Off Air... with Jane and Fi - A quandary for the shorter lady

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

Last night, Jane and Fi were at an extremely important corporate event. Fi made a faux pas, and Jane fell off a chair. We're wrapping up the week with the essentials; cats, loyalty cards, and famous people in toilets. Jane and Fi are also joined by Chris Atkins, documentary maker and author of the prison memoir A Bit of a Stretch. The sequel, Time After Time, is out now. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfi Assistant Producer: Megan McElroy Times Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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I think you could get another cat. And I think if you get another cat. And I think if you got another cat, then maybe your Dora would start to behave a bit better. Well, by the way, hello, everybody. Hello. Hello, Fi. Hello. This is off-air. I'm just pondering it.

But she's been very naughty this week. She has taken against anything with flowers in it. Now, I like flowers. And I like to fill my house with flowers. Now, I'd just like to have a couple of vases on the go. But she just tips them all over. I came back last night and I was a little tipsy. And there were just upturned vases, two of them. She's just evil.

She's like the cat possessed. She's nasty. Truly dreadful at times. So I think if you've got another cat, and especially because you're feeling sorry for the flat-faced cats. Well, they've been in the news today. Yeah, and they do look, they look a bit... And nobody wants them because they look like they've just run up against a wall.

Well, no, the problem with the flat-faced cats is people did want them. And then the poor things, because they're bred in a particular way, you know what's coming, they end up with really difficult health conditions that are really expensive to treat. And then they get dumped, the poor things, and then people don't want them from the animal centres. Well, I think you should take some in. I think it would be good for all parties involved.

Don't say some, please. Yeah, go on. You're heaping pressure upon me. Go on, go on, go on. Now last night, Fi and I went to a very important corporate event. Very important. During which Fi made a faux pas and I fell off a chair. So

it was quite the evening and I think, do you think we made a good impression? All in all? So we were sitting on these, so it was a corporate event and it was at a really amazingly lovely London restaurant. It was a very, and it was at a really amazingly lovely London restaurant. It was a very, very fine selection of London's finest advertorial people. And we were just doing a bit of a talky thing with Henry Bonsu and Hugo Rifkin before we sat down to dinner.

And you and I walked in, we saw the bar stools and I know that both of us thought, please, dear God, not those. It's a quandary for the shorter lady. But first of all, will I get on to the barstool? Yeah, very much so. And then secondly, how will I get off? Very much so. And unfortunately, I went off it a bit too soon. Sooner than expected.

So there was a lovely woman there from Boots and Henry made a comment about the Advantage card. And dear listener, Jane, like she was going down, like she was going down what they call it the bobsleigh. Yeah, a little bit like the luge. More like the luge. Towards this woman. I just wanted to thank her for the Advantage card.

As if she had the last advantage card in the world and somebody might be getting there before you. So it was quite funny. But I mean, I think you rectified yourself very quickly. You were helped back onto the store. Right, that's it. Anyway, that was last night. I know.

And then mistakenly, at the end of the evening, instead of just saying, you you know just waving at our enormous great big boss across the room i decided for some reason blow the kiss oh god anyway as you can tell um we we're not certain how much longer we'll be kept in employment here uh but it's been fun while it lasted now uh content is everything and we have started this new thread, Famous People in Toilets. This is from Kay, who's in New Zealand. As a cadet radio broadcaster aged 23,

it was 1986, I bumped into the actress Prunella Scales on the stairs of a Christchurch, New Zealand radio station on my way back from the loo to my desk. She asked me where the toilets were and I led her back to them. It was a confusing building with multiple staircases. She thanked me and was just lovely. I was so starstruck and stunned to see her there as I wasn't aware she was in New Zealand for a play nor that she was being interviewed that day by one of our station's

senior hosts. In common with you two Miss Scales has talent, humour and is a class act, but gets extra points from me for coming all the way to New Zealand to satisfy her fans with a show. Hint, hint. Cheers, she says, and as an aside, I hope your theme on meeting famous people in or near toilets doesn't tip into dodgy territory. There are quite a few famous folk out there

who would rather forget some of their ablutary aberrations. Never heard that word. You've got to wave with the English language all the way over there in ZK. That was absolutely terrible and I'd like to apologise. Can I apologise on behalf of my friend there? Somebody has taken issue with you being so rude about Uckfield.

Helen says, since moving with my husband from West Oxfordshire, a.k.a. the celebrity hotspot, to Uckfield, a place we'd never heard of before our property search, both Uckfield and Sussex have knocked our socks off. We live within walking distance of the high street on the hill, which, to name but a few, has a thriving coffee shop culture, a wonderful independent picture house, bistro, restaurant and bar. Oh, gosh.

A lovely modern library and a number of great independent retailers, as well as the usual suspects, including Waitrose, so you'll be fine. The town is well connected with a direct rail service to London Bridge, so you can get straight to work here. Regular bus services to Brighton and Tunbridge Wells. All right it's got a tiled splashback. It goes on and on and on and then there's the stunning South Downs and Coast but actually Helen makes a good point that the community here she says has been very friendly warm and welcoming and as we previously lived in

a very small rural village we anticipated this might be different. However, we have a lovely group of new friends, something that's not always easy to build at our time of life when friendship circles are long established. And also much to the amusement of our daughters who live in the metropolises of London and Brighton, strangers actually acknowledge you here. And I think that's such a good point because I would imagine that that is very difficult when I think they're a little tiny weenie bit older than us. You know, if you tip up in a place, then some of those friendship groups have been going for decades. They've seen kids all the way through schools,

they've nursed each other, all that kind of stuff. So to go to a place that's very welcoming and wants new friends in a group is fantastic. Sounds absolutely brilliant. It does sound very nice indeed. Yet more news from New Zealand, from Pam. I was out on my morning walk listening to your email special yesterday when I heard some panicked peeping.

It turned out that six ducklings had fallen down a drain while the mother hovered anxiously beside it, looking at me pointedly. So I hauled the cover open, saw I couldn't do it alone, and got help from some people nearby. They had exactly what was needed and scooped all the ducklings out in just three goes. What a success. The family waddled away,

the people went to fetch mesh to prevent it happening again, and I continued on my walk, listening to you. Well, it's that sort of life-enhancing content content that we're after isn't it? It is yeah. Pamela is an award-winning freelance travel writer since 2009. That's quite a good innings. Yeah it is a good innings. Thank you. Now this one is important because it comes from the original listener who sent us the email worried about her daughter's weight. It was very difficult to hear my original email being read on air as it was the first time my thoughts had been uttered. I'm sorry, there's a weird thing going on there

in the way that it's been printed out. Apologies. With much trepidation that I listened to the email special, knowing that you were going to cover the topic, I had already come to the conclusion that I needed to reframe my thoughts and concentrate on the brilliant things about her, of which there are many, and to the emailer who referenced that I hadn't mentioned love in my original email. I can reassure her I do love her very much and the last thing I would ever want to do is to cause her any ongoing issues. But we never doubted that,

did we? No, we never doubted that at all. The emailer who spoke about wanting to protect her daughter from the unkindness she'd experienced really encapsulated where my motivation for thinking I needed to address the issue came from. As Jane did mention in the podcast, looks do matter. And as I learned to change my own thought patterns, my ask, which is a big one, is that society also stops judging and worshipping

the what we all know as unreal Instagram version of beauty. We as women must lead this. And I totally agree with you. And you know what, I did think that after our email special yesterday, that it's really brave and our podcast really thrives on people sending very honest accounts of what's going on in their head and their dilemmas and I'm sure it is with trepidation that you then listen to other people's responses and perhaps that sounds quite harsh when people dive in and offer lots of advice but I think it always comes from a well-meaning place I think you started a really fantastic conversation, actually, that allowed people to talk on both sides of that parental and, what do you call it, childhood fence.

So the other daughter's experiences of parents, one whose father had been critical about her, it's just so important to hear all of that. So, Jane and I, we hear you. I'm sure it was a difficult listen, so I suppose our apologies as well if it felt a little bit bruising because none of the emails sent to us would ever want to do that. No, absolutely not.

And I feel immense sympathy with our original emailer. I suspect a lot of others have been in very, very similar situations. Now, we did feature on the radio show on Times Radio today a conversation with Paula Chadwick of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Charity. And this was because it is Lung Cancer Awareness Week. And it was also in response to the emails we've had at the podcast about lung cancer. And it is just worth saying, rather bluntly, but it is worth saying that lung cancer does kill more women than breast cancer. And you don't often hear that.

It's a statistic that is not repeated probably as often as it should be. And I'm not in any way underestimating the terrible, terrible breast cancer cases that I've had in my own life. I understand that it's a horrible thing to go through. But perhaps we do need to talk more about the symptoms of lung cancer. And Paula was very clear, wasn't she, about the symptoms that you do need to do something about if you've had them. Yeah. And they are, let's try and do this together, a persistent cough. For longer than three weeks. Longer than three weeks. Yeah. Obviously, if you cough up blood, do something about it. If you experience sudden weight loss and fatigue like you've never had fatigue before. And then there was pain in your chest and particularly in your shoulder.

Right. And you can be any age. Yep. You don't need to be, you don't need to have been a smoker, so forget that. So please, please don't assume that if you've never smoked a fag in your life, you won't get lung cancer because it's just not true. And also she was so hopeful about some of the treatments. Really hopeful. You can have keyhole surgery and actually be in and out in a day if your cancer is caught early enough. But she did say that so many young people are dismissing their symptoms and, you know, not actually presenting to a doctor until they've got stage four cancers.

Because you think, oh, I've got a chest infection. I've pulled a muscle in my shoulder. You know, I've had a bit of a bug. I've lost the weight. You know, they're not putting these things together and thinking this could be lung cancer. I was flabbergasted by that statistic about it being more prevalent than breast and cervical cancer. Well, I suppose, I mean, as Paula did go on to explain, it's because people have got the message about breast cancer, haven't they? You know, you examine your breasts, you make sure you don't have a lump. If you do feel a lump, you're trying, you are inclined, more inclined than in the past perhaps to do something about it

because, again, the treatment there has improved. But a lump is something tangible, whereas with lung cancer, I suspect the symptoms are possibly a little too easy to dismiss yeah and you shouldn't do it just don't connect them no so i hope that's helpful so if people want to go back and listen to that you can do that on the times app you just uh you log in and you can go to times radio and pick today's show and then you can listen back to it it's just about 10 minutes to five we started that interview and actually you could do that with a really interesting piece that we did with

Jamil Kerens talking about IVF yeah so Jamil Kerens is the associate editor of the Saturday Times magazine she comes on our program every Thursday to talk about what's in the magazine and this week it's a really brilliant piece where she describes her own journey through IVF and out the other side without a baby and how that has made her feel and it's interesting because you might think you've read that kind of article before but I absolutely guarantee that you haven't and it definitely flagged up some interest amongst our listeners. This one comes in from Juliet from Brisbane who says Jane has a really insightful and very special first person article today could you

please pass on my congratulations to her for such a wonderful read my multiple IVF adventures resulted in one child now 13 but you don't often read much about when it doesn't all work out and she then says please please do consider taking the podcast on the road

we'd love to see you in Oz but I do think the flight would be no fun for Jane. She's not just here to have fun. And then Julia says in brackets, Jane does seem to be nicer to feed these days. Money has changed, Julia. HR's been in contact. We're much better now. You just reminded me, actually. I've written HRT on my hand.

You mentioned HR reminded me of it it You know they're different departments Have I been getting my tablets from the wrong department? It would explain a lot, especially to Julia Our guest today was a filmmaker and the author of a best-selling prison memoir called A Bit of a Stretch. His name is Chris Atkins and he got five years in prison for tax fraud back in 2016. He ended up serving two and a half years. He's now written a sequel called Time After Time about life after jail and asked some pretty awkward questions in that book about why so many ex-offenders end up back behind bars. We started the conversation by asking Chris to tell us about why he did end up in prison.

So, yeah, I was a reasonably successful documentary maker and I foolishly used a sort of slightly naughty tax scheme to get some money for a film I was making. And it was the kind of thing that was sort of quite popular back in sort of the 2000s, lots of celebrities. The Times famously exposed Jimmy Carr for sort of investing in one of these things. And it was foolish and we got the money to make a film

and then years later HMRC came and prosecuted everyone involved. And it was, the exact defence was conspiracy to cheat the public revenue. Right, okay. And you got what would actually seem to many of us to be a long sentence. Five years for that, doing two and a half in the end, I think will strike a lot of people as pretty harsh. It struck me as pretty harsh. And though oddly at the time, it's kind of bonkers that they were trying to actually send me away for longer.

And I've subsequently learned that judges and prosecutors do this. They kind of really dial up the figures to scare the willies out of you, basically. And so when you land up with five, you think you've actually got off quite likely. So they always sort of start high and then come down, maybe so you don't complain quite so much. I don't know. So on the actual day I got the sentence,

I was oddly relieved because they were gunning for a bit more. Right. I mean, I've read a bit of a stretch and it was really interesting. But I mean, I've read a bit of a stretch and it was really interesting. But I mean, I know you'd be the first to agree that it is

a white middle class man's view of this very particular world. Yeah, guilty as charged. Yeah, yeah. And did you feel that you were writing it on behalf of those who wouldn't have a clue

how to write such an important book? Yeah, I mean, I had sort of straddled two horses really. I wanted to be completely honest and just say, look, this is what I saw and this is the experience I had through my eyes book yeah i mean i had sort of straddled two horses really i had i wanted to be completely honest and just say look this is what i saw and this is the experience i had through my eyes

and it you know i was in one cell of 1500 cells in one prison out of 100 prisons you know so it's very much slanted by my own sort of thoughts and feelings and experiences but at the same time i could see that the whole prison system was actually disproportionately unfair and unjust to people from minority backgrounds and to people who were, who didn't know how to read and write, like 50% of the prison population are functionally illiterate. There's a disproportionately high number of people with mental health problems who are never going to get a book deal. So in my head, I was like, right, it's going to be through my eyes. But at the same time, I'm going to write a lot about these people because actually, because they take up most of the system there's actually very

few white collar people like myself right and in fact you and your other white collar gangs yeah your gang well yeah yeah you basically helped the the prison authorities run the joint yeah I don't want it to come across as too altruistic because initially it was just because that was the only way to get out of my cell was that if you had a job be it handing out slips or like delivering food or whatever it was that was the way to not be locked in yourself for 23 hours a day because that's how it starts off so it was initially just get me out of here i will do anything to just so i can stretch my legs and have some human contact and not go mad um so but then over time I realized there are actually certain jobs not many but there are certain jobs I ended up doing that really did help people and one of them was

the listening so that's where I became like a Samaritans volunteer within the prison so I was trained by the Samaritans and if other inmates were suicidal or self-harming they could come and speak to me and we'd get it wasn't over the phone you get locked in a room with them and and you'd sort of ask them about how their day was and and try and try and convince them not to commit suicide essentially so that had you know i think was a very sort of helpful thing i did but a lot of it was all pretty banal but your way of dealing was to write about it had you already already decided that this was one another way that you could occupy your mind yeah someone texted me the day in the days before i went in a great quote from may west which i'll never forget which was always keep a diary and one day the diary will keep you um and you know i was

in the literary world ish uh my my sort of ex-partner at the time lottie mogark had just written a successful book her mother's deborah mogark who's like a huge best-selling author you've got connections i've got, and so I was aware, I was around people who wrote books. And look, my instinct is a documentary maker. My instinct was to point a camera at everything, but I just didn't have a camera. I had a pen and paper,

and even that was difficult to get some days. So it was kind of the only outlet for me to document it was by writing about it. It was kind of obvious to do that to me. What was the biggest problem in Wandsworth? Was it the overcrowding? Was it the poor staff levels? Was it the relatively poor quality of the staff?

Because I think a lot of more experienced people had left. Yeah, I think a lot of it comes down, it's like you've got hundreds of problems in Wandsworth, but they all kind of funnel from the same place, which is huge funding cuts to the prison system, which were instituted by the coalition government. It's fascinating to see the architect of that now just come back into the fold but yeah they they took about a billion pounds a year out of the prison budget which meant they lost about 30 approximately of staff

huge numbers of officers went but the number of prisoners remained about the same so this crucial prisoner to officer ratio just got stretched and stretched and stretched where literally all they had time to do was to lock everyone up count them and give them some food um so all the things that are supposed to happen in prison to drive rehabilitation so things like you know mental health treatment um drug therapies um looking at education employment all of that sort of thing just hit the floor so people were literally being warehoused until the day of their release. And that's what sort of shocked me the most, that people were just stuck inside their cells all day, every day, and all their problems were getting worse. How much do you think the general public genuinely cares? Well, I think they oddly, you see, they're oddly fascinated by

prison. Oh, they're fascinated. It's a real paradox. Because people always say, oh, can you come and do prison? You know, prisons really rate when they put it on media. So I think they care for that level in a kind of fascination way. They care to the extent it's a very, very emotive subject. So the public care that bad people are seen to be punished, I think.

They don't care, by and large, in the sense of are the treatments humane? Are people being looked after? Are they being rehabilitated? They don't really care about about that side and that's sort of why i'm here that's why i kind of campaign for this stuff because i think people should care not least because it's about cutting crime if you want to cut crime you need to rehabilitate people yeah and that's it's the rehabilitation thing yeah where most people just lose interest and glaze over because what they want is bad people banged up and away away from us so i think there's

a huge mismatch between the reality and what's presented in the media and there's some really interesting studies done and where people when they talk to people in focus groups like the majority of people in focus groups you know don't think that sentencing has been getting softer this is an amazing thing so it stops someone on the street they all think oh sentences are too soft they've been getting softer where the exact opposite has been happening. Sentence lengths have been flying up since the Blair government came to power. That's why we have so many people in prison ahead of population. So it's kind of like the way that people are digesting the subject of prisons and criminal justice through the media is very, I know we all say the media distorts things, but it really

distorts things when it comes to prisons. So your second book, Time After Time, is about life outside prison, which often ends up with people back inside. Yeah, exactly. So when you're discharged, you're given an amount of money, aren't you? Yes. Which is? I think, well, with me, it was £47.50.

Funny enough, actually, there's someone in my book, Josh, who is one of the key chaps in my book, and I went to pick him up two days ago. I actually drove to pick him up at HMP Weyland, and he was given about £80. So it goes up with inflation. But even so, in today's world, that really isn't going to get you very far.

Well, how far is it supposed to get you? I mean, that is the release grant. That is so you can get yourself some accommodation and something to eat. But as we all know, that is going to stretch you pretty thin. Look, the huge majority of prisoners are just chucked out with nowhere to go.

Sometimes they're given a list of homeless shelters. Sometimes they're literally told where the nearest park is and given a sleeping bag. And that is literally the only support that's available to them. And so many of them, for that very reason, end up back inside almost immediately. So the book, Time After Time, is kind of about that. It's about why we have these very high rates of re-offending and rec recidivism and did you meet many prisoners inside who actually really didn't want

to leave prison because they knew that what greeted them outside was so uncertain yeah i mean i think it was it was more you know it wasn't your moriarty's it wasn't your ronnie biggs's okay there's very few of those and i thought when i went to prison it would be all like that and there's very very few of those in there it's mostly people who don't have a family support network, have been through the care system, often excluded from education. And, you know, they're in an adult prison, but it's not their first time behind bars because they cycle through the care system

and then the youth offending system. So it's just accepted that this is their way of life. It is accepted to them that this is going to happen. And quite often, especially around about Christmas time, what awaits them outside is worse than inside. And let me tell you, what was inside was dreadful. And so I always think to myself, God, how bad is your life?

And how bad are things for people like you on the outside that actually coming to Wandsworth is preferable? I hated Wandsworth. I don't want to spend any more time there. But people would choose to go there. They'd offend deliberately so they could come in just to get a roof over their heads. Did you spend a Christmas in

Wandsworth? I did. You did, okay. I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was horrendous. I mean, in some ways I look back on it with sort of maybe not rose-tinted spectacles, but I always say prison brings out the best and worst in people. I saw that a bit in the pandemic,

and I remember saying to people at the start of the pandemic, it's almost like déjà vu for me, it's like, here we go again, and I said, this is going to bring in the pandemic. And I remember saying to people to start the pandemic, it's almost like deja vu for me. It's like, here we go again. And I said, look, this is going to bring out the best and worst in people. And some people behaved appallingly during the pandemic. Other people were volunteering and, you know, driving people around and working in food banks and all this wonderful stuff. And I think it was the same in prison that,

especially I remember that over Christmas, I saw officers like working extra hours without pay, going really out of their way just to try and, you know, give people something to eat or to try and bring a bit of joy to people's lives. And also, it was a time when yeah, the minimal amount of extra activities that happened in prison all shut down for about two weeks. So the bang up, as we call it, I've been locked in yourself long periods just skyrocketed up. And I found the listener, my listener call outs went went through the roof. There was I remember, I had a little listener suite it wasn't it was we called it listen suite but it was just an empty cell where I did my meetings and I would talk to someone for half an hour be

pretty grueling they've been self-harming or had an episode or something and then I'd let them out and I'd look out the door and there'd be like a queue of other prisoners like up the wing waiting to see me because everyone was just having the worst possible time. Do you think that you did save lives? Do you know that you did? It's really... People often ask me that, and it's really... I don't want to take credit for anything I haven't done, and it was really difficult to know

because the prison was so massive and you were just in this hugely chaotic system. Quite often you wouldn't see people after they'd been to see me, and I don't know what happened to them they just kind of vanish into the into the ether and you mentioned that you went to pick up a friend that you met during the course of that period of your life only recently so you have kept up proper friendships with these people totally and that's kind of where time after time came about is because I got out and I stayed in very close touch with quite a few people who I

met inside for all sorts of reasons no we'd shared a really tough experience together and I stayed in very close touch with quite a few people who I met inside for all sorts of reasons no we'd shared a really tough experience together and I think that that forces you together and I think people talk about this it's slightly different but in you know in war zones people are there for a very short amount of time with other soldiers and they form a bond for life right so I it's in you know we weren't volunteering for our country we'd done something wrong but in the same way the stress forced us together and and And so you kind of share that with someone. It stays very strong to you. But also, journalistically,

I was meeting all these fascinating characters and these wonderfully interesting criminals who'd done all these kind of mad things. You'd hear what they'd done or you'd read what they'd done. You'd think, oh, my God. Like, normally, as a journalist, it would be a nightmare trying to get access to these kind of people. They were right in front of you.

And they were right in front of me. I couldn't leave. They'd walk in and start whinging at me. So I got this extraordinary access to the criminal underworld. And they didn't see me as a nosy journalist. I was going to ask, there was no resentment there? No, not really. I think people were just keen that I wouldn't write about them

if they didn't want to be written about. Or if I was going to write about them or put them in my podcast or book, I'd change their name so I'd always get that kind of clear up front quite often they were fine with it i think they just because the the material that was about them in the public domain is their court record right which is normally pretty negative if you've been convicted of a crime they don't they don't both sides it they don't bbc and go on the one hand he was a nice guy and helped little ladies across the road road, and on the other hand, he robbed a bank. They just talk about the bank robbery.

So in a way, they thought, well, at least I'm probably going to put a more sympathetic take on them in the public domain than is what's out there, because what's out there was pretty grim. So they did, but by and large, no, they were fine. I think as long as I sort of, I was honest, really. VoiceOver describes what's happening on your iphone screen voiceover on settings so you can navigate it just by listening books contacts calendar double tap to open breakfast with anna from 10 to 11 and get on with your day accessibility there's more to iphone

Get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. We're talking to Chris Atkins about the sequel to his prison memoir, Time After Time. And Jane asked him what specific issues he would tackle if he was in charge of prison services. Yeah, people always say to me, like, what's the one big issue you'd try and tackle straight away if you were sort of in charge? And I'd always say accommodation, because it's one of those things where actually just for a little bit of money, it would have a hugely disproportionate and powerful effect, magnified. Because as he was saying earlier, so many cons don't have anywhere to go.

They come out, they're homeless, they end up offending or they end up going to stay with a friend. And guess what? Their friend's a drug dealer and they're in a house with lots of drugs, crime happens, they go back. So if you could have some kind of safe housing buffer for most people in the leave prison, it will cut crime hugely. Because what we have at the moment, as you said, is certain landlords, and I actually went and stayed at some of these properties, who I think most landlords won't take people on, because if they've got a criminal record. And now people ask for references and they Google them and check them out.

So I find a lot of ex-prisoners are just immediately excluded from the housing system. And some of them, when they do get local authority support to stay somewhere, the landlords, it's an absolute rip-off. And they put them in properties, and I describe it in the book,

like worse than Wandsworth. And Wandsworth has been condemned by numerous prison inspectors as being not not fit for purpose but it was like a genuinely dangerous house to stay in and the landlord was charging like way more i actually went on right move and looked at what sort of bedsits were like in the area they were charging about double what a normal landlord would charge because they could because they could because no one else would take these people for For some of them, they do get local authority support, but not many. And so it's the public that are paying for this. And then that is going, and it doesn't go to the offender,

it goes straight into the landlord's pocket. And a word, too, on the probation service, which doesn't get a great deal of attention until something horrific happens. Something awful happens, yeah. And then everybody piles in. Yeah, and it is almost like the shadow service because prisons are very kind of visible

and everyone can get prison in their heads and it's like you drive past Wandsworth or Pentonville and they're big, ugly buildings where criminals live. We can kind of get that. But that's only half the issue because most prisoners, like me, are let out halfway through their sentences. The other 50% of their allotted time by the judge

is spent being supervised in the community by the probation system. And it's almost like they're not there. There's so little support. They've been hacked back so much, again, by the austerity measures. Chris Grayling, as Justice Secretary, actually privatised the probation system,

which was a complete disaster. And all they're really there to do is catch people out and send them back to prison which is recalling them but because there's so few probation officers there's so many prisoners under their supervision the caseloads have shot up so I talked to probation officers

who 10-15 years ago would have about 30 or 40 offenders on their list which is hard work but they can manage it now they've got 200 offenders on their list so all they can do is call them up for five minutes each and say, have you committed any crimes recently? No, good. Right, see you in a month. And it just means that very, very dangerous offenders, and we all know the case is Zara, Aline,

and you can list all of them, where the people have been released, very, very dangerous offenders. They clearly weren't safe to be managed in the community. Their probation officer wasn't doing their job properly. And guess what? They went and killed someone as a consequence. And what do you think of, I mean, you've mentioned how popular in speech marks prison is. Prison reality shows banged up on Channel 4,

Time, the drama on BBC One. What do you think of them? I mean, look, Time I think is great. I saw the first season, if that's what they are, with Sean Bean, who I thought was fantastic, and I thought that really got under the skin of it. Look, I found this new season really, really hard going, for the right reasons.

Because it's about a women's prison. It's about a women's prison, and they really focus on the separation from children, which is something that affected me, obviously, because my son just turned four when I went away, so the scenes where she can't get in contact with her kids and stuff i found just really heartbreaking so i couldn't really watch a lot of that um uh banged up i had very very low expectations for they actually here's a scoop here i was asked to go on it three times i did wonder what whether they might yeah

they did and and for all sorts of reasons one because the production company doesn't have a brilliant reputation. Well, they're not here to defend themselves. They're not here to defend themselves. No, in terms of, I think they make quite sort of schlocky reality shows that, by the way, are probably very, very popular and lots of people love.

I just don't happen to like the kind of reality shows because I work in the business myself. Did you also just not want to go back into prison? Oh God, there was an element of that. I think they also weren't going to pay me. That was the other aspect. Well, I was going to ask that because if you haven't seen Banged Up,

it's a so-called reality show. They have involved Oxford prison. It's a rig show. It's a rig show, isn't it? It's a decommissioned prison in Oxford. I think it's Oxford. Or Shrewsbury. I think Oxford prison's a hotel, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah. And I've stayed there. It involves ex-cons, so-called, who are invited to appear and they are told they have to behave as they did in prison. And celebs. And their new celebs.

And the celebs as well. So when they called me up, I said, do you want me to be the ex-prisoner or the celeb? And they weren't entirely sure. But yeah, anyway, I went in. There's a big but coming here. I went in with very low expectations. And then I watched some of it

and I went, actually, I can find time for this this because it does get across the insanity of prison life it does get across the kind of the chaos the instability the claustrophobia and there's a scene there where johnny mercer is is in his cell and he's like you know i don't how long am i going to be in here and the guy with him the real cons like hours and hours and hours you know so i i thought actually this is pretty authentic. I mean, it's never going to be exactly like Prison because it's a reality show, but I thought they actually took the time,

they got it pretty authentic. The other reason I give it my seal of approval is I found this and I tweeted the image of this on Johnny Mercer's bed. It's a copy of A Bit of a Stretch. So I think to prep for his time in Chokey, someone obviously said to him, you've got to read this amazing book by Chris Atkins.

So it's there on the bed. So therefore, I give it a thumbs up. I'm just profoundly grateful you didn't go on there to describe what had happened in that scene. I'm not going to. You're not on a family radio station. No, because it was at that point I decided reality television had got a little too real.

A little too real for comfort. And I turned off to Antiques Roadshow or whatever else was on offer that night. So I think, Fi, you're interested in the alternative prison systems and where else in the world it might work better. Well, we spend so much time talking about what's wrong with the prison system in this country. And when you look at other countries with certainly better recidivism rates,

so you assume that something is happening in prison that's working for those individuals, the gap between what they're doing and what we're doing is wide, isn't it? It's very wide, as is the gap between their re-offending rates. So without wanting to bore too many people with stats, referencing somewhere like Norway, the re-offending rate in Britain hovers around sort of 45% of people re-convicted within one year of release, which is astonishingly bad. For people on short sentences, which they might be scrapping, it's over 60% of them are back inside within a year.

It's astonishing. If you go to somewhere like Norway, it's about 20%. And that all feeds directly into crime. That's fewer knifings, that's fewer stabbings, that's fewer shootings, that's fewer mobile phones being snatched from your cafe table. So it's worth examining what they're doing that's so different to us that is obviously so effective.

So what are they doing and how much would it cost us to do it and would we ever be able to afford to? Treat people like human beings. There's no votes there, Chris. Well, there aren't, are there? No, no, no, absolutely. It's like a more subtle way of approaching the issue there isn't bad people done wrong punish them which is sort of all the kind of british uh argument goes through on a loop

in norway they say okay bad people done wrong how should we punish them shall we punish them in a way that almost guarantees they come out and commit more crimes or shall we punish them in a way that means they won't commit more crimes guess what they? They choose the latter. And it's by having, you know, windows. It's by having education. It's by having clean cells. It's by regular showers. It's by exercise. It's by their food.

It's not like screwing down the food budget. So they eat healthily. And it means they come out of prison with qualifications, with degrees. They've been retrained. And look, some of them do re-offend. Just a very, very few of them in comparison to the uk coming back to a question of cost it saves money it saves money in the end

because it's less crime eight re-offending costs the taxpayer 18 billion pounds a year four out of five crimes in the uk are re-offenses these the government's own figures so it's it's it's it's responsible for 80% of all crimes. So if you do this human being treatment thing and it works, people come out, you're then spending far less money on prisons. You end up closing prisons. That's what some Scandinavian countries have done. There aren't the criminals to put in them.

Here we're doing the exact opposite. We're building more prisons. Chris Atkins. And we enjoyed that conversation. We didn't, as ever, we never feel with people like him that we've had quite enough time. So ironically, in the circumstances. So we're going to try and get him back.

Yes, I think we should. And it's just such an interesting perspective, isn't it, that you don't hear often enough. And just when he reels off some of those statistics, I mean, the £47.50 that you're given when you leave prison. Yeah, I mean, it's not well. I think he said it had gone up to 80. So what? I think you might, would you be able. Yeah, I mean, it's not... Well, I think he said it had gone up to 80. So what?

I think you might... Would you be able to get one night in a Premier Inn? Not really. Not in the centre of a city. And why, you know, one night? Well, I know, it's hopeless. I mean, it doesn't do anything. But anyway, so let's go to some of your emails very briefly

because there have been some interesting ones. This is from Mary who said, I went into the women's section of a Canadian jail every month for 10 years when I lived in Ottawa. The purpose was to hold an AA meeting for the women who were there. Now, over the decade, I met all sorts of women. Sometimes I felt very sad as a result of the stories, sometimes the opposite. Over the years, the prison did improve as the Ontario government changed ministers of corrections.

There were more guards who were better trained and understood the value of treating visitors with respect. But the cells were overcrowded, with many women sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the cell. There were very few programmes to educate or to incorporate healthy living styles. They watched too much TV and had virtually no exercise. The meals weren't nutritious or appealing. However, many of them said that they were glad they were there. At least they got shelter, food and most importantly, safety. Many of them had been sex workers and they were at least away from the freezing cold Canadian winter and more importantly, perhaps away from their pimps. Canada doesn't really have much

to boast about in this department, says Mary. So that's interesting because we do tend to think about Britain as being dreadful, but maybe not entirely terrible compared to the rest of the world. Louise says, I work for the local government in healthcare IT in California. I'm actually from Britain. A couple of my colleagues are responsible for the detention services health documentation. Of course, we've got no NHS here. So the local government picks up all the health care bills for inmates. If you're sick and poor, you get better health care in prison than outside and free health care for pregnant women inmates too. And that's not a given in America. Don't get me started on taking away abortion rights, then expecting you to pay all the obstetrics bills. God, I hadn't thought about that. God, it genuinely hadn't crossed

my mind. So you have to carry on with the pregnancy and then you have to. It's incredible. Here, male prisoners may be called upon or forced to fight wildfires. They're paid a token wage. However, on release, they can never become firefighters as they have a criminal record. Right. OK. I mean, that's that's quite remarkable. This is from Ellie, who says, I'm glad you're talking about prison. I've just decided to start mentoring at my local jail in Brixton. I'm currently going through the application process. And last week that involved going on a visit to the prison to meet some of the current mentees. I'm 28 with no experience at all of prison so I was a bit nervous but it was incredible. The prisoners were so interesting telling us their stories

and asking thoughtful questions about why we wanted to be mentors. Some of them were making the most of their time in prison either using the time to reflect, getting involved in work and education, or as a life-saving opportunity to get off drugs. I left feeling so inspired and excited. Thank you for that and the best of luck Ellie with your plan to become a mentor. And finally Rita is in Mallorca. I spent many years teaching yoga and meditation in Parma Prison, having studied for this with the Prison Phoenix Trust. Entrance through nine locked doors, but once inside, it's like a dual world with gardens and so on. Prisoners were brought from different cell blocks by friendly prison officers, but then we were left alone. The class were mostly men, different nationalities, occasionally somebody from England, and I never felt anything but friendship between us.

I don't know what crimes they committed and I didn't want to but while I was with them they were just people. I really enjoyed the classes and I had very appreciative feedback. I don't know how this compares to English prisons. Well, I'm here to tell you Rita I don't think you'd be allowed to teach yoga and meditation

in most British prisons to male prisoners. I tell you what, if anybody is really interested, I could be wrong. Just have a really, really quick basic Google search about the Norwegian prison system, which Chris Atkins referred to in his interview, because it is remarkable what they've managed to achieve. You know, there are different, there's a different demographic, there's a different size of society, all those kind of things. You can never make a direct comparison, but they have just managed to completely change the way the system is regarded in society. And it's funny, isn't it? Because they've made it so much more comfortable for prisoners, but the prisoners still don't want to go back into prison so what chris was saying about here life on the outside being so dreadful that you do want to go

back into somewhere like wandsworth which is a terrible place to spend christmas yes yeah locked up probably 23 hours a day uh you know it's it's worth educating ourselves about it actually because something has to change in this country we can't carry on filling up the prisons and not investing in those prisons too. A couple of weeks ago, prisons had officially reached crisis point. There were only 432 places left in the whole country. Right, OK. And I don't know what's happened to that story since. It seems to have gone away. Well, I suppose other things have taken over, haven't they?

Yeah. There was some politics in this country this week. So if you're popping up to HR, could you get me a low-level patch and some oestrogen gel? That would be very kind. Join us all again next week. It's Jane and Fee at Timestop Radio. Our guests next week are wonderful,

including the magical, spangly Anton Dubeck. Oh, yes. Real name, Tony Beak. No, I refuse to believe that. I think he's a rather interesting man. I did meet him very briefly once. He won't remember, so that's all right. We didn't dance.

But who knows what's going to happen next week. I'm looking forward to that very much indeed. Have a lovely weekend, everybody. Thank you for listening to this, and take care of yourselves. There was a note of surprise in your voice there. This is good stuff. I said I might give it a listen myself. You should try it. Take care of yourselves. There's a note of surprise in your voice there. This is good stuff. I said I might give it a listen myself.

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