After a life-changing summer, when the Lionesses’ victory in the final of the Euros confirmed a first major trophy for the England women’s team and the country’s first major football trophy since the men’s World Cup win in 1966, midfielder Jill Scott topped off her year by being crowned queen of the jungle – the winner – of I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!
After her coronation with a crown of flowers on the carved wooden throne, support from the retired footballer’s former teammates flooded social media. “I’m so proud of you @JillScottJS8 QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE”, said Beth Mead, player of the tournament and top scorer in the women’s Euros.
“Honestly, one of the best people you’d ever get to meet and the world’s fallen in love with you too. Always been a queen. So happy for you,” tweeted the England forward Lauren Hemp. “Never doubted it. You deserve it,” said the former England captain Faye White, with the current captain, Leah Williamson, echoing her: “Never in doubt!!!!”
To anyone who has followed women’s football or spent time in Scott’s company, there would only ever have been one winner. It is impossible not to like Sunderland-born Scott, who went viral after she was caught on camera during the 2-1 defeat of Germany in the final screaming expletives at Sydney Lohmann after a hefty challenge. Her beating the Hollyoaks actor Owen Warner and, in third place, the former health secretary Matt Hancock to the crown felt as inevitable heading into the final episode of the show as it was when she was first announced as entering.
There is a reason why, at 35 years old, Scott was still an integral part of England manager Sarina Wiegman’s plans in the summer and the public were treated to a glimpse of it in the opening hour of this year’s series. She had transferred seamlessly from the Lionesses’ hype woman to the camp’s hype woman. “Come on, you can do it,” she said, as she urged the actor and comedian Babatunde Aleshe to walk to the end of a plank off the top of a skyscraper. When Scott, after striding along the plank despite a fear of heights, and the ITV presenter Charlene White were stood on the end of the platform she continued to shout her encouragement: “Just keep breathing, you’re doing so good.”
Scott has been the jovial glue in the England team for a very long time, retiring this summer after finally collecting a gold medal with the national team, having become England’s second-most-capped player behind Fara Williams, with 161 appearances.
The former England manager Phil Neville called her “happy-go-lucky” and said she brought “a bit of cheekiness to the squad”.
In the early 2000s, England players in the north-east would go to their local prison twice a week to work on their strength and conditioning, because they had the best equipment there. Scott was full of beans and a bit of a joker, and would get “banned from going for a while”, according to England’s former head of performance Dawn Scott.
In the jungle, the public was treated to Scott’s quick wit: “Tonight’s meal, we’re going to call it Ed Sheeran … because it’s ginger hare”. It was treated to her digs at Hancock: “Just to be clear, are these guidelines or rules?” she said with a wry smile after the newly selected camp leader had handed out tasks to the other campmates. “If he collapses, I ain’t giving him mouth to mouth,” she said, as Hancock raced back and forth exercising, before saying to him: “Matt, are you training for Love Island next year?” Then, when asked whether the Celebrity Cyclone challenge was more fun than winning the Euros, she said it was, “just because of watching Matt get battered”.
It was treated to her grit, as she downed drinks that included blended spiders’ legs (“This is going to make me legless, isn’t it?”) and conquered her fear of heights and rats, after there had been fears that she and her campmates weren’t getting enough airtime because Hancock was dominating. And it was treated to a more personal side of her, as she opened up about her journey into football, her relationship with fiancee Shelly Unitt and homophobia in men’s football and how that contrasts with the women’s game.
“I literally didn’t realise until a couple of weeks in that I was literally the only girl [playing football with the boys],” she said, before telling her campmates that the parents were less forgiving than the boys. “If I beat their precious son, they’d shout stuff at us. Like: ‘kick her, hack her down …’ I’d come off the pitch in tears.”
Her jungle victory caps off a staggering year, but Scott’s rise will not slow, because there is nothing not to like.
