Off Air... with Jane and Fi - A hairbrush lies tantalising out of reach

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

Welcome to this podcast about a podcast that nobody is sure has been a podcast... Jane (in the North) and Fi (in the South) discuss Follett Land, blokey books, hospital radio, and Jay and Dunc. Plus, Fi and Rosie Wright, who's sitting in for Jane on the Times Radio show, speak to Katie Prescott, The Times’ Technology Business Editor, about her new book ‘The Curious Case of Mike Lynch’. You can listen to our 'I've got the house to myself' playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2MkG0A4kkX74TJuVKUPAuJWe've announced our next book club pick! 'Just Kids' is by Patti Smith. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Second, Eve has not given us the green light. Three, two, one, go. Now, this morning's technical kerfuffle, which you will appreciate Fee, was that I hadn't turned my microphone on. And that was causing issues earlier. I've got to say, Eve, was, she has been throughout this process, very, very patient. Yes, and that's why by the time I get in here at Times Towers, she looks exhausted. Yes, well, she may do. She's really earning her money.

We should just explain, I'm at my mum and dad's sheltered housing. No, you're in a safe house. You are in a safe house. This is all part of your new identity. It is quite safe. So I'm not in London, very much hope to be next week. So normal-ish service will be resumed. But while I'm here, I am missing all the political intrigue. You're only three tube stops away from Westminster.

So what is occurring? What's been going on? Well, I mean, we can feel the vibes radiating out of 10 Downing Street. So today's political shenanigans, you've got to follow this vaguely closely to care. So West Street, currently the health secretary, he's a very, he's got a big person. and he's never been particularly shy about his ambitions. And both of those are glorious things in a human being. So let's just park that there.

Lots of people have speculated for ages that he's got his eye on the main prize. And really rather weirdly, because we're not that far into Labour government with a landslide victory, etc., etc. There seems to have been a briefing at some point over the last 24 or 48 hours from Downing Street. to say anybody who's got those kind of ambitions, come and get us. Come and get Kear if you think you're hard enough. So all of these, and you know what the kind of the,

there's this vortex, this whirlwind that starts around leadership campaigns that becomes the dominant conversation in politics so quickly, doesn't it? And I was thinking this morning, oh my goodness, really? here we go again, kind of so soon, because I think many of us felt that we're taking quite a few turns on the merry-go-round during the Conservative government, Jane. Maybe we needed to get off and just have a cup of tea on a bench for a couple of years. Exactly. And I have to plain toast, for God's sake.

How does it look from afar? Because I had two conversations with colleagues on the way into work, literally, one by the main entrance and one on the escalators. and the talk is of nothing else. Okay, so because I am out of the loop, I mean, it's arguable that I've never really been in it. Let's just acknowledge that. But I do feel out of the loop. I thought I hadn't got the whole trying to smoke him out thing,

which is, as you've said, is presumably exactly what is going on. I thought he had just started telling people he was going to. No, so it's not that simple, is it? No, it's not. So it's a briefing about a briefing. that nobody is sure has been a briefing. Has taken place. Yeah, right.

But you, I remember, and you're right, in many ways, Mr. Streeting is a commendable individual. He's a good communicator. He really is. He's quite funny. He's sharp. He's young. He says some uncomfortable things about the NHS that need saying.

And he's been ill himself and recovered, and he's been treated by the NHS. He's got a compelling story, actually. And he's also, he's written, memoir, hasn't he? And I remember you interviewing him about that memoir. And, well, remind me, and indeed anyone else listening, what that memoir was like and what he was like. So the memoir was very good. And I think that it was definitely seen as a politician putting their story out there at the start of what they hope to be a long and glorious career. And they're

always advised to do that, aren't they, people who are seeking political power to take charge of your narrow live and to tell the world everything about you. And I found it a very good read. I think what was interesting about it, Jane, was that West Streeting doesn't come from a privilege background at all. And his family, you know, have faced quite a lot of hardship and particularly his mum, who I think, I recall being very, very young when she had him. But what comes through in the book is he is surrounded by love within his family, like people who really genuinely have looked out for him and cared for him. And so as he's emerged into his adult life,

I think he is a man who's had the privilege of that love, even if it might not be in the kind of 2.4 nuclear family, environment that, I mean, let's face it, so few people ever have access to anyway. But he was an honest person to talk to, Jane. And I like the kind of, I like anybody who can reach into difficult subjects and just immediately pick out the bit that needs amplifying. And I think he is doing that about maternity services, for instance, about women's health. he is one of very, very few male politicians

and a lot of health secretaries have been male, haven't they, over the last 20 years or so. Oh, the overwhelming majority of the result. Yes, yeah. And he said things about, you know, women's health and about the need to look after women all the way through their periods, all the way through their menopause.

You know, he says things that you just think, I'm struck by that because nobody's really said that before. So I have time for him in that regard. I don't want to, you know, reveal too many political persuasions. Some Tories and Lib Dems are fantastic too. But I can... What about the Greens. Yeah.

S&B. S&P. Oh, CLP. Okay. Steady. Steady. So do you know what I mean? As a politician, I do find him very engaging.

Whether or not as the headmaster, you want that in your staff room, I don't know. Well, I think you promote him, give him a job that's almost impossible to do, and secretly maybe you hope he fails at it. I'm not saying that's, I'm not saying that's what's happened. Like Theresa May, making Boris Johnson foreign secretary. Oh, I've forgotten that. You see, that was interpreted at the time as an absolute stroke of genius.

Get him out of the country. Keep him out of the country. But he came back. Although it's been a bit quiet with him lately, hasn't it? Am I wrong? Am I right? I haven't heard. Oh, I did see him at the Senator course on Sunday.

Oh, yes, because any former leader gets together, don't they? Yes, I mean, I'm rightly, but once again, a hairbrush obviously lay tantalizingly out of reach in the Johnson household. Look, I can talk. My hair is an extravagant. thing. But if I were going to an event like that, I think I'd have tried to make an effort. Anyway, that's, that's getting, that's getting very dicey and political. So we shouldn't, we shouldn't do that. So let's just keep abreast of what young Wesley's up to. Because I think

you've been incredibly polite and, and lovely about him. And you're absolutely, but it's fair to say he has many, many qualities. But he's also, I'm going to say it, he is a stranger to self-doubt. Yeah, he's bumptious, isn't he? He's a bumscious chap. Let me just give you the very latest on the Times newspaper live website. Kirstarmalatis, Westreting denies leadership bid. The Labour leader faces PMQs on Wednesday after privately vowing to fight off any challenge from feral MPs. Westreting has denied plotting a leadership bid and accused number 10 insiders of self-destructive briefing against him.

So there you go. Right. Well, listeners to offer will be kept fully informed about events down Westminster Way. Yeah, but we're also going to... We're going to talk about AI cat flaps in a minute as well. We really are, but I just want to mention, because Eve will be interested in this. Eve played an absolute blinder, sending my copy of Ken Follett's Circle of Days all the way to our listener, Lynn, who I think from memory, Eve will know this. Was it New Zealand or was it Australia?

New Zealand. It was New Zealand. It was New Zealand. There was quite a confuffle. when Lynn had got in touch to say that she would love to have a copy of Circle of Days, but, you know, it was a little bit out of reach because it was in hardback. So we wound her my copy of Circle of Days. Now, the bad news that Lynn has read the book now, and I like this, she says, thank you, Jane, for your semi-well-thumbed,

what were you eating copy of Circle of Days by Ken Follett? Now, she's right. I know I did leave some brownish, pinkish stains. Oh, Jane. I'm sorry. What was it? Was it one of your giant buttons? It was either that or some sort of curry sauce.

Oh. So I'm extremely sorry, Lynn. But even worse than that, she didn't actually rate the book. So after my generosity in giving the book away and Eve's expert, knowledge of the international postal system. So you got a, sorry, hang on a sec, you got a freebie book and Eve posted at work, but yeah, the time and the thought was costly, yes. Lynn says, it began slowly with too many large chunks of his research presented semi-digested

instead of being seamlessly incorporated into the narrative. Wow. Wow, there were immersive moments, but they were too few and far between. Right. Okay, so that's circle of days. I just want to speak up for Ken, as I often do. I'm very proud to do so. I is my audio book at the moment and I, you know, I'm relatively stressed. So it's lovely to have a fabulous book to sink into Last Thing at night and when I'm out on a walk to the shops or something. So I have got Ken Follett's that I've written it down here, full of giants. Now it is about the First World War and about any number of different characters in different countries and what happens to them and how they got to where they are.

Fee, it is 30 hours long, 30 hours. And the glorious news is I've got 23 hours left. So I just couldn't be happier in Follettland. I just want to speak up for him because Lynn has given us the benefit of her somewhat a servic criticism of Circle of Days. Lynn, if that one hasn't suited you, I would definitely suggest you go to Fall of Giants. And the good news is there are two other books in that series. That's fabulous. Or try another author, Lynn. No.

I've got a copy of the Black Wolf by Louise Penny. It's very engaging. Apparently, Ken didn't win the Book of Prize. No, he didn't. No, I'm interested by the book that's won the Book of Prize. So it's by David, and I've looked this up because no one seems to be able to pronounce his name the way he wants us to Solnay. And it's called Flesh.

and it's this very masculine voice book about sex and life and what it looks like from a male perspective. And I think that's really interesting, Jane, because the Bailey Giffa Prize has been won by Helen Garner with her collected diaries, absolutely authentic female voice. So that is bookending the human experience, isn't it? I think good on the judges both times round. Yes, actually I'm predating Eve with a lot in this episode,

But Eve gave me a copy of flesh because she said, I'm sure she'd heard a lot about it when it came out in a kind of press copy and I couldn't get into it at all. I did try and do you know what? I thought it was a bit, so it was very tersely written and I did not like the central character one bit. But then I'm not the intended audience, so fair play.

But who is the intended audience? Shouldn't it be all of us? You think it's a bloke's book for blokes? Well, interestingly, isn't that what The Times has written about today? Our hero, Robbie Millen, has written a piece for the Times today on Message Mandy, as you can tell, is with me here in my safe house. And it's, yes, he's written an article about the best books for men by men. And because this book, Flesh, is regarded as a male author's book for men. Okay, what else is on that list?

Have you got it in front of you? Is it stuffed by Philip Roth? No, but Martin and Kingsley Amos are both there. I haven't got it with me, but I do remember that. See, I didn't like either of them at all. But, you know, hey, it's personal. Everybody is allowed to like certain things. I don't know why I'm using that voice.

I don't know either, but I was quite glad to hear it because I haven't heard that for a while. Well, look, let's carry on our conversation about this and maybe further down the line in Book Club. After we've had some books that everybody enjoy, because the one that we're reading at the moment, not everybody has, but maybe we should all read a blokey book, I'm with you on Kingsley Amos.

I have, I have, I have like, I have, Jane. I have liked a couple of Martin Amos books, but not when he started to go really, you know, it's Times Arrow, isn't it, that's written backwards? And that's just someone with too much time on the hands. Just, I mean, just ridiculous. I haven't got time to get my head around that. It's just someone who's never had to scrub a surface.

Oh, it is. It's just absolutely stupid. I don't like that. Yes, grow up, Martin. He's no longer with us, I'm so sorry. No. Right now, I know that you've had some really, really lovely suggestions from our fantastic community of kind people, Jane,

about what you could do to make hospital visits a little bit more bearable. So I'm sure that you want to mention some peeps. Yes, no, I just want to say that also, by the way, I just are really grateful that people make the effort. And when I was saying, make hospital visits easier, I mean, it's clearly not that bad for me relative to my mom. I'm glad you said that. It's just, do you know, I've been very fortunate in my life, as indeed has my mom, actually, up until now.

I've just got to acknowledge that. And I have not had to visit hospitals in the way that I'm doing at the moment. I've worked in hospitals. I worked for the NHS for quite a while. I've done, I've been a patient, but only in maternity hospitals. And that's, well, you'd agree, that's a whole world of difference. isn't it? It's nothing like this experience at all. So it is a challenge. There's no doubt about it. Annie says, you might remember Fe and Jane, I lost my sister and my mom in 23 and just recently

lost my dad after a spell in hospital. I found asking him about his childhood and family memories was not only fascinating for me, but it genuinely seemed therapeutic for him too. I guess we were fortunate because he could talk and respond, but if that's not possible, even talking about our childhood, family memories, did seem to make him smile. I only wish I'd written stories down. Annie, I do remember you, and I'm sure Fee does too,

and thank you very much for that. And other people have suggested, well, trying to do the crossword or a wordle, or just buying a local newspaper on the way in, it would be the Liverpool Echo or something here, well not or something it would be the Liverpool echo and just sort of reading bits out so yes that's actually that hadn't occurred to me and that's a good idea but i you know it's it's hard sometimes when i mean i've only been in hospital for five days when i when i had my first child and at the

end of that five day period i did feel institutionalised now how it feels to be in hospital for months on end i just cannot i just cannot imagine um i think it's properly tough. So I, that's a whole new, I don't know, what's the longest you've been in hospital for? The longest I've been in for was a week after my daughter was born because we had to go back in. She was a little bit unwell. And I completely agree with you that, I think maternity wards are very different. I just couldn't, I think you're so away with the fairies as well, aren't you, at that time, that the norms of time just seemed to fly out the window. And I genuinely can't really remember very much about it. I mean, you know, there were some spikes of drama

involved in that visit as well actually, so I tried not to think too much about it. But in terms of hospital visiting, so I have visited people over, you know, kind of longer period of time. And I think the thing that always struck me was you do have to leave your normal sense. of timings at the door because everything is on a different schedule and you've got to you've got to accept that you know staying for an hour or two hours

or three hours whatever the visiting time is even if that I think even if that is in silence or even if you're kind of busy doing something the person you're visiting at least knows that you're there and I think if I was in hospital for a long period of time I don't think I'd mind somebody kind of getting on with their own life. I think I'd rather like it, actually. But I would definitely, definitely just want somebody to be sitting next to me.

Yes, yeah. I think that's hugely significant and so important. I also think you sort of need to be careful because sometimes you, this is me talking, so I'm not judging anyone else, I will think, oh, look at that poor soul there. They haven't had any visitors. And then you actually discover that in fact their son is completely devoted to them, he works shifts. So he can't be there during normal visiting hours, but he does come at a time he's able to come in. So there's all this stuff sort of going on that you just need, well,

I've just been made aware of a lot more stuff, I suppose, that's made me properly think about it. Can I ask you a strange question, Jane? Is there still our hospital radio at the hospital, you know, hospital radio station at the hospital that your mum's in? Can you just be, do you mind? I mean, this podcast is doing fairly well. I don't think I really need to um i mean it's a little harsh i'm not suggesting i'm not suggesting a career move but um so i don't be daft don't be daft um i used to work in hospital radio when i left uh when i left university and i needed to get some work experience i went at bromley hospital radio and i mean it was just just it was everything that you'd imagine hospital radio to be with bells on jane but but i do remember

we all obviously you had to go around the wards collecting requests for people you know that you'd then play in the evening show and everybody in the hospital had headphones horrible horrible plastic headphones attached you know to their kind of wall of alarm systems and bells and whatever next to their bed so everybody could listen in and actually it was an astonishing petri dish of human experience behaviour emotion and whatever and the were loads of people who didn't have visitors at all. And so when you popped in to say, you know, can we play you a tune, you really did have to stay for, you know, for quite a long time to have a chat about that. But it was, you know, it's easy to laugh at things like that, isn't it? But actually, it was doing the most amazing service, hospital radio. But I don't know whether any hospital radio still exists anymore. I don't, well, I don't know is the answer to the question about whether or not this hospital has a radio station. Everyone's got their own sort of individual telly screen.

So what you don't have is that kind of blaring TV in the corner situation, which I know a lot of people really hate. But it also in a way is isolating. So if somebody does want to watch their telly, they can do it on their own, presumably with headphones or earbuds or whatever. But there isn't a collective experience. So it's, I mean, I have to say that like mum's only in a a room with one other lady. And she, when I arrived yesterday, the other woman said to me,

what have you done to your hair? And I thought that was a bit, because all I'd done actually that morning had been to brush it genuinely. But look, it clearly, it brought her a little bit of joy that my hair was, shall we say, as exuberant, as clearly she judged it to be. So there you go. I mean, I try and spread what small amount of joy I can. Yeah. So your hair was kemped for a day, it as opposed to unkempt. Maybe that's what she did. I actually thought I was looking relatively tidy. I think Eve and I would be intrigued to see a picture of your hair being kemped.

It's not happening. Just very briefly, I want to say hello to Sarah. And thank you, Sarah, for your lovely email too. She says, it is just really important to acknowledge that hospital visiting of this nature, visiting ill people, it's really hard and draining. and I used to acknowledge this as much as I could to whoever would listen to Sarah. I refused to feel guilty for slightly dreading visits each time. I honestly think it's a natural human reaction and it doesn't mean that I love my mom any less.

Sarah, yeah, thank you for that. And I think you're absolutely right. And in our small way on this podcast, we occasionally do try to discuss what you might loosely call uncomfortable truths. And I think that might be one of them. Honestly, really appreciate all your kind thoughts, and thank you very much. Now, shall we race through some emails? This hilarious one came in from Petrina, and it says, hey guys, and I know. Hey, guys.

I've just come up with an awesome idea. We're in Australia, and my husband is a diehard radio fan. He's been listening from the beginning. We're eloping to Queenstown in May. We legally wet on paper in May 2020, but due to a lot of heartache, we've put off any ceremony. we finally decided to get on with it as we love New Zealand we're having our ceremony

on the top of the Remarkables on May the 20th, 2026. It would be awesome to invite you guys to come up and surprise my husband and me at our wedding. Just a thought, thanks guys. I'm not adding these guys here. All of these guys are...

No, they were there. Yeah, thanks guys for your awesome work. So I read that at 6.30 this morning and I thought, well, actually the chances of Jane and I going to someone who we've never met ceremony on top of a mountain in New Zealand are very slim

I'm surprised that somebody's thought we'd even entertain the idea and then I looked at the top and although it's sent to Jane and Fee at times dot radio the heading is Jay and Dunk so whoever Jay and Dunk are presumably they're a duo

on a semi-humorous podcast somewhere in the Antipodean Hemisphere you sent it to the wrong people Petrina So, I mean, the answer's just a great big fat. No, but they'll never know whether or not Jay and Dunk could have come. Sure, have you looked up, Jay and Dunk?

I don't think I want to. No, no, let's not. No, hang on. Oh, hang on, Eve just has. Oh, oh, and? Come on, Eve. Break it to me gently. Jay and Dunk refers to the radio show host Jay Reve and Duncan Hyde,

who hosts the weekday afternoon drive show. I mean, that is like us, isn't it? On the New Zealand radio station, The Rock, the show is known for its, inverted commas, crazy and outrageous content. They're just so zany, Jean, they're so zany, with highlights and other content available on their Facebook page and as a podcast on platform, platyforms. All the good platforms, yes, on platforms like Spotify. You can watch this video to see some examples of their funny content. Well, I mean, they look about the same age as us.

Oh, do they do? They do, yeah. One of them's got, they're both wearing baseball caps. Oh. And one of them's got a very, very full beard. So that's me. Well, I mean, nothing says zany more than a baseball cap, does it? An outrageous content.

Oh, my God. Guys are not crazy. I bet they do swears and all sorts of stuff. I just want to end with this from Sarah because this is very intriguing. I was listening to you talking about Princess Anne and the Cake Slice. Well, first of all, correction corner, Sarah, it was never Princess Anne and the Cake Slice. It was Princess Margaret, wasn't it? It certainly was.

Yes, who wielded a cake slice in a lavatory at Greenwich Naval Museum. I was going to say Laboratory. It's obviously a museum. Anyway, but we'll move on from that. because it's nearly lunchtime. Sarah says, I once worked in a tiny photography lab and I was allowed to process super carefully Prince Phillips pictures. Taken on a six millimeter camera, I never found out why. I saw home life with the Royals, the Queen in Marigolds, and the young princes William and Harry in the bath, supervised by the Queen, laughing hysterically with a soap bubble beard.

Thank you, Sarah. Wow. I would imagine they'd have to be pretty careful about who developed. I mean, this is obviously back in the old days where you needed to send your images away. But Sarah must have been thoroughly vetted to do that, wasn't she? Yeah. How incredible to have seen those pictures.

Yes, I am surprised. I have to be honest. Anyway, Sarah, look, I'm not doubting you. But also, Jane, they were just more trusted. times, weren't they? So you probably, there probably was somebody in the royal household who thought we absolutely can't take this down to our local boots to get it sent away to be developed. So we're going to have to ask somebody we know and trust. And I think you just did know people who you could trust. I think nowadays, because we do everything on technology, it doesn't even matter if you

trust the person you've asked. You have to be wary of whether or not someone's going to hack you in the cloud or on the way there or on the way back. They're just different times, weren't they? Just different times. Oh, they are so different these times. There we are. I mean, that's up there with life is international. It is sweet. AI for a good cause and cat flaps, we're going to save until tomorrow.

I want to say a very quick hello to Jennifer from Ducklington. Now, this goes way back to our appearance at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. and Jennifer from Ducklington, I'm sorry that I didn't do this sooner. You were asking if it was a bit weird to listen again to a radio program from the previous day. She'd come along to see us and she'd met another off-air devotee from the hive. They'd have a very nice time watching Penny Lancaster and stuff. It's never weird to go back and listen to radio at all. You can do that on the app.

And Jennifer says I was the goon and shocking pink perched on the stool directly in front of your surprise. low-tech radio desk. And I noticed you, Jennifer, because your outfit was just superb. We're going to also save the Airbnb story submission. Search and Rescue is the subtitle until tomorrow two. And can I just say to Kerry, worried to hear that Fee might be getting dangerously hooked on Scrabble. This happened to me at the behest of my aunt. I love that word behest. We've now been playing every. day for nine years without a break. I'm currently leading 648 games to 588, which I put down to my age advantage. I'm 72 and she's 104. Oh, fantastic. Gosh, absolutely. Let her win, you miserable thing. When I read that, I did think she's not, I mean, with the best one in the world. She's not, she's, she's, she's not got 30 years in which to catch up on that widening gap.

But Kerry says, just be careful, it's worse than crack. And you're right, Kerry, it is worse than crack. So I thought that I had it under control and that I'd be able to stop my scrabble addiction. But I did put out to plea this morning if we could start the Scrabble games again. I got in a bit of a huff jane because I was on such a losing streak. how fascinating I think I'm just showing my ignorance because I honestly

I don't actually know how you play I don't know what it is I think the world does divide and I could be wrong into board game and word game players and card players as well actually and the rest of us

I don't know what I just I can't get interested and I know it's a failing and I probably need to get on board particularly as I age do you know I'd slightly disagree with you there because I can't I don't don't like board games at all.

And, you know, when the kids were in those years of wanting to spend the whole of a Saturday afternoon playing Monopoly, you know, my heart would sink. I don't like ball games and I don't like card games at all, but I absolutely love Scrabble. So I think that that means I'm not really in either clearly divided camp. But I think also I don't like, you know, you know, people who like to play game games. you know let's have a game of charades oh god no I don't I don't like those things or I struggle with those we play them at Christmas

because that always seems like a laugh but I can't do the game game thing all the time and actually I felt when I joined radio four that I'd stepped into a world of people who really enjoyed that type of stuff did you feel that no you are so right that nothing nothing gets me turning off

a radio quicker than any panel game introduction on Radio 4. I'm with you. It's a house party that's been going on since the 1950s and I've never been invited. I don't get it.

I agree completely. It is gather around the piano at the Cambridge Footlights. No! Don't! Our guest this afternoon is the technology and business correspondent for the Times, Katie Prescott,

who's written an extraordinary forensic book about the life and death of Mike Lynch. It's called The Curious. case of Mike Lynch. Rosie Wright has been presenting with me during the afternoon program this week, so she starts the interview off. It sounds like the plot to almost a sort of TV series succession style with just extraordinary odds. It's the story of the technology giant dubbed the British Bill Gates. This is Mike Lynch who built a billion, multi-billion pound technology empire. He ended up, extradited to the US in handcuffs, arrested on suspicion of fraud,

Facing life in jail with facing only a 0.4% chance of an acquittal in those circumstances. Now, that was a trial he ended up winning. But in celebrating his victory, on his yacht off the coast of Sicily, that was the Basian, it sunk in a freak storm taking his life. His co-defendant was the same weekend, killed in a car accident in the UK. Now, the odds of both of those deaths occurring on the same weekend were, estimated to be four in one billion. Lots of people have been searching for conspiracy. The fact actually is it's just tragically sad. Documenting the story has been Katie Prescott, the technology

business editor of the Times in her new book, The Curious Case of Mike Lynch. And Katie is in the studio with us this afternoon. Katie, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Congratulations on the book as well. I think we could do with starting with just a reminder really or an introduction to who Mike Lynch is because I think when we think tech pioneer, we think of this sort of introverted character squirreling away in their bedroom and he was quite the opposite in terms of his personality. Yes, that's right. So I mean you talked about the story being improbable. I'd say everything about Mike Lynch's life was improbable. He was born to a relatively poor background in Essex, an Irish family. His mother was a nurse and his father was a fireman. He was born. He was

born without fingerprints. So it was one of the first things that I found was sort of extraordinarily unlikely. It's a very, very rare condition. Do you know what? None of our listeners were expecting that, can't you? And it comes into the story later on, actually, in his first business. But he was extraordinarily bright and a very, very gifted child, but not, as you say, the sort of introverted person who didn't have friends.

Far from it, actually. He was a very lively child, very, very curious, liked doing things. sort of taking an alarm clock apart to see how it worked, a voracious reader. Love playing the clarinet with his cheeks really puffed out. And a terrific musician. And he won a scholarship to a private school where he really excelled. And very early on, his teachers, his school friends told me had him mapped out as really one of the brilliant boys of his generation. I say boys, they let in girls later on, but certainly in his year.

And then he went on to Cambridge, where he started off studying natural sciences and then moved into engineering, into a bunch of engineering called signal processing, basically looking at patterns in audio and images. As you say, he loved playing the clarinet, and he was passionate about music and led bands both while he was at school, but also at Cambridge. And his first foray into tech was really into music technology. so if you think about how music sounded in the 80s the kind of the sort of use of synthesizers and stuff that was where Mike Lynch started getting into tech but his first business when he left Cambridge was developing fingerprint scanning for the police force

and his business partners at the time said it was quite annoying because you couldn't use Mike to test the technology And this is really where I think you start to see him as something of an outlier. When you look at a lot of people who left, so he was at Cambridge in the 80s, a lot of really bright people who wanted to get ahead and make money went into the city where the big bang was happening, the opening up of financial regulation, and people were making a fortune. But Mike was always passionate about science and doing something that was actually practical

and that would really change the world. And so he decided to stay at Cambridge to do a PhD. And that's where he got into the business world, working in a very, very early sort of business startup center before these things really existed in Cambridge. And that's really the genesis of his big company autonomy. He wrote the sort of wave of development of technology, the dot-com boom.

And one thing that helped him was not just his intelligence, was his creative storytelling. And you have so many examples here from friends, colleagues that you've spoken to about how he would just, it was more than exaggerate, wasn't it? He would sort of, in some cases, completely fabricate things, but then also believed his own lies. I think, yes, it was quite a difficult book to write in many ways because certainly the picture and the stories that might projected to the world when I read interviews, it often transpired, were exaggerated when I. I spoke to people close close to the story. He was remarkable because he was able, I think, to understand technology, but also marketing in a way that very, very few people can. And so that was, I think, the genesis of the success of his business is that he could see how tech could

become a bigger story. I think you often find with entrepreneurs that storytelling is a big part of what they do, is the sort of fake it till you make it thing. And Mike's, certainly had that in spades. I mean, one of the early stories I was told was that he made up a finance director in his business called Frank Bridges. So if anyone phoned up and wanted to speak to Frank, the whole team would know that it was about an invoice or something, but it just became a bit of an in-joke. And that was an early example of this sort of exaggeration. But as you start to look at the business and how it grew further on, we found more and more more examples of that, yeah. Can I just ask you, Katie, how autonomy would have touched us? So we often

hear about these big companies that got massive valuations, astonishing figures. And you think, okay, but where did I meet that? You know, where's the kind of Heinz-baked beans interaction in my life? What did it do for us? It's a great question. And actually, most of us probably wouldn't have encountered it because it was a business-to-business organization. But it essentially did corporate search. So it would search through unstructured data, things like emails and voicemails and anything that wasn't put into neat databases. And they sold their software to everyone from governments, the BBC was a customer, the financial services authority. So big organisations were using their software, but it's not the sort of thing that you would have seen advertised on the telly. I mean, he did brag, didn't he? He thought it could have been as big as Google.

Yeah. So because he developed this search technology in the 1990s, just at the cusp of the dot-com boom, he said that had he applied it to all of us and made it for the consumers, it could have been the next Google. I mean, personally, I think that that was really an exaggeration. He blamed tech analysts at the time for saying that the consumer model wasn't working. That's why he went down the corporate route. But it seems, given how forceful he was as a character and how ruthless, that that's unlikely. We'll get onto the fraud accusations and then sort of the tragic end of this story in a moment or two. But from your personal perspective trying to tell this story, there were lots of complications. First of all, because obviously he's only recently died, but also these rumours going around autonomy of people saying Katie Prescott's dangerous. What happened? So it's interesting you said congratulations at the beginning about the book being published because in some ways I don't feel a huge amount of joy in it.

It was an incredibly difficult book to write and I didn't just start writing it after his death. I wanted to tell the story of how Hewlett-Packard bought his business autonomy. A year later he was fired and accused of fraud and there was this enormous fallout, a decade of litigation and far more court cases than the final California. one. However, when he died, clearly that just added a horrible tragedy to the story. So it was very, very difficult to write in the aftermath of his death. He had a small cohort of people who were very, very close to him. Clearly, we're grieving. Just this extraordinary, dreadful thing to happen, most of whom as well knew Stephen Chamberlain, the Vice President of Finance,

who was killed that same weekend. And then a lot of people who had crossed Mike over the years, and he was a very difficult character and could be very abrasive. And as one of those very close to him said to me, you know, people never really forgot the scars of their encounter with Mike. But people were unwilling to speak ill of the dead. And I really noticed that a couple of months into the project, that started to thaw the fear.

And I think there was a lot of fear around. Mike started to melt away and people were much more willing to speak. So in the end, I spoke to more than 100 people for the book. Since it's been serialised in the times, I've been inundated with people who've also been contacting me about their experiences. I think we need to try and explain, don't we, the elements of fraud, the tribunals and the cases in all of this. Because you say Mike Lynch to people. And I think genuinely, most people don't know what to make of the different verdicts that had been passed down in different places. It's incredibly, incredibly complicated.

So if we start perhaps with the British civil trial, is that, or do we want to go back to the sale to HP? I don't know, maybe that's a... I think start with the civil trial. And in a nutshell, sort of encapsulate that he kept getting into legal difficulties throughout his career. So Hewlett-Packard bought autonomy for $11 billion. and then after Mike Lynch was fired, a whistleblower came forward, and I should say a whistleblower

had also come forward to autonomy a few years previously, and spoke to HP about some queries they had with the accounts. And that led to HP starting an investigation. And then there was this completely unprecedented situation where the chief executive Meg Whitman accused Mike of fraud without him realizing that this was coming. And at that point HP said that they were going to sue

autonomy, they sued Mike Lynch and his chief financial officer who was a good friend of his from Cambridge called Sushavan Hussain. This finally came to trial in the UK and you realize how painful lawsuits are when you read this book. So the fraud was declared, as it were, in 2012.

It came to trial in 2019. and there was this incredibly long and complex trial and at the end of it the judge took two years to come to a verdict but categorically found that there was fraud at autonomy and went through it transaction by transactions and experienced chancery judge here and at that point Mike Lynch who'd been fighting extradition to America his chief financial officer at this point had been put in prison for the fraud

so he'd been he'd gone through a criminal trial and the Department of Justice were pursuing Mike for the same thing and Priti Patel signed the form for his extradition and he was sent to the States. So when you talked about the probability of him being found guilty in his trial in California, you can see that especially given all of the verdicts that had come before, it certainly was what everybody presumed would happen.

And you were at, I think it was the time summer party when the news came through to say, He's been found not guilty. Yes, and I just... And you were stunned. My phone buzzet. We had, in the way that journalists often do pre-written a story and explain a story about what had gone on, I'm afraid with a top that sort of had a presumption of a guilty verdict.

I should say as well, the Financial Reporting Council, the Britain's accounting watchdog, had also found evidence of fraud at autonomy and fined Loit over the auditing of their accounts. So it just felt like there was this mountain of evidence against. them. And I ran to find my editor, Richard Fletcher, the business editor of the Times, and told him, and he couldn't believe it. I mean, he's, you know, he's been a business editor for a very long time and has followed the Lynch case. And I think even, I mean, anyone in the lynch campaign, the lawyers would tell you, they were astonished as well. I mean, it was really a shock verdict from the jury. Did he have many, many friends or anyone sort of coming out to, to defend him who hadn't been paid to do that? Yeah. He had, he had, he, he, he, he, he, He had got a very close group of friends who had worked with him through autonomy and who stayed with him after the sale to Hewlett-Packard and he went after he was fired and went and formed a fund to invest in new businesses. The judge in the British civil case called the people at the top of autonomy a cabal and there was certainly very much an inner circle around Mike. people described it to me as like a bunker mentality. You know, like you're on the team or off the team.

Yeah. And it was very like that. You get this verdict that is sort of stunned the technology world, the business world. It's not what you were anticipating. I think maybe not him either. They have this then celebration, which brings us up to the absolutely tragic accident, just a real freak accident, this storm that seemingly came out of nowhere. Remind us of what happened.

There had been a series of yacht trips that summer where Mike was bringing together people who'd really worked with him and supported him through the past decade, through these cases. And on board the particular trip, which ended in tragedy, was Chris Mulvillow, who was his long-standing U.S. attorney, well-known New York lawyer, from a big family of New York lawyers, his wife, a chap called Jonathan Blumer, who was the chair of Mike's audit committee at Autonomy right at the very end of the business, and his wife,

his daughter Hannah and Mike Lynch's wife, Angela, and a few others. And they had just heard the news about Stephen Chamberlain being hit by a car, Mike's co-defendant in the US trial, not someone he was particularly close to at Autonomy, but their lives became entwined in this extraordinary trial Steve was living in a small Airbnb

out in San Francisco not too far from Mike so their lives had become entwined by this In case you remind us how he died he was out running in Cambridgeshire and he was hit by a car and the lady stopped and he ended up having to go to hospital

in Adam Brooks and that's where he died so they'd found out on the yacht about the accident so the mood was pretty bleak as you can imagine. They knew a storm was coming that evening. They were leaving the next day. They were flying out of Palermo, the capital of Sicily. And so the captain decided to moor the boat in a shelter area to weather the storm.

But early in the morning, the boat was hit by an enormous gust of wind and tipped over in 15 seconds. And those in the cabins below, including Mike and his daughter, Hannah, drowned. which it was just absolutely awful. Yeah, unbearable to think about. And actually, it was almost unbelievable for the people who were there. They couldn't believe how quickly that yacht just literally disappeared under the waves. You had to comb through many sort of conspiracy theories to try and tell this story because that is something so unfathomal to say,

well, those two individuals both died in freak accidents the same weekend. And the weekend itself is really odd because it was the 18th of all. August, which was the date that Hewlett-Packard had bought autonomy and was forever known within Hewlett-Packard as 818. It was this sort of terrible day for the company. So it was extraordinarily strange. I have not found any evidence that this was anything other than too dreadful and completely improbable accidents. I think if you look at any of the evidence, You know, you can't find anything, but I can see why people's brains jump to conspiracy theories. You finished the book by saying sort of his life serves as a warning and an inspiration.

Why? Why did you come to that conclusion? One of the saddest things I found writing this book was that Mike was obviously so completely brilliant in so many ways. and he did not need to push the envelope, as so many people have described it to me, when it came to the accounting of his company. I really grappled with the fraud, I have to say, he always denied it. But I think when you look at the evidence and when you speak to people and you look at what happened in the civil trial, it's pretty clear. and I haven't actually found anyone who said it wasn't now

looking back all those years that they were fiddling with the accounts but they didn't need to, it wasn't a failing company and so I always found that very, very sad because he created so many successes which I think is when I talk about his legacy you look at some of the businesses that he invested in in the wake of that terrible HP takeover

And by the way, I don't think HP are completely blameless in this situation either, but that's another story. He backed a company called DarkTrace, which is a cybersecurity company that got sold for billions last year to a U.S. business, a company called FeatureSpace, which is really early to financial services AI and illegal AI business. And so it is very sad to think, you know, coming back to the UK, what he might have created. I should also say, though, this is one of these stories which still hasn't finished. So the lawyers in this case are getting together again in a few weeks' time to finally decide how much Lynch's estate has to pay Hewlett-Packard. Earlier this year, they ruled that it should be a judge ruled that it should be £700 million. That doesn't include interest.

And that was in 2011. Right. So I think that Anne, one of our listeners, sums everything up about this story. saying how can anyone believe that the death of Mike Lynch and his co-defendant were just coincidence saying it's just tragically sad isn't an answer people aren't going to buy that.

How do you create a storeman? That is the huge problem and why your title is so perfect the curious case of Mike Lynch because it doesn't matter, you're a forensic journalist, it doesn't matter how much fact you find. That coincidence just will always make people think

that something else happened here. How do you create a storm and try and hit a specific person? I don't know. I mean, just anyway, that's a terrible, horrible question. But it is just one of those cases, isn't it? One of those stories where we cannot get our head around, everything that happened, the avenues of that man's life. I mean, it's like a, you know, a burglar comes into your house

and takes the TV, the phone, the washing machine, but it's not a burglary. That's what happened with the company, too. It is remarkable. It's a story beautifully told. Thank you very much indeed for coming in. Thank you. It's good to see you both. Katie Prescott and her book is called The Curious Case of Mike Lynch. And it's an extraordinary kind of and really tragic morality tale for our times, Jane, isn't it? With so many twists and turns that you just can't quite believe. And, you know, if that is the universe marking people's cards, it's marked them pretty well.

Susie Wright has been filling in for you on the afternoon show, which is why there was another voice involved in that interview. She's been an absolute delight, Jane. But we hope to welcome you back into the warm and loving embrace of Times Towers next week. Honestly, I'm very much hoping to be there, looking forward to it. And the guest tomorrow, much anticipated, is Petula Clark, who isn't a dame. A lot of people think she is. She's actually CBE.

But nevertheless, she's got a fascinating. live story. And you can hear from her tomorrow. And also, we probably should mention December the 7th. Should we sneak in a quick reference to that? Let's. What's happening on December the 7th sister? It's our stage show in the West End, the glittering West End of London. And we're at the Prince Edward Theatre. And it's an early evening event. Don't worry, you'll be well home by 10, and I mean well home. And it's a kind of Christmas, what is it? It's a sort of homespun evening of reflection. It's not.

It's a Christmas cracker. It's a Christmas cracker of a show. We're going to play, well, we've just said we don't like playing games, haven't we? We've got features. We've got features. They're not games, they're features. Yes, just dart over that. Don't worry about any of the detail.

Tickets selling, like, quite hot cakes, quite hot cakes. So to be in with a chance, get a wiggle on and see if you can come along on December the 7th. Very much looking forward to it. Me too. Speak to you again. Same time tomorrow. Hope visiting time goes all right tonight

and send our love to Ray. Thank you. Bye-bye. Congratulations. You've staggered somehow to the end of another Offair with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live, every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4 on Times Radio. The Jeopardy is off the scale. And if you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online, on DAB, or on the free Times Radio app. Offair is produced by Eve Salisbury and the Executive.

producer is Rosie Cutler.