Jill Scott will have no problem getting some shut-eye in the jungle - after years of sofa surfing when she first made her way as a football star.
The former England international, 35, had to regularly make the 170-mile journey from her native Sunderland to Everton after she signed for Everton Ladies in 2006, but at times she would try to stay on her team-mates’ sofas to save money on petrol, before the days female footballers were paid to play the game.
Jill now has the ability to “sleep anywhere” after years of bedding down on couches, which will stand her in good stead to sleep outside on a hammock after she was seen heading into the ITV show’s Australian camp tonight.
Jill said: “When I first started there was a lot of travelling and we didn’t get paid to play football, so a lot of the time you were covering your own expenses. I should’ve had shares in petrol back then. But back then you could put £5 petrol in and that would probably get you up the motorway. It wouldn’t nowadays.
“But I feel so fortunate that I’ve actually lived the journey of the game and made so many good friends. Because back then it was like, ‘Can someone let us sleep on the sofa? I’ve got training tonight.’ It was literally like that, but you made such good friendships through that.
“The friends that I have now that I’ve made later on in the game. There’s a massive opportunity there now that players can play full-time and have careers. I think that’s a fantastic thing.”
Speaking about sofa surfing, she said: “I was poorly quite a lot of the time and now I think I know why.
“I would always get my sleep, because I can sleep anywhere and that’s probably why, because I got used to it.
“But eating as well. I’d be stopping at the services and just grabbing anything.
“Some of the food I’ve eaten, like a Dairylea Lunchable just to get some energy. I was ill quite a lot. I’m touching wood right now because I think in the last eight years of playing for City I’ve only been unavailable for one game. It’s the coffee, it helps your immune system as well.”
While Jill no longer has to rely on service station snacks to get through the day, the star admits she does get “hangry” - angry when hungry - and always has four meals a day, plus extras, which could prove a problem in the jungle, when the campmates mainly eat a die of rice and beans.
Asked if she gets hangry, she said: “Yeah, a little bit. I usually have breakfast, lunch, dinner, I always have supper, and definitely a snack in there as well. And definitely a chocolate bar.
“I am a bit of a grazer. My snacks aren’t too healthy. I do like toast and jam.”
Quizzed on what number she sets her toaster to determine how brown her bread goes, she said: “What do you mean? That’s just too complicated. I just put it in until it flips up. What do you mean a number? I didn’t even know the toaster had a number. It just goes in, it pops up, I butter it and I eat it. I do like to let it go cold though and then put the butter on, so that it stays on. Toast-ally ridiculous.”
But Jill - who was part of the England Lionesses squad which won the Euro 2022 this summer - isn’t likely to get emotional about not being able to have her usual food intake, because she has only cried twice in the last six years.
She said: “I literally can’t cry. I think I worked out that in the last six years I’ve cried twice.
“I just think when you’re at weddings and stuff and there’s a pressure to cry, and then overthinking I’m meant to be crying. I just can’t cry.”
Jill retired from the beautiful game in August after playing 161 times for England, and she now runs a coffee shop, Boxx 2 Boxx, with her long-term partner and fiancée Shelley Unitt.”
Jill praised her partner for making their shop look “as good as it does”.
The star explained: “She’s obviously done a lot of work and that’s why the shop looks as good as it does.
“She drinks a flat white with oat milk or something. She tries to be posh. I’m quite simple really.”
Jill popped the question to Shelley after buying a ring from a shop in New York, when she was in the city for an England game.
Speaking on her Coffee Club podcast, Jill added: “It was right when Covid hit and we were in America. I remember it was like, ‘Right, tomorrow everyone is going home.’ We were on lockdown. I’d already made a plan to go to New York to get a ring, because that is where me and Shelley had first bought a silver ring thing. I wanted to go back to the same shop. The whole country was going into lockdown. Me and [fellow Lioness] Carly [Telford]
still had our football stuff on. So we got a ferry over from New Jersey. It was late at night, because the game had finished late.
“The shop was closing in five minutes, but they let us in. They were looking at us up and down because we looked scruffy.
“Carly had said we were looking for an engagement ring and as soon as she said that we were sat down, they gave us truffles and prosecco. It was a rush, but I got the ring, went back over and was so scared not to lose it.
“I gave it to the [Lionesses] security woman Sue. She’s the safest pair of hands until you get back on the flight the next day and realise Sue is not feeling well and she’s stayed in New York. This is so bad of me, I didn’t even say, ‘How is she?’ I just said, ‘Where’s the ring?’ But she had passed it on to one of the other members of staff. That was my engagement story.”
Former Aston Villa and Man City player Jill admits that while she will miss Shelley and the rest of her family, she will find it tough going without a cup of coffee to start the day during her time in the jungle.
She said: “Aside from my family, I will definitely miss coffee and tea as I am a big coffee and tea drinker. That is what starts my day, and I am going to have to think of something else.”
Despite winning the Euros, being Queen of the Jungle is not on her mind.
She said: “I haven’t even thought about winning. It sport what’s drilled in you is just take everything step by step.
I’ve actually got a tattoo on my wrist that says step by step day by day,
mile by mile, obviously, Whitney Houston lyrics and that’s something that I’ve always lived my life by.
Tomorrow is never guaranteed so I’m just always willing to give it my all for that day. So I haven’t thought too far ahead about winning, I just want to go in there and no matter what the outcome is just kind of make my family proud I suppose.”
