The Basics
Jade Billington is a lifestyle influencer who gained a large following from her popular Disney vlogs. She started making videos in 2013 under the name ‘Leading Lady Beauty’, although a lot of these older videos have since been deleted.
Age:
There are multiple incorrect sources online stating that Jade is 29 and was born in 1992. This is incorrect, her actual age is 32 and she was born in 1990. Jade confirmed on Twitter in 2018 that she was 28.
Jobs:
Jade works in telecommunications and has worked for the same company since she left college. She used to work full-time as a manager, but in 2019, she made the decision to go part-time and step down from a management role in order to focus on YouTube. Ironically, she now posts less than when she was working full time. Since her divorce, it's believed she's returned to full-time hours.
Background in Performing Arts:
Jade has a background in musical theatre. Her family paid out of pocket to send her to a private Performing Arts college (the fees would have been around 30k). This is where she met her future ex-husband Matt - who had actually gotten in on a scholarship. Despite paying all of this money, Jade never did anything with Performing Arts after leaving college. Although she does have an old StarNow page https://www.starnow.co.uk/jadebillington/
Relationship/Divorce
Matthew Billington-Eden is Jade's ex-husband, who featured in the majority of her videos and has been on her channel since the beginning. He works as a general manager in the fitness industry. He had Jade's name tattooed across his chest - awkward!
Began dating: June 24th 2009
Engaged: September 2016
Married: April 24th 2017
Separation: Sometime in January 2021
Why did Jade and Matt break up?
No one knows. In her statement about the split, Jade said that Matt turned to her out of the blue and ended things. It has been speculated that lockdown played a part, as they were both at home together throughout the entirety of lockdown and they had never spent that much time together before.
Were they any warning signs of a break up?
Considering just 8 months before the split they were bragging about being the happiest they'd ever been, whilst also in the process of renovating their house, it's safe to say the split came as a surprise. However, everything is clearer in hindsight.
In this video, posted two weeks before the split, Matt's behaviour seems off. 8 minutes in, they are asked a question about whether they'd go to Disney without each other. Matt's reaction is extremely blunt and he purposely doesn't respond to Jade when she leans into him. There's also a noticeable sadness in his eyes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6heqhtePdiU&t
People have also picked up on the many occasions where Jade puts Matt down, ignores him or speaks over him.
Despite claiming they never argue and have the 'perfect' relationship, in this video, Jade shares a 'bicker tiff' she and Matt had. Jade and her friend (The Brighton Girl) used to constantly text each other about all the annoying things their partners did. Matt had spent all day painting the downstairs hallway, but despite this, Jade moaned about him to her friend, complaining his sliders were left out and his shower loofah was in the wrong place. Matt somehow found out and got pretty upset, but Jade just admits to laughing straight in his face.
This seems like an eye-opener for their real relationship dynamic. A lot of fans have been slating Matt for just 'abandoning her' and 'not giving her a second chance', but glimpses like this prove that his feelings were being invalidated, so what if he already tried?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn8mihKUJh8&t
This video (11.40 onwards) it's a perfect example of how Jade cuts Matt off when he's speaking. This is something she's done on multiple occasions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uAo76vOHA8
In general, she put him down a lot and made jokes at his expense, but couldn't take it if he tried to make fun of her. This is another speculated reason for the divorce...Matt had enough. She also seemed very annoyed that he'd had a girlfriend before dating her and would often bring this up.
Jade after the split
In March 2021, Jade made a brief return to social media, 2 months after the split. She posted a handful of vlogs, some tiktoks and a few Instagram posts. Through this content, we learned that she's still living in the house she owned with Matt and that she's got both of their pets - Pig and Bunny.
Jade's return to social media didn't last long and she vanished again at the end of April, claiming she came back too soon. This is also around the time she was getting dragged for some old offensive tweets (more details below) so this could also have played a part.
In May 2022, Jade's younger sister Charlotte got married. A couple of weeks after the wedding, Jade removed her own wedding video from her YouTube channel.
In July/August 2022, Jade was finally removed from her management's website roster, suggesting she will not be returning to influencing.
Jade has a private Instagram '@jadelbillington' which she is very active on. She's also active on depop from time to time (please will someone buy those fugly dumbo shorts off her, the gal is desperate).
Matt after the split
After the split, Matt went pretty off the grid - although was occasionally seen on his work's Instagram. In July 2022, he announced his return to social media!! He said he wouldn't be answering any questions about the past but was excited to be back.
Since splitting with Jade, we've seen a more adventurous side to Matt. He's grown out his beard, he's drinking beer and he's spending more time with his family. He's recently been promoted and is now working in London as a general manager in the fitness industry.
Matt's new girlfriend - his work colleague
In January 2022, a tattler shared some very juicy gossip. Their partner works at Nandos in Chichester and Matt came in to pick up an order under the name Victoria.
Victoria Green is Matt's coworker (technically ex-coworkers since Matt's promotion). They were working together while Matt was married to Jade. He followed her on Instagram and was seen liking a few of her pictures. He also left this comment on her graduation picture
It was speculated that Vicky was reading tattle, because when users started to speculate her age, she updated her Instagram bio to include it. She also switched her account from public to private after getting mentioned.
When Matt made his return to social media in July, he was on holiday and posted some pictures. Then later that day, guess who posts pictures of the same extremely unique swimming pool...Vicky! Her account was on private, but a few tattlers were still following her.
Matt's pic:
Vicky's pic:
People instantly began to speculate and Vicky then posted this quote to her story, suggesting she is reading here:
Vicky is 23 and Matt's 33, so there's a bit of an age gap.
There's a lot of speculation whether Matt cheated on Jade with Vicky. Walking out on your marriage and then ending up with your coworker doesn't look great, but no one knows what went down. Matt definitely isn't going to come out and say anything, so it will be one of those questions that will always go unanswered.
Matt's tattoo cover-up
After the split, the main question on our minds was 'wtf is Matt going to do about the big Jade tattoo on his chest?!'. Fear not, we got the answer to our question!
It was noted that Matt was following a tattoo parlour on Instagram '@theinksmiths_chichester'. An eagle-eyed tattler spotted Matt's cover up on their page. You can very clearly see Jade's name poking through (we aren't sure if he's booked in for multiple sessions or if they've done a shit job).
In the corner of the tattoo, you can make out the initials 'VF'. Vicky's name is Victoria Francais Green, so it's highly speculated he hasn't learnt his lesson and has put this there for her.
How did Tattle find out about the split before it was announced?
Just like most influencer breakups, it was figured out on Tattle a while before the announcement was made. Jade and Matt abruptly vanished from social media around the 20th of January. Jade has a reputation for hardly uploading and making excuses, so at first, there was a lot of speculation on Tattle about whether she was being lazy again.
This caused a poster by the name of Ooohlalala to come and say the following:
It seemed that their intention was to guilt-trip everyone, but they actually did far more damage than intended by planting the idea of a split, which no one had considered until this point. They also liked (and later unliked when it got pointed out) a comment which mentioned J&M potentially splitting.
For some background, Ooohlala had an existing Tattle account, where they frequently posted in the ‘Styled By Suzie’ thread - this gave their account some merit and made it seem less likely to be a troll. After these original messages, Ooohlala stayed silent but kept a constant eye on the thread.
In the meantime, the investigation began. It was noted that Jade had recently started following a breakup therapist on Instagram and had unfollowed Matt’s brother and his wife. Over the next few weeks, other noticeable events included:
- Matt unfollowing one of Jade's brothers and her sister
- Matt unfollowing all the main Disney World Florida and Universal accounts
- Matt unfollowing the majority of the Jade and Matt fan accounts he was following
- Jade turning off the comments on her most recent Instagram post after the topic of a split kept getting brought up
- Jade blocking fans who messaged her asking if she was okay
- Matt creating a Spotify playlist called the sad bastard playlist
- Despite ignoring all other socials, Matt was still very active on Linkedin, liking random posts and memes (suggesting he was okay)
Matt was also constantly reading Tattle. How did we know? Well, when Matt's Spotify got brought up here, he changed his settings and renamed the account. When Matt's Linkedin activity was mentioned, he changed his settings so we could no longer see what he was liking. When we shared a comment that
Brogan Tate had written about Jade and her silence (more details further below), Matt unfollowed her.
On the 18th of February, Jade unfollowed 44 accounts in one big hit. This included everyone personal to her. Her siblings, her bridesmaid, her friends and people who go to her church. She also unfollowed the breakup coach. Later that evening, Jade finally made a statement, asking to be left alone, because people were contacting her family and work. It’s speculated she unfollowed all the accounts as people were contacting her family.
Matt didn't engage with this statement or even share it to his story. Considering he was usually so protective of Jade, this was another red flag. Especially because the entire statement was from Jade's perspective with no mention of 'we'. Matt also didn't unfollow any of the accounts that Jade had, suggesting they weren't on the same page.
On March 8th, Jade finally revealed that they'd broken up.
Who is Ooohlalala and did they really know Jade and Matt?
If this was an episode of Scooby-Doo, Shaggy would be pulling off the mask to reveal...Charlotte Rooke - Jade's sister!
How did we figure this out? As mentioned previously, Ooohlalala was an active Tattle user who'd been posting on the Styled by Susie threads. A quick look through her posting history revealed a post where she shared her name...Charlotte. This was from months before the split drama, so not a troll trying to set her up.
Oohlala returned, admitted their name was Charlotte but denied being the sister and then tried to perform some damage control. They abandoned the account the day their name was mentioned. They also mentioned having their own fashion business, which Jade's sister also has, strengthening the proof even further.
This isn't the only involvement Jade's sister had. When Jade made her original statement about 'stop messaging my work', she seemed to pass her Instagram over to Charlotte. Charlotte was looking at Jade's DMs and then using her own account to send people hate. She brings up Tattle in this message as well.
Scandals and drama
The offensive Tweets
A series of offensive Tweets from 2017 were discovered, between Jade and her blogger bestie the Brighton Girl. They find the f slur hilarious and it seems to be an inside joke. Although it appears that they're talking about the meat, they know the word is offensive and it seems like they're using the meat as an excuse to say it, which is why it's so funny to them. Jade was 27 at the time, so there's really no excuse
The Brighton Girl seems to push it more than Jade, but it's clearly a joke they share together and at no point has Jade told her to stop. There are more comments along the same line on Twitter and Instagram, but here are just a couple more
The child BFF
We discovered that Jade has properly befriended one of her underage fans, Amy. The friendship started when Amy was 13 and Jade was 27. Amy is now 18. It's an incredibly weird and inappropriate friendship considering the age gap, the power dynamic and the way they communicate. It would've kicked off if Jade was a man.
We've learnt from Twitter that:
- They Facetime
- Jade has given this girl her number and they text and call each other
- Jade has bought her Birthday presents
- Jade offered to take her to prom
- Jade has told her she's 'not just a subscriber'
- Jade is always saying how much she loves her, how much she misses her etc etc, often being the one to initiate this
- They always talk about wanting to meet
- Amy sent Jade a load of presents
tat, which can be seen in Jade's first-ever PO unboxing video
- Jade has mentioned her in videos before - everyone presumed she was talking about a grown adult
- Amy has a nickname for Jade's mum
- Jade tells Amy secrets before other fans
- They jokingly insult each other - suggesting they're close
- Jade would Tweet about how great Amy is off her own back, not in reply to her or anything
I've put together an Imgur gallery if you want to look at all the tweets. I think there's more I've missed, but this is the gist of it https://imgur.com/a/LWpNJTp#kkZdYvJ
The Aftermath of the Tweets
When Jade and the Brighton Girl found out that the tweets had resurfaced, they deleted them asap, right around the time of Jade's birthday (April 28th). We believe they found out as someone who was reading here, but later posted, DMd the Brighton Girl, to which the Brighton Girl responded.
After going on a deleting spree on her actual birthday, the next day, Jade posted a story promising new vlog footage, but then totally disappeared. There was no message, no warning...nothing. Just like before, despite going silent, she was still following new accounts on both Instagram and TikTok, making Pinterest boards, using Depop and liking photos. As you can imagine, after a few days/weeks of silence, the messages from concerned fans began pouring into her comments. Despite still being active, Jade ignored them all.
Once the Tweets were brought to Jade’s attention, Jade or someone close kept reading here. For example, it was noted that Jade was still using her Pinterest account to make boards...a day later, Jade privates all of her boards. It’s noted that Jade is still liking Instagram photos...Jade stops liking photos. A tweet mentioning Mr Brains is screenshotted here...a few hours later, it's been deleted.
Jade turned off all her Instagram comments after Tattle got mentioned in one of them. Only people that Jade follows can leave comments on her posts. Naturally, this caused the comments to move into her most recent YouTube video, so Jade turned that off too.
She also deleted quite a few of the Tweets relating to Amy. Amy is also aware because she privated her Twitter, removed her profile picture and deleted her Twitter bio that revealed her age. So now it seems that the inappropriate friendship between an adult and a minor is now a
private inappropriate friendship between an adult and a minor
Auschwitz
In 2019, Jade and Matt went on a trip to Poland. It turns out, Jade took some rather posey selfies at the Concentration Camp, Auschwitz. It seems like Jade got a lot of backlash for posting these pictures, as she took them down pretty soon after they went up - so much so, most of us had no idea she’d posted them in the first place. Thanks to the amazing tattler who screenshotted these at the time! It just seems very inappropriate.
Tattle
Jade’s first-ever Tattle thread was created in June 2019. In November 2019, Jade discovered the thread and went on a huge rant about the supposed trolls here calling her fat. This was a total lie to gain more sympathy. Jade has made other digs at the 'haters', including shaming one poster because she has three children but uses Tattle ?? And on an Instagram live stream in 2020, Jade said that people who use gossip sites must have mental health issues, so you need to feel sorry for them. This is extremely stigmatising.
Photoshopping and editing photos
Following on from the last section, Jade claimed that people called her fat on tattle which is completely inaccurate.
Look on thread 1 page 4 for what was actually said. People simply stated that it seemed there
may have been some editing and/or photoshopping because her Instagram photos don't reflect reality. These two VERY different photos taken on the same Disney trip.
After Jade found tattle she made this post in which she evidently lies about what was said here. This is irrefutable evidence as tattle threads and posts are locked and cannot be edited. Let's dissect this:
- 15 pages - First lie, her thread was at 12 pages when she made this post on Instagram.
- No one picked her body apart whatsoever. Another lie as this can be checked
- No one called her fat. In fact, people specifically said that she doesn't look fat or bad at all.
- No one zoomed in on any part of her body. More fabrication
- She topped her post off with jade's notorious threat to leave social media which is a cry for sympathy from her followers
'Common'
Jade has an obsession with class and not appearing 'common'. In a video from 2017, where Jade talks about her traumatic experience wedding dress shopping, she corrects her pronunciation at the beginning of the video and says 'oh gosh, that sounds really common!'. She has since (very recently) edited over this clip with instrumental music, so you can't hear her say it, which makes the entire video seem really strange. You can lipread this at 0.26 seconds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZnM7KA6Dyc
In a now-deleted Q&A where Jade split the tea on other YouTubers, she shared a storytime about a YouTuber who looked at her and apparently said 'you look like you come from nothing and like you have no money'. She didn't name this creator, so it could be made up clickbait, but she treated the remark like it was the biggest insult possible.
It seems like her mum has a similar attitude to Jade. Jade has made comments before and done things that her 'mother wouldn't like', such as not ironing her bedding.
Click baiting fertility issues
When Youtubers post videos, they use tags to help the video gain attention. So if someone searches a word they tag, their video is more likely to come up. In their relationship q&a where Matt goes on a rant about ‘stop asking us if we’re having fertility issues’, Jade has tagged fertility issues for views
she also tagged break up, which shows she was trying to click bait
Bad attitude towards food
Jade went on a diet around 2016/17 and lost a lot of weight. For anyone who's curious, here's a before and after:
Ever since, she has used very unhelpful and triggering language around food. She:
- Refers to anything that isn't a vegetable as 'naughty' including kiwi's
- Claims she doesn't snack (although she has contradicted herself on this many times) and if she does snack, it will be a plate of cooked vegetables at 11pm because she's sooo quirky and healthy
- She loved pointing out how big Matt's portions were and how teeny tiny hers were
- She constantly called Matt greedy
- She uses a lot of shaming language around fast food
- A couple of months ago, she purposely pushed her stomach out for a pictured and claimed this was her bloated, but it was literally just her pushing her stomach out
Copying everyone
It's been noticed that Jade doesn't have an original personality
at all. She seems to base herself off different influencers. The most recent being Jess Conte and Kristin Johns.
Jess’s bedroom VS Jade’s bedroom (even the messaging above the bed is the same)
Jess’s dog VS Jade’s
Kristin’s posing VS Jade’s
Jess’s thumbnails VS Jade’s
The new mirror Jade bought for £600 (and is sending back for the bigger one) is the same as Kristin’s
In all of the above examples, Jade did these things second. Jade also has pictures of Jess’s bedroom, dog and husband saved on her Pinterest. As mentioned with the tags above, Jade tags Jess and Kristin's names in multiple videos
Another example of her copying behavior is this TikTok she totally ripped off by another creator that she follows.
Here's Jade's: Tiktok unsafe link https://tattle.life/threads/19920/
And the one she copied: Tiktok unsafe link https://tattle.life/threads/19920/
Rude behaviour to fans
In 2018, Emilie went on holiday to Florida and bumped into Jade and Matt. She had a very negative experience with Jade and she shared her experience in the tiktoks below...
Part one - https://tattle.life/data/video/608/608457-5dcce7e90a5df728fad19be177653b75.mp4
Part two - https://tattle.life/data/video/608/608458-86474b0271099e1bc82fb69616835940.mp4
Part three - https://tattle.life/data/video/608/608461-f8f7d0d75200b1d8e5ae038616f29373.mp4
Essentially, Jade was really rude and standoffish with her, whilst Matt was really nice. Afterwards, she could see Matt saying something to Jade. Later that evening, Jade posted an insta story claiming she was sick and sorry to anyone she met if she seemed off. The next day, Emilie bumped into them again at Typhoon Lagoon. Matt actually went out of his way to say hi as he recognised them, but Jade ignored them once again.
Another fan with a similar experience also posted on here (thread 7, page 30, post #590) about meeting Jade and Matt:
"We also met Jade and Matt in 2019 outside flight of passage - they were sat on a rock not doing anything so we went over as said ‘sorry to bother you but we love your videos and it’s so nice to meet you!’ Matt stood and greeted us and asked our names and what we were up to that day but Jade sat the entire time and made me feel like I was in the wrong for going over to say hi, when she always says ‘if you see us in the parks please come say hi’! I felt so embarrassed and it almost ruined that day for me. I’m almost glad to see that someone else has had this experience and it wasn’t just me!"
Ads
Jade has gained a reputation for posting a ridiculous amount of ads, but hardly any content. If Jade is being particularly active over on her Insta stories, it means an ad is coming. She only promotes products she loves apparently, which is why a Princess Polly jacket she was
soooo obsessed with in a sponsored haul ended up on her Depop unworn. She also does a lot of random ads and then never talks about them again...noticeable mentions include cheese, Now TV and bikes from Halfords.
Disney Vlogs
Jade has gained a lot of her following from her Disney vlogs. There are three series in total from 2017, 2018 and 2019. In their 17/18 trips, J&M claim to be much bigger fans of Universal than Disney. But in 2019 when they got a free trip from Attraction Tickets Direct, they suddenly became team Disney.
They also claimed to be huge Florida fans and have been over 10 times, but they only visited Animal Kingdom and Typhoon Lagoon for the first time in 2017, which is strange.
Friends and family
Here's a guide to her nearest and dearest (any pictures are from either Jade or Matt's instas or screenshots from vlogs)
Charlotte - Jade's younger sister
Sam - Jade's younger brother
JS - Jade's younger brother
Pauline - Jade's mum
Andrew - Jade's dad
Ashley - this is a sibling from her Dad's side
Jake - Matt's brother
Lauren - Matt's brother's wife
Brogan Tate -
Jade and Brogan became 'friends' as they're both in the Disney community. Jade stayed at Brogan’s house once and they’ve attended a couple of events together, but they never really hang out. When Jade first went silent in January, a fan messaged Brogan to see if she had any news on Jade. Brogan replied via DMs and the fan shared the message in Jade's comments (they later deleted it out of fear of being blocked).
Brogan probably thought she was helping but basically exposed Jade for still lurking on Instagram and ignoring concerned fans. Matt was reading tattle and after this got shared here, he unfollowed Brogan. Jade unfollowed Brogan's house account, although she didn't unfollow her main account.
When Jade finally announced her breakup, Brogan got a lot of backlash for making it known she already knew (something she has a habbit of doing). She also shared Jade's breakup post to her own Instagram story which was a bit weird and like she was basking off her friend's bad news for attention
Jade has a private Instagram account (followed by Matt so it's legit). Brogan was following this private account until the beginning of June, but has since unfollowed or been removed. It seems more likely that Jade has removed Brogan as a follower, rather than Brogan unfollowing, since Brogan loves to flex about her inside knowledge. They're both still following each other on mains, but they definitely aren't as friendly as they make out.
Sophie and Dave -
Jade and Matt are friends with another Disney couple...Sophie and Dave. Dave seemed to have a good friendship with Matt and neither Sophie nor Dave have unfollowed Matt after the split (unlike a lot of Jade's other friends).
JazzyBum -
In 2015, Jade was friends with fellow YouTuber JazzyBum. They did a few collabs together and seemed to be good friends. We're not sure what happened, but they now have nothing to do with each other and have both unfollowed.
The Brighton Girl -
This is Jade’s ‘anonymous’ (not so anonymous when you register your brand name on companies house) bestie. They met through Jade's office job and still work together. They've bonded over many things...sharing offensive tweets together, complaining about their partners and even going through breakups at the same time.
The SIL drama
TLDR: Jade's ex SIL Lauren got busted slagging her off on tattle
The full story? There was a pic from Matt's Instagram on here with Matt and his brother and his kids could be seen in it. The SIL (Lauren) made a 'new' account, admitting to being the SIL and asked for it to be removed. She claimed a friend had told her about it. This was a bit suss as she posted this
very quickly. Mods then outed Lauren for having a second account (which is something they have access to see) called Looser1231, where she was slagging off Jade and defending Matt. Here are the four posts that Lauren made...
She first started posting on the day of the split announcement, but her account was made in June 2020 so she's been lurking on her inlaws for a while. Since being outed, the SIL has not returned and neither account has been active since.
For some more context on the wedding chat, we were discussing Jade's wedding and how the SIL showed up wearing white. After making this comment, this is when the SIL started posting again and basically fished for us to find out who proposed first and who got married first. Matt's brother proposed around early 2015 and they got married in June 2017. Jade and Matt got engaged in October 2016 and got married in April 2017, sticking their wedding in three months earlier, despite getting engaged second. It seems like this was a source of beef from the SIL's comments.
She also implies that Jade and Matt were arguing all the time and he didn't get to see his family. She's going to have a bias towards Matt so who knows how much is accurate, but she suggests there were lots of arguments happening, despite Jade claiming they never fight.
