Off Air... with Jane and Fi - A saccharine note of journo pap - with Elizabeth Day

Episode Date: October 18, 2022

One day on from having to tear up the script and start yesterday's show again, Jane and Fi return to discuss Hugh Edwards 10 second warning about The Queen's death and when else they've had to be quic...k on their feet in the studio.They are joined by the author and How to Fail podcast host Elizabeth Day; to talk about friendship, writing for different audiences, and what happened when she interviewed Liz Truss.Also, Jane appears to have misunderstood the aeroplane mode function on her phone, and the pair have selected their personal special cubicles.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radioTimes Radio Producer: Rosie CutlerPodcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to Off Air with me, Jane Garvey. And me, Fee Glover. And we are fresh from our brand new Times Radio show, but we just cannot be contained by two hours of live broadcasting. So we've kept the microphones on, grabbed a cuppa, and are ready to say what we really think. Unencumbered and Off Air. Off you go. Well, you can start. Hello and welcome to Off Air with me, Jane Garvey.
Starting point is 00:00:44 And me, Fee Glover. There we are. That'll do. That's got everybody confused. So it is Tuesday and today felt like a trust truce had been called, albeit a temporary one. Yeah, so after the fervour of yesterday when we followed the goings on in the House of Commons for most of our programme. And it did feel like there was, I know febrile is an overused word at the moment, but the atmosphere around Parliament and what might be happening and who might be there and what was going to be said was extraordinary, wasn't it? It felt incredibly pressurised. And you're right. Today, it feels like, I don't know, it's like after a thunderstorm, isn't it? Yeah, I think we are just bobbing around in slightly calmer waters.
Starting point is 00:01:27 But I think tomorrow, Prime Minister's questions, that's going to be one not to miss. And you can listen with Matt Chorley, of course, because he does that very clever thing on Times Radio where he stops the action and interprets it. Yep. You've definitely drunk the Kool-Aid. No, I have. I know which side my bread's buttered. I love Matt Chorley's show.
Starting point is 00:01:47 I love bread and butter. Because the slogan is politics without the boring bits, isn't it? And politicians always, when they come to power, they promise to do it differently and without the boring bits and they're going to get rid of the yaboo of Prime Minister's question time and they're going to trim around the edges of the Civil Service and all that kind of stuff. Cut, red tape! Same old, same old. So, politics
Starting point is 00:02:10 without the boring bits could have sounded like a meaningless slogan, but it's bloody well true on Merchawaldy's programme. So you're not far behind me in the queue at the bar for the Kool-Aid, are you? No, not at all. We're having a nice time here, aren't we? I'm very grateful to our listeners who sympathise with us starting new jobs relatively late in life
Starting point is 00:02:27 and just the rather prosaic things that we find difficult about them. So Sarah sent an email saying, I started a new job after nine years in my previous role at the beginning of March 2020, 14 days in the actual office before we all got sent home. And I completely agree with you. The thing I missed in those first few weeks and do still now is not knowing anyone when I walk through the wider office to our team's area. Not seeing a familiar face is really hard. My colleagues are lovely,
Starting point is 00:02:54 but I just don't know any of the wider office. And it all leads me to just wanting to work from home all the time. And I'm not sure that's so good. Thank you for your daily podcast. I like having more of you to listen to as I can't always catch the live show. Keep doing what you're doing. Well, I mean, after what can only be described as a couple of minutes of super creep, we do intend to keep doing what we're doing. So yeah, I'm with you there, Sarah. It's interesting what Sarah says about wanting to work from home. You and I have both had periods of working from home over the last couple of years. wanting to work from home. You and I have both had periods of working from home over the last couple of years. I am so much happier now I'm not working from home. Yeah, me too, sister. It's just, it just feels better to get out of the house and into a workplace and space
Starting point is 00:03:34 where there's a hubbub. And yes, it makes you tired, but I'm kind of getting energy from being around people who are full of energy yep i could not uh voluntarily work from home again i just wouldn't want to it would be with a very heavy heart if i ever ever had to work from home um this is from mary um i really chime with your item about settling into a new work workspace um although i've been retired for over 20 years from a large office-based job i can vividly recall how much my special toilet cubicle meant to me. It's interesting you say that, Mary. I'm going for the third one in at the moment.
Starting point is 00:04:12 Oh, phewie, because I'm going second one from the end. Oh, you're going right to the end. I thought after we talked about it, I think it was yesterday, wasn't it? I thought, I bet we've gone for the same one. No, clearly we haven't. No, good. Completely different stalls, completely different way of operating. Do I leave work happy today?
Starting point is 00:04:27 With a spring in her step. Mary says, in modern jargon, it was my safe space, this is her special toilet cubicle, where I could go to gird my loins for the next round of management speak and sexism, which was a never-ending accompaniment to trying to get the real job done. Mary, yes, thank you for telling us about your special toilet cubicle and indeed about what you had to go through 20 years ago in your office job. I mean, there was there is crap spoken in every
Starting point is 00:04:55 workplace. And there's also sexism in most workplaces even now. But I bet it was a nightmare 20 years ago, depending on what you did, actually, I guess, and depending whereabouts in the world you were. But Mary, you're a better and stronger person for living through it. And do tell us if you have a special cubicle that means something to you. I mean, we all have habits. I remember there was a very distinguished, I'm not going to mention his name, a very distinguished BBC journalist who I could never take seriously again because I always used to see him at the same time every day going into the loo with a newspaper.
Starting point is 00:05:32 And because I could see him and it was always the same guy at the same time. I mean, he was really revered. Sorry, that leaves a lot of people. By not mentioning who it is, a lot of people are in the frame there. Yeah, I think you haven't really narrowed it down. I think also there's another person from our previous existence who I could never, ever look straight in the face once you knew the punchline to a very, very well-known anecdote. Oh, yes, I know what you mean. Around the building.
Starting point is 00:05:59 About the two women. Is that you, Gloria? Yeah. No, is that you, Maureen? I've heard it as Gloria. Anyway, look, Gloria? Yeah. No, is that you, Maureen? I've heard it as Gloria. Anyway, look, this is silly and we've disappeared up our own fundament and let's try and broaden proceedings. We talked about a couple of things on the programme today,
Starting point is 00:06:15 one of being the prospect of winter blackouts because this is a particularly terrifying thing that might be coming around the corner. Yeah, but it might not. It might not. I know the media loves to prepare people for things that are pretty terrible but probably won't happen. Mercifully, we are at this current, currently where we are,
Starting point is 00:06:34 it's that backouts are not likely to happen but might and so you should still be prepared. And the funny thing is that you are already prepared. Oh, i'm prepared because you err on the side of extreme caution don't yes and you've got you should make this as a confession to listeners who are new to this you were one of the toilet roll hoarders at the beginning of the pandemic i was a bog roll bandit yeah um yeah. No, it's terrible, isn't it? And I still, sometimes, I can't resist buying it. I just think, oh, well, I better just get that full pack,
Starting point is 00:07:14 even though I've got a 16-pack at home already. That's gone up, by the way. So you're already prepared for blackouts. You would be okay if there was a blackout tonight? I would. That makes it sound like as though I want them to happen. I emphatically don't because I know they'll be both frightening and dangerous for some people. So as I just keep wanting to emphasise, they are not on the cards.
Starting point is 00:07:35 They remain a relatively remote possibility. I think they're one of those things though that people do want to talk about and hear about in a strangely not accepting that it might be frightening and all that kind of stuff in a weirdly British way. I think we like stories about storing things up and being prepared. Preppers. But we're not preppers. I mean, the Americans have a fine tradition of prep, prepping, don't they?
Starting point is 00:08:03 They have whole shopping aisles dedicated to what might happen in an emergency don't they i don't think we have those no well we do have there are british preppers i remember i interviewed one once and she just had a lot of tins of beans okay uh which would indicate that have you got a go bag i haven't got a go bag no what like the bag you prepare when you might be going to a maternity hospital? Yeah, I think that's got very different things in to the bag that you might have somewhere in your house just in case of the apocalypse. Because I'm not sure that I'll be taking to the apocalypse
Starting point is 00:08:36 a very, very large set of sanitary pads, some Ribena and Dime bars, which I was addicted to in both my pregnancies. Although actually. You had one this afternoon. Yeah. Do you have something to tell me? That'd be lovely. That'd be good for the times, wouldn't it?
Starting point is 00:08:52 Crikey. What was I going to say? Oh, I know. Yeah, I don't want to. No, I won't be wearing a nipple shield at the time of the year. At least I hope not. Oh, that's funny, isn't it? You could make a very, very good sitcom
Starting point is 00:09:09 out of somebody getting the wrong go bag at the beginning of the movie. Grabbing the wrong go bag. Yes, yeah. Oh dear. Now, who was our big guest today? Our big guest was sensational. Elizabeth Day, who is a podcaster, journalist,
Starting point is 00:09:24 writer, novelist. Non-fiction author, hugely successful. Yeah, absolutely wonderful woman. And she was on to talk about not one, but two books that she's currently writing, both of which will be published next year. One is a book based on her How to Fail podcast aimed at teenagers, explaining why failure is actually a really, really good thing to go through. And the other book is all about friendship, female friendship, what works, what doesn't, what's toxic, what's not. And as you'll also hear in this interview, Elizabeth Day has interviewed
Starting point is 00:09:55 Elizabeth Truss, and she has some quite interesting things to say about what that experience was like. Anyway, here is our chat with podcaster, novelist and nonfiction uber successful author Elizabeth Day. Isn't that a good link? One of your amateurs. Well, keen amateur. Keen amateur Elizabeth Day, writer, journalist and the brain behind the incredibly successful podcast How to Fail, which I mean, it is. Let's just get that over with for a start. How to Fail is a really daft title for an incredibly successful podcast hosted by a very successful woman. Do you ever think of changing the name? I don't because when I started it, I felt like a failure and it wasn't successful and I wasn't successful in that sphere. And when I started, I felt like a failure primarily in my personal life
Starting point is 00:10:40 because I was 39 and single and recently divorced and all of that and I just had a yearning to talk to other people about how they coped with failure and how they survived and what if anything they learned from it and it was as big a surprise to me as it was to anyone that it's become mildly successful everyone wants to be on it apart from Fee Glover I've asked her and she said no did she yeah you'll get now. She's got something to plug. You've been on it though, Jane. Yes, I have. One of my favourite ever episodes. Oh, of course.
Starting point is 00:11:08 What else can you say? I thought yours was a lovely episode, actually. I'm going to add a note of sincerity there. I thought it was. Do you know why? Because Elizabeth's a really good interviewer. But it's actually a great, genuinely such a great idea because everyone, however successful they might seem,
Starting point is 00:11:24 nothing has been easy for anybody really, has it? Exactly. That's the idea behind it is that vulnerability is the source of all true connection. That's a belief of mine. And also if we see people that we might aspire to or that we see them as sort of shimmering gods on the red carpet when they're going to their latest film premiere, they might seem quite far away from us and it might seem quite alienating but actually when you get into the bones of their story it turns out that they've had lots of trials and tribulations to get there I mean obviously various people to varying degrees but I find that a very democratic way of doing an interview and it also makes it easier for me as the interviewer I mean thank you for your kind words Jane but
Starting point is 00:12:04 I ask people in advance of coming on to come up with three failures in their life that they don't mind discussing and often that choice is very instructive because what people categorize as failure says a lot about them as a person but it also means that the parameter is set for the interview so I think people come feeling quite safe already yeah and it means that we can have really intimate and open conversations. And I value that as a journalist. Do you think you could have made it and would it have been as successful 15 years ago? Oh, great question. Look at this. It's like you're a pro. I've never been asked that before. So 15 years ago would be what early 2000s?
Starting point is 00:13:05 So 15 years ago would be what? Early 2000s? Possibly not, actually. I think I got very lucky with my timing. And I didn't think it through. It wasn't some master plan strategy at all. I got in at the beginning of podcasts. And I also got in at a time when people were beginning to hear of legends like Brene Brown, and the idea of being more open about things going wrong was just starting to take hold. But I think in the early 2000s, what with the rise of social media, there was this insane period of time where Instagram and Facebook became places where we could curate visions of our own perfection. And that was the selling point and and also when stars quote-unquote broke down publicly it never did their image any good so I'm thinking of Britney Spears so I actually just don't think in that era we would have been ready for it in the same way and I certainly in that era was a print journalist doing a lot of interviews with celebrities about all of their successes and there was a specific format to that you know you had to go in with a little potted biography and then you had to say,
Starting point is 00:13:46 and what was it like working with so-and-so? And they would say, oh, wonderful. And that was it. And that was the deal. And you couldn't ever get anything more, I felt, authentic or real or honest. So changing the subject slightly, though not entirely, watching Liz Trust yesterday,
Starting point is 00:14:01 Fi and I felt something approaching sympathy. And I don't think sympathy is great if you start to feel it for a politician, certainly not for a leader of a free country. When she was sitting on the green leather in the House of Commons, when she came into that chamber, her body language could not have been more different to the kind of rambunctious bravura Liz Truss that we'd seen a couple of days before. And she just looked haunted. She really did look terrible. Is that a woman who's dealing well with a massive failure? I would say no. I think that there's a lot going on here. I think that the broader failure is one of our political system, which we can get into another time. But that is a failure in the sense that she got elected to a role that arguably she wasn't ready for. And also that our system is so combative rather than collaborative. So even when you do something so disastrous, you have to front it out. There's this sense that you
Starting point is 00:15:02 have to front it out and you can't possibly admit to having made mistakes and even when she did offer a sort of half-hearted apology yesterday in a tv interview I felt that it was quite a sort of passively expressed apology it was sort of um I objectively feel one could be sorry if one if someone else had made mistakes it was sort of that tenor and I think the first step to dealing with failure and to learning from it is to have self-awareness of what's gone wrong but are we still at a stage where we expect more from women in roles like that Boris Johnson I can't remember did he ever say sorry I think you're totally right that we do expect more from women and uh it's it's a much harder battle to win because if you say sorry too much then you might be accused of being overly emotive and you're right that Boris Johnson just had this immense bravado that some people bizarrely found
Starting point is 00:15:58 appealing but he did say sorry didn't he he offered one apology during party gate at the beginning that was much criticized because I think people didn't feel sorry, didn't he? He offered one apology during Partygate at the beginning that was much criticised because I think people didn't feel it had authenticity behind it. And then another apology where people noted a proper sense of contrition. So two sorrys, he said. Quite far down the road, I think. But he has said sorry. He was also famously sent to Liverpool to say sorry, wasn't he?
Starting point is 00:16:21 Which I'm not sure back in the day was an effective apology. In that city were all that. Accepted it. Ever entirely come to terms with him. But anyway. I've actually interviewed Liz Truss twice. Once way back when she was, I think she was a backbencher, but she was not one of the new influx of Tory MPs. And I interviewed her for the Observer left-leaning newspaper. And I really liked her. And she seemed quite fizzy and interesting. And then the second time I interviewed her was when she was being touted as a successor to Theresa May. Remember Theresa May?
Starting point is 00:16:58 Well, some people say she might be making a comeback. Stand by for more later. Carry on. It says a lot that I feel relieved at that prospect. But I interviewed her the second time when she was being touted as a possible prime ministerial contender the first time around. And I found it harder to warm to her, not because she was in any way unpleasant, but because she lacked a fundamental quality that makes me warm to people, which is introspection. And I think in order to be self-aware, you need to have introspection. And I don't know whether she was just very good at pretending she didn't have it for the purposes of a newspaper interview. But I remember there was a couple of things I asked her when the last time she cried was,
Starting point is 00:17:38 classic journalist question. She said, oh, probably a film or something. And then she told me the story of how she met her husband and they went ice skating together and uh she fell over and i went gushily oh you fell at his feet and she said yes i've always enjoyed winter sports and it was quite hard to get a chink of human out of her i'm with liz here i think you were just trying to inject a saccharine note of jernopap and she just wasn't going for it a saccharine note of jernopap is that wasn't going for it. A slugger in note of journo pap. Is that your second album? I think we'd better have a break. We're in conversation with our big
Starting point is 00:18:16 guest of the afternoon, Elizabeth Day, podcaster, novelist and writer of non-fiction and you're going to write something next year, you're writing it now, about friendship. Yes. What inspired this? This is non-fiction. It's non-fiction. First of all, I love being called a big guest. Thank you very much.
Starting point is 00:18:30 I'm going to put that in my Twitter bio. You're huge. It's non-fiction and it's a book called Friendaholic, Confessions of a Friendship Addict. And it's about my journey through friendship and what prompted it was the pandemic, to be fair. And I think actually a lot of people underwent re-evaluations of their friendships during that time because overnight our diaries cleared out and either we felt extremely lonely
Starting point is 00:18:57 or we felt the blessed relief of having a few evenings in. And it was really about assessing where I'd gone wrong with friendships and how I'd said yes to too many encounters that should have just stopped at being friendly rather than making them into bona fide friends. And then how sometimes you get overwhelmed. There's a saturation point that comes from more and more connections. And because friendship isn't something that socially we're allowed to fail at, it's seen as a failure if a friendship ends. Whereas romantic relationships, part and parcel of that is that you'll probably have a few before you find someone that you want to settle down with. And so I
Starting point is 00:19:34 realised that there wasn't a language to express some of the things that I was feeling and that I knew a lot of my closest friends were also feeling. And Friendaholic is an attempt to explore my addiction to friendship and also to provide a language of it. Okay, do you think you are a good friend? I think I'm a good friend in certain respects. And this is something that I've had to be really clear eyed and honest about in the book. I think I'm a bad friend in the sense that I'm extremely conflict avoidant. I care too much what other people might think of me. And that makes me cowardly. And so sometimes I haven't faced up to the ends of friendships. And I haven't said in black and white, or I haven't spoken to someone about why I feel our
Starting point is 00:20:17 friendship is ending. And I have just fallen out of their lives, which might be called ghosting. And I feel really bad about that. But I think part of the reason that is the case is because there is a lack of vocabulary. And because we all feel ashamed if a friendship has in some way gone awry. And what I realised during the writing of the book is that friendships are not failures just because they end. They can have an incredibly meaningful impact on your life forever, even if they're not an active daily part of it. It's a bit like volcanoes. Volcanoes can be dormant, but they completely shape the landscape around them.
Starting point is 00:20:53 And so I think I'm a good friend in that respect, in that I've realised that, and I think of my former friends with love. And I think I am relatively funny. I mean, maybe you two could disabuse me of that notion. Just go on. And I'm present. Like, if you need me, I will be there.
Starting point is 00:21:12 Yes, I was going to say, that's the ultimate test, isn't it? I mean, I honestly think I have, there are people I know I could ring at three o'clock in the morning. And actually, isn't that, what would you regard as the biggest test of a friendship? Well, so I've got this test which I inherited actually from somebody else, which is the M4 friend. Would you, when you're driving on your way to a really lovely weekend on the M4,
Starting point is 00:21:33 if you got a phone call from somebody, would you just turn around and go back to help them? Would you take the call in the first place? And would you ruin your own weekend? If it was safe to take it, I would. I mean, obviously not a u-turn on the m4 using the the necessary slip roads etc but it's that kind of thing isn't it to be able to know that you would interrupt your own life whatever you're doing to go and help somebody else out
Starting point is 00:21:57 and stay with them until they are okay and i i sometimes think as women and men who are listening can really correct me about this, but I think we have such an expectation of those kind of friendships and finding lots of them that sometimes we're not looking, we're not hard enough with ourselves to kind of go, actually, I can only have two of those people across a whole lifetime. I can't expect everybody to become that or for me to become that to them. I don't know whether men do the same thing. I think we collect friendship in a different way. Well, I think that goes into that notion of shame and failure because women, and this is a huge generalisation and therefore I'm sure inaccurate, but women, generally speaking, are meant to be friendly. They're meant to be pleasant and pliable and nice.
Starting point is 00:22:48 And we're meant to be able to foster that sort of small talk and that communication at the school gates. And therefore it feels humiliating and shameful if we don't carry on friendships lifelong. And you're totally right that that's completely impractical. And there's a very famous scientist in this field called Robin Dunbar, who I'm sure you've heard of, who developed Dunbar's number, which is about how many friends you can actually sustain. We'll certainly pretend we've
Starting point is 00:23:12 heard of Robin. I'll be honest and say no. But he said this thing, he developed his theory and evolved it somewhat. He developed something called friendship layers. And in your innermost layer, you can have five people who are like the m4 people it's a very privileged road to choose there are other motorways do exist but you have five of them and if you fall in love and you have a long-term romantic relationship or you have children that will cost you two of those other relationships which i thought was fascinating and it's just at the thought was fascinating and it's just at the end of the day it's just about how much time we actually have and time is a finite resource
Starting point is 00:23:49 and that's yeah the other thing that I realized about friendship is that we all have different ways of measuring it so the m4 test is a great one for me my primary friendship metric is generosity of spirit if someone thinks of me, even if I don't get in touch with them all the time, even if I'm terrible on the phone, if they're thinking of me well, and they know that I'm thinking of them well, that for me is true friendship, and we can pick up where we left off. Whereas some people really need the kind of face to face contact. And their metric of friendship is time. So it's really on some it will be shared hobbies and book club. So it's really a question some, it will be shared hobbies and book club. So it's really a question
Starting point is 00:24:25 of finding out what your metric is. Can we talk a little bit about the book you're writing for young people? I'm sure you have already written it. This is Philosophy for Teens. Is this out now
Starting point is 00:24:34 or is that the new year as well? That's coming out in January. January, a time when we all turn over a new leaf. Well, exactly. We shouldn't feel the pressure of that.
Starting point is 00:24:43 A time when we have a lot of book tokens. That's also true. I don't think the book of that. A time when we have a lot of book tokens. I don't think the book token really exists anymore, does it? Anyway, I was just thinking how I often feel how grateful I am not to be 14. Oh, me too. Presumably, is that where you come from in terms of the toughness of it? Yeah. So, Philosophy is a book that I wrote for adults, which was a distillation of seven failure principles that I came up with from having done four years now of the How to Fail podcast.
Starting point is 00:25:08 And it's a reworking of that specifically for the teenage market because I have three teenage stepchildren. And so I get a bird's eye view on how monumentally difficult it is to be an adolescent in today's society, because not only are they the most tested generation we've ever had in terms of exams, but there is the inordinate pressure of peer groups on social media, and feeling like you have to be living your best life and comparing yourself to gym girls or boys on TikTok. That's a huge amount that I never had to deal with. And I'm grateful for and so really this is meant to be an empowering warm and practical guide as to how failures don't have to define you but they can actually just be useful data acquisition for the future about who you really are right and you don't feel you shouldn't feel pressure to have this I mean Instagram has its uses I mean I've bought a number of pairs of elasticated trousers that have been offered to me via that.
Starting point is 00:26:06 The trousers I'm wearing now were advertised to me on Instagram. Were they? And they are elasticated waist. Elizabeth, I would not have known, but thank you. But even I, I mean, I'm a reasonably intelligent, mature woman. I get so exercised by the great time everybody else appears to be having on Instagram. And then I'll speak to
Starting point is 00:26:25 the same person the next day. And it turns out that holiday was rubbish. Yeah. And they hadn't spoken to their husband for three days of it. But don't you think it's really interesting what Elizabeth's done with the How to Fail podcast, because it's put another horse in the race, hasn't it? Because we know that we've got all of that perfection search going on. And we're really hard on ourselves when we look at all of that but your podcast people love because it's the flip side of that so we are managing to you know to ride different horses it's not all going to hell in a handcart you just have to choose something different we are capable of making that choice definitely and i think the important thing to remember when you're scrolling through social media is that you are comparing your insides to everyone else's outsides so you we know what neurotic messes we are inside
Starting point is 00:27:11 our own messy heads but we can't possibly fathom that that person posting about her yoga retreat in Ibiza is also feeling like that because we only have her outside projection to go on and that's been a very useful thing for me to remember as well plus the airplane mode function on your phone yeah just switch it on oh it hadn't occurred to me you can put that on anytime any time change such a rule follower i thought you could only put it on on airplanes you're absolutely joking me no i'm not are you joking what jane that's the sweetest purest thing i've ever heard what a great title for a book that was elizabeth day and we were to use a favorite radio phrase inundated in other words we had three messages from our listeners saying could we have an elizabeth day slot every day
Starting point is 00:27:58 and we could i mean apart from anything else it's just a gift of a pun isn't it a daily day slot day day yeah something like that uh but how revealing jane oh no your use of technology honestly i'm amazed that you get anywhere i'm amazed that you managed to turn up i only use an airplane i'm not a big traveler mentioned it before i go abroad once a year and i come back i thank god for that and that's when i use airplane mode so i didn't know i know it's really sweet i know that's that sounds a bit patronizing well i don't mean to be patronizing i was genuinely and i think lots of people listening would just be tickled pink by the notion that uh that you've literally interpreted the the symbol for airplane mode
Starting point is 00:28:43 but is that why? Genuine question. Sometimes you do come into work and you say that, you know, you've been pinged all night by your daughters or other family members. It's been a while since I came into work. In all honesty, but yes.
Starting point is 00:28:58 Because you don't know, because you've been leaving your phone on all night. How did you think the rest of the Western world was going to keep it all? I did wonder. I just thought I am a light sleeper and I wondered whether everybody else was a heavy sleeper. Okay.
Starting point is 00:29:11 So tonight, will you put the airplane mode on? I think I will. Yes. And I'll report back. I think we'll see a transformed Jane Garvey. I'll look 25 tomorrow when I come in. Yeah. We've got plenty to look forward to on the programme tomorrow.
Starting point is 00:29:23 You've volunteered openly to drink the mushroom coffee that's being brought in for Wellness Wednesday. Are you sure you're going to want to do that? Well, I've been horribly exposed today, so why not do the same thing again tomorrow? I mean, I'm not a voluntary worker, but let's see what happens, shall we? It might be that I visit my favourite cubicle in
Starting point is 00:29:47 the lavatory a little earlier than might otherwise have been expected. But look, other people will know to avoid it now because I've said which one it is. So that's tomorrow. Plus, we are led to believe that Liz Truss will indeed be at Prime Minister's question. So we'll talk about that as well. Okay. We love all of your emails. Do keep them coming. Jane and Fi at Times.Radio. Any subject you like. You don't have to follow the meanderings
Starting point is 00:30:12 of our quite daft middle-aged minds. But you can. You might learn something. You have been listening to Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Ben Mitchell. Now you can listen to us on the free Times Radio app or you can download every episode from wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget that if you like what you heard and thought, hey, I want to listen to this, but live, then you can, Monday to Thursday, 3 till 5 on Times Radio.
Starting point is 00:30:52 Embrace the live radio jeopardy. Thank you for listening and hope you can join us off air very soon. Goodbye.

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