Jack Monroe speech Greenbelt 2017 You'll have to bear with me for a moment because I thought I'd be a bit tech savvy with this one, and do it on my tablet computer because I've got arthritis in my hands. So writing is a bit difficult these days but I keep losing my document and deleting large chunks of it so I have written a talk but you may not get it. I apologize in advance, I was raised by a paratrooper and then in a fire service mess room. I have not written any naughty words into my speech because I'm aware that there may be children present but should my whole document decide to delete itself halfway through an emotional part, I may say some things that are a bit unsavoury and I apologize in advance and those of you have a sensitive disposition may just want to go. I say I've written a talk well I've written half a talk and it's the second half of the talk. So you're going to have to listen to the first half of me rambling, like a bit of a twit first, because I wasn't really sure what to say because normally I give talks about poverty to conservative party conferences and assemble groups of people who really need to hear a hard-hitting message about how terrible they are, and you all seem quite nice. So I'm so I wasn't really sure how to start. So I thought I'd start like this and it seems to be going okay, no one's left yet. I will call you out if you do. One of my friends - and Dave Johns who was the lead in I Daniel Blake - I say friends but I follow on Twitter. He did Edinburgh Fringe last weekend and he told an excellent story about how just as he got to the end of his set, about 10 minutes before the end, when the hat usually goes around for donations. I don't have a hat, sorry - feel free to throw money at me if you like. At the end when the hat wear around for donations a guy got up, bang in the middle and tried to run out. I don't know why. I don't know. Some of you might do that in church. A collection plate comes by you hide under your seat or whatever. And He turned around halfway through his set and went 'he knows where there's a better show on!' and everyone got up and followed him out the door. I'm not saying I will do that, but I'm not saying I won't. I've got a bit of a serious reason for being here, though. So I'm going to put my can of Coke down that I stupidly wandered on stage with. You're all so lovely. Look, I've got a table for me drink. No, it's fine. I did a, I did a talk for the Guardian about two years ago and it was in this great big, beautiful concert hall and I walked on with a beer and put it on top of a Steinway piano. Now, I'm a nice working-class girl. I've never seen a bloody Steinway piano before. I didn't know what one was thought was a bit fancy. Was very, very shiny and four separate people on the video footage came running onto the stage to remove my beer. And so, basically, always provide me with a stand for my, for my beverages. Anyway, back to serious things, I'm doing quite well and might get an hour out of it if we carry on like this, I was really worried but I think I think we'll be all right. But on a serious note, I'm here to talk about serious things. So, if we could all just stop having quite such a jolly time. I'm here to spoil your day. You laugh now, you'll be crying later. I say that to my son a lot as well. For those of you who don't know who I am, besides someone that looks like they dress themselves like a toddler that can't do up their trousers after going for a wee, I'm a single mum. I'm 29 years old and in case you couldn't tell from my broad regional accent, I'm from Essex. So brilliant part of the world. Have a cheer if you're also from Essex. No don't think I know any of you, sorry. I nearly made a quite crude joke there, but I held it in and I hope you all really proud of me. Where do I start? So I've been in work all my life, apart from that period of work where I famously wasn't? I started work at 14 years old as a waitress in a family restaurant, not my family just sort of loose in the way that Greek Cypriots are, we're all everyone's family, everyone's Uncle this and Auntie that and Uncle this and just because they look a bit like you and it makes it all a bit easier. And I was never out of work from then. I worked as a waitress or worked as a cleaner. I've worked in shops; I've worked in retail. I've been the person that sticks the chickens on The Spits in a rotisserie. I've made an awful lot of pizza. I've flipped a lot of burgers. I've played a lot of flaws of made, a lot of beds, I've scrubbed a lot of loos. And then I got to a point where I have my baby, my little boy and I was in the fire service at the time and I thought I had a permanent full-time well-paid respectable job answering 999 calls. It was fun. My watch were a laugh, they're an absolutely brilliant bunch of people. We got through and we saw, and we did some really seriously grim things, but we did them as a family. We did them as a team, we did them together. And there was me paying into my pension plan, at the age of 21 thinking, this is me until I die. And, you know, that that was nice, that was good. And I enjoyed it and I loved it and I still have a lot of Pride when I talk about their job and I still miss my colleagues every day. I still keep in touch with a lot of them, I would go back tomorrow. After the tragedy at Grenfell a couple of months ago I sat down and I had a serious heart to heart with myself. Do you want to still carry on titting about, doing what you do? Or do you want to go back and do something real and something meaningful and go back in the fire service, I felt a real pull, like that's where I belong. So, that's how much of my heart that job had, and still has, and it was one of the hardest decisions of my life to have to leave it. I had my little boy so couldn't do the shifts anymore, and so I got to a point where I had to resign. And I go into that in that level of detail, because certain factions of the right-wing press will have, you believe that I just woke up one morning when this is a bit hard, actually, I think I'll go on welfare. When it was the complete opposite of that. It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make. And everybody said, you'll be fine. You know you were in the fire brigade, hundreds of people, applied for your job, they'll snap you up and for a week I believed it. I was like, yeah I'm great people will love me, they'll want to employ me and they didn't. And they didn't, and they didn't, and they didn't, and they didn't and for 18 long months. Suddenly, I was no longer proud of the organization that I'd worked in when you have to type it 300 times into online job applications. You just wish it wasn't such a bloody long organization name to have to type in again and again and again and again and again and again and again Essex County fire & rescue service Essex County fire & rescue service, Essex County fire & rescue service. Seriously Freudian errors made on those application forms. The older members of the audience may understand. It broke me. It completely broke me as a person and I'd grown up in a household where both my parents are foster carers. From the age of five I had known full well far too much about the darkest underbelly of the world. Far too much about trauma, about abuse, about how difficult things can be. We had kids turn up on our doorstep with nothing but the shoes they were wearing. We had people turn up in the middle of the night with children in their arms who had been violently abused and taken away from their families. So I wasn't naive for any stretch of the imagination. I knew that the world was an ugly place and I knew that it was a dark place. I was woken up in the middle of the night by girls as young as 8 who would tell me stories about things that household members had done to them. Things that I could never imagine, things that I couldn't marry up in my head why anyone would do this to a child? So I wasn't naive by any stretch of the imagination. I knew that the world had its darkness and I knew that darkness was behind closed doors and in places that people can't see it and in places they don't know where it is. But as a result of that, I grew up terrified of social workers because the only time I ever saw social workers was in bad situations. Now I know now as an adult, I know a lot of social workers and they are great people. And they have massive hearts and they do the jobs that they do with so much compassion, and so much care, and so much concern, and they are underpaid and undervalued. And they have a terrible reputation and they're wonderful people. But as a kid - and I'm just telling you this ramble for some context really, like the longest introduction to the shortest talk in the world. But a lot of this is stuff that I've never really said, and I feel like it's important to give some context for, you know, for the things that I often get asked and the things that I say and I grew up, you know, petrified of social workers because the only time they ever really turned up was to take away my newfound brothers and sisters. I lived in a revolving door of traumatized children, 80-85 kids in total over a decade. And I'd just get to know someone, I'd make a little buddy, I'd be sharing my bedroom, it be marvellous, and then they get taken away. A bit rude. And again, and again, and again, and so, I grew up with a fear of social care. And I'm still not at the part of my talk I've written. So when I left the fire service and life started to go horribly wrong one of the things people often ask me is, why didn't you tell anyone and why didn't you ask for help? And I didn't ask for help because I was terrified that in the middle of the night, the social worker would come and take my child away. And this is where my story begins. Because I couldn't put a name to it at the time. The creeping endless heartless uselessness that I was feeling. How devastatingly depressed I was. If I'm honest with myself, I wasn't meeting my son's basic needs and I can say that now five years down the line, because no one's going to come and get him. They've got me to get through first and we're doing all right. I wasn't even making my own basic needs. We were living in absolute desperate, poverty. And poverty is not a far-flung problem in our country. It never has been. It's everywhere. It's in your street. It's on your doorsteps. It's in your doorways. It's at the train stations. It's sitting there with this dog. It's staring you in the face all the time, but sometimes it's people that you don't know who need the help. Sometimes it's people who you'd never think to ask, sometimes, it's the most smartly dressed person in your congregation whose putting on their best clothes for a Sunday morning because they don't want you to know how terrible everything really is, because we're all a little bit scared inside. We're all not just scared of losing our children, we're scared of losing ourselves. We're scared of losing our sense of identity, we're scared of losing who we used to be. I was a nice grammar school, girl, bit bright, not very well educated but only because I sat over the park and smoked with the boys. All through my teens. But it shouldn't have happened to me but the point is it can happen to anybody. You probably have a Food Bank operating in your own church. And if you don't, you've definitely got one in your neighbourhood, feeding the most vulnerable and hungry people in your communities. People don't choose to be there. They don't just waltz in fresh from their Ocado delivery to top it up with some dented tomatoes and a couple of Contraband black bananas. Nobody opts for that lifestyle, turning off the heating, missing days of meals. It's not some cosy romanticised post-war frugality. I can tell you, because I've been there. And if any of you and I don't think you do because you're all quite nice looking and stuff, but if anyone thinks for one minute that it's easy, you know, it's only a couple of weeks or it's only missing a couple of meals. Give it a go. Try it. Turn off the fridge because it's empty anyway. Sell everything you can see lying around that you might get more than a quid for. Walk everywhere in the pouring rain, in your only pair of shoes with a soaking wet and sobbing toddler dragging along behind you. As you walk into every Pub and every shop in walking distance and you ask them if they've got any jobs available and try not to go really, really red when the girl behind the counter at the fancy jewellery store looks you up and down at your tatty jeans and your tatty jumper and she shakes her head and she said, no, we haven't got anything. And you know what she means is we haven't got anything for you because you're a mess, absolute mess of dark circled, red-rimmed broken savage, starving pale, sleepless wreck. and I don't think in that particular State, I could sell engagement rings to loved-up couples either and she was right. And you walk home. Dramatic pause You stuff your wet handwritten CV back in your pocket and you trudge home with that toddler dragging along behind you. And you try not to cry because he's crying and you're crying and your feet hurt and everything hurts. Your heart hurts. That little boy, who watched me, get rejected Time and Time and Time and Time and Time Again from jobs. No, your mummy's not good enough no, your mummy's not good enough. No, your mummy's not good enough no, your mummy's not good enough. I was absolutely heartbroken They said you should have tried harder, I couldn't have tried harder. I was writing my CV out by hand, because I didn't have a computer because I sold it. I'll go to the library, the library was closed. It's, there's no ... People think they've got answers and they think they've got solutions, but they don't even know the problems that they're trying to solve. You need a mobile phone these days if you're on the dole because the job centre ring you on it, you need it to make your premium rate phone calls from God knows however much a minute they charge you to phone the number if you've got a problem with your benefits. All the things that people take for granted, all the things that we put to one side. All the things that people get demonized for day in day out. How dare you have shoes? How dare you have a phone; your coat looks clean. All the accusations levelled at you day in day out. What did you do with all your money? What money, 70 quid a week, a fortnight, whatever it was, it wasn't enough. It's never enough. And I've gone off on a ramble which you might have guessed happens here and there. But you get home. And you very carefully pour exactly half of your tin of chopped tomatoes over some leftover pasta. Exactly half because you need that other half tomorrow. And you give it to your son, because you don't have it, you can't have it because you need to feed him first. He's the one the social will come for. They don't really care about me. And you try not to cry when he turns round to you and he says I don't really like it mummy. Can I have something else? And then he's crying and you're crying because you both know, deep down that there isn't anything else. You're living on bread and jam and cereals, and water, and it's not really living at all. You put two jumpers on, you worry about how you wash them, so you take them off again and you just sit there cold in your dressing gown and no one comes around anymore anyway, because your house is cold and you're always moaning because everything's a little bit miserable. And after a while, people forget and they drift away and they forget you exist and you're isolated, you're insulated. You're just sitting in your four walls, I'd rather have been in jail than starving on the dole because at least I'd have had three meals a day. I used to sit in bed at night thinking up petty crimes. I could commit to get myself put inside. I've never said that out loud before to anyone but my girlfriend. She thought it was... she was horrified, I thought what can I do? What can I do? Just to get a bed, just to get a bed that is a little bit more comfortable than mine. Just to get somewhere to live. Just to get some people to talk to. So, I started blogging because I was lonely but I started writing about it on the internet like every other lonely old soul out there. We write our little diaries and we think no one's ever going to read them and then people read it and that wasn't supposed to happen. It wasn't supposed to. I never could have dreamed that it would have ended like this. I'll tell you how it did and why it did. And now I've gone completely off the tangent now because I'm crying and I can't really read my words. So I'm just going to talk at you instead. And I'm only here today, because of kindness. Because of other people's kindness In July 2012 I tried to kill myself quite brutally. My son was asleep in the bedroom next door. It's not something I'm proud of, but something I feel that I should talk about because I know that I'm not the only one out there, it's a million people using food banks in the UK at the moment. And I can't put the statistics on it because I haven't asked them all, but a lot of them would have been in the darkest places that I've been because none of us choose to be there. And so, I took myself into my bathroom with the eviction notice for my flat that I was getting kicked out of because I can't pay the rent anymore because my housing benefit had been stopped. And I took 30 sleeping pills, all of my heart tablets and two boxes of paracetamol, washed them down with a bottle of vodka and lay down on the floor and tried to go to sleep. I woke up violently being very ill everywhere. Furious with myself, I couldn't even do that right. But when I came around, I was so thankful that I was still here and I picked up my son, we walked to the local food bank and I've been resisting it and resisting it and resisting it for so long and I walk to local food bank and I know now that I had a complete mental breakdown. I walked in, I don't remember very much about this at all. I walked in, I was asked if I was okay, everything was spinning around me. I was completely falling apart. I felt like all the noise was just crushing in my head like bees, like a like a swarm of wasps, like flies. Like everything was just suddenly drilling into my brain and I collapsed. And I had my boy and I was so worried that he was going to get taken away because I was such a mess and a woman and I've never, I've never been able to find out who she was, came and took me into a little side room with my boy and gave him some toys to play with and sat me down and we were there for about an hour. And she just sat with me with a hand on my back, telling me everything was going to be okay. She got me a cup of tea. I hadn't had a cup of tea for weeks! And we talked and I talked and I talked and I talked to her and I don't know what I said. But I kept my child, and I told her how scared I was and how frightened I was, and how I felt like I was just a drain on everyone, a burden on everyone, my friends, my family, my boy, the state, Society, the world, and how I felt it would just be better if I wasn't here anymore. And she put me in touch with the NHS mental health people. She got me help with all sorts of things. She gave me so many lifelines and while she was doing that, I didn't realize that two volunteers were filling my buggy up with carrier bags of food. And she helped me carry it out. And we walked home and for the first time in a very long time me and my boy had a really good walk home. We were laughing together. We were holding hands. And all I can remember, is, we were having a really lovely time and I hadn't seen him smile and I hadn't seen him laugh for so long. But I was happy. And so, he was happy. And I went home and I split that bag that she'd given me in two and it was like the size of a bin liner. It was yellow as well, a bright yellow bag. And I'll always remember it. And I took it home and I put it all on the kitchen floor, and then I split it methodically in half and I rang my best mate who also used the food bank? And I said, do you want to come over? Because we can eat today and tomorrow and the next day and maybe even the next day we got choices. We don't just have to go to the supermarket and scrape together what we can out of some pennies? We had choices. I had two boxes of cereal people. And that was a really big deal. And she saved my life that day. and from then on, I've gone on. The next five years haven't been a breeze. People think it's wonderful. You know, getting to do what I do. Bum around, teach some cookery courses, write some books, write some stuff in the guardian, but people have saved my life and my sanity with kindness on more occasions than I can count in the last five years. It's little trite things from, I'm having a bit of a bad day and I'm being bullied on the internet so someone will send me a picture of their dog because they've noticed and I love dogs and they'll go I see you're looking a bit sad. Well, no I'm not, I'm bold and strong and crying in front of you. Or they'll send me a picture of their puppy with its tongue out to cheer me up and that tiny act like that just Yanks me. It stops me from going under and it sounds so small. Someone on the tube, asking me how my day is. I was in Budapest last week, doing some research and a guy came up to me in the swimming pool, just sidled up really quietly in his shorts. He's half-naked. It was a bit embarrassing. I was also half-naked very embarrassing, so I sort of ducked under the water like this so you could just see my head because, you know, I eat for a living now and its glorious. But you know, I don't want anyone see me in a bathing suit. And he went You’re Jack Monroe aren't you and was like, yes, I am and he's like your book saved my life when I was in uni. Thank you. I'm called Johnny and I was like, thanks Johnny, I'm going to go now because this is really embarrassing But actually before then I'd been having a pretty crap day and I was really you know I get quite overwhelmed by stuff and life and the world in the world news. And I read it, I take it all in and it just devastates me on a daily basis. I can't even read the news at the moment because it just makes me feel so useless and so heartbroken, and I don't quite remember what in particular. I was being really miserable about that day, but it's probably Trump related or something. And he just swam over said, hello, said a nice thing, swam off again and that's it. My mood lifted, I wasn't quite so heartbroken anymore. And I suppose, it's what I came here to say, is that in an age of austerity where greed is our new false idol where we worship men in big gold Towers, where we all just want to be bigger, better faster stronger, more powerful. We want to earn more. We want to be more. We want to be bigger. We want to be better. We want to be the top. People say to me Oh aren't you upset your book's not made number one, like, I've written a book! You know, it's its glorious, it's marvellous, is it good to just be who you are and put stuff out in the world and I don't care if one person reads it, I don't care if 10 people read it. The fact is you've got to do what you do for the right reasons, but you've also got to do what you do from a place of kindness because the most revolutionary thing we can do in today's society, we're all being taught not to love our neighbours, but to fear them. We're all treating, not us here, you all look very nice, but as a society, we are drip fed a diet of division and suspicion. And it's a disease. And it permeates through everything, everything that we see every headline. Drip fed Every Lie. Every line, every all of it. It just is Insidious. Hideous. And it needs to stop. And the only way it can really stop, and I've been thinking about this for a while. I'm like, how can I change the world? How can I, you know, I don't really go for small projects. I mean you know I like I like I like I like to drive myself slightly insane on a daily basis by thinking about how I could how I could possibly make the entire world a better place, all by myself, and I've realized I can't. And neither, can you sorry about that. But what we can do is we can make our world a better place. So someone told me there was 20,000 people at Greenbelt, I'm very glad they're not all in this tent because I'd been bimbling along like a twit more than I currently am. Thanks. For the crying. because it might happen again, and we can change our world, you can change your world, you can change the immediate world that you occupy the immediate space for your crap. So if 20,000 people all at Greenbelt today, made a decision to do one little acts of kindness to do one thing. One kind thing to be making it louder or quieter. See look, kind acts. Everyone kept the kind man - it's his second one as well. I didn't I didn't even prime him. No one knew what I was going to say, not even me. If we all went out of our way to do, one kind thing. One completely selfless act. For one other human being. And then that person went on inspired by your love and generosity to tomorrow. Go and do something nice for somebody else. And that continued in that vein in that rather flimsy Hanging On by a thread hopeful little idea that I have by the end of the week. Half a million people would have been touched by a random act of kindness. And we think that we can't change the world, but actually we can make our world better. And we can love our neighbours and we can feed the hungry and we can feed the Homeless and their dogs, too. And we've all got it in us to just take a minute out of your day stand shoulder-to-shoulder with someone who's being harassed on public transport. Smile at people when you see them in the street. So one thing I found about Budapest, everybody says, hello when you walk down the street for the first day, it was like, what, what, what do you want? And then I said, it was quite nice, actually, friendly people being friendly and I find it, whenever I go back to Northern Ireland's, , my mom's from Belfast and everyone's just really cheerful. Hello, good morning. How's your day? And as a British person, Ireland is British sorry, politics, politics. But sorry Mom. She's not here. But she sometimes watches these things on YouTube. So, I'll get a phone call at some point. But yeah, whenever I'm back in back in Ireland, people walk down the street grinning at you saying, hello? And it's frankly alarming but after a while it's really quite nice. And you know what? It's not rocket science. We're going to love our neighbours, were all taught to love our neighbours. We were all were all it's one of the core teachings of the Bible is to love your neighbour and I've lived on my road for nearly for over a year now. And I only know, one of their names. We live in a little apartment. We live in a tower blocks. We hide ourselves away in our communities. We don't see people; we don't talk to people. We don't know how people are in difficulties. We don't know who the people are, that need our help because we don't even know their names. And that's where we're going wrong. Really? In my humble opinion that I'm delivering from a lectern. You invited me? Apparently, it's the equipment. Not me. They all say that. That wasn't a rude joke. Stop it. I'm a nice girl. But contrary to everything, you might have just heard. But where was I? Be nice. Basically, be nice to each other. Learn your neighbours’ names. Talk to them. Ask them if they need help. Ask them if they need anything. Invite them over every Christmas. Now I seem to have a collection of people gather at my house. People who would normally have a bit of a ropey Christmas. Otherwise people who would ... My friend who spent Christmas with me last year, is in the wings and I think that was her coughing at me. Sorry, I'm sure your Christmas would have been marvellous. But I get everyone together like a little, like a little Shepherd and I'm like, just come to mine. I'll cook, it will be vegetarian. But you know what? You'll be okay and, people do sneak their own pigs in blankets in, it has been known. I no longer make them eat them in the outside loo. But it's the little things you can do. And I grew up in a Baptist Church and the Baptist Church was over the road from my parents’ house. And that was something that we would do every Christmas day. My parents would be like, don't you want to spend Christmas with the family? I'm like, no. I'm just going over to sing to some old people, and I'll be right back and that's what you do. You do? You just give what you have. I was watching that Princess Diana documentary on the BBC. Last night. I loved Diana. I absolutely adored her as a child, I would collect magazine cut-outs of her I had stockpiled and made scrapbooks. I know every one of her outfits, every one of her iconic photographs, she was my idol. I love my mom, but secretly hoped Diana would adopt me. I used to go to Great Ormond Street for surgery on my leg every month quite boring story. Don't know why I started telling it. And on the way back, I'd always want to take a slow walk with my dad past Buckingham Palace, because I was like, maybe she'll see me and I'll be her dream, child. She doesn't have a girl. Hi-yah. Never, never really worked out. can't now. You can't stand and talk for an hour and not slip up somewhere. Come on. And anyway and Harry was on, was on the Telly last night. My dream of marrying him didn't work out either. I've got a lot of dreams, but he said something that really touched me and he was talking about his mom, and he was talking about her Legacy, and he said, You've got to believe in yourself, believe in yourself with all that you have and give as much as you can. And I think I'm going to end it there. Because that's all we really can do. Because once we start to lose our self-belief, once we start to doubt ourselves, once we start to feel that we're not good enough or that we're not enough, then we start to sink back inside ourselves. We start to withdraw and we can no longer be a light. We can no longer change the world. We could no longer radiate, we can no longer touch other people, we can no longer change their lives. So, the first thing you need to do every single day is go, I'm awesome. You don't have to mean it. You just have to, you know, just get into a pattern of thinking, you're a bit great, it's not ego, it's self- preservation. And once you've realized that you're all right and you're doing all right and you're going to be all right? And you've got 100% success record at surviving all of your worst days. Because you have because you're all still here that no matter what life's done to you. No matter what you've done, no matter what you've been through and no matter what you seen? You are still here. And the makes you a lot stronger than you. Probably think you are. So, believing yourself number one, lesson to take away from this believe in yourself. Believe that you are good and you are capable of goodness and you are capable of kindness. And it is really simple to do. It's really easy. It's easier to be nice. It's easier to let the Stranger On The Bus, ramble in your ear, than make awkward conversation, and try and move away because that's rude. And I'm usually that stranger and please talk to me because I'm lonely. Thank you. Secondly, I hadn't finished. Thank you. I mean, I'm not that I'm not grateful for your spontaneous Applause, but I'm still talking. Secondly. Believe in yourself. And give as much of yourself as you can don't burn out, don't exhaust yourselves, but I think we've all got the capacity in us to do a little bit more. Now, I was going to sing a song, but I bottled it, so I'm not going to. No, no, no, I don't even know why I mentioned it. You see, you see, I have this terrible. So I was with my other half yesterday and asked her a question. I'm gay by the way. Sorry, but you all seem quite nice. So I thought I could I mean I'm sure you wouldn't have worked it out. If I hadn't said anything about was, I was there and I asked her a question. I said, And she took a while to answer and it wasn't even a complicated question. I think was, what do you want on your pizza or something? And as she paused for ages, I was like, what are you doing? Why aren't you talking to me? She's like because sometimes, I like to think before I speak. Who does that? Is that a thing people do? How does it work? Please let me into your secrets. And so, then I tend to get myself in trouble because I say things like I was going to sing a song and you will get excited. Now I feel like I can't let you down. I just want you to know. I haven't sung on stage since I used to lead the worship band in my local church about 15 years ago. Secondly, I'm very sure that they could have set my mic very quiet deliberately and thirdly, I'm wondering how I can get out of this and if I can just run but it will stop me crying. So, I think that's probably a good thing. I'm going to do a quick recce. How many of you know Anything by Jackie Oates. Oh, no, that's not enough for you to save me from this. It's a song that sums up my speech, but you've listened to me ramble with my horrible Essex vowels for a look for about 40 minutes now. So this can't possibly be much worse than what you've already sat through. You all seem like very resilient people. There are usually ear Defenders lying around at this kind of thing if you if you need them. And I apologize in advance for what I'm about to do. I like to confront fears and this is one of them and I'm not quite sure why I've chosen now to do it, but it appears, here we are. Because I should have written more of a speech and there would have been a time for this nonsense and if I just stand in making excuses about why I'm not going to do them in time will be up anyway. Would you look at that? We've only got three minutes. Yeah, it's so it's a song that basically. It got me through my worst periods. This isn't completely random. It's a song that got me through the worst period of my life and it's the message I want to send you home with today. It's probably a lot better. If you go home and download Jackie Oates version but I'm going to give you like a verse to get you started and maybe be excited or horrified by it. No, I'm going to stop talking. And I'm very sorry for what I'm about to do. Oh, this is horrible. Nope. Sorry. Squeak. INSERT TERRIBLE WARBLING HERE Not even Gentleman, Jack Monroe. QUESTIONS Hi Jack. I just wondered if you could just briefly, tell us how the next stage in the food bank, how then you turned your bag of ingredients into the amazing menus that you then created? I just thought, for me, there was a bit of a gap in your story. I wanted to know more about how, what was the next bit? How you became a Master Chef. So back in my old life, And when I when I had time to spare and money to spend, I collected recipe books and so I had a little collection recipe books. I still know what they were and kitchen by Nigella Lawson Ramsay's best menus by Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver number and a lot printed out from the BBC, good food web site. And when I went home with my bag of ingredients from food bank, I started to basically rip off other people's recipes, using the cheap ingredients that I had in my Cupboard and made them my own and it's something that I try to encourage people to do now is to if you've got a recipe but you don't have the exact ingredients try and substitute. What you what, you don't have with what you do have because as long as you swapping a carb for a car or a spice for a spice or a green for a green, you're not going to get the recipe that they invented, but us recipe book, writers don't know everything. Anyway, you're going to get something that's a closer approximation to it. That is still going to feed you. And I think that's one of the problems. Was a cookery today is that we've got the master chefs. We've got the, we've got the Bake- Off. We've got all the all the brilliant TV cooking shows. But basically what they only ever taught me and it's why I don't have one myself. It's that I couldn't cook. They say that you can't cook because you don't have a KitchenAid, or we don't have a fancy kitchen or you can't get this far flung exotic vegetable. That they only sell in one market in Brixton. You've got you, you've got to learn to use what you've got. But when you haven't got anything, it's too much of A risk to take to go Well I'm going to try this out and if it doesn't work, it's going to go in the bin. So basically I took what I had, I sorted it out by. These are carbs, these are proteins, these are vegetables. These are flavours and I just used other people's recipes and made them into my own which I found quite guilty about later down the line. But not that guilty, really. Because they're almost millionaire chefs and they helped me out and I do credit them in all my books and been like this recipe was based on a Gordon, Ramsay chili, sorry, Gordon for what I did and a lot of them got in touch and they are really grateful that I've made their work more accessible. Some of them less so but some of them are really, really nice. So yeah, basically it's about using what you have to make the best of what you know. Hello. Hi, my name is Allison. Are you had a recent very public running with the ghastly Katie, Hopkins and I wondered how you're doing recovering from that. I had a full mental breakdown of the back of that trial. This one of those things that happens to me quite a lot. It was quite exciting. The first time it's less exciting, the more it happens actually gets quite predictable after a while. I'm doing, I'm doing well and it's It took a year out of my work life, so I cancelled all appearances, I've stopped writing. I was unable to do anything. My book is a year late. I've deeply apologize to any of you who are still waiting for it, but it's there and it's made, it's beautiful. And I just need to, you know, get it to you. So, it did have an impact, but actually I did it because and I pursued it because I wanted to send a very clear message that bullies should never win. They should not be tolerated. And really that's why I did it. I didn't do it for me. I didn't do it for money. I didn't do it for any reason other than a deep sense of Injustice. I was like, no, that's wrong and you're wrong. And, and you need to say sorry for that. And so that that was a very long way of achieving that and quite stressful and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but it's okay now and I've got a lovely new handbag out of it, so it's fine. Hi Jack, intentionally or not intentionally. You have a huge Ministry and my question is, what can we pray for you? Peace. Just peace because I am very anxious person and I get very anxious and I'm terrified of the world and all it contains. And I would just really like to know a life free from Fear of the unknown again. So, if you can all make that happen, that would be marvellous. But if yu can't, then of, thanks for trying. And but yeah, thank you. Hi Jack, my name is Louise and when you've been to talk to the Tories, do they actually make any promises what's their reaction when they hear your story? You know what do they do and face of the reality of who you are and what you've done? Well the first time I spoke at the Conservative Party Conference was 2013 and they revoked my pass and cancelled my talk two days beforehand. So, I went anyway. And I gave it anyway and they'd taken it off the programme. They designated me a tiny little room and people came into the tiny little room hear me talk. And I didn't realize that they were all in the corridors outside with the doors wide open as well. At the end of that talk,