle to Zoe Eccentricity for a period. In the words of a bowl of Petunias.
Jack says that she regularly attends Alcoholics Anonymous and their support has been invaluable in her recovery. Despite this, she continues to be indiscreet on her socials about what she sees and does there. What bit of 'anonymous' do you not understand Jack? An example is when she shared an Insta post about attending a celebratory dinner with her AA group, including a photo of her in front of an instantly recognisable feature wall in a London restaurant. Anyone in the restaurant at the time could identify Jack's companions as having a drinking problem.
She said in the 2023 Hattenstone interview that she had been addicted to Tramadol as well as alcohol, and at the worst of her addiction consumed 40 Tramadol a day along with a bottle and a half of whiskey, saying "How I’m not dead is beyond me." It's beyond everyone else too. She says she never took any illegal drugs, but a doctor wouldn't prescribe enough Tramadol for a 40-a-day habit, so if she took that many then she was not getting them legally. This is the same interview where she infamously admitted to spending thousands of pounds of Patreon money on designer furniture in drunken online shopping binges.
In February 2023, Jack argued on Twitter with someone who suggested she used cocaine. She denied this, but then shared a photo of various chips she had acquired from sobriety organisations, one of which was from Cocaine Anonymous! Other Twitter users identified some of the chips as being from the 1990s-2000s and no longer in use, and others as being used only in the USA/Canada - so Jack had evidently bought them online.
By July 2023 and despite saying she has been 'clean' for 2 years, 4 months (a timeline which doesn't tally with when she said she was sober, from June 2021) Jack was still having to attend 9 AA meetings a week. AA is supposed to give you the tools to help you deal with your addiction so you don't have to keep coming back - for example, Jack gave two completely different recollections of the same interaction with her local corner shop where she asked them not to serve her alcohol. Aside from the fact that this doesn't usually stop most alcoholics (they will just buy somewhere else), it's the opposite of what AA teaches about taking responsibility for your drinking and not replying on others to intervene.
In April 2024 she had now been sober for "over three years" i.e. before April 2021, not since June 2021 or January 2022.
Jack's stories of alcohol/substance abuse also cast doubt on her saying that she has always been her son's main custodial parent. Others clearly knew about her addiction, as she has said that it affected her friends and family, her son saw her pass out drunk, and Louisa had to leave work or social events when Jack had been drinking. It's hard to believe no one would raise the alarm if she were bingeing on whiskey and Tramadol every day with her son at home. Jack has complained (see wiki page 2) that "trolls" had made false complaints about her to social services, but it seems the people who know her had more than enough reason to report her. She had also posted about her addiction on her public Twitter account where anyone, such as neighbours or her son's teachers, could see.
In one instance Jack said she accidentally knocked herself unconscious, and her son sat with her and checked her breathing, but realised she was OK when she started snoring. We question if she made this up - because a couple of days later, she shared a picture of her black eye, which had evidently been drawn on or at least enhanced with makeup. But if she was telling the truth, it's concerning that her son (who was 10 years of age) would know to be reassured by her snoring. A child wouldn't normally be aware of this unless they had first aid training or were used to seeing someone pass out.
Autism/ADHD
The first mention of Jack having autism is in this article published by the Scotsman on 23 February 2019. In the article Jack claims that she only got her diagnosis of autism a few years back after being unable to drive due to the existence of roundabouts.
An unspecified variety of doctor tested her and immediately diagnosed her with '99 per cent of the qualities of classic autism and there are ADHD qualities to it'. In the early 2010s, professionals working in the field of autism diagnosis were starting to use the term Autism Spectrum Disorder rather than outdated terms like 'classic autism'. The term 'classic autism' implies a severe expression of the condition, usually with accompanying intellectual disability. Furthermore, a diagnosis would never be expressed in terms of a percentage score.
Jack allegedly spends £135 a month on private prescriptions for her ADHD. She doesn't have money for shower gel or lightbulbs though #priorities.
The second version of the origin story is from a Guardian article entitled Go, Greta. Autism is my superpower too published on 27 April 2019 in which she says that she saw a GP three years prior to the article being written, which would have been in 2016, following a breakdown. The GP asked if anyone had ever told her she might be autistic and gave her some resources to look at, failing to mention that she had apparently already been diagnosed as a child. Since this article followed the one about the miscellaneous doctor, it seems she was implying that this GP diagnosed her which is not within their remit and they would have to refer her to specialists which can take years to access via the NHS.
During her famous appearance in thread #31, Jack claims in this post that she was diagnosed at the age of 11 by an educational psychiatrist, and her parents were aware of the diagnosis and a recommendation to send her to a different school; but chose to withhold it from her. She reinforced this in January 2023 following an op-ed article about her, in the Guardian.
Firstly, the job of educational psychiatrist doesn't exist. Secondly, she would have been 11 in 1999, a time during which it was extremely rare for a girl to be diagnosed with any form of autism due to poor understanding of how autism is expressed in girls. Thirdly, there is no earthly reason why any parents (especially those who are foster carers for vulnerable children) would refuse to acknowledge such a diagnosis. It would be tantamount to neglect to deny her any additional care that she would benefit from, including a more appropriate school placement. In this version of events, she also only found out about the diagnosis from a GP she saw in her early twenties who asked if she had followed up her childhood autism diagnosis.
As she has no real experience of living with the condition, Jack likes to trot out tired stereotypes about autism whenever the mood strikes her. In the original Guardian article she likens her mind to a pocket calculator and that recipes just fall into her mind like Roald Dahl's Matilda. She constantly talks about her forensic, autistic brain and her love for maths. In March 2022 and on multiple occasions since, she tweeted about how somebody accusing her of lying has no understanding of autism as she literally can't lie (source: this post.) A quick survey of the canal confirmed that not only can autistic people can lie but Jack does nothing except lie.
Other stereotypes she has wheeled out include needing to cut labels off all her clothing and for some reason a blanket, having a wardrobe full of denim shirts, and being hypersensitive to sound to the point of being able to hear electricity in the walls. By perpetuating these stereotypes she is causing harm to the autistic community who she is misrepresenting.
Mental health
WARNING: Jack often talks in detail about suicide and similarly sensitive aspects of her mental health. Please use caution when navigating this section and all links.
We are not trying to suggest Jack has no mental health issues or hasn't experienced the things she says she has. However, there are so many inconsistencies that not everything she says can possibly be true; and it's evident that she uses her mental health as a way of deflecting criticism. A Tattle user alleges they were outright told by a journalist that "(Jack's) mental health issues are what are stopping them publishing."
Jack has frequently written in detail about past suicide attempts or described being suicidal. This section, and all links, contain very graphic and triggering descriptions/language.
Here's a chronological timeline of suicide attempts she has mentioned:
November 2011: Jack was struggling to manage her demanding Fire Service job around childcare: "The stress eventually caused her to overdose on sleeping pills and beta blockers (...) She says the overdose wasn’t an accident." (EveningStandard, November 2013.) She has repeated this story on several other occasions, see wiki page 7 for the circumstances in which she left the Fire Service.
Christmas 2011: Jack made another suicide attempt, later saying "This year I will not try to commit suicide on Christmas Day." (Blog, December 2013.) It must have been 2011, because she spent Christmas 2012 with her parents.
July 2012: Jack attempted an overdose. She's spoken about this at least four times:
The Sun, February 2014 - In response to Edwina Currie pointing out during a TV debate that Jack's grandfather was wealthy, Jack published an article about her life in poverty including an attempted overdose. She did not give any other indication as to when this was, but the details fit with what she has said about July 2012.
Greenbelt Festival, August 2017 (around 17:40 in the audio) - Jack stated that she attempted suicide in July 2012. She said she was driven to despair after being served with an eviction notice, and that she waited until her son was asleep in the next room. She survived, and the following day she took him to the food bank for the first time, where a kind employee sat with her and made tea. Jack didn't want anyone to know she had attempted suicide, as she was worried her son would be taken into care.
Unfiltered podcast, February 2018 (around 25:06 in the audio) - Jack said that at the time of writing "Hunger Hurts", she intended to send her son to his father and then "top herself."
Twitter, April 2022 (Part 1, Part 2) - Jack said her suicide attempt was on July 30th 2012, the day she published "Hunger Hurts" - which she had intended as a suicide note for "a wraith who could go a week without speaking a word to another human being out loud." She sent her son to stay with his dad and then attempted an overdose. However, she survived, and woke up the following evening to messages from strangers sharing their own stories. She repeated this story the following month in a blog post trying to justify comments she had made about how people should be able to feed a family on very little money.
There are some very obvious inconsistencies here:
At the Greenbelt Festival, Jack said she attempted suicide after being served with an eviction notice. The other two accounts of her overdose don't mention this. Jack's blog from the time period indicates she was threatened with eviction but was not evicted, and stayed in her home until October 2012 when she left voluntarily.
"Hunger Hurts" describes her friends supporting her and buying her drinks so she could still go out with them: "There’s a running joke that I owe a very big round when I’m finally successful with a job application, and I know I am lucky to have the friends that I do." " Everything that I have was either given to me by benevolent and generous friends ..." "My world is defined by the love and generosity of my friends." She also stated on her blog that she had been volunteering full time. It therefore seems unlikely that she was going a week without speaking to anyone.
If she didn't wake up until evening, then she cannot have taken her son to the food bank the next day (July 31st). On July 31st 2012 she made a blog post advertising a local volunteering scheme, which also suggests she wasn't unconscious all day.
Was her son with Jack or with his father? Did she send him to his father's before publishing "Hunger Hurts" or was she going to do it afterwards?
Not many comments were left on "Hunger Hurts" initially, and they weren't from people sharing stories. Most of the comments were left in 2013 or later, after Jack had come to public attention. As can be seen from archived copies of her website, she received only eight comments on the piece when it was first posted.
"Hunger Hurts" doesn't read like a suicide note; Jack clearly had plans for the future and had been thinking of solutions to her financial troubles, stating she intended to go to the pawn shop the next day. She was seemingly also already planning her "Big Open House Sale" (see wiki page 7), which she mentioned on her blog on August 5th, less than a week later.
All three versions of the overdose story mention Jack taking a lot of paracetamol. Without immediate treatment, she would have suffered liver failure within a couple of days. She has never mentioned going to hospital afterwards, and her blog posts over the next couple of weeks indicate she was carrying on with life as normal.
February 2013: Jack attempted suicide via a different method.
On February 12th, 2013 she posted on her blog that she'd had to withdraw her son from nursery school eleven days previously because she could no longer afford the fees. On February 25th she announced she had a new job as a trainee reporter at her local newspaper. This was the first time she gave the "almost had a breakdown in the food bank but kind staff made her some tea" story. Saying that she went to the food bank and got upset because she had just that day had to withdraw her son from nursery; but then while still in the food bank, she got the call offering her a job. Jack therefore withdrew her son, went to the food bank, and got the job on February 1st 2013.
During the rest of the month, she posted lots of recipes on her blog, using a variety of ingredients; so it seems strange that she was apparently using a food bank. She also posted about local politics, photography, and her usual content. She didn't mention the suicide attempt until August 2013 when the website Left Futures published an opinion piece about her that Jack didn't like - expressing the view that she presented a "cosy", "middle class" image of poverty. She responded with a blog post, in which she described her suicide attempt in detail, and gave the food bank story again. This time, she went to the food bank the day after she tried to take her life. So did it happen in July 2012 or February 2013? She said her suicide attempt was in February "before the job or the book deal", even though she was seemingly offered the job on February 1st.
Also in August 2013, she recorded a promotional video for the Guardian of her preparing food. Her wrists are shown close up, and she clearly doesn't have scars, nor is any impairment in her mobility obvious - contrary to what she said in the blog post that her suicide attempt in February had left her with badly damaged wrists. In the video, she gives yet another conflicting account of what she did the day after writing "Hunger Hurts" - this time saying she scraped together pennies to buy food from the supermarket value range.
April 2013: Jack explicitly stated on her blog that she had made two suicide attempts when she was poor - not three or more (if we don't count November 2011 when she wasn't yet poor.)
November 2015: Jack told the Times that she had suffered a mental breakdown and attempted suicide in February that year. As it was her second recent suicide attempt, she had been forced to seek professional help so that she didn't risk her son being taken into care. Social services try to keep families together and would have first tried to place him with his father or grandparents - even when Jack was poor and unknown, much less when she had a platform in the national media.
October 2017: Jack referenced being repeatedly suicidal because of online trolling, including from fans of Katie Hopkins. (Warning: link contains uncensored racial slurs and discusses sexual assault, self-harm, and suicide.)
February 2018: In her essay "My Ready Meal Is None of Your Fucking Business", Jack wrote: "I tried to kill myself four times that I remember under austerity policies." So was it twice, three times (again not counting November 2011), four times, or more?
December 2019: Jack said she "attempted suicide several times" in 2013 - a year when she was in full time employment from February onwards, was given plenty of writing and media work, and had a financially stable partner. See wiki page 7.
Jack has twice claimed her pets saved her from suicide after a breakup: her cat when her relationship with Louisa ended, and her dog with "OH." She also frequently alludes to being suicidal in tweets, and complains she is being trolled or harassed - saying things like, "I don't know how I'm still alive after this." Often when her grift has been questioned or she is being challenged over something she said/did. She posts about this on her public Twitter which she says her son and his friends read! How might you feel to see your mother tell the world that her dog or cat (not you) was her only reason to live? On another occasion she brought up a friend's recent suicide in a very casual, insensitive manner in an attempt to win an argument on Twitter.
Jack had an eating disorder when she was younger and she varies on when and why this started:
In her teens because she struggled with the strict rules and structure of school - The Guardian, May 2016. She said here that she walked miles to school in an effort to become thin, but later stated that she did it so she could spend the bus fare on sweets and Pokemon cards.
At age nine, in response to sexual assault (warning for discussion of CSA) - Twitter, March 2021
At age 12, when she "crashed" after starting grammar school - The Guardian, January 2023
She says her eating disorder lasted all through her teens and that she became "gaunt", "skeletal", and so thin her parents were afraid she would die. Nevertheless, she hasn't mentioned them trying to get help or treatment for her. She has shared photos of herself as a teenager in which she was clearly a healthy size. She also liked food at this age and ate large portions of pasta and coronation chicken with chips in her teens.
When someone on Twitter questioned Jack's stories about her eating disorder, she attempted to win the argument by sharing an old photo of her "stupidly wasted legs" - actually showing her at a normal, healthy size, and standing next to someone using a wheelchair. We wonder what he thought about her "wasted legs" comment?
Warning: links and discussion in this section involve CSA and sexual assault.
Jack has repeatedly said that she has PTSD as a result of poverty and that this leaves her unable to answer the door or open letters, as she is afraid of bailiffs and debt collectors. At the same time, she has often told stories of being presented with surprise gifts or visitors at the door.
Jack says she was abducted as a child by a woman who tried to put her in a car; and was "selectively mute" for days afterwards. Her mother has described someone leading Jack out of a park, but didn't mention a car or actual abduction. In other retellings of the story Jack's mother mentioned that the would-be "kidnapper" was known locally as someone who was unwell, this person let go of Jack when shouted at, and the park was full at the time. No one's doubting this did happen and that it was upsetting for Jack and her mother - but it doesn't seem to have been quite the way Jack describes it.
Jack has given multiple accounts of being sexually abused/assaulted, including as a child. She says she was repeatedly abused by an older child, and tried to tell an adult, but they dismissed her as a liar. In now-deleted Tweets she suggested the abuser was one of her parents' foster children. Jack being abused, especially by a foster sibling, would raise serious concerns over safeguarding and the suitability of her parents to be foster carers. It's likely they would no longer have been approved to foster, or at least would have been investigated - even if the offender were someone outside the home.
She has also spoken about how she was abused by a teacher at the age of nine, and he stalked her throughout her teens and into adulthood. (Warning - link discusses sexual assault, self-harm, and eating disorders.) Again, this would have had serious implications for her parents as foster carers. She repeatedly reported him to police, but they did nothing, and as late as 2020 he approached her in public when she was with her son. She got into debt to pay him after he demanded money to leave her alone. It's strange that someone would demand blackmail money be left on a car windscreen where anyone could steal it! If, as Jack says, this man was still stalking her when her son was born, it's shocking that she gave out her address to strangers on the internet when SB was a baby and named her apartment building on her public blog (see wiki page 5.)
Here's a partial list as described by Jack (warning for triggering content) of various unfortunate events that have happened in her life. It's a little jarring that she ranks "two concussions" up there with everything else!
Other health issues
Jack claims to have rheumatoid arthritis that is so bad (especially "right foot, hand, knee and hip") it leaves her regularly requiring a walking stick. On International Women's Day 2020 she posted a picture of herself delivering a complete speech standing on tiptoes, stating she always delivers speeches this way and has done for years. Apparently as she can stand like this for 12 minutes (and therefore knows when to start finishing up), due to her previous ballet training.
In 2015, Jack claimed she had recently had three suspected minor heart attacks in a short period of time, and had now signed up to run a marathon. This is obviously implausible and the cookery writer we call TD (Trifle Defender) called out Jack in comments.
In her Mumsnet Q&A (again can be found through Google), Jack spoke about her trans/non-binary identity. Gender critical posters accused her of perpetuating the idea that anyone who doesn't conform to strict gender roles must be trans. She then heavily hinted she was actually intersex, saying she was "female enough to carry a child, male enough to have intimate physical abnormalities and an alarmingly high amount of testosterone." She has never mentioned this again before or since.
In a Facebook post on the group 'Mrs Gloss and the Goss', which Jack was a member of for some years, she claimed to have been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in October 2016. It seems 2016 was very unfortunate for Jack, with all of these diagnoses apparently taking place in the same year...how coincidental!
Migraines with convulsions / flailing arms and legs
Seizures
Rejection sensitivity disorder
OCD
50p sized hole in lip
Laryngitis
Shoulder calcification
Hyper-independence
Eating disorder (13 years in recovery)
Hives caused by dogs
Needs shoulder replacement
(Mostly eats with a spoon these days)
Intersex
Tall tales
Train chaos
Jack can never seem to get on a train without incident. Here are just a few of her stories about this:
Her "chunky Mediterranean arse" saved her when she fell under a train. If your entire lower body were under a train like Jack says, you probably wouldn't stand a chance! No, we don't know what really happened, although a Tattler hazarded a guess.
A woman muttered "white trash shouldn't breed!" at her as she was getting off a train. Jack responded "bitch please, this bag is Cath Kidston!" The expression "white trash" is rarely used in the UK, especially not aimed at a Guardian columnist with a Cath Kidston bag.
She dropped her iPhone and lost the Tile (a Bluetooth-based tracker, similar to an Air Tag) while on a train. A couple of weeks later she was on a train again, spotted a Tile on the floor and discovered it was hers!
She ranted on Twitter about how she was trapped in a train carriage alone after the train stopped in a tunnel and the lights switched off. Saying this had happened to her before and it was lucky she didn't "boot a fucking door in." She then argued with the train company's staff when they replied asking her not to swear.
Having to get off a train to make important phone calls and sit on a log in a field so she could get a signal - sharing an obviously staged photo. This was blatantly "inspired" by two different gags in The Thick Of It (Nicola getting off a train to make calls / Mannion having to stand on a children's slide to use his phone)
Fantasies of violence/assault
One of Jack's favourite stories to tell is how she has supposedly threatened or physically assaulted someone; always without repercussions. She doesn't sound tough or funny, she sounds completely deranged! Examples:
She carried a knife after receiving death threats. As well as being highly dangerous, it is illegal to carry a knife in the UK - so an interview in the national press wouldn't be the best place to admit to it.
Her father fired a cannon in a residential street for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. When people pointed out this was probably illegal, she insisted he'd got permission to do it.
She and a friend went out to the beach to see the sunrise, but ended up at the MOD firing range at Shoeburyness and she was almost shot. Jack has lived locally for most of her life so would know where the shooting range was. At the time, her father had recently posted on Facebook warning visitors about it - Jack appears to have made this story up (or actually gone down there!) just to provoke him.
A mortgage advisor offered to "overwrite (her) awful credit score" in exchange for touching her feet. It says a lot that Jack would think this a funny anecdote rather than a worrying sign of a predator!
Being recognised by a shop cashier who asked if her name was Monroe like "the famous author."
She contacted a hotel ahead of time to ask that they remove alcohol from the minibar because she was a recovering alcoholic. Then they filled it with water, Yakult, smoothies, juice, and kombucha for her. A hotel wouldn't put an open carafe of water inside the door of a fridge (it would spill when the fridge is opened) - they provide an empty carafe for guests to decant bottled water into. You also wouldn't expect a hotel to offer kombucha or Yakult, because they could be held legally liable for any health and safety risks of fermented drinks. By all appearances Jack staged this photo herself; the alcohol from the minibar was probably in the main part of the fridge. Why would you go to this kind of trouble to support a made-up story?
Claiming that she was flirting with a TV star, and asking strangers on a Facebook group for advice about when to sleep with him. She dropped hints that it was Russell Brand - who, at the time, had just had a baby with his partner and they were about to get married.
Insisting she posed in a bath full of coppers for the Guardian photo shoot in January 2023. One of the makeup artists on the shoot posted a BTS video, clearly showing it was just a few coppers on a blanket.
Having to buy phones and laptops for a team of staff when she had, at most, one admin assistant
Other lies about her past/background/family
See wiki page 7 for her flipflopping accounts of whether or not she grew up in poverty and why her family didn't help her when she was poor in 2011-12.
1. Her explanations as to why she left school:
She chose to leave, implying it was because of bullying (July 2013)
She "dropped out" of education due to her poor grades (February 2014).
Her school essentially forced her out of education by withdrawing her from any subject where she was not predicted an A, in order to protect the school's place in the league tables (July 2020)
She was expelled from school "days before the end of the GCSE term" for stealing a scalpel. Her parents didn't find out (September 2023.) Once GCSE students have sat their exams they normally don't have to return to school - so if Jack had finished her exams and wasn't staying for sixth form, why would the school need to expel her? Expulsion in state schools involves a formal process and wouldn't happen without parents/guardians being informed.
2. Other stories about school:
Her primary school was "permanently in Special Measures" (meaning it had been placed under an improvement plan to prevent its being closed down.) First of all, a school can't be in Special Measures forever and will eventually be closed if it doesn't improve. Second, OFSTED reports began in 1993. The earliest publicly available report shows that the school was rated Good in 2003, and again before that in 1998, when Jack was still there.
She "came 86th out of 4000ish" students who took the 11+ the same year she did. 4000ish where (in the county, region, etc?) You aren't given a "ranking" like this when you sit the 11+.
Her Head of Year told her she was "only good for making burgers" (or in another version "flipping burgers.") When Jack published her first cookbook, she sent this person a copy with the page folded down on a burger recipe. She's told this story at least three times: on Twitter, in the Times, and in the acknowledgements section of Thrifty Kitchen. It's suspiciously similar to other stories she's given about her getting revenge on people who put her down, such as her former boss saying Jack would never amount to anything.
At age 16 again (BBC Radio's The Food Programme, April 2022). Now saying she had lived with two housemates. Even in a house share, it is not cheap to rent in Southend, especially for a 16-year-old on minimum wage.
She had lived in rented accommodation for 17 years (Twitter, May 2022) when she was 34 - indicating she started renting by herself at 17.
She had been renting for 18 years (blog post, July 2022) i.e. since she was 16
4. In an essay about giving up her smartphone, Jack said she got her first phone when she was 16 and that she was not allowed one before that. In the same post she describes having to hide the phone under her pillow; why would she need to do this if her parents let her have it and/or she was living independently?
5. Jack says her son's privacy is paramount, and this is why she no longer shares photos of him or features him in press interviews. But she posts so much personal information that someone would be able to find him offline. She also continues to tweet about things he probably doesn't want the world to know, such as health issues he is having.
6. Jack's father used to be in the Army and she has repeatedly said, both in interviews and on social media, that he is a former paratrooper. He is not, and he even personally edited her Wikipedia article to remove the statement that he was a paratrooper.
7. Jack says she was baptised as a teenager after having been a "long-standing" Girls Brigade leader (a Christian organisation similar to Girl Guides), worship leader at her church, and Sunday school teacher. Girls Brigade requires leaders to be at least 18 years of age. Most churches require anyone leading worship or teaching Sunday school to be baptised already, and expect Sunday school teachers to be at least 18 for safeguarding reasons. Jack could have been a Girls Brigade leader from the age of 18 and then baptised at 19, but she wouldn't have been "long-standing." She has also claimed that she was kicked out of her church at the age of 15 because she was gay.
9. On the "Unfiltered" podcast in February 2018, Jack made a number of suspicious claims about poverty, both as a child and adult:
Her blog was initially anonymous because she was afraid of her son being taken into care if authorities knew she was poor. See wiki page 7 for examples of blog entries from the time period - she repeatedly gave her name as Jack Monroe, named her father (who is well known locally), and named the building she lived in.
When she was growing up, her father was so poor he had to hitchhike to work, but he also drove his children to school in his white Ford Transit van. If he had a van and her mother had a Land Rover, why was he hitchhiking? Owning a white van, especially a Ford Transit, is a stereotype of a tradesman - did Jack throw that in there to make her working class background seem more "authentic?" The Ford Transit was first mentioned back in May 2016. She also mentioned (both times) that the van was Fire Service issue; the Fire Service doesn't normally give out company cars to regular staff.
Her mother became disabled when Jack was four, and was on "pittance benefits" because Disability Living Allowance, the main benefit given to disabled people who cannot work, didn't exist yet. Jack was four in 1992, which is the same year DLA was introduced.
Her parents taught her to read before she started school because they couldn't afford hobbies or activities for their children. Despite this, Jack has said that she had martial arts and ballet lessons as a child and that she continued ballet until she was 17. In an interview about his experience as a foster carer, her father said that he began fostering when Jack was 3-4 years of age, and spent a lot of money renovating the house and buying a bigger car to accommodate the foster children. That might explain why they didn't have much left over when she was starting school!
Her primary school was in special measures and she "fit in marvellously" because the school was full of children from the local council estate. If Jack knew as a child that she belonged with the poor children from the estate, why has she also said - again see wiki page 7 - that she did not realise her family was poor until she went to grammar school? See above regarding the school being in special measures.
At grammar school she was "the poor kid" while her classmates all had designer clothes, holidays abroad, and mothers who drove Mercedes. Grammar schools are academically selective state schools. Like most grammar schools, Jack's old school attracts wealthy families who don't want to pay for private education; but alo has a mix of normal middle class and working class kids. Jack may be deliberately playing up to stereotypes of poor scholarship students at fee-paying schools, which she was not.
She and her brother often walked the six and a half miles home from secondary school because they didn't want to ask their impoverished parents for the bus fare. Under current laws, which came into force in 1996 (before Jack started secondary school), schools must provide free travel for any student aged eight or over who lives more than three miles away.
2. Jack had a pop at Jamie Oliver for using capers as apparently they're too specialist, then the following week published a column in the Metro featuring a recipe that included capers. The following week she posted a recipe on her blog that used lime pickle.
3. Driving/owning a car:
July 2012: Jack wrote that she had chosen not to drive. She said she had taken driving lessons and briefly owned a car before she was poor, but got "bored" so she sold the car and never took her test.
October 2012: Jack mentioned in a blog post that she was looking for a new home and wanted/needed parking.
December 2012: Jack told the Mirror she had to sell her car when she became poor.
November 2013: Jack again said that she sold her car when she was poor, indicating this was before August 2012 (when she sold most of her possessions) - she held the sale at home since she had no car and couldn't go to a car boot sale.
November 2019: Jack said in an interview that she has never been able to drive because her autism causes difficulties with spatial awareness.
July 2022: Jack stated in Hunger Hurts 2 that she was desperately looking for a job and had recently applied for work as a train driver. This would be difficult to say the least if she cannot even drive a car!
4. Jack claimed that a friend had pawned her engagement rings (all from relationships that broke up before the marriage.) In England and Wales you cannot legally pawn something on someone else's behalf, and ID checks are required - since it's effectively a loan. It would also be a waste to pawn rings you don't want back, when you would get more money for selling them. Some pawnbrokers offer "cash for jewellery" services, so she may have meant that. But why double down on saying they were pawned?
6. Jack holds two honourary doctorates, one from the University of Essex and one from Coventry University. According to her, the Essex degree is for research into poverty in the UK and Tanzania (poorly written blog posts are not doctorate research!) But the university's announcement of the award doesn't mention research
