When Maya Jama asked her financial advisors, “‘Can I retire at 40?’ they said, ‘Yes … you definitely can.’ So that’s the aim, but I want to make a lot more money first.”
The 30-year-old Love Island host and presenter-elect of The Masked Singer (she takes over from Rita Ora as a judge on the next series, which starts next month) has come a long way in the past 15 years. Born in Bristol, Jama’s story is one of huge resilience. Her father had been in and out of prison for a series of violent offences and she cut ties with him altogether when she was 12. And she had only been in London a short time when her boyfriend Rico Gordon was shot dead, caught in the crossfire of a gang shoot-out in Bristol. Jama had been on the phone to him when he was hit by a ricocheting bullet. Her reaction? “I decided to stay in London and try to make it work.”
