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15 Minute Drama: A Girl Called Jack

Jaime Winstone

June Whitfield

Sam Troughton

Polly Thomas

Jack Monroe

Sarah Daniels

15 Minute Drama: A Girl Called Jack: Episode 1

A Girl Called Jack

Episode 1

BBC Radio 4 - 15 Minute Drama, A Girl Called Jack, Episode 1

Why Grandma is not talking to Jack, and why soda bread is her favourite recipe.

Jack Monroe is an unusual food writer, gaining celebrity from her unique blog about existing on the breadline. During that time, she hit rock bottom but kept fighting to eat well and give her son proper food, rather than live on processed, cheap products. Now successful and no longer on the breadline, she continues to campaign passionately for decent food and standards of living. 

This new drama, starring Jaime Winstone and June Whitfield, revisits her past and her relationship with her beloved Grandma. 

Jack's blog started in 2012 after a Southend local councillor attacked single mothers. Jack lived in a small flat with her young son. Having been made redundant from a well-paid job, she found herself struggling to get by on benefits while applying unsuccessfully for jobs. Her blog documented the difficulties of living on welfare and, particularly, how to feed her son a nutritious and enjoyable diet on just £10 a week. It became a huge hit, Jack became a journalist, published food writer and social campaigner.

Sarah Daniels is an award winning radio writer. In 2014, she dramatised Nigel Slater's food memoir, Eating for England, for BBC Radio 4. She has drawn on Jack Monroe's written recipe books, blogs and direct conversations to reveal the personal story behind Jack's years of struggling and subsequent fame.

"Poverty isn't just having no heating, or not quite enough food, or unplugging your fridge and turning your hot water off. It's not a tourism trade, it's not cool, and it's not something that MPs on a salary of £65k a year plus expenses can understand, let alone our PM who states that we're all in this together.

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."
Jack Monroe, 30 July 2012 Hunger Hurts blog


Episode 1:
We find out why Grandma isn't talking to Jack and why soda bread is her favourite recipe. 

Guitar playing by Dan Cocker
Production Co-ordinator: Sarah Kenny
Sound design: Eloise Whitmore

Producer: Polly Thomas
Executive Producer: Joby Waldman
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Dramatisation of Jack Monroe's first cookery book about how to eat well on a tiny budget.

Dramatisation of Jack Monroe's first cookery book about how to eat well on a tiny budget. Adapted by Sarah Daniels.

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