Jack Monroe

An Introduction to Jack Monroe

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

Wiki guide:

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

Some common terms explained for newbies:

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Comments Club" refers to Jack's policy of only allowing Twitter comments from people she follows, so that all responses will be positive. She encourages her fans to join the "comments club" by privately messaging her so she can verify they're not TROLLS/haters/canal. Jack did not post on Twitter for much of 2023-24, but maintained much of her Patreon following. This led us to question if she had a private account, WhatsApp group, Discord server, etc. for her "Comments Club." As of November 2024 Jack mostly posts on BlueSky where she has not reintroduced the "Comments Club".

For other common terms, see "In jokes" on page 8. See below for a list of notable Jack events that are often referenced on the threads.

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




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

A potted history

• Jack is from a middle class family known locally as well to do. In November 2011, she left her well-paid job as a call handler in the Fire Service - ostensibly because they wouldn't allow flexible working around the needs of her young son. She was then unable to get another job, and fell on hard times. For whatever reason (she's given conflicting stories), her parents and her son's father did not or could not help her financially.
  
  
• She began blogging about local politics, her day to day life, and budget recipes. In summer 2012 she shared a post called "Hunger Hurts" about how she couldn't afford to feed herself or her then two-year-old son. This began to circulate online and gained her a wider audience - although it didn't go viral until after she was starting to become well known.
  
  
• In early 2013, an interview with Jack in the Telegraph effectively launched her career in the public eye and she was quickly offered prestigious writing and media work. Over the next year she released recipe books, was given brand deals, and became fairly well known as a writer and campaigner.
  
  
• She continued to be given more and more opportunities. Despite having two relationships with wealthy women in the public eye, and her social media showing evidence of lavish spending, Jack always seemed to be struggling for money. She cited various hardships including her former agent stealing book royalties from her, and being unable to work for more than a year while pursuing a libel claim against Katie Hopkins.
  
  
• Jack gave increasingly far-fetched and inconsistent stories about her time in poverty, alcoholism, and supposedly being from a poor working-class family. She told more and more lies and caught herself out. Whenever challenged she will deflect by repeatedly saying that she is mentally ill, disabled, and/or an impoverished single parent, and alluding to (warning) self-harm and/or suicide.
  
  
• In 2020 she aggressively promoted her Patreon, saying that she had lost a year's worth of work because of the COVID-19 pandemic. She promised a system of physical rewards for her sponsors but never produced them. Jack later admitted in a
  Guardian interview that she had spent Patreon donations on alcohol and designer furniture. There have been numerous other instances of crowdfunding, fundraising, or asking for donations where it wasn't clear how much she had raised or what happened to the money.
  
  
• In 2022 she posted a follow-up to "Hunger Hurts" on the 10th anniversary of the original post. She said that after a decade of working in the media, she was now poor again and could not afford shower gel or electric lighting. Meanwhile, her social media showed that she'd recently had lip fillers, multiple holidays, and bought a designer puppy. Questions began to be asked, in part because of Tattle and anonymous Twitter accounts and blogs drawing attention to Jack's many self-contradictions.
  
  
• Jack came under a lot of scrutiny when, after asking for PayPal donations to fund a lawsuit against Lee Anderson MP, she failed to file the case before the deadline. She said the money had been donated to a food bank, and showed a redacted receipt - but a closer look at the receipt shows she gave the money to her church, not directly to the food bank it runs. It's also not clear if the amount donated was the full total of donations she received
  
  
• Her Patreon was hacked in December 2023 and purported figures show that she received almost £10,000 a month in some months from January 2022 onwards. She has since claimed that all her social media accounts were hacked, she has not regained access to her Patreon, and has received no money from it. Despite this, she did not at any point post to warn people about the hack or to tell them to cancel their subscriptions. There are other obvious lies/inconsistencies in this story as well, such as saying in June 2024 that she was hacked "almost a year ago" when it was the previous December. Jack has again tried to deflect from this by talking about her mental health and saying that she was stalked and police were involved.
  
  
• She has been involved in numerous other controversies including releasing a book (Thrifty Kitchen) that had to be edited in re-prints because it gave very dangerous household/kitchen advice. She no longer blogs and rarely does any "campaigning." It is unlikely her career will ever recover because she is widely known as a scammer, and there are plenty of people giving far better advice on budget cooking than she does. As of 2024 she has a regular 9-5 job but still periodically posts on Twitter and continues to describe herself as a writer, cook, and campaigner.

Background

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

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

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

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

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

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

School: Jack went to a grammar school (Westcliff High School for Girls). After receiving 4.5 GCSEs (the half GCSE is in RE), she left school in 2004. She has given multiple different accounts of why she left when she did, see wiki page 6 for more on that. Jack claims to have struggled at school because they failed to accommodate her autism and ADHD. Again see wiki page 6 as she's said at different times that she was either diagnosed as a child and not told about it; or not diagnosed until she was an adult. Either way, how was the school supposed to know? At the time Jack went there in the late 90s-early 2000s, there was little awareness of neurodiversity, especially in girls.

Hunting for fame? In 2007 when Jack was aged 19, a profile in her previous name appeared on the StarNow talent hub. She didn't mention particular skills or talents, or looking for any specific kind of performing work - seemingly, she was open to anything that would get her attention. Around this time she tried out acting classes (mentioned on her StarNow profile), music (writing songs and appearing in a photoshoot for what looks like a girl band), and modelling (she had photos taken for a portfolio.) She claims she auditioned for The X-Factor. After her son was born, she continued to perform at open mic nights and began trying to establish herself in local politics. All of this leads us to suspect that she just wanted to be famous by any means possible - it was never really about campaigning against poverty.

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

After a few years of temp jobs, Jack somehow (read: Daddy) got a job in the control room for the fire service in 2007. She revealed during a talk at the Edinburgh Book Festival that she failed her first interview but was then given an opportunity to sit in the control room and observe how the job worked, following which she passed a second interview "with flying colours." It's unclear whether all potential candidates are afforded this opportunity or if it is a privilege reserved for relatives of the Head of Fire Investigation. She's repeatedly stated that she earned £27k (see here in "Hunger Hurts"). That's worth almost £47,000 in 2024 and was a highly paid role for a 19-year-old with no qualifications.

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

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

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

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

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

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

In July 2012, Jack published her best known blog post "Hunger Hurts". It went viral and began to gain her an audience, although her career in the public eye didn't start in earnest until the following year. The best known quote describes her then two-year-old son going hungry: "Poverty is the sinking feeling when your small boy finishes his one weetabix and says ‘more mummy, bread and jam please mummy’ as you’re wondering whether to take the TV or the guitar to the pawn shop first, and how to tell him that there is no bread or jam."

Becoming well known: With "Hunger Hurts" gaining attention, Jack realised she could become better known as a sad single mother in poverty than as a plucky campaigner saving Southend from the Tories. She capitalised on this to the max and in spring 2013 became a success after being interviewed in the Telegraph by the writer Xanthe Clay. Jack was increasingly given writing work and media exposure. By the end of the year she had corporate sponsorships, awards for her work, a publishing deal for her first book., and a regular column in the Guardian.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A summary of “tip jar rattling” 2017-2022

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

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

She no longer updates her blog or shares recipes, and her current output seems limited to brief one-off projects (her latest of which was a Fareshare collaboration in June 2024.)

Jack's Books

Jack is the author of the following books:

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

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

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

• A memoir - she said in early 2023 that she had signed a deal to publish it. Given her frequently changing accounts of her past, we question if the book will be written in a "Choose Your Own Adventure" style.
• A book provisionally titled The Hunger Names, seemingly a political polemic based around real stories of people who have died as a result of Tory "austerity" policies.
• A cookbook provisionally titled Recipes For Recovery, based on Jack's experiences of recovery from drug/alcohol abuse.
• A Greek cookbook that she may publish under her birth name for "authenticity" (stated at the Edinburgh Festival on 14 August 2023)
• A crime/thriller novel (mentioned on Bluesky in 2024)

Kickstarter campaign (December 2015 until 2018)

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

A brief summary:

• Jack raised funds in December 2015 for a book that was to be available via Kickstarter only.
• She promised a delivery deadline of May 2016.
• Thousands of people pledged money to buy the book, with some buying an additional copy to be donated to a food bank.
• The book did not materialise in May 2016. It was eventually sold to a professional publisher and was published in early 2018.
• Backers did eventually receive self-published black and white copies in summer 2018, after the same book was already available in colour on Amazon.

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

BBC Daily Kitchen Live (April 2020)

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

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

Jack's Tax

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patreon and other begging

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

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

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

Some receipts of blatant begging are helpfully screenshot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She claimed in June 2024 that she had not regained access to her Patreon since it was hacked, and that she had not received any money from Patreon in almost a year - despite the fact that the hack was only 7 months ago! During this time she had not removed her Patreon link from her bio (although she quickly did so when it was pointed out to her.) Nor had she posted to warn her subscribers even though she said she had no idea where the money was going, and believed it had likely been diverted to the hacker's own account. She claimed she had been too ill/traumatised to report the hack to police and that Patreon had, in effect, done nothing about it. Remember, this was after years of saying that her Patreon income was keeping her afloat and funding her good works. She would also be in trouble with HMRC if she failed to declare income that was in her name or couldn't give an accurate record of her earnings. See wiki page 4 for more on this.

Thrifty Shades of Beige/ Postcards

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

Recipes and food shopping

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

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

Here's an example of a more recent grocery shop, which Jack says cost £18. Notice the tricksy wording - she talks about having an active household and how many meals they eat, but doesn't specifically say this shop covers all those meals. She worked this out as 42 meals a week, saying that was because her partner didn't live there and her son spent some time with his father each week. But even averaging that out to three meals a day for two people, these groceries wouldn't provide balanced meals for a week. See here for an estimate of the calorie count - it wouldn't provide even half the recommended intake. Several people pointed out on Twitter that this also doesn't include other things you would normally include in a household grocery shop such as pet food and cleaning products.
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Jack has often been challenged over her recipes. The "Slopalong" (where the canal tried out her recipes for ourselves) showed that they rarely turned out the way she said they would - see Slopalong wiki thread. Here are some common issues:

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

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

Fake recipes

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

Bad politics

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

Political stance

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

Jack has worked with the conservative think tank Bright Blue despite hypocritically professing that she hates/would never vote for the Tories.

She appears to have commented under her birth name on a Lib Dem website, asking “but what about the Christians?” in response to a post about Tim Farron MP sending good wishes to Muslim constituents. If this was indeed her, perhaps she did not want these comments to be associated with Jack Monroe's public image?

She has written several times for the Daily Express, a right-wing, very pro-Tory tabloid which supports austerity and is extremely critical of immigration and LGBT people, i.e. the polar opposite of her professed values. And she bought three copies of an issue that had her face on the front cover. She once had a very performative conversation on Facebook with her dad about how they would never buy the Daily Mail (which is very similar to the Express in content and political leanings) at the same time as she had an article out in the Express!

Jack used the murder of Jo Cox MP for attention. She had her son pose with her for photos laying flowers at the scene; and made an over-the-top Instagram post, giving a patronising and self-righteous response to one of Jo's friends who commented on it. Jack had never met Jo, and wasn't a member/supporter of the Labour Party at the time (she says she only came back after Jo was killed.) In 2021, her own local MP David Amess was also murdered. Jack was one of his constituents and had met him, but funnily enough she managed not to use his tragic death to draw attention to herself. So why was it OK for her to milk Jo's murder for publicity?

People Jack is friendly with on social media include:

• Sarah Vine, Tory "Westminster WAG" who publicly stigmatises the poor and calls for benefits to be cut
• Former Tory MP Anna Soubry. See here for Anna's voting record as an MP, which includes consistently voting for "austerity" measures
• The late comedian Janey Godley, who repeatedly used racist slurs and "jokes", and was criticised for her comments about disabled people.
• Liz Jones, who is also racist, is a COVID conspiracy theorist, and frequently expresses her opinion that benefits should be cut and workers not given sickness or maternity leave.
• Someone who promotes far-right content and professes to be a member of Britain First. This person seems to be a personal friend of Jack, as they were added to "comments club" in 2024 when Jack had locked down her account and wasn't adding new people.

Comments on poverty

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

See "Food shopping and recipes" above: Jack has repeatedly claimed that she lives on a food budget of £20 a week for herself and her son and partner, and has said that poor people would have more money if they switched to the very cheapest food (as if they're not doing that already.) This plays into the idea that if people are not getting by, it's because they don't budget properly or cook for themselves. At the same time, she complains about the government using her as proof that you can feed a family on next to nothing. Some of her comments are very similar to those of Lee Anderson MP, who has controversially claimed that no one really needs a food bank. She went so far as threatening to sue him because he pointed this out!

Jack frequently promotes cheap food and pushes for supermarkets to keep prices as low as possible. However, cheap food has a huge negative impact on the environment, workers, and animals. She has not acknowledged any of these issues apart from a phase where she was briefly vegan (around 2016) and talked about animal rights, but has since reverted to eating lots of cheap meat and dairy. Complaining that a 48p bag of pasta is now 75p doesn't really help people living in poverty.

She talks about her "immigrant grandfather" as if being an immigrant equates to poverty (example here.) This perpetuates prejudice against immigrants and the idea that they are all needy and a drain on society. In fact, her grandfather owned property worth almost £2 million; see Katie Roche's investigation into Jack for more on that.

Stigmatising and stereotyping poor/working class people

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

Jack claimed she frequently gets hate mail saying she's "too pretty to be poor" - unlikely, especially as she's also repeatedly stated that people tell her she is "too pretty" to be a lesbian or a Guardian columnist, etc. What is she suggesting a poor person looks like?

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

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

Over the years, she has changed her story and now says she had an impoverished, working class childhood. She often mentions that she attended a primary school in "special measures" and most of her classmates came from local council estates. (Special measures means that the school was found to be inadequate, and had been given notice to improve.) The school is indeed in a deprived area but publicly available OFSTED reports show that it's consistently received Good ratings, including in 1998 when Jack was still there - see wiki page 6. Why does she lie about this and encourage the idea that poor children = failing school?

In 2012, Jack wrote on her blog: "I could stay off work (and claim benefits ...) but I'm not going to. My small boy, aged only two, knows ‘Mummy work’ (...) Mummy will work, son. Mummy will set you a good example and Mummy will bring home the bacon." In other words, suggesting that being on benefits is lazy or an easy way out. Many people don't have a choice; something you would expect Jack to understand, as she'd previously written that she had to leave her part time job because she couldn't afford to lose her top up benefits. She admitted that as a single parent of a child too young to have started school, she was not required to look for work while claiming benefits. It's admirable that she wanted to work, but there is a good reason why people in her position are not expected to; the system recognises that a young child's needs should come first.

She posted on Mumsnet about an unpleasant encounter with a woman who supposedly stole Jack's wallet in a pub beer garden. Notice how Jack describes the wallet-stealer as your stereotype of a "chav" single mother who gets drunk and abuses her kids. You wouldn't expect this to be written by someone who is supposedly a working class single mum herself.

On December 18, 2023, Jack appeared on Times Radio to discuss the subject of food poverty and obesity. She publicly named a local council estate and described it as "notorious." She suggested that its residents live on ready meals and alcohol because that's all that is available in the Tesco Express next to the estate. Most local people do their regular shopping at the nearby Lidl, which sells fresh food. Was Jack making assumptions based on stereotypes or was she just expecting her audience to? She rents in one of the wealthiest areas of Southend but this is how she speaks about poor people. You can find a transcript here.

Other

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

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

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

Other issues

Animal welfare

As well as her disabled kitten (see wiki page 5), Jack has had a number of other animals that died, were neglected, and/or "mysteriously" went missing. These include Dash the bunny, which she claims was stolen during a burglary. Surely his disappearance was nothing to do with being kept in a damp and crowded shed, in a garden that had foxes in it. She also had two guinea pigs that were shut in a cupboard and quickly died. Jack said they had died in a carbon monoxide leak, but a Tattler who claimed to be an old acquaintance (and seems to be legit) said the guinea pigs died from the cold. There has also been concern from Jack's followers over her cat repeatedly having an infected nose, and her dog Laurie's visibly matted coat. Jack says Laurie is just shaggy, despite vets commenting on her posts to say otherwise.

Child welfare

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

None of these things makes Jack a bad parent, but they all present a risk to SB's welfare. If what she's saying is true, you would expect her to be known to social services. She shares a huge amount of personal information online that puts her son at increased risk, including:

• When she first started her blog, she repeatedly gave her address on the blog and in letters to the local press. SB was two years of age at this time. Multiple people have been able to find her current address because she's given so much personal information online
• Photos of her son's route to school
• A photo of her son in school uniform with an award certificate he had received from the school - including the name of the school and what class he is in
• Tagging her son's father on his personal social media accounts, which contain his full name and photos of SB and his other children.
• Repeatedly posting online about SB's mental health, puberty, and other medical concerns.

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

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

Relationships

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

Her relationships often move very quickly. See wiki page 5: in 2013-14 she was engaged to two different people in the space of seven months and this resulted in multiple house moves and changes of school for her then very young son. More recently, in 2022 Jack dated a man ("OH") with whom she was pushing for marriage and buying a house together in a very short space of time. It came across as predatory because he was evidently quite wealthy and had elderly parents he could expect to inherit from.

She demonstrates over-familiarity and behaviour that is often part of "lovebombing." Examples include repeatedly calling her ex Louisa her "wife" when they weren't married, referring to OH's parents as her "in-laws" after a very short time, and talking about other people's children as if they are hers. She regularly changes elements of her style and personality to fit her current partner as well. This was particularly notable when she was with Allegra McEvedy and Jack began dressing like her, taking up some of Allegra's hobbies, and got her son to start calling her "Mama" because that's what Allegra's daughter calls her. When they broke up, she organised her new kitchen to look like Allegra's.

Her behaviour towards Louisa often came across as borderline if not outright abusive. Jack often patronised and criticised Louisa, complaining that she cannot cook, she cannot iron, she cannot clean the television properly, she left the hose out and it got eaten by a fox, and she doesn’t know the difference between wet and dry ingredients. Jack publicly made Louisa look bad by trying to blame her for a poor performance on Daily Kitchen Live (where Jack was clearly unprepared with a weak wifi connection), and claiming after they broke up that she was struggling financially because Louisa had left her to pay off the lease on their house.

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

Comments about fostering

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

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

Mental health and threats of suicide

Fake Twitter accounts

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

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

What to do if you have been taken in by Jack

Credit to @Hunsgraveyard for this advice

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

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

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

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

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

SLOPBOT & The Sloppies

Visit SLOPBOT at http://www.slopbot.com/

The Sloppies are an annual awards ceremony for the best Jack chaos that year.

The Sloppies 2020
The Sloppies 2021
The Sloppies 2022
The Sloppies 2023

FAQ

Why do you call Jack "Guest?"
It comes from a press photo of her at Dame Kelly Holmes' birthday celebrations, where the caption referred to "Dame Kelly Holmes, Emeli Sande, and guest" i.e. they didn't recognise Jack. We think this is an amusing illustration of how irrelevant she really is.

Who are Big Dave, LJC, etc?
See wiki page 8 for a full list of in-jokes and nicknames used on the thread. The most commonly used ones:

• SB = "Small Boy", what Jack calls her son
• Big Dave/Big Chocolate = Jack's father. A former colleague of his told a Tattler that "Chocolate" was what they called him behind his back in the Fire Service because of his ego ("if he were chocolate he would eat himself")
• Ev/Big E/Big Eve = Jack's mother
• LJC = Louisa (Jane) Compton, Jack's ex-partner who is Head of News at Channel 4
• Harold/Old Harold/OH = another of Jack's ex-partners, whom she referred to as her "Other Half"/"OH". We called him Old Harold after the "Hide the Pain Harold" meme.
• Content = Jack's dog Laurie

What is the VBI?
VBI stands for Vimes Boots Index - Jack's idea for a price index showing how much the cost of cheap/basic foods has risen with inflation (she doesn't trust official statistics.) She promised back in 2022 that she would complete this over a weekend, and thus far it still hasn't materialised. The Office of National Statistics holds an index of the cost of food over time, however, this has nothing to do with Jack and she didn't contribute to it in any way.

Has Tattle doxxed Jack?
No, we have never done this. Her address has never been posted here, although a number of people on this site and others have worked it out from the huge amount of personal information that she shares online. Jack alleges that she has been doxxed by us and as a result, a stalker showed up to her house. What actually happened is that someone brought a legitimate CCJ against her for failing to refund a Patreon donation, and delivered a court summons to her house - see wiki page 3 for more.

What is the "Dordrecht Incident?"
Refers to when Jack went on a trip to Dordrecht in the Netherlands with her ex-partner OH, and he broke up with her a couple of days afterwards - leading us to suspect that something happened on the trip that led to the breakup. See wiki page 2 for more.

What is her real name?
Her name has been legally changed to Jack Monroe. We do not use her former name on the threads.

Is Jack middle or working class? Why does it matter?
Jack's given many conflicting stories about this, and now says that as a child she thought she was middle class but later discovered her family was poor. We won't argue over the divide between working and middle class - suffice it to say that her stories don't add up. Some of them are obvious lies, such as saying her family lived in desperate poverty at a time when her parents were foster carers and were being strictly vetted (see wiki page 5.) It matters because she uses this for attention, sympathy, and to get people to donate money.

Why do you suggest Jack's son/pets do not live with her?
Jack has made references to her son visiting during the holidays or stopping by on her birthday, indicating that he lives with his father. Similarly, Laurie the dog only ever seems to appear on social media at these times, suggesting that Laurie is actually SB's dog and lives with him and his dad.

Why does Jack lock her Twitter/close comments?
She allows replies only from people she follows ("Comments Club" - see above) and who she trusts not to challenge or question her. Currently she locks her Twitter when she isn't around and opens it again when she's active on there. All this is an attempt to control the narrative, because she is frequently called out as a grifter on Twitter.

What was "Sue Lee?"
"Sue Lee" refers to Jack announcing that she intended to sue Lee Anderson MP and asking for donations to fund her legal case; then failing to file the case within the deadline and a lack of transparency over how much she raised in donations and what she did with the money. See wiki page 2 and page 3.

Who is "Carp Man" and what happened about the house purchase?
"Carp Man" (so-called because he is an angling coach and uses a picture of a carp on his social media accounts) is a man who alleges that Jack intended to buy an apartment from him, then "ghosted" him. This caused a significant delay in the sale as she had paid an exclusivity fee, and caused distress to him and his wife as they were selling the property in the wake of a personal tragedy. Carp Man's story is supported by evidence of him trying to reach Jack urgently via Twitter, and posts she made about planning a fishing trip at the time she was supposed to be buying the property - seemingly trying to impress the vendors. The property had a very short lease but Jack explicitly told Carp Man she understood the implications of this and still wanted to buy. At the time, the law in the UK was about to change to make it easier and cheaper to extend a lease. Jack didn't do anything illegal and of course, house purchases fall through all the time. But she did cause considerable upset and inconvenience to a bereaved elderly couple.

Is Jack connected to any other well known internet grifters? (Depher, Supertanskii, Simon Harris, Russ in Cheshire etc.)
Roadside Mum (Louisa Britain) originally gained an online platform off the back of Jack's content, but as far as we know they aren't friends IRL. Simon Harris has said that he's met Jack through mutual friends as they both live in the Southend area, but he doesn't know her well/hasn't spoken to her in years. She does not seem to be connected to anyone else, although some of them have defended her online.

Why has Jack never been exposed in the media?
We don't know, but we suspect the reasons include:

• It's easy to dismiss her grift as "if people are stupid enough to donate money to her, it's their own fault" and not really newsworthy. Again, compare Simon Harris, who received a large amount of taxpayers' money from a public sector organisation; or Depher, who was found to have personally manipulated elderly, vulnerable people (not just convinced them to give him £5 on Patreon.) These are more in the public interest than "woman can't account for unknown amount of money she raised online."
  
  
• Jack portrays herself as a vulnerable, disabled, impoverished single mother; and constantly talks about her poor mental health and threatens suicide. Media organisations will not want to be seen to be "bullying" her. One Tattler alleged that they were explicitly told by a journalist that the Daily Mail will not publish an exposé on her for that reason. The death of Caroline Flack (a TV presenter in the UK whose suicide was attributed to social media harassment) is still fairly recent.
  
  
• Jack's ex Louisa Compton is Head of News at Channel 4 and is an influential figure in the media. Anyone wanting to report on Jack may not want to go against Louisa, who likely doesn't want her name coming up in connection with it.
  
  
• There is already plenty of material out there about Jack on many different sites including Tattle, Medium, and various blogs.