If you think food blogger Jack Monroe's rags-to-riches story seems like the narrative of a feelgood film, you're not alone: Hollywood executives agree.
Representatives of the writer of The Wolf of Wall Street recently contacted the 25-year-old single mother to inquire about buying the "life rights" to her story, she says in an interview in Observer Food Monthly. She turned them down. "That was too weird. I mean: unemployed girl writes food blog isn't going to a be a great movie, is it?"
Despite her modesty, Monroe's blog about living in poverty won her legions of fans, who devoured both her cheap recipes and her candid online diary.
In an ironic twist, her budget cuisine has led to a soaring rise in her fortunes. In the past year she has won a cookbook deal with Penguin and a column in the Guardian, and last month she moved into a larger, two-bedroom, flat in her native Southend-on-Sea. She says she is still frugal, however: "I pay myself the living wage and I try to save the rest, because if life has taught me one thing, it's that you never know what is around the corner."
Monroe says she keenly remembers her days of a £10-a-week food budget and queueing at food banks, which she admitted left her feeling ashamed. "One of the volunteers was a friend of my mum's. We both pretended we hadn't seen each other because I hadn't told my parents," she said. Pride prevented Monroe from leaning on family and friends when she fell on hard times after struggling to find employment, despite 300 job applications. She had left her post at a fire brigade switchboard at the end of 2011 as the shift patterns prevented her caring for her son Johnny, now three.
As rent arrears spiralled, she turned off the heating and hid the radiators behind furniture to try to forget they were there. Next the furniture had to be sold, followed by the television and then, wrenchingly, her son's toys.
However, after a blog post entitled "Hunger Hurts" went viral in 2012, thousands of people flocked to read her online diary, A Girl Called Jack, and her popularity has continued to rise. Last month she was splashed across the front page of the New York Times as "the face of British austerity".
She has also recently appeared in an advert for Sainsbury's value range, but was quick to point out that she donated the fee to Oxfam: "I earn my living as a writer, not as the paid face of Sainsbury's, so it was a no-brainer really."
As her profile and finances have risen, however, so have her detractors. Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn attacked her for "masquerading as an ordinary person" and suggested that the use of kale in her recipes was evidence of a bourgeois background.
Sanguine about such attacks, she said: "I am everything the Daily Mail loathes … I'm a lefty, liberal, lezzer cook and I talk about it all."
Monroe also spoke frankly about changing her name from Melissa to Jack. She said she felt the papers were "gleeful" about it, but added: "I was bullied about my name a lot at school, which is one reason I wanted to change it. I still get loads of smartarses on Twitter saying 'hey Melissa', of course."
"For the first week I was thinking, what have I done? But after people started to use it, it felt right."
She admitted relatives and friends were concerned that her name change signalled a desire for deeper gender alteration, but said their reservations were unfounded. "I was like, no, I'm a little bit tomboyish, a little bit butch. But I have no immediate plans to transition."
Coming out to her followers and readers was another hurdle. While her close friends knew she was a lesbian, she thought a wider audience might be hostile. Eventually she felt compelled to reveal her sexuality while blogging on gay pride. Despite some "nasty abuse" and rape threats, she said: "Mostly the outpouring of support was phenomenal."
