Hold on, they would harrumph, she describes herself as a working-class kid with four and a half GCSEs (the half was for taking the short course in RE rather than the full GCSE), but when she first emerged she said she was middle-class and had had a good education. My liver was packing upĭespite her success, Monroe continued to plead poverty. In late 2014, Monroe contributed to a thread on Twitter about why then prime minister David Cameron should resign, saying: “Because he uses stories about his dead son as misty-eyed rhetoric to legitimise selling our NHS to his friends.” Columnist Sarah Vine responded in the Daily Mail by accusing her of heartlessness and hypocrisy, telling Monroe, “You used misty-eyed rhetoric about your son to build your career.” I found what I loved, which is whisky, and it very nearly killed me. When they got the chance, they jumped at it. Some people thought she was smug and opportunistic, and deserved to be taken down a peg or two. She was an out-and-proud lesbian, gorgeous, gobby, tattooed, smart and funny, showing people how to get by on a pittance. Before long, Monroe had columns in newspapers, was on the telly, feted by the liberal media. A decade ago a young woman (she now identifies as non-binary and transgender, but is happy for us to use the pronoun she) blogged about living in dire poverty and surviving by cooking meals to feed herself and her son for £10 a week. Perhaps it was inevitable that she would become such a controversial figure – the Jack Monroe story seemed too good to be true. As for her critics, they say she exaggerates her influence, makes claims she cannot back up, and is not transparent about money. Both publications praised the way that Monroe has highlighted the fact that food inflation disproportionately affects the poor. In October, she won the 2022 Food Hero at the Observer Food Monthly Awards, and a couple of weeks ago she was named The Grocer’s Hero of the Year. For many, she is a heroic anti-poverty campaigner, as evidenced by her recent awards. Today, few people divide the public like Jack Monroe. But I’m about to find out that it wasn’t as straightforward as that. She showed us how to survive in the age of austerity by being frugal in the extreme – making meals for 30p, and reusing every leftover.
Monroe is the anti-poverty campaigner and food writer who kept herself going by making the most of her pennies. Hair and makeup: Alice Theobald using Morgan’s Pomade and Guerlain.
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