Jameela, tell us about the motivation behind your members club for disabled people, Why Not People?
Access [for disabled people] in this country is so embarrassing. I'm embarrassed of our government, I'm embarrassed at us for letting it go on for this long where we exclude a huge portion of society. There are currently 11.8m people in the UK desperate to have a normal night out. All they need is a normal night out, no one's not asking for special attention. Just a regular night out. A chance to get pissed and pull and enjoy live music and have stories to tell at the office. It's so normal what we're asking for.
Tinie Tempah's performed already, you've got a show with Sam Smith coming up. What other acts have recently come on board?
Muse have just joined us, Ellie Goulding, Ella Eyre and Foxes have all just signed up. They're coming in armies of A-listers. It's natural that people, if they aren't directly affected by disability, to do nothing. But everyone has decided to join me on this.
What's your end goal?
The end goal is to add a Why Not People? event onto every single tour that exists. I would love for every venue in the world to become accessible to disabled people but that's going to be very difficult to achieve and that's going to take a very long time. In the near future I'd like all the artists to give us one night with them on tour.
You recently decided to take a break from Radio 1. Does your new company mean the gap year is over?
This was always my gap year. I just meant a gap year from being on telly and radio. I needed my full focus to get everyone on board but I've been doing it from all around the world because I've got an amazing team. They keep it all afloat but I do all the big meetings, I make all the big phone calls and the best begging!
It will be great if we can get brands and sponsors on board because I've paid for everything for the last two years, I've paid for this event but I've run out of life savings - tens of thousands, a lot of tens of thousands.
Are you living in LA now?
I'm between here [London] and LA and then I'm maybe going travelling to Tokyo but I can only do short spurts away because I need to be back here for the business.
Did you need to schmooze any artists particularly to get them on board?
I didn't need to schmooze anyone. Everyone was just well up for it immediately. The only people who were super super busy were Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith. They were so up for it because their schedules are just mental so it's so cool that, even then, they made it happen. They were like 'make it happen, we want to perform to all of our fans'. You always worry that your favourite artist is a w***** and that hasn't happened to me yet. Joy to the world!
We saw you last week at Wimbledon with a mystery man. Is he anyone special?
No, he's just a close friend.
You split from your ex in January. Have you found your man mojo again?
I don't think I ever had a man mojo! I did complete Tinder in America, I went on lots of Tinder dates and it was really fun because no one really knows who I am out there but I didn't even get a snog. The American men I met were very nice but my heart will always love English men.
And there was talk that you were dating Brit singer song writer James Blake, are you together?
We're really close, we've been really close friends for years but we're just close. I don't talk a lot about any of that kind of stuff. Every time I become close to a boy and we're just friends everyone makes assumptions.
So did you date him?
No, we're just really close. That's all I can say at this point. If you catch my drift. I don't know what's going on with anyone right now. I'm just taking it one day at a time. I've got a lot going on with my company to solidify anything with anyone.
Tagged in Jameela Jamil