From rough sleeper to MBE: Jay Flynn found the answers that saved his life

Jay, 40, went from sleeping rough on a London bench for two years to becoming an internet sensation during lockdown after hundreds of thousands of people enjoyed his online pub quizzes.

After raising £1.3million for charity, he was awarded an MBE by the Duke of Cambridge at Windsor Castle last December.

Now he’s making the move from fans’ laptops to the big screen with a film, which will come out next year, telling his astonishing story.

A huge champion of rough sleepers himself, when Jay saw those pictures of the future King quietly doing his bit on the streets of London he was surprised.

He hadn’t realised that William was following in the footsteps of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, who was a patron of the Centrepoint homeless charity.

“I didn’t realise how big he is on ­homelessness,” Jay confesses. “Now I know it’s such an emotive issue for him I would love to find a way to work with him in any
way, shape or form I can. I think there’s a way to get him as a cameo, recreating his Big Issue-selling role or even in the background of the shot!”

Jay hasn’t contacted the Palace directly, but he has a plan. “I’m going to say to the team, this is what you need to do. Off you go, make it happen. We’ll see,” he chuckles.

Garrulous, unassuming, and somewhat nerdy, Jay’s a natural quizmaster. He collects information.

Shortly after our Zoom chat starts, he becomes briefly distracted as a train passes by his home in Darwen, Lancashire.

“It’s a completely different colour than normal,” he explains. “I love my trains.”

The last two years have been a whirlwind. Jay made his name as the nation was ordered to stay at home in March 2020.

The former pub landlord set up a Facebook quiz for friends and family but didn’t know to alter his settings to privacy, which meant anyone could join in – and join in they did.

“I now know how these stupid people who create an event which says ‘I’m having a party at home – do you want to come along?’ see 12,000 people turn up,” he chuckles. “By the time that first quiz came around, over half a million people were interested.”

He was asked to host more, which he live-streamed on YouTube. Celebrities including Dame Judi Dench, Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross and Gary Barlow signed up to become co-hosts.

By April 2020, Jay had set a Guinness World Record for the “most viewers of a quiz YouTube live stream” as 182,513 viewers tuned in. He racked up 20 million online views in a year. Two book deals followed. It was a strange time.

Why does he think he did so well? “I don’t honestly know,” he admits. “For a lot of people, it became part of their routine… the only thing I can say is that I don’t take myself seriously.”

Today, he still runs quizzes and is the Thursday quizmaster on the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2.

But fame hasn’t changed him, he says. He credits his wife, Sarah, and their son, Jack, five, for keeping him grounded, along with his friends who teasingly call out “a celebrity’s here” when he meets them in the pub.

“I don’t suddenly walk around like I’m Elon Musk because I’m never going to trouble the Sunday Times Rich List and that is not something I’ve ever wanted to do,” Jay says.

“Having spent two and a half years ­without any money, it doesn’t get me out of bed in the morning. As long as I’ve got a roof over my head and I can provide for my wife and child that is all I’m bothered about.”

Those modest ambitions are understandable given the way Jay’s life spiralled out of control 15 years ago. He was in his mid-20s and engaged to be married when he split up with his then fiancée.

With nowhere to live, he sofa-surfed at a friend’s while working as a driver’s mate. But he struggled to sleep and lost his job after too many late starts. So he worked in pubs, but his mental health deteriorated as he struggled with heartbreak and homelessness.

“Having not dealt with the relationship breakdown, I was trying to be upbeat and hide that I was broken,” he says. “I lost faith in everyone around me and, all of a sudden, I couldn’t trust the people who would naturally try to help me.”

Discussions about mental health were still largely taboo in 2007. “It got to the point where I was so broken that I decided that if I walked out the door one night, no one would miss me, and if I threw myself off a bridge then really no one would miss me,” Jay says.

As he contemplated taking his own life, he called the Samaritans, who kept him on the phone until the police arrived. He attempted to take his life twice more, the first time washing down painkillers with alcohol.

“It just gave me a belly ache and used the last of the money that I had,” he says. His failed attempts made him feel worse but eventually proved a turning point.

“They made me go through rock bottom and out the other side,” he says. Resolving to survive, he picked the second bench along from Embankment station and slept there every night, rising at 7am and returning at nightfall. He existed like this for two long years.

“You now live at Number Three, Riverside View, Victoria Embankment – that’s your home, just get on with life,” he reflects. “Your daily job is walking up to 16 hours a day ­seeing what loose change you can find.”

He kept one of his few possessions, a portable radio, for company and survived on 15p packets of custard creams and Swiss rolls.

Occasionally he got lucky. Once, on Park Lane, he found £40-worth of banknotes “floating up the street”. And when he found pounds instead of pennies, he ate ­sausage and chips from a kebab shop on Tottenham Court Road.

Why did he return to the same bench each night? “It was home, that simple,” he says. “It was safety and shelter, as daft as it sounds… I tried everything that I could to blend in and not appear as a homeless person.”

The Embankment mostly provided a peaceful spot by the Thames.

“I only got hassled once and that was a group of German tourists queuing up to get on a tour boat,” he says. “I overslept, it was midday, and they were throwing little stones at me to wake me up.”

Despite all he endured, Jay never touched drugs or alcohol.

“Drinking never entered my head,” he says. I remember finding a bottle of gin and 200 cigarettes in a Duty-Free bag and I left them on a train. Now, there’s no way I would give away a bottle of gin!”

The next turning point came the night an outreach worker from homeless charity The Connection at St Martin’s passed Jay as he slept and left a card inviting him to visit their night centre.

It took him a few days to summon the courage to go but when he did he was provided with clean clothes and shower facilities. He credits the humanity and decency afforded to him there with shaping who he has become today.

“I was a shell of a person, I no longer had a personality because our personalities are built by our interactions with people and what we do in our daily life,” he says.

“I’m a quiet and shy individual who doesn’t really want to be out there but I’m also the most empathetic and loving person who will do anything for anyone.”

With help from The Connection, Jay joined football and art sessions before finding accommodation and a job as a team leader for Sainsbury’s. He moved to Wigan and met his wife Sarah in March 2013. They moved to Darwen together six months later.

His old life may be behind him, yet a constant “why me” nibbles away at Jay’s thoughts. “I don’t believe in myself,” he admits.

He grew up in Wimbledon Park, south London, with his mum, younger sister, grandmother and grandfather, Christopher, who died when Jay was 16.

“That broke me because he was my father figure,” he says. “He hadn’t completely trained me in how to be a man and then I had to find my own way in the world.”

A former child actor who appeared in Casualty and The Bill, Jay has dismissed the idea of playing himself in the film made by the production company behind A Street Cat Named Bob. He fancies British actors Rafe Spall, Will Poulter or Matthew Lewis of Harry Potter fame for the part.

“I wouldn’t want some big A-list name who is just about the money and doesn’t give a flying monkeys about me or where I’ve come from,” he says. “I want someone who’s gonna come along and do it justice.”

He’s ready for a rerun of intense fame, if with a little trepidation. Unkind trolls forced him off social media after accusing him of selling out. One person suggested he only got his MBE because Boris Johnson had hosted one of his quizzes.

“Everything I do is for other people,” he says. “That’s what really hurts.”

He has no plans to host TV quizzes. An ambassador for The Connection, he is more interested in finding a solution to end rough sleeping and helping people understand “that every single homeless person out there is different”.

His story has helped but more work is needed, he stresses. “A lot of people say I’ve changed their perception of homelessness because of how I ended up how I did. It can happen to anyone.”