As a trailblazing footballer, and an iconic part of the Lionesses’ Euros winning team, Jill Scott MBE is one of the best athletes Britain has ever produced – but she admits that when it comes to keeping fit, she’s only human like the rest of us.
“I’d love to say I do enough, but I don’t really,” she groans, when I ask about her exercise routine now she’s retired. “When I was playing I used to wonder why people didn’t just go to the gym and keep fit? But my eyes have been opened now. Work gets so busy, and sometimes it’s hard finding the time to train. If I’m being completely honest, I’ll do something good for a couple of weeks then fall out of it.”
“Hopefully I won’t be remembered for my swearing, but just for being a passionate athlete!”
Jill’s refreshing honesty is one of the reasons the British public fell in love with her – and why she’s been so in demand since hanging up her football boots. In 2022, she was crowned Queen of the Jungle after winning I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and went on to become a captain on the panel show A League of Their Own. She’s also a podcaster, a pundit, a motivational speaker and a coffee-shop owner – so very busy indeed.
“I’ve enjoyed every single minute of it,” she says of post-retirement stardom. But sport will always be her first love – which is why she’s so keen to do something about the barriers that stop women from fitting it into their busy lives. “It is difficult,” she says. “We’ve got to make it easier for people.”
Warm, gregarious and funny, Jill, 38, is exactly the woman you want standing up for women’s sport. She doesn’t back down – as demonstrated by a heated exchange with an opponent who fouled her in the Euros’ 2022 final which went viral. “F*** off, you f***ing p****!” Jill memorably yelled at the German player. She’s since had FOYFP tattooed on her side as a memento of the moment.
“That’s what it looks like when you want something so bad,” she grins ruefully. “It was the final moment of my career. I knew I was going to retire after 16 years of being competitive. Hopefully I won’t be remembered for my swearing, but just for being a passionate athlete!”
Getty | Shaun Botterill
Jill has recently teamed up with hydration brand Liquid IV, whose new survey reveals that 46% of women are keen to take up a physical activity but admit something is holding them back. The top barriers include the cost of participation, lack of access to suitable spaces, and sports equipment designed primarily for men.
And Jill says one of the biggest issues is girls feeling self-conscious about how they look on a sports pitch.
“I think there’s always this thing around women and especially teenage girls, where they’re under a lot of pressure through social media to look a certain way. We need to teach the younger generation that being strong, being physically and mentally active, is so much more powerful than the negative thoughts we have about ourselves.”
“We need to teach the younger generation that being strong, being physically and mentally active, is so much more powerful than the negative thoughts we have about ourselves.”
Jill can identify with those feelings of self doubt – having come under scrutiny for being ‘too skinny’ when she was a younger player. “There was this sense that you all had to look the same way. And for me, no matter how many weights I did, genetically, I wasn’t going to change.” But she didn’t let it stop her. “As long as I was playing well and contributing to the team, I don’t think we should ever, ever be judged on how we look.”
In fact, when it came to football, nothing was ever going to put Jill off – she’d been mad about the sport for as long as she could remember. As a child, she was the only girl on her all-boys team. “The lads were very supportive,” she tells PS in her warm Sunderland accent. “It was often the parents who’d make more comments.”
Finding a girls team when she was ten was transformative, and gave her a new confidence. She never looked back. She signed to Everton Ladies and then Manchester City, getting her first call up to England in 2006, when she was just 19. It was a different world then. “We were still juggling jobs, working part time,” she says of her early days at England. “I remember looking at teams like the USA and being scared before even stepping onto the football pitch. They had the best sport science and the best psychology, how could we be expected to beat them?”
Jill played in an astonishing ten international tournaments, and saw the game change massively during that time. Thanks to investment from the FA, and a new focus on sports science, finally England could compete with the likes of the USA. But there were plenty of sacrifices along the way too – including Jill having to skip the first dance at her sister’s wedding because she had to get back for a match. All that paid off, however, with the Lionesses’s historic Euros triumph in 2022.
“It was the best feeling in the world, I’m not going to lie,” smiles Jill. “After working so hard and having nine disappointments, to finally get that medal was amazing on a personal level but it was also so much bigger than that. It was about how many people tuned in, the support we got, and the change that it made after. I feel so proud to have played a tiny, tiny part in making that happen.”
And she should be proud – there was a 140% increase in girls’ football participation after that win and a 173% increase in attendance at Women’s Super League games the following season. Since then, the Lionesses went on to win the Euros again in 2025, followed by the Red Roses England rugby team triumphing in the World Cup.
“It’s fantastic having all these role models for young girls now,” says Jill. “Sometimes you have to see something to be able to dream about it.”
Jill announced her retirement shortly after the Euros, but says she’s channelled everything she learned from sport into her media career. She even puts her triumph in the jungle down to her competitiveness and instinctive teamwork. She jokes: “I never thought sport would teach us how to live in a jungle for three weeks but it did!”
“The friendships you make through sport are so much deeper because you’ve looked each other in the eye and been like, ‘I will fight for you today’.”
If there’s one thing Jill wishes more women knew about sport it’s the power of the friendships formed on the pitch. “It’s the best thing. The friendships you make through sport are so much deeper because you’ve looked each other in the eye and been like, ‘I will fight for you today’. You’ve been through highs and lows together and I am extremely lucky to have such great people in my life thanks to sport.”
One of her best mates from football is fellow Lioness Karen Carney, with whom she hosts podcast Long Story Short. Karen is currently competing on Strictly Come Dancing, and Jill is loving cheering her on. So would she do it herself?
“No!” laughs Jill. “I think I’m ok at dancing once I’ve had a few drinks but I think I should leave it to the people who actually can dance. Kaz is absolutely smashing it so I think it would be hard to follow in her footsteps.”
For now, Jill has too much on her plate anyway – including hosting a series of interviews for Liquid IV called the Hot Seat Series – conducted in a sauna, for an extra challenge.
So what about fitting in that exercise regime? “The best bit of advice I would give is, don’t try and make a drastic change and suddenly train seven times a week. Do something that is sustainable like fitting in a walk or a couple of runs. That’s what I’m going to try, anyway!”
See Jill Scott in the brand-new Hot Seat Series on Liquid I.V. Instagram, TikTok and website.
Emily Fairbairn is a freelance writer and journalist. She has more than 15 years of experience at national newspapers such as The Sun, and she has also ghostwritten a number of fiction and nonfiction books.
