TV presenter Jameela Jamil on how being paralysed for more than a year inspired her to help those with disabilities get the most out of music gigs
Left paralysed for more than a year after a serious road accident, DJ and TV presenter Jameela Jamil has first-hand experience of feeling isolated and excluded. Which is why she’s on a mission to get people with disabilities to the front of the crowd at music and comedy shows
'I think artists want to play for all their fans and are horrified to think that some people can’t get to their gigs'
It takes a girl with chutzpah to stroll into Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont hotel in the teeniest of strapless dresses, and it’s fair to say that 29-year-old Jameela Jamil is that girl. She may be attracting admiring glances with her glossy hair and long limbs today, but the TV and radio presenter has made her fair share of embarrassing entrances too. ‘I was interviewing Daniel Craig and Naomie Harris for a Bond film a few years ago, and the moment I sat down my dress ripped,’ she laughs. ‘No more bodycon numbers for me. I had to walk out of the room backwards when I was done.’
Chances are that this was the last time Jameela took a backward step in her career. Having auditioned as a presenter for Channel 4’s E4 show Music Zone in 2008, securing the job despite having no prior TV experience, she found herself a year later on the successful weekend youth show T4, where she formed a popular partnership with fellow presenters Nick Grimshaw and Rick Edwards. Then in 2013 she became the first woman to host Radio 1’s The Official Chart show. ‘I’ve been amazingly lucky,’ she says, ‘and believe me, I don’t take anything for granted.’
The Why Not People? ambassadors include TV presenter and wheelchair basketball player Martin Dougan, The Last Leg presenter Alex Brooker, Paralympic bronze medallist and TV host Ade Adepitan, Jameela and Hannah Cockcroft, who won the wheelchair 100m and 200m at London 2012
While she is enjoying the fruits of her current success, ‘lucky’ certainly isn’t the word one would use to characterise the years leading up to it. Bullied at school for being ‘a loser – glasses, braces, chubby, swotty’, and raised by a single mother in a North London household where money was scarce, Jameela also had to undergo several operations as a child to correct severe hearing difficulties. Moreover, she was paralysed from the waist down and was unable to walk for more than a year when she was run over by a car, aged 17, while crossing the street. Her spine was so badly damaged, she says, ‘The doctors weren’t sure I’d walk again.’
It was a dark period in her life and one which prompted Jameela to embark on her latest project, Why Not People? – an online members’ club for those living with disabilities (membership costs £15 annually). Having had the kernel of the idea after recovering from her own accident, she is rightly proud that it’s finally coming to fruition. ‘I’ve had versions of disability my whole life, first with my hearing and then when I couldn’t walk for over a year. It was challenging to go anywhere with my friends because [disabled] access ten years ago was even more tricky.
'After I got better, I wanted to get out into the world'
It was difficult to socialise, which was really depressing and alienating. You’re made to feel such a burden, so I wanted to do something that would change the way we look at disabled people.’
Why Not People? will host a number of music gigs (with different kinds of events planned for the future), with A-list headliners already on standby. While only people with a disability can purchase the tickets, they can buy them for their friends and family, whether or not they are disabled. ‘Often venues don’t think about what it must feel like for people in wheelchairs to be at a gig, where they’re stuck on a ramp at the side of the venue or all the way at the back, separated from their friends,’ says Jameela. ‘So we’ve created an infrastructure where we have collapsible seats – people who don’t need space for a wheelchair can sit on the seats, but they can be collapsed to make way for wheelchairs. Wembley Stadium has 90,000 seats and out of those 310 have wheelchair access – and that’s one of the most advanced venues in the UK. With our system, we can accommodate up to 50 per cent.’
Jameela with friend Charlie Howarth
Rick Edwards, Jameela and Nick Grimshaw at a T4 live show
Where the venues have fixed seating, ‘we have to work with them to see how we can make them work for our needs,’ says Jameela. ‘For the moment we are focusing on venues which have at least a large section with free seating. For example, at Troxy [in London’s East End], they have fixed theatre-style seating on their upper floors, which are accessible via a small set of stairs.
'However, on the ground floor there is a vast empty space that will be built around our members’ needs and allow them to sit right next to all their friends in the middle of the action. We’ll also have SubPac technology – backpacks which vibrate to the beat, allowing you to feel the music in your chest, lungs and stomach – something I’d have loved when I couldn’t hear. There’ll be someone doing sign language on stage, too, so we’re really going for it.’
It’s a terrific idea and so simple that one wonders why no one had thought of it before. ‘I don’t know, to be honest,’ says Jameela.
‘There are 11.9 million people living with disabilities in the UK, with a spending power of £80 billion – it’s called the purple pound – and they’ve got nowhere to go to spend that money. So from a business standpoint, you’d think venues would want to do more. [People with disabilities] want to shake off the week as much as the rest of us, and I think artists want to play for all their fans and are horrified to think that some people can’t get to their gigs.’
Tinie Tempah has already been lined up for the launch party at Troxy on 1 July, with stars such as Sam Smith, Mark Ronson, Ed Sheeran and Coldplay to follow. ‘I’m not best buddies with any of them,’ says Jameela, ‘but I know them reasonably well and none of them hesitated to say yes. They’re doing it for free, but not for me – they’re doing it for their fans.’
Not everyone, of course, would be in a position to dial up music’s A-list to support their cause. But while her glamorous career and gorgeous looks would appear to mark Jameela out as the archetypal insider, growing up she often felt on the fringes and alone. Born in London to Indian parents and raised alongside her elder brother Adnandus, now a writer, Jameela’s first experience of isolation came when she was just a baby.
‘I was always very quiet and I think everyone thought that was because I was a good child,’ she reflects. But in fact Jameela was born with a hearing problem. ‘I’d sit there in silence, but it wasn’t until my mother was calling me one day when I was very young that she realised something was wrong because I wasn’t responding.’ Jameela was found to have poorly functioning eardrums, ‘and I had only partial hearing until I was 12. I needed seven operations to get my hearing back. Now I can hear pretty well, although I use the same earphones at Radio 1 as Annie Nightingale, and she’s in her 70s.’
It meant that Jameela had to attend a primary school for children with special needs, where she met her best friend Charlie Howarth, who has cerebral palsy. ‘I was about six when we met,’ says Jameela. ‘No one wanted to hold his hand on the way to the park, so I did, and we’ve been friends ever since. He’s been a complete inspiration to me. He’s been to Oxford University, he’s so handsome and tall and wonderful – he really inspired me to set up Why Not People?’
Jameela’s parents separated when she was young and she and her brother were raised by their stay-at-home mum. At 11, Jameela, who was academically gifted, won a scholarship to the prestigious Queen’s College in London’s Harley Street. There, too, she encountered difficulties.
‘I was very studious,’ she says. ‘I didn’t drink, smoke or do drugs and I wasn’t interested in boys, so I was bullied. I didn’t enjoy school that much, but it was definitely a character-building experience.’
But the car accident that she was involved in at 17 was a particular low point and one which Jameela admits made her wonder ‘if life would ever be the same again. I damaged my sacroiliac joint [above the coccyx] so badly that I needed to have steroid injections in my spine, which is very dangerous. The doctors weren’t sure whether I’d walk again and I spent a lot of time in bed. We lived on the second floor without a lift, so when I was finally able to move around, I’d use crutches or a Zimmer frame or go down the stairs on my bum.
'There were times when I thought that would be it for the rest of my life,’ she says. ‘When you can’t really shower by yourself, you don’t have the same worries that other people your age do, such as boy troubles, so you feel alienated and alone. It definitely changed me – it made me grow up and put things into perspective and not give as much of a damn about the small things. And it made me quite fearless, too – once you’ve experienced not being able to go to the loo on your own, nothing else really fazes you!’
Confined to her bed, Jameela had little to do but watch TV, and so the girl who had once set her sights on becoming a doctor started to see her career path a little differently. ‘Until then I’d been an academic,’ she says. ‘But then I realised that television and film can give you a bit of escapism, and that entertainment has the power of distraction when you’re isolated. Watching all that TV gave me a love of the industry that I hadn’t had before. It was probably how I learned to be a presenter. After I got better, I didn’t want to spend any more time sitting in a classroom – I wanted to get out into the world.’
But then another health issue last October prompted her to take a sabbatical: this time, a breast cancer scare. Did she ever think, why me?
‘No,’ she smiles, ‘but it was a wake-up call.’ After discovering a lump in her breast, Jameela underwent an operation to have it removed. ‘Even though the lump was benign, waiting for the biopsy results was awful. Three women in my family have died of breast cancer in the past couple of years. After I got the all-clear, I booked a ticket out of London and I’ve been travelling around the US ever since.’
I realised that television and film can give you a bit of escapism, and that entertainment has the power of distraction when you’re isolated
Radio 1 couldn’t have been more supportive, she says. ‘I haven’t left, I’m just going travelling for a while.’ Her carpe diem trip meant saying goodbye to a two-year relationship with her boyfriend (whom she’d rather not name). ‘A long-distance relationship would have felt a bit like being pen pals, so we ended it.’
Just last month, Jameela was back in the UK to promote health-food store Holland & Barrett’s new Free From range. As if the difficulties she went through as a child weren’t enough, at 12 she was diagnosed with coeliac disease (an intolerance to gluten). ‘I felt tired and unwell constantly,’ she says. ‘I didn’t exactly help myself by secretly eating cakes despite the doctor’s orders. I then got mercury poisoning [from amalgam fillings] when I was 21, and developed allergies to things such as dairy and celery, so I’m careful about what I eat.’
She’ll certainly need to be fighting fit as she launches Why Not People?, which has been backed by a range of celebrities including Hannah Cockcroft, the 2012 British double Paralympic gold medallist, and Ade Adepitan, the TV presenter and bronze medallist for the 2004 British wheelchair basketball team. But while her empathy for others is plain to see, it still hasn’t stopped Jameela expressing her somewhat trenchant views on everything from body image to the over-sexualisation of young stars. She shakes her head recalling the ‘heroin chic’ of the 90s, and once received death threats from Miley Cyrus fans after she dared to criticise the pop star’s sexual posturing.
But it’s that same feistiness that has helped her weather the tough times. ‘I take very seriously the fact that things can change at any moment,’ she says, ‘and I don’t want to waste a second.’
For more on the launch gig at Troxy, featuring Tinie Tempah, go to whynotpeople.com
Jameela Jamil is the ambassador of Holland & Barrett’s new Free From range of more than 1000 products. hollandandbarrett.com
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