Maya Jama’s estranged dad reveals he was in and out of jail since she was two years old
MAYA JAMA did not have the easiest of childhoods.
When she was aged just two, the police knocked at the family’s door looking for her father in connection with an attack.
When the bewildered tot was asked where her dad was hiding, she replied: “Under the bed.”
But despite growing up with a jailbird father who was in and out of prison, Maya has become one of TV’s most in-demand presenters.
However, the 26-year-old — currently on our screens with ex-England striker Peter Crouch on his Crouchy’s Year-Late Euros: Live — has now cut her father out of her life.
In an exclusive chat with The Sun on Sunday, dad Hussein, 52, tells what life was like for a young Maya, who was born in Bristol to him and Swedish mum Sadie, 45.
And he shares his wish to have her back in his life again.
Showing off the photos he still has of Maya as a child, he said: “It’s weird, she is a grown woman now and is doing so well, but to me she will always be my little girl.”
Hussein, who works at a bar but is on furlough, spent time in and out of jail from the age of 17.
He said: “I always loved fighting, to be honest, and Bristol was a violent place — it was always kicking off.
“But I calmed down when Maya was born when I was 26 and stopped going to the football on weekends so I could stay home with my family.
“I can still remember staring into Maya’s eyes after she was delivered. When she was born, her mother and I looked at each other and said, ‘We made that’. I couldn’t believe how beautiful my daughter was.
“I told Sadie, ‘We need to get her a little brother quick’, and two years later our son Omar was born.
“Sadie was seven years younger than me but we had been together for two years before Maya was born.
“She and I were very much in love and things were good.
“We used to go to a little city farm that was close by and to festivals. We took Maya to Glastonbury when she was eight months old.
“There was always music in our housing association flat and we would listen to a lot of soul and R&B and reggae — the same stuff my daughter plays on the radio.”
Hussein, who has had numerous jobs including in sales for BT, proudly remembers her talents as a tot. He said: “I remember when she was tiny and would say, ‘I’m going to be on TV one day’.
“We never doubted her because she was a born entertainer.
“From the age of two she would be singing on the bus to entertain all the other passengers.
“In the park, if there was a brass band playing, she would dance in the middle until everyone applauded.
“She did her first catwalk show for her mum’s friend when she was two and she loved being the centre of attention. She used to give my sister fashion tips and tell her what to wear and we just had to laugh.
“The girl could talk when she was a year old and have full-on conversations with you. She had a huge vocabulary and never picked up my full-on West Country accent. She always spoke well.”
But in 1996, when Maya was just two years old and her brother was a baby, Hussein was jailed for 12 months for glassing a man with a bottle.
Hussein said: “The police came looking for me and asked Maya, ‘Where’s your dad?’. She said, ‘Under the bed’.
“When I was in jail, Sadie said, ‘You can’t leave me at home with two little kids so next time you go in, it’s over’.
“In 1999, I was back inside and Sadie kept her word and I don’t blame her.
“I’d chased three lads down the road while my friend was attacking this guy he had knocked to the ground. The guy had a ruptured spleen and was unconscious but my mate was trampling him, so I pulled him off before he killed him.
The police came looking for me and asked Maya, ‘Where’s your dad?’. She said, ‘Under the bed’.
Hussein
"The prosecution said we were both equally guilty, so I was given six years, and did four. Maya was four when she first came to visit me in jail and it broke my heart.
“I remember her asking, ‘When are you coming home?’. I said, ‘Not yet’. I still had another two or three years left, so what could I say?”
Hussein, whose parents emigrated from war-torn Somaliland in East Africa, saw his kids every other weekend when he got out.
He said: “Later, when Maya was older, I would take her to watch Bristol Rovers and one thing I have given her is a love of football.
“I remember once we were one-nil down after five minutes and Maya said, ‘Not again, Dad’.
“But I told her, ‘Don’t worry, there’s plenty of time left’. We won 3-1 and that was the play-off final at Wembley in 2007 — we were ecstatic.” But a turning point came when he was jailed for three years in 2008 for attacking a man outside a pub following a football match.
He said: “Maya just got fed up with visiting her dad in jail.
“When she was in secondary school she would go to her friend’s house and see their dad sitting at the dining table, but she had to drive three hours to see me.
“She would say, ‘It’s not normal. Who has to go and see their dad in jail every other weekend?’.
“I remember when she was a teenager, I had just come out of prison and she was round at my mum’s house so I popped in and said, ‘Do you want to give your dad a hug?’ She said, ‘I don’t want to talk to you, Dad’. I hoped it was a teenage thing and it would pass.”
Hussein last spoke to her in an emotional reunion for a 2017 Channel 5 documentary about families whose dads go to prison.
He said: “I agreed to go on the programme because I wanted to reconnect and show I had changed. She promised that we could be together again if I sorted my life out and stopped going to prison.
"I was good to my word and kept out of trouble, but I haven’t spoken to her since. I have tried to contact Maya and just want to be in touch because life is too short.
“I’d love to take her out for a meal to put my side across and explain that I never meant to hurt her.”
In the documentary, called When Dads Kill, Maya states: “I cut my dad out of my life because I couldn’t build a relationship with someone who was constantly disappearing back to prison.”
‘I TELL PEOPLE WE DON'T SPEAK, IT HURTS'
Hussein added: “It was only afterwards I found out the title. I said, ‘Why did you call it that? I never killed anyone’.
“My mates said, ‘You didn’t come across too well’. I don’t know why we haven’t spoken since and it’s weird when people ask, ‘How’s your daughter’, and I have to say, ‘We don’t speak’.
“It hurts. I’m always passing my number on to my son and saying, ‘Let your sister know I’m thinking about her’. I send Maya text messages at Christmas and when it’s her birthday. I follow her social media accounts and I watch her on TV.
“I am so proud of everything she has done. I hope we can move on one day but she has definitely inherited my stubborn streak.
“But I have come to accept that she has her life and I don’t fit into it right now. I hope one day I will.”
With her current Euros TV gig and stint on BBC1’s Peter Crouch: Save Our Summer last year, Maya has gone from little-known radio DJ and ex-girlfriend of rapper Stormzy to a millionaire with more than two million followers on Instagram in just a few years.
She has co-presented game shows Cannonball and The Circle, been a panellist on ITV’s Loose Women, co-hosted the Mobo Awards and Stand Up To Cancer and presents BBC1’s Glow Up.
Other stars with jailbird fathers
MAYA is not the only celebrity to have succeeded in life despite having a jailbird dad.
England star Kalvin Phillips has told how his father Mark is locked up at HM Prison Wealstun, a short drive from the midfielder’s home in Leeds.
Kalvin, 25, said: “He’s been in and out of my life since when I was young. He’s been in prison, out of prison. He got into the wrong crowd – drugs, fighting, anything you can name.”
The dad of X Factor star Ella Henderson, 25, was jailed for three-and-a-half years in 2018 for his role in a £4.7million fraud.
Sean, 54, was involved in a scam to convince investors to give money by promising returns of up to 20 per cent – but the cash was never returned. Judge Paul Watson said it was a “deliberate and pre-planned fraud”.
Billie and Sam Faiers’ stepdad David Chatwood was jailed for 12 years in 2002 after being caught with 140,000 ecstasy tablets, 130kg of cannabis, two pistols and live ammunition.
And he was back inside for a shorter stint in 2012 for his role in a £1.1million bullion robbery.
Boxing world champ Tyson Fury’s father John, now 57, served four years of an 11-year sentence for gouging out a man’s eye in a 2011 brawl.
Reformed John, an ex-bare knuckle fighter, has insisted the incident was an “accident”.
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Last week she made headlines once again for wearing a plunging white dress on Crouchy’s Year-Late Euros: Live, which led to one viewer quipping: “Lucky it’s after the watershed.”
But her rise is one her dad has had to watch from afar. He said: “I have to accept that it was my dumb lack of self-control that caused the rift. I wish I could change it just to have her back in my life. I hope if she reads this she may get in touch.
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“I would give anything to make up for the years when I wasn’t there for her.”
Additional reporting: