Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S2 Ep6: Bookshelfie: Fi Glover

Episode Date: April 19, 2020

In this episode Zing Tsjeng is joined by the broadcaster and author, Fi Glover. Fi is a BBC journalist, presenter and podcaster. She is a veteran host, she launched shows like My Perfect Country on the World Service, The Listening Project on Radio 4 and is also the co-host of the smash hit podcast series, Fortunately with Fi and Jane. She is also the author of the intriguingly named Travels With My Radio: I Am An Oil Tanker. Every fortnight, join Zing Tsjeng, editor at VICE, and inspirational guests, including Dolly Alderton, Stanley Tucci, Liv Little and Scarlett Curtis as they celebrate the best fiction written by women. They'll discuss the diverse back-catalogue of Women’s Prize-winning books spanning a generation, explore the life-changing books that sit on other women’s bookshelves and talk about what the future holds for women writing today. The Women’s Prize for Fiction is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and this series will also take you behind the scenes throughout 2020 as we explore the history of the Prize in its 25th year and gain unique access to the shortlisted authors and the 2020 Prize winner. Sit back and enjoy. This podcast is produced by Bird Lime Media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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around the world. I'm Zing Singh, your host once again for a brand new season of the Women's Prize podcast, coming to you every fortnight throughout 2020. You've joined me for a special bookshelfy episode in which we ask an inspiring woman to share the story of her life through five brilliant books by women. So we are still on lockdown and practicing safe social distancing due to coronavirus. So through the magic of technology, today we are connecting with our brilliant guest via a virtual studio connection. Joining us is the BBC journalist presenter and podcast, Duffy Glover.

She is a veteran host. She launched shows like My Perfect Country on the World Service, the Listening Project on Radio 4, and is also the co-host of the smash hit podcast series, fortunately, with Fee and Jane. She is also the author of the intriguingly named Travels with My Radio. I am an oil tanker. Fee, welcome. Very nice to be here. How are you? I'm good. I'm just about hanging in there. What about you? Well, I think about the same. I mean, I don't, we shouldn't, you know, we don't have anything normal to judge this against. So let's just say we're here and we're grateful. I think gratefulness is a, is a predominant emotion of the past few weeks, I think. So, Fee, have you

always been a big reader. Have you always enjoyed books? Oh, I think so, yes. And my mum was very old-fashioned and very technology averse when we were kids, which is now a very long time ago. And I suppose by technology averse, I mean we didn't have a TV for a very long time. So we read books, books, books, books, books, books. So I think once you get that kind of ingrained in you from an early age, It's just a vacuum and a void that just needs filling. So, yep, I would class myself as a reader. Have you been a big reader during quarantine? Oh, now that's a good question because no.

I mean, absolutely hands up, no. And I think the problem for all of us is that our mind is just elsewhere. And I hugely admire people who can compartmentalise and just shut down all of the stuff going on outside and really lose themselves in a book. But I found it incredibly difficult. And all I can really read at the moment are kind of humorous, you know, anecdote-based memoirs. I'm doing all of David Sedaris's books at the moment. But I can't get into anything kind of heftier because my mind just drops out after about five pages.

I know. I've got a friend who's reading all of the Hillary Mantle in anticipation of finally getting to read the last book in the Wolfhorn trilogy. And I just, I'm amazed. Yeah, I wouldn't be able to do that. I know. I'm looking like you reading lighthearted things. David Sederis is amazing. Yep, he's perfect because you just,

so I read him before I go to sleep at night. And there's just always a little chortle out loud. You know, his take on the world is really funny, but it's also just really kind. And I dread reading things at the moment that might take me to a dark place because I don't think I would really be able to handle it. And I mean, let's face it, most amazing fiction has to have darkness in it in order for it to be amazing.

So I just have a fear of really big books at the moment, which is a shame because obviously, you know, there's quite a lot of time that needs to be passed and it in other circumstances, you know, would be a great kind of place to be reading. But you've picked a lot of books on your list for bookshelfy, actually, that kind of fit the bell of both being dark and serious, but also quite lighthearted and humorous and exciting. I think the collected works of Colette was your first choice. Yes. And Collette is an amazing writer.

She manages both the light and the shade very, very well. So she's just a joy, isn't she? And actually, my sister gave me her collected works when I was in my 20s. And I hadn't really put turn two together. So I hadn't connected her as being the writer of Gigi, which I think is what most people, you know, would associate her with, just, you know, because the movie was such a huge thing, way, way, way further down the line.

But she's just remarkable. She's one of those incredible women who was so out of her time. I mean, she just did whatever she wanted to do, usually guided by the heart. And her love life was tangled, but I think she just went where she found pleasure. And as soon as I started reading her,

I just couldn't put it down. I mean, I've read so much of her works actually, not recently, but when I was a much younger woman. And she is terrific. And she is funny. She is really, she is really funny. Was she kind of a role model for you in your younger days? Well, I don't think so. I haven't lived quite such an exciting life.

But I think what she did, because, I mean, for people who don't know her life story, and there's no real reason why you should, because actually I think she's a slightly kind of forgotten woman in history, really. She's the author of all of the Claudine novels and of Gigi, and she was married, I think, two or three times. She didn't really have an independent life of her own. Her first husband took all of her publishing profit when she became successful and left her a bit destitute. She embarked on some quite well-known lesbian affairs.

She just lived out her life how she wanted to live out her life. And she was quite kind of out of her time. You know, she was quite a sensation in the process. in the Paris of the 19th century. And I suppose, you know, she wasn't in any sense a role model, but you know sometimes when you're much younger, you read about these breakout women. And it takes you by surprise, I think,

that people in previous generations have pushed the boundaries so much because there's something about being a 20-something where you think that you own it yourself. And of course you don't. You're just walking in the very well-trodden tracks of women who've really done it before. But no, my life hasn't been as exciting. What were you like as a young woman in your 20s?

Oh, I should think of pain in the ass would be the best word putting it. I just worked actually in my 20s. So I left university and I got a place on the BBC's trainee reporter scheme because it was the only thing that I ever wanted to do was work on the radio as a reporter. And I just, I was really lucky looking back on it. I just worked and worked and worked. I could not get enough of working. And my 20s are just a blur of microphones and radio cars and the inside of radio stations

and early morning shows and late night shows and overnight shifts and all of that kind of stuff. So I don't have any kind of, you know, I wasn't leading the party life of London or anything like that at all. I was just working really hard. But you did have quite an international upbringing. of, you know, the jet set lifestyle of Colette, but not, you know, not as, I guess, in Bohemian Paris, because you've moved around quite a fair bit, haven't you? Well, I love that you call it jet set. I mean, to be honest, at this point in time, anything outside of the front door of my house is

considered a jet set. That's very true. That's very true. Our boundaries have changed, haven't they? Yeah, let's go with jet set. I don't know whether it was very jet set. I mean, my dad worked in Hong Kong when we were growing up. So we had, you know, kind of a two home family. And when I started work in London, I mean, I was based, I've lived in London for about 33 years now, I think, but I had a job on the travel show for a couple of years. So maybe that's the Jetset part of it. And that was a really, really wonderful thing to do. So I think that was kind of late 1990s. I think We did 36 countries in three years, just bobbing around, making little reports. So yes, I guess that bit is jet set, but otherwise it's pretty Dolston-based, and it has been for about 20 years.

Did you have any country that particularly stood out for you while you were shooting that? Do you know what? I didn't actually, and sometimes I really think about affinity, because it's really important, isn't it? And if you have it and find it and you know, you're lucky enough to be able to stay in the place that you find it, you know, I think it calms a kind of wandering spirit and ticks a lot of boxes in your life. And I can genuinely say that there isn't any other part of the world that I would want to live in apart from this little corner of East London. And I had no connection to East London when I first moved here at all, although really strangely, and I'm hoping that this will make. the hairs on the back of your neck stand-up thing. But I moved to a tiny place in Dahlston, I think, in 1998. And my grandmother was about 97 years old, and she was in an old people's home in Oxford.

And I remember driving to see her, you know, to go and take her out for tea one Sunday after I'd just moved in to this place. And I took the particulars to show her just out of interest. And I showed them to her, and her face went absolutely. white and it turned out that she her family her parents had worked they they were in service her dad was a you know handyman and her mum was a maid and they'd worked in service in a house just around the corner literally just around the corner wow a glorious you know big house in dulceton uh years i mean you know 80 years previously uh and literally i had moved into a tiny place not a grand house about 100 yards away from where her parents had been.

And I think about that sometimes. I'm not a particularly kind of, you know, spiritual or spooky person, but of all of the places in the whole of London to have then ended up in and had some weird sense of affinity with. It's quite bonkers that, isn't it? I know. And Dolston as well, that was quite a, you know, in the 90s. That was quite a while before it became the place to move. The place to move.

Yes, it really wasn't. at the time the place to move to at all. But it's lovely. It's really, really lovely. And, you know, it's where I've had my kids and they're at school here and stuff. So it's been a very, yeah, it's been a very happy place to be. Well, your second book that you picked is after you'd gone by Maggie O'Farrell, who was a Northern Irish writer.

Yep. So I would read Maggie O'Farrell's shopping list if she would let me. I've loved all of her books. and her latest book is up for the women's prize this year, isn't it? Hamnet, which I haven't read yet, and I'll have to wait until my brain gets back into gear in order to do that. But the one that I'd picked is after you'd gone, which is just beautiful about grief and loss and young love

and how you rebuild a life after losing someone when you're young. And I couldn't believe how good her writing was. You know, sometimes when you open a book and you do a good, couple of pages and you are just so grateful that you're in it because you know you've got the whole of the rest of the book to just luxuriate in and I think she's a brilliant writer absolutely brilliant and I'm really glad that she now gets the recognition that she clearly deserves I think she's one of our finest female writers of the modern day so you know I'm kind of I'm gunning for her to win actually this year because I think she's just brilliant absolutely brilliant

And after you've gone is lovely as well because it's set in London It's got a connection to Hong Kong. It's about sisters as well. So there was lots of kind of resonance in the book and her descriptions of London And I guess you would have written after you had gone in the maybe mid-90s,

maybe a bit before that, are just absolutely spot on. It's absolutely one of my favourite books of all time. What do you remember about growing up in Hong Kong? It's funny because my mum also grew up in Hong Kong so I'm really interested to hear what you remember of it. Well, so we went there in the 1970s. So my dad had lost his job in the recession in this country

and he was offered a job to go and work in Hong Kong. So he just grasped it with both hands. You know, it wasn't kind of enormous family plan. It was quite a get out of jail card. So I went over there when I was five. And I mean, my memories are just really weird, just of the heat. and the humidity and, you know, playing,

we used to just play in the car park of our block of flats all the time. I remember breaking my dad's steering wheel on the car once. It was a, you know, it was just a, I mean, everybody's childhood is normal, isn't it? That's, you know, that's what everybody always says. And, you know, it just felt like a normal childhood to us. And then when we came back to this country, I think it's when you set things against each other, isn't it, that you realize how different things are.

And, you know, we went back to live actually in a very rural part of Hampshire, middle of bloomin nowhere. And that's what made my kind of early childhood in Hong Kong seem so completely different. But I haven't been back for years, saying for years. And I don't think I've occurred. My dad sadly died quite a long time ago now. And I don't think I'd be able to cope with that kind of, you know, wash of memories, actually. And I think it must be an incredibly different city.

I mean, obviously it's an incredibly different city. to how it was in the 1970s. So I'm going to just leave it in my memory bank, I think. Yeah, I think Hong Kong has changed a lot. I remember going back for Christmas last year, actually. And even my memories of being in Hong Kong with my mother from when I was a child, it is just a completely different city now. Yeah.

So I presume also just really kind of actually quite hard work. I mean, so populated, so polluted, so busy. and it wasn't, you know, it was obviously a growing city when we were there, but I don't think I would really recognise very much of it anymore because so much of it's built out on the reclaimed land, isn't it? So even the skyline would be very different. Have you travelled widely around Asia for work? No, not really.

No, I haven't. And when we were living in Hong Kong, we didn't do lots of travelling. I mean, I think travels just, travel's about to change again, isn't it, because of the coronavirus. And, you know, maybe we'll look back on the last kind of 30 years as being a form of insanity that people travelled so much. And, you know, I know that if you went to live in Hong Kong kind of 10 years ago, then you probably would travel all around Asia and see much more of, you know, China.

But, you know, we just didn't even enter our heads that that was possible or realistic or a kind of doable thing. So, no, I have very little knowledge outside of just Hong Kong Island. I know, it's funny, isn't it? When you think about what it's going to be like to look back on this period in the last 10, 20 years, it will seem like absolute madness that people used to just hopper on a budget flight for three hours to spend a weekend in a completely different country. Yes, I think it will.

I really think it will. and I don't know what accompanies that, you know, whether it reduces human curiosity. I mean, obviously it's much better for the planet. But, you know, that kind of, if you were ever to assume that travel broadens the mind, I think you could see in our kind of geopolitical state that it clearly didn't. So there are, you know, there are lots of things, I think, that will happen as a result of this. That would be really fascinating to watch. And I'll tell you what, where we are in London, we've been under a flight path, you know, for a very long time here in East London.

there had been no planes for the last month. And there was something really quite profound about taking planes out of the sky. And my kids who are young teenagers, you know, they've never known anything different than a really, really noisy city. And we were sitting outside the other day and I can't remember which one of them said.

It's like the sky is completely new because there's just nothing up there. And you forget how much actually a busy sky is part of a city life. You know, there's always noise and there's always a trail going across. And it's just one of those tiny things that I've noticed since the coronavirus hit. And I don't, not sure that I really want to go back. I mean, we will go back to some form of travel, won't me? But I think you're right. Just the, you know, let's hop on a plane and go and have a lunch somewhere, which I believe some of the Instagram generation have enjoyed doing. That is,

You know, that is mad, isn't it? That is mad. Not for much longer. This podcast is made in partnership with Bailey's Irish cream. Bayleys is proudly supporting the women's prize for fiction by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Bailey's is the perfect adultery, whether in coffee, over ice cream, or paired with your favorite book. Well, your third book that you picked is the domestic manners of the Americans by Fanny Trollope.

What was that one about? So Fanny Tronlep is a really amazing woman. So you will recognise the surname, you know, because of the writing of her son. But actually she was a writer in her own right and she was absolutely bloody brilliant. And she wrote the domestic manners of the Americans in the 1830s when she took her and three of her children. I think she had five or six children. to go and live in America, to try and make a family fortune to make up for her feckless husband back in Britain, who was basically drinking away the family money.

And she's remarkable because if you think about what most other women were doing at the time, women of her kind of, you know, middle, upper class status, they were not traveling to America to try and, you know, make it on their own. She's a real proper, proper frontier woman. And the irony of the domestic manners of the Americans is that she didn't really luck out when she went to New York. She found it very difficult to break into society there. She was not making the kind of fortune that she wanted to make. And eventually she wrote this book, which is kind of taking the piss out of all of the very mannered American elite and all of their pomposity and their kind of exclusive. and the book became a massive hit, but of course it meant that the doors of society really

properly closed on her. And so she kind of, she slightly stabbed herself in the foot. But she also went off to Cincinnati to start a trade fair in another attempt to make some money for herself and her family. And again, I mean, imagine that you are, you've got three kids in tow. You're a woman. you're not even from America and you decide that you're going to go to a city that you don't know and try and do business with people who don't want to know you. I mean, she just had balls, absolute balls, and it's a very funny book.

She does not spare the horses in a very, very witty, take down of American society. So I couldn't recommend it enough. I mean, nobody's really. read it. Nobody's really heard of Fannie. And it's a shame. It's a shame. I think she deserves a much, much bigger place in the canon of female literature. It's well worth a read. I don't know if this is a spoiler, but did she actually end up making it in America? No. I think we can safely say that because nobody's really, you know, taking that much notice of her. No, she didn't. And she ended up coming back.

you know, without having made the huge family fortune at all. But she, do you know what, the way she writes as well is really self-deprecating. You know, she's very aware of her own shortcomings to, you know, she's a very, very brilliant woman. And I suppose, I mean, it's no great comfort to her that she didn't make it, but it slightly would have ruined her if she had because her writing is brilliant because she does find everything, you know, a bit of a struggle and it doesn't really work out. And there aren't, you know, rainbows and unicorns at the end of the story.

You know, that's what makes it such an amazing read. But I really would recommend it. I really would recommend it. And also, it's just funny. And not a lot has changed. You know, that level of society, I think, especially on the East Coast, I think it's still elitist. It's still snobby. difficult to break into, you know, should you want to try and do that. I think she's tapped into

something of the American spirit that we don't always read that much about. Did you ever encounter that in your experiences or travels in America? Does that spirit still very much live on? Yeah, I did, I went to try and live in Manhattan actually in my early 30s, expecting to really love it and maybe never come home and I came home and I didn't really like it because, God, I don't know why, actually. I found, I mean, I get that New York's really exciting and vibrant and, you know, you're never bored and all of that kind of stuff. But I don't know. There was something about it that I, that just didn't really chime with me. And, you know, maybe there's something of the same thing. I mean, I wasn't trying to kind of break into a Manhattan elite. But I found it,

I found that I felt very much on the outside looking in in a way that I didn't really expect. Because it's that thing, isn't it, of speaking the same language as Americans, but actually we are completely, completely different in terms of our kind of national characteristics. And it is a foreign country. So I didn't, yeah, I didn't like it as much as I hoped that I would do. And I came back after a couple of months. did you move over there for a job or just to test the water? Yeah, I was going to write a book.

I was going to write a book and I did start writing a book about a left-wing American talk radio station that had been set up to try and rival the unbelievable power and really forceful emerging power of the right-wing radio stations that was swinging elections. So this was in the time of George W. Bush. and the right wing kind of tone of voice was becoming very harsh and very didactic and really kind of quite insightful to all kinds of hatred, but it was absolutely zinging it. And a group of Democrats tried to set up a left-wing liberal radio station to try and rival that sound. So I went over to America to try and write a book about that, but the radio station folded. Oh, no.

Yeah, within a couple of months. Because actually, left-wing liberal talk radio is dull. I mean, you know, that's not to say that it's not carrying, you know, important messages and talking about important things. But actually it's hard to have a really kind of high-volume, punchy debate when what you're trying to say is, you know, let's all be kinder and kinder to each other. and that's what they found. And, you know, the kind of the right wing in America, as we all know, is incredibly powerful now.

And the seeds that were being sown, so this would have been 15 years ago, were, you know, were quite, it was quite ear-catching stuff. We've got used to it now, but it was ear-catching stuff at the time. And I admire hugely the, you know, the group of people who were trying to, you know, provide some kind of an alternative to it. but it just didn't work. It just wasn't ear-catching and nobody was listening and the advertisers weren't buying and their big name signing

was Al Franken who then his demise has been well-charted but at the time he was just a comedian and he hadn't stood for political office and he was good and he was funny but he wasn't ever going to

kind of take on the Rush Limbaars who were really doing the business so it wouldn't have been a great book I started to write its thing and I was slightly bored of, you know, what I was writing. So that's never going to be a good sign for your readers. So the whole jingbanks sheet just folded and I came home.

But this was before you wrote your actual book that did get published, that you did finish. Oh, so no, that was afterwards. Or did it predate it? That was after it. That was afterwards. So I wrote travels with my radio, I think, probably 1999 to 2000. Yep. And yes, that was enormously, enormously good fun, yep.

which is just a very simple book about really slightly bonkers local radio stations around the world that are always stuffed full of people with enormously warm hearts and enormous kind of local characters. And you don't get as many local radio stations like that anymore because there's just been such a change in the whole industry. But back then, you could pretty much guarantee that any town you turned up in, you know, anywhere in the world would have some kind of a tiny broadcasting facility stuffed full of people, you know, with enormous local voices. So it was just a book that kind of celebrated all of that.

Is there a specific character that still stands out after all these years? Do you know what? There are quite a few, actually. There was a really lovely guy called DJ Fitz. I don't think I ever even knew his first name who broadcast a really brilliant music show in Palm Springs and he was just one of those people who was so dedicated to the art

of talking up to the lyrics, making an amazing kind of playlist way before we even all used the term playlist and he did it every night from this kind of bunker in a semi-industrial park outside of Palm Springs. So there was no glamour to the reality of the radio station but if you listened to it,

it sounded like the most glamorous thing. It sounded like the closest thing that you would ever get in a modern America that was redolent of, you know, Sinatra and all of that kind of rap pack era. It was just the most brilliant radio show. And then you peeled, you know, the exterior away. The Palm Springs, banding. Yep, just sitting in a car park, putting all of these tunes together. But he was just a lovely guy and he was just really, really passionate about what he did. And he just, you know, he loved his job. He loved the whole kind of medium of radio. He loved all of his audience. You know, he was just cracking actually. He was an absolute cracking bloke. I'm going to assume he is not the source of

the I am an oil tanker. No. So the I'm an oil tanker is just a quite a well-known within the radio industry cock-up that was made by a very nice guy who was reading the IRN news and he got a little bit confused, walked into the studio, sat down with his papers, I think he was probably in a bit of a hurry, and announced to the nation, I'm an oil tanker, Dickie Arbiters are a blaze in the Gulf. So it's just one of those things where he got his name wrong and the sentence wrong, and it's just a tiny little kind of radio legend thing. But actually, there were two, you know, there were two prints of the book, and the first is called I'm an oil tanker, and the second one's just called Travels with My Radio

because the publishers thought it was just too confusing a title and it had been placed in shipping in some bookshops. So it's got two titles. I mean, one book, two titles. I could see how it could be placed in shipping, but I love I am an oil tanker. So irreverent and fun. But also, I mean, I don't know how big the shipping section is

in your average waterstones, but also it just doesn't look like a book that's going to be about freight, but you never know maybe the community of freight readers is much bigger than we think it might be it might be so let's not do them a disservice yeah and the fourth book you've picked is what i loved by sirie huistvet so so it's the most beautiful novel about a group in fact it's set in new york about a group of artists and their lives their interests their intertwined lives with each other. And you know sometimes when you read a book and you want the whole world to slow down, you know, so you can just really, really enjoy the moment. And I felt like that every single page of the book.

So she just writes so amazingly about the love that you feel for your children, about the different love that you feel for men and women. And it's a really tragic book. and I won't There's a death in it But I won't say anything more than that It has stayed with me It's a book that's really really stayed with me

And her prose is incredible And her descriptions are incredible But there's just something about the way That she writes about the depth of love That I haven't really found In another book And she's just terrific She's absolutely terrific

And I came to it quite late actually I think I read it probably A good 10 years after she'd she'd written it. And I did read it after I'd had my children. And again, I don't want to give too much of the book away, but it's an important book to read, I think, as a parent. I'm not sure that it would have had quite as much resonance if I'd read it before having kids. So I think we have to leave it at that. I was going to give away what happens in it. Is it a book that makes you feel good about being a mother or terrible?

Oh, I think it's just about the whole. whole fragile business of it. That's what it is. And it's about the reality. And most of all, it's a book about, it's a book about what you, about that difference between what you need from love and what you want from love, which, you know, those are two quite distinct things. And, you know, she writes about it in such an eloquent way. I'm not going to be able to explain it any better than that. How did you encounter the book? Oh, so a friend of mine recommended it.

A really fantastic friend, Vic, who is an avid, avid reader. So she'll race through, she's always read everything. She's just fantastic. And I think she said it was one of the most powerful books she'd ever read. So I just picked it up from that. I'm not terribly good, actually, at reading books, you know, when everybody else is reading them. And I don't know whether that's like almost.

a syndrome, you know, where you don't want to be part of the kind of, I'm reading this at the moment thing. I quite like to wait and read books in my own time. I don't know whether anybody else does that. I mean, it does mean that you can't talk about lots of books if people are talking about lots of books because you haven't read them yet. But I always seem to be really late to the game on things. I actually think that's almost better because you don't want other people's opinions of a book to colour your experience of reading it. And I think if there's a hot book, that everyone's reading at the minute, it almost kind of influences the way you read it? Yes. I would agree. And I'm in a book club and the ladies in the book club are really fantastic.

And I value everything they say. But sometimes I almost don't want to share what I think about books or hear what they think about books. I mean, and you're really entitled to just say, well, why don't you just get out of it? of book club then fee but it's i sometimes find it quite hard i suppose you know reading for me is just a very it is just a really personal experience and i don't always i think especially with fiction i don't always want to tell people what i've thought about how a book has made me feel which is unhelpful to the publishing industry i know i just being honest it probably gets on the nerves of your book club members I think of, if any of them listen to this, I am out of book club, right? I'm unwelcome. No, we need book club in these times.

Yeah, and, you know, the proliferation of book clubs is a really fantastic thing. And I'm sure I'm not the only one doing that. You know, just kind of thinking, well, you know, of course I want to go along and of course I want to be part of this, you know, but maybe I won't, I won't tell everything about how I feel about what I've read. So the fifth and final book you've chosen is I feel bad about my neck by Nora Ephron, which I love. She is fantastic. The best. So I think it's a collection of just some of her essays and largely her essays about being a woman and about aging as a woman. And she's an extraordinary writer. So lots of people might know her because of her films. but she was also a really fantastic political essayist too.

I sometimes think she got slightly kind of shoved into that lane that female writers can get shoved into, which is to write about love and relationships. But she's got such a depth to her writing. And the title of the essay collection, I feel bad about my neck, just refers to her meeting up with her group of girlfriends. I suppose they would be in their late 50s, early 60s, and there was one day when they all turned up at a restaurant, they were all wearing turtlenecks or polo necks because that kind of sagging of the neck had just started to happen to them.

And she just writes these blisteringly honest, funny, wonderful, warm-hearted, wise essays about what it's like to be a woman, but also, you know, to be a clever woman and to really watch everything that's happening around you. and I just love her to bits. So I think I've given a copy of I Feel Bad About My Nectar to probably about 20, 25 friends across the last five or six years. And I've started to give it to men. I've forced it on my brother-in-law and he really enjoyed it. And it's a funny thing, isn't it? Because actually, we need to read more experiences across the genders

about how we feel about ageing and how, you know, we feel about our bodies and our minds. And I would like to think that, you know, men would be as amused by Nora's writing as women are. And I don't know a single woman to whom I've given her book who hasn't then written back or phoned up and said, absolutely brilliant. You know, I can't believe that I haven't come across these before

because she's enormous. She's an enormous figure in America. But I think she's, you know, she's, I don't know. Is she still, would she trip off the tongue of everybody here? I don't know. I honestly don't know. Probably not. I feel like here she's probably most known for, you know, you've got male or sleepless in Seattle. Yeah. I think, and of course your, you know, her films will kind of eclipse her writing just in terms of fame. But she's just wonderful,

really, really wonderful. And this probably says something about my aging brain, but I can go back and read her essays as if I've, you know, never read them before, probably every two or three years. And it'll, you know, they'll still make me laugh out loud. She's just bloody brilliant, really, really brilliant. It's interesting because I was really delighted you put this on your list because in some ways I think that your podcast of Jane Garvey fortunately reminds me in tone and spirit a lot of Nora Ephron. Oh my God. we wouldn't we wouldn't pick up the crumbs from her table. Well, that's a very nice thing to say, but we're nowhere close.

But, I mean, our podcast is about 250-something women shooting the breeze about life. And I hope that we're quite honest about it. I mean, you know, Jane would say exactly the same thing. I think we're two classic examples of women who've really tried very hard, but it's not always worked out. So, you know, our observations. No, not really. No.

So our observations on life are from that kind of, oh, okay. Well, yep, that's happened now. And we enjoy doing it enormously. But we're not, well, Jane is incredibly funny and wise and clever, but I would never presume to put myself in the same category as Nora Fron at all. How did fortunately come about? Oh, gosh. Well, Jane and I did a, so we'd worked together.

just as colleagues on the same radio station for years, but we didn't really know each other very well. And we hosted a radio academy festival, which is the kind of industry shindig for everybody in audio, way back in 2013, I think. And they'd never had two women host the festival before, and the expectations were alarmingly low, and we just about managed to scrape above them.

So somebody, I think, in the audience, well, they're quite funny together. You know, why don't we see if we can do something else? But it did take about, it took about four years until we eventually got commissioned to do the podcast. And originally we were meant to do a podcast that was kind of recommending other bits of audio that we'd heard. And then it just turned into Jane and I kind of shooting the breeze.

And that's what it's stayed being ever since, with an occasional guest who pops up to and stirs it around a bit. And it's massive. It's one of the BBC's biggest podcast. I know. And they didn't expect that. Which makes it even better. We're quite pleased. But you know what? There's a serious thing to say about that, which is people have been surprised that it's been successful. And I think it is the BBC's third or fourth biggest podcast. And people have been surprised because I think they didn't imagine that two women shooting the breeze together would have.

have any kind of huge currency or huge validity. And of course it does because when women get together and talk, you know, often it goes from profound to idiotic within seconds. And, you know, the way that women talk is really not on the radio. It's not being displayed, you know, in lots of other places. And just that kind of pattern of speech apart from the content is not really on display. So I think it's just fantastic that lots of people do like it. And I think they like it because they just hear, you know, something of how they speak in it too. And actually we do have lots of male listeners.

It's not just women. And they all say the same thing that it's just really nice to kind of eavesdrop on, you know, more normal type of conversation. So we're thrilled that it's been a success, actually. Really thrilled. Because I'm assuming radio as in BBC radio and being on the, and being broadcasting is very different from podcasting. Yes.

And I think actually a lot of women, and I'd count myself in this too, and so I am 51, so I've been doing it a very long time. So I think a lot of women have always felt that they needed to be something slightly different to their normal lives in order to be on air. And that's not a totally kind of pejorative thing to say.

It's just about, you know, the kind of formality of radio when it started, you know, the need to be taken seriously, which, you know, definitely is more of a thing for women than it is for men. And so I think, you know, the way that we've always talked on radio hasn't been as natural as we would like it to be.

And then along comes podcasting, you know, which is just so deliciously loose and different and is propelled by subscription. So, you know, you can just be, you know that your audience, is liking what you're doing. And actually that really, you know, that does power you to take a different direction. And I think podcasting has allowed so many different forms of conversation and not just, you know,

the way that women talk. I think there are lots of, you know, really amazing podcasts by men and all manner of different communities, just talking how they talk. You know, that's the joy of it. It loses this kind of slightly, it's not. a pompous thing, you know, when you're on the radio, but it's definitely a kind of more official type of conversation. So the looseness of podcasting, I think, has been wonderful, really, really wonderful. And also, who knew? You know, who thought tiny little radio,

which was always television's kind of poor cousin, would actually be the medium that really, really thrives and succeeds. So all hail to it. I know. Well, nowadays only really watch. I know, exactly. Well, nowadays, I only put on the TV if I want to. to listen to incredibly depressing government briefings about coronavirus or watch Netflix. Well, okay, can I just recommend some things on the BBC that you might like? No, I can't be bothered. Yeah. But it's wonderful, isn't it?

And also because radio's just always managed to do that thing where it's a, you know, it's a buy one, get one free service. You can be doing something else with your time and you're listening to this amazing thing. So it doesn't ask huge amounts of you. And I think that's just come into its own. now, hasn't it? And also because of the technology available, you know, the smartphone just revolutionised the life of audio. So I can't see it ever diminishing, actually. I hope it never does. Long live radio and audio. Yes. Yes, yes. Final question. If you had to choose one book from the list

you've just shared as your favourite, which one would it be? Oh, so it would be, Nora. It just would be, just because it's got everything. And I suppose the thing that I really love about her more than anything else is she makes really complicated and difficult and sometimes sad things seem so light and easy to understand. And that's such a talent. That is such a talent. You know, to keep you entertained when you're talking about death or divorce or loss

or grief or everything. aging or, you know, the shit of life. She can still make it funny and you've learnt something by the end of it. And I just love her for that. I absolutely love her for that. She is a classic. I hope she stays read well into the next century. Well, I think she will because the younger generation, I think you're probably one of them.

The younger generation has really embraced her because Dolly Alderton has written the forward to a new publication of I feel bad about my next. hasn't she? So I don't think that there will ever be a time when we don't need Nora, because what she does so well is she does make us feel good about feeling shit. And, you know, it's the sign of a great writer to be able to do that and everybody needs that. So she's hopefully an immutable force for a very long time. Well, thank you so much for joining me on bookshelf, Fifi. It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me. And thank you for letting me share my random selection of books. And, you know, braver readers than me can indulge in all of them during this lockdown. It's just me that is seeking refuge and amusing

diaries. You go for it. I'm Zing Singh. You've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast, brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. You definitely want to head to our website to find out more about the Reading Women Challenge, get exclusive video and audio content, and check out the hashtag reading women on Instagram and Twitter to join in the conversation around the 24 brilliant past winners of the women's prize fiction. Please click subscribe and don't forget to rate and review of this podcast. It really helps spread the word about the female talent you've heard about today. Thanks very much for listening and see you next time.