Off Air... with Jane and Fi - A sip of Kylie's Cava and a gulp of Beefy Botham’s Sauvignon

Episode Date: April 26, 2023

Jane’s having tummy troubles but Fi’s by her side offering kind words of support (as always), plus coronation plans commence but Fi has banned Jane from getting drunk…They're joined by music journalist Sylvia Patterson to discuss her second memoir ‘Same Old Girl: Staying Alive, Staying Sane, Staying Myself’, a story of cancer, friendship and ageing.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Producer: Eve SalusburyTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's the first time that's ever happened to me because I literally walked in at five to three and thought, oh, God, I really need to go. It was so out of nowhere. It'd been fine the minute before. Have you really never had to leave a live programme on grounds of ill health? I have. Are we on? Are we doing the podcast oh i'm sorry yes i mean you never know because we don't talk to each other

unless we're being paid for it um i um i had to leave several times when i was in the early stages of pregnancy to have a dry retch okay but then actually but lovely i know horrible i was never actually sick but i used to just all the time. I used to have a bucket underneath the desk on the Radio 4 programme. It's such an odd feeling, that, isn't it? It's really strange. And also because I never wanted to make too big a deal of it because you kind of think, well, you know, I'm just pregnant.

And then you think, no, that's really weird. There's no just about it. Yeah, were sick you were sick anyway it's such a it's an odd feeling because it's nausea but in my case and everybody's different it was nausea made substantially better by eating and there's no other nausea like that is there no did you find did you find a go-to cracker well no i just go to the tesco's down the road. At the time, our local Tesco's had a caff and they used to do a very nice baked potato and cheese. And if I ate that at about 10.30 in the morning, that would see me through until lunch.

The problem, I mean, this is why I put on four and a half stone in my first pregnancy and was like a human weeble. Yeah. I found I got completely and utterly addicted to salt and pepper crackers. And I could get through in my second pregnancy a whole jumbo double pack of salt and pepper crackers. Because if I just ate them constantly, like one every kind of five minutes it would stave off the and then I just got addicted to them well you've done ever so well

you went to the priory and now you're out we shouldn't mock I should also say that Fee saved my professional life today because she had Imodium in her bag I'd never leave her without it

do you get to a certain age where you don't i'm stopping at super drug on the way yeah i don't leave her without imodium and paracetamol and a spare shopping bag i've got a little shopper in my bag i have jane okay well that's very very sensible right um we've just come in the studio partly because there was some high octane marathon chat in the office. And Fee and I are a little bit jealous because we can't enter the chafing chamber of debate because we've got nothing to offer. We are never, ever going to do a marathon. And some of the other folk are very much in that mix, aren't they?

I don't have a single supplementary question I can ask somebody about a marathon to which I will give the right reaction for the answer. So even if I say to somebody, what time did you run it in? I genuinely don't know when they say 17 and a half hours whether I should go, that's amazing, darling. I really do appreciate that it's a colossal physical effort, but I'm a bit like you. But anyway, I am delighted for those folk who've done it and feel rightly a huge sense of achievement. If anybody does want to know what it was like to run the three kilometre Hereford Fun Run, I'm here to tell them that it was hard. Exceptionally hard. But I did it.

Now, well done, you. Well done. And I have the medal to prove it. Can you bring it in? Because I don't know about you, Eve, but I don't believe she finished. Let's see if I can find it. Now, Kathy has sent an email, and it's about Liverpool, but it's not very flattering, Jane.

Can you cope with this? I can. Okay. Hello, both. I just had to write in response to the email you read out today where a listener questioned whether we should make the decision on behalf of our pets to get them neutered whilst living in liverpool in the early 80s and she stops to say did we ever pass in the street jane or perhaps in the armadillo

tea rooms or the pyramid club um possibly the armadillo two rooms but i never went to the pyramid club okay uh kathy goes on to say i was horrified to witness a group of tomcats chasing, cornering and then, well, attacking a clearly terrified and cowering female cat on a neighbouring fire escape. Since then, I've been in no doubt that by neutering your pet, you're doing it a favour. Sex between cats or between dogs is really not like in The Aristocrats

or Lady and the Tramp. Well done, Fi. Brian and Barbara will have a much calmer life ahead. Thank you, thank you, thank you, etc, etc, etc. And I suppose I agree with that. And we just wouldn't be able to keep dogs and cats as pets if we didn't neuter them, because we'd be overrun with them.

I mean, I understand the sort of very deep philosophical argument about whether or not we should do this to animals we choose to keep as domestic pets but i mean barry i'm sorry i don't know who barry is brian barbara and dora will all live on knowing that they are free to roam without any sense of uh approaching threat yeah and brian is very very very happy with Aris Balls and Barbara's making a very good recovery. I took the cone off today. Oh, excellent.

This morning. And she did that wonderful... Oh, they love it, don't they? Freedom shake. Yes. Look at me. No longer a cone head. This is not officially a cat podcast, by the way.

We need to make that clear. Oh, we talk about dogs too. There's a danger of the whole of the whole concept just whiffing a little faint all too strongly of the old litter tray of life so yes we happen to have cats but let's move on let's talk about nuclear war instead and this is from maria i've just listened to the episode with angela hartnett at the end of which you mentioned a book about the nuclear threat in the 1980s and the dodgy advice given to the public. Yes, that's attack warning read, which I'm still reading,

but actually is so terrifying. I've had to just give up on it for a while and just give my brain a rest. Anyway, at the time, says Maria, I was at a secondary school in Folkestone on the Kent coast. Now, nearby, of course, was the Dungeness Power Station, which was thought to be a possible target or source of explosion. And I can remember we were given instructions on the action to take if the four-minute warning was sounded.

Basically, it was to get under a table, pulling other furniture around it if there was any time. And I kid you not. Well, there's plenty of time, Maria, in four minutes. Isn't there good grief you could get under the table and find some other furniture? You're quite interested in Armageddon, end of the world stuff though, aren't you?

I've always been interested in it because I don't think we're, it seems bizarre to me and it's never been fully explained why it was so much at the forefront of our minds and our cultural lives back in the 1980s and it's now disappeared from view, despite the fact that

I would argue we're no safer from the threat of nuclear war than we ever were. But isn't that just because we were in an astonishingly evil era of nuclear arms proliferation? We were, but are we genuine? Do you honestly feel that there are fewer, shall we say, eccentric men at the helm of countries than back then? I don't. No, neither do I. But I suppose I'm slightly comforted and I really don't want to tempt fate, obviously, by saying this. Well, no one will hear it, love, because we won't be here. Go on. That none of those deranged men ever have pressed the nuclear button. No, but it's more the sort of terrorist element, people who might get hold.

God, I think there are some terrorists in power, aren't there? Well, you could argue that as well. I'm more puzzled by why it's not front and centre as it appeared to be. So there's a really interesting chapter in the book. It's by a woman called Julie McDowell about the BBC and their role in all this. And they had a film called The War Game, which was, I think, made in the 70s or perhaps very early 80s, maybe even the 60s. And it was deemed too shocking to be shown on television. So it never was. But it was available in selected cinemas for certain groups of people who might be needed in the event of a crisis.

So councillors, council leaders, fire brigade officials, police, people like that. And then there was Threads, which was the seminal BBC drama from the 1980s, only ever shown once on television because it was so terrifying. So I remember that being the huge, huge thing in my early television watching career. And we did get together to watch the ending of it. You know, it's a big, big kind of build-up. So isn't it interesting that we probably had quite a lot of our fear defined by drama

in a way that because we just have so much drama around now, I mean, there's just an enormous great big genre of apocalypse drama, isn't there, that just doesn't touch the sides? Well, there's apocalypse drama, but it doesn't really, it doesn't actually confront what the reality of a nuclear war would be like. No, and most of it is actually post-apocalyptic, isn't it?

It's all set in the future, and we don't actually see what's led to this dystopian landscape in which they're living. Do you remember the advice, you know, if the alarm went off, that you got under a table? Well, that's what they just said. You listened to the email. No, I was actually... I'm so sorry. I was actually just reading something else.

I was practising in my... I'm so sorry. I was practising my pecan pronunciation. Well, get on with that. Let's move on to talk about nuts. Let's talk about nuts. Our go-to topic. Hello, Jane and Fising my pecan pronunciation. Get on with that. Let's move on to talk about nuts. Let's talk about nuts. Our go-to topic. Hello, Jane and Fi, says Malika. Texan here. I just had to weigh in. The word pecan is derived from the general word for nut in Algonquin languages and the closest English pronunciation is pecan.

Plus pecan can just sound gross. Love the podcast. So I'm sorry I did that wrong didn't i because i didn't get the pronunciation right when i first said pecan i'm not going to be able to change that malika i'm so sorry i can't you know if i went if i saw it on a restaurant menu i would not be able to say i'd like a slice of your pecan pie you see you laughing but that's how we meant to say that's because you live in East London. You just laugh at me living in East London. People are still writing to us about parallel lives and their imaginings, and this is from New Mexico,

so we've moved seamlessly from Texaco. Texaco? Is this showing your age? That's a garage. Is it? Is it a garage? I think, well, it definitely was. Are there still Texaco garages? Why are we looking at Eve?

No, you would have stopped off late night to get some chocolate. Yeah, you bought a Ginster's pie at a Texaco garage before now. Four in the morning. Yes. Well, five more like I would have thought. Okay. Yeah, thank you. This is a New Mexico.

Does any of that make sense? We just heard from a listener in Texas. Now off to one in New Mexico. Hello, Kathleen. I didn't meet the man who would become my husband until I was 38. So I've got plenty of time to make a satisfying life on my own. Now, during the 20 years we were together to my great sorrow, he died a few years ago. I regularly visited imaginatively what I thought of as my parallel other life. The other I might have had as an unmarried person. Maybe I'd be teaching English in Argentina or living near my Italian cousins.

My parallel life was lively, but not time-consuming, and much less troublesome than real life. It had nostalgia and longing, but in a sort of healthy way if that makes sense. These days I'm lucky to get to spend time with a four-year-old and I notice how seamlessly she moves between reality and imaginary. To her they are distinct but entirely compatible. In children we think imaginary friends and scenarios are signs of a healthy imagination and a rich inner life surely this can be no less true for adults i think this is a really really interesting email i still have a parallel life but now it's a version of thy one i had with tony alive in it and i think that's really touching kathleen i'm sorry to hear about Tony dying but I it sounds to me like you

found a really constructive and rather intriguing way of getting through and I think that's really interesting so isn't the brain wonderful in its coping mechanisms but also so interesting that I think um maybe some elements of the medical or psychological profession would kind of decry having that very, very vivid parallel life. I mean, I don't know that for a fact, but I'm just thinking maybe not everybody would see that as being healthy. But of course you're right. When you're a kid, you can be made enormously happy to spend a whole day outside of your actual reality and you're thoroughly

encouraged to do that so it's bonkers not to think in fact we really now we say oh isn't it sad that they don't play yes they have no imagination yeah they don't dress up but i just think that's interesting children really young children do just go from the completely made up to the utterly real and we think it's lovely and they love it too. And it's considered very healthy. Yeah, and we like joining them in their imaginary worlds, don't we? And then we get to a point where we say, stop, be real. You say that.

We used to have to play a game or I used to have to play a game called Head Teachers, in which I had to... Oh, come on, you must have loved that. No, but I wasn't the head teacher. I was the pupil. Oh, you must have hated that. I did hate't the head teacher oh i was the pupil oh you must have hated that i did i did take that because i'd have to wait outside knock on the door and come in and somebody aged about three would then would then tell me off and then i'd have to go out that

wouldn't work kids i can tell you that i was always a customer so a customer always a customer a customer so my son in fact I found a picture of this the other day, he went through one of those phases where he had Bob the builder toolkit on for about two years got up in the morning, put the toolkit on he'd go round the house doing odd jobs so I'd have to be a customer, I'd have to phone him on my pretend phone

and ask him to do a job can you build me an extension today please love do it quickly oh it's wonderful times. Wonderful times. They are actually very sweet times. Yeah. Yeah. Can we just do a quick one about Biden's age? Yes. Good. I'm sorry. That's one I've got there. So go for it. No, no, no. You go for it because then I've got an absolutely perfect one to go into our guest today. OK, this is from Catherine. This time we're in Washington. We really want to set a big shout out to our listeners in the United States. We are global, although we're not the News UK.

Keep that in. It is not ageist, says Catherine, or discriminatory or even unkind to raise Biden's age. I'm a very centrist Democrat. I abhor the loud and distorting political fringes on both sides that our politics are currently enmeshed in. So much wasted time and energy, and it's just the most base in the gutter stuff I've ever seen in my life. I voted for Biden if only to keep Trump out, but he's 80. He is the most powerful leader on the planet. It's insanity. And I think egotistical for him to run again. Age matters when you're in his territory. For the obvious reasons, it's time for generational change. A smart, reasonable, energetic public servant millennial is what we need to see us through this very unstable era, especially with the rapid advances of AI coming at us.

We desperately need someone who can see the larger picture of technological change across the entire world and harness it for the good of the public writ large. He is too old. His work is done. He kept Trump out. I mean, I don't think I could have put it any better myself. I fancy that fee, me thinking that. So, Catherine, thank you for that. And I think you've probably put into words there what a lot of people think. I think that detail, actually, about just not really understanding the tech. I mean, I think that's an entirely reasonable point to make.

I mean, I'd make it about myself. And I don't think it's i don't i'm not being funny when i say that frankly i now found the world often too puzzling a place and i do have to you know cliche coming ask my kids for help yeah so you definitely shouldn't be in positions of enormous power without having that digital native mindset it's just just a fact, isn't it? I'm afraid it is a fact. And the very real risks that countries like China, Russia, North Korea, I mean, the problems just keep on coming at you. What I don't understand, and perhaps some of our fantastic American listeners or global listeners will be able to answer this,

I don't understand why Biden is seen as the only person who can defeat Trump. why Biden is seen as the only person who can defeat Trump. Because surely if you put a young, dynamic, incredibly forward-thinking, uber-Democrat on the stand next to Trump, you say something that words don't do justice to. I mean, just the vision would be, I would have thought, much more powerful. You would think so to. I mean, just the vision would be, I would have thought, much more powerful. You would think so, but I mean,

so why isn't Kamala Harris running? It's because she isn't popular enough. So she's running as the vice presidential candidate because Biden can't afford to dump her because she ticks a number of boxes. It's so crude that, but I suspect it's true. I suspect one of our listeners could do a better job though, Jane. Yes, I think they could. Yeah okay so this is an email which I think you'll agree will go really beautifully into our guest today. It comes from Sophie who says I don't want to get all woo

woo about this but it was pretty upsetting hearing you read the email from the person who felt really disappointed in her life and you know what I hope that correspondent is heartened Jane by all of the people you've written in to say please don't feel like that because a lot of us are feeling like that too or you know we we just really hear you I'll carry on with Sophie's email I feel there's probably a lot we're missing in her story but I just wanted to share a small tip that I've used for the last 19 years running my own small business working on my own from home and with two boys to look after, although I have a wife, which is probably the key. Anyway, it's not exactly groundbreaking, but it does work being grateful. And again, I know this can sound trite, but just to recognize what you have is really powerful. Being healthy today, able to walk and enjoy the sunshine and the rain,

not live in a war zone, have choices in the supermarket, have friends, family, support, a home to live in, delete, add as necessary. I go for a walk every morning and recite what I'm grateful for. And it is really powerful. I'll send you some kefir grains. Maybe not today. Maybe not today Sort of like a starter It's the easiest thing in the world to make Add a sound though I am not capable of adding a sound that would be broadcastable Or even podcastable

Just add the starter to whole milk Leave on the draining board for two to three days Scrape off some of the starter Put it in a Tupperware And then put everything in the fridge. Love the show. Glad you're feeling better again. Well, unfortunately, Jane's not feeling great today, but hopefully she'll be all right tomorrow.

Love, Sophie. So it is a really simple thing to say, but it's absolutely bang on. Yeah. And we interviewed a woman today who I think says that in every single page of her book. Well I think so too and can I say that's excellent production well done. Thank you. Sylvia Patterson was our guest today music journalist she was a woman who got a job on the magazine that just meant so much to

me growing up smash hits if you're British and you're around my age you will know just how significant smash hits was it had humor it had pin-ups it had all the gossip it had when it first started it had the song lyrics as well so it was hugely helpful to those of us who couldn't always quite get what they were singing fee uh and it came out every fortnight and i would be so much more buoyant in the week heading up to smash hits than I had been the week before. True. Tragic, but true. And then Sylvia, who's from Perth in Scotland, went on to write for magazines like Q and The Word. And she'd already written one memoir, which I loved, called I'm Not With The Band. But then she went through breast cancer during the pandemic and she first noticed

something on her breast when she was I think in the shower which I'll go on to explain in 2019 at the age of 54. So she's written a book called Same Old Girl, Staying Alive, Staying Sane and Staying Myself and the book is as much a tribute to her partner Simon and to her lifelong friends and to her love of music as it is in any way a memoir about breast cancer although it is I think the best book I've ever read that references breast cancer. It's a story about ageing and mortality, friendship, music and much more including her cancer. Now I told her I thought this book might be even better than her first memoir I'm Not With The Band. That's extraordinary to hear I'm very very The Band. That's extraordinary to

hear. I'm very, very pleased about that. And can I just say, that's incredible that you would say that Smash Hits indeed was the greatest magazine. It was. Of all time. No, it was. It was such a big part of my life. Do you agree? Oh, yes. Yes. I mean, it's the greatest regret of Jane's life that she didn't actually make it through. Yes, that you got the job all right, Sylvia. Okay, never mind. The only thing I'll ever have over you,ane well i don't know about that to be honest um now this is a book about breast cancer but it's not just about breast cancer because it's about music and it's about great mates and how great they were to you it's also about the pandemic as well and it touches on elements of your family story about addiction as well. So there's an awful lot to get through.

I do think as a public service we should talk about the breast cancer to start with and particularly about how you knew you had it, which is something I confess I didn't know about, Padgett's disease. Can you just explain what that is? Yes, exactly. That was something that I'd never even heard of before. It was, I mean, many women out there I I'm sure, would relate to such a scenario. You're in the shower and you look down and you think, what's that?

That's a bit strange. One's nipple is looking like it has something wrong with it. In my case, it was, I mean, I can't believe I'd never noticed it until it became actually that bad, to be honest. Or maybe it just erupted overnight. But anyway, it was scaly and weepy and all of those things that my nipple is definitely not right it'll just be eczema it'll just be a sports breath

thing blah blah and i did what we all do and i and i ignored it and i think to be honest with you i must have ignored it for at least a month that's quite a long time and then another couple of weeks went by and i thought nah i've got it i'm I'm doing that thing that you're told not to do and ignore it so I'm going to do that I'm going to be a grown-up here I'm going to go to the doctor's made an appointment nothing for three weeks now that's quite a long time to have gone past anyway I go for the original consultation she has to then send me to a specialist they will be looking for cancer she didn't say anything about anything called Paget's disease I looked it up I noticed that this was that the examples I could see online

were exactly what it looked like on my body. So I wouldn't have been, you know, I was prepared myself and then went for a mammogram. And then the radiographer looked me in the eyes and she said she saw I was starting to get upset and she said, it's a lot to take in. And no one had told me anything at that point. i thought right she can see on her screen what i can't see there's something there um but the paget's disease which is entirely of the nipple

hope you're enjoying this uh the listeners um what was inside my breast that she could see was an actual tumor yeah so the pagetet's disease saved my life. Yeah. Because it was manifest on the outside. And I think that's a really important message. So if you are in the shower, and actually, of course, men get breast cancer too, we need to say, if your nipple is in any way changed,

do seek help and don't wait. Don't wait. It'll take you three weeks anyway to get an appointment. Just do it immediately. Is Paget's disease always a sign that you would have cancer or could you have it without it being in any way a malignant force? I think the statistic was nine out of ten cases that's a lot. Okay okay so just get it checked I mean I think I just think it's such an important message. Absolutely. Now this the time at which you found that was what 2019 is

that right? Yes autumn of 2019. and your timing sylvia was absolutely terrible um i do hope you know that uh and by the summer of 2021 um you'd been through yes elements of the pandemic uh chemotherapy surgery radiotherapy surgery and then more chemotherapy and you are i have to say very explicit in your in your account of what you went through I mean it does I've never had chemotherapy I've been so fortunate in my life with health and it did strike me reading this just how brutal chemotherapy is well do you know that's partly why I thought you know what you know cancer is all around us every two minutes someone is diagnosed with one element one one one version of it and one one you know one in every well one in every seven women certainly will will have a breast

cancer specifically in their lifetime that is one hell of a statistic isn't it um and i thought to myself do you know what i mean i've seen my father die from cancer i've seen a really good friend of mine die from pancreatic cancer i've known other women have breast cancer but i don't actually know what chemotherapy did to them. I have no idea what being in the process now means, as I was told you're in the process now. And I thought, I really, I'm so naive to this. How can I be naive at this age when it's happening to me?

Sorry, how old were you? 54. Right. Yep. So I thought to myself, do you know what? Most cancer memoirs, if I can call it that, although, as you say, it's much more than that. Very, very tragically, they will be written by the people who died.

Yeah. But I was always told that I was treatable. So I think once you're told that you're treatable, then I thought to myself, well, if you're treatable, you're going to go through this process, but the chances are 75% of women and which is a significant majority will actually survive this thing and I didn't know that at the time I you hear the word and you think you're going to die you think you're going to die

but when I started going through the process I thought to myself you know some days were so bad it just tips over into being funny I'm afraid it just does because that's life and you know your partner Simon um he saw you at your well it's not I'm not going to say worst but at your most vulnerable both of those things I would say yes that's very honest of you and you are you know you're clear that frankly at times he found it too much he didn't really want to deal with it or he didn't feel able to deal with it. I think that's probably fairer. There was only a couple of days really where he just looked absolutely forlorn, I think,

because he just realised he couldn't actually do anything for me. But, of course, he was doing everything for me just by his very existence. But there was just a couple of days where it was just the struggle. I just felt, you know, it's actually worse for the partners. I think in some ways it might be. I really did feel that quite a lot actually

because, I mean, everything he was trying to do he tried to be, because my mouth had entirely disintegrated with ulcers and you have to be graphic about such things, it's partly what being in the process is about, so I just thought, I'm just going to have to go for it, and he would, because he's a great cook, and he made me

gazpacho soup which i could not i couldn't hardly get it to my lips because my mouth felt like it had had an entire wasp's nest flying around in there for you know for months or whatever and because it was so painful to try and get through um i looked up what were the things that you actually should avoid at all costs with this particular um condition and it was onions, tomatoes and garlic, which is entirely what was in that soup. I'm thinking, you poor man. You've got some delicious cold soup.

That'll help with your sore mouth. Nice cold soup. I was crying in agony. That's incredibly frustrating for anybody. Yeah, I mean, he was doing his best. You're also, you're pretty explicit too about constipation and about diarrhoea. I mean, you just, I think, he was doing his best. You're also, you're pretty explicit too about constipation and about diarrhoea. I mean, you just, I think it's really important that people know

that this is desperately tough on the body. Yes. And, I mean, you just went through hell, really. I mean, in truth, people don't need to hear me say this, but constipation is one of the worst things you can have, isn't it? Honestly, I had absolutely no idea that such a scenario was was possible and i did think to myself you know what i'm going to write just about an entire chapter about this because because that particular day when i and i i'm telling you i seriously thought this actually is going to kill me yeah i'm going to survive this cancer and this

is going to kill me because this thing is not coming out of me and it was five and a half hours later and i had i'd been on the phone to um A&E I'd be on the phone to I mean it was just can somebody please try and help me because I was absolutely I thought the rupture is coming my the entire my entire bowel is going to absolutely just split apart poor Simon was sitting with head with actual headphones on at that point because I was screaming so much after after he had sprinted to the chemists to try and get me some laxatives and from then on you always kept a bumper pack of laxatives in in the flat didn't you yeah and this is to do with folks just in case you're wondering for

anybody out there who's ever um in this situation if you are given morphine for any of the dreadful diseases that might ever happen to you make sure that you take laxatives because that's the problem. Morphine will do that to you. And the doctor should have told me that. And hence, that was a problem that she eventually apologised to me for because it's bad and it's avoidable. So how much do you think you would have been helped, Sylvia, if you had been able to read somebody else's very visceral account of cancer before you were struck by it yourself? I think enormously to be honest because

I just as I say I'd never really been behind the blue curtain with anyone before who'd actually come out the other side of it it is always the death scenario and those books are very compelling and very moving clearly of course they are and they're very very you know incredibly sad and but this is about you know if you if you can just be patient if you can get through these things now I know what the process is now I know what you'll what it means to be a little bit tired because you think well what what does it mean what does it mean when your hair starts to fall out what is it like to have no eyebrows what does it mean when your libido is on the floor how does that because that will test that will test you how does it feel your mastectomy I had

no idea what that was going to be about I didn't know what a reconstruction was about and that went really badly wrong as well and I had to in the end I mean the I mean my reconstruction I called it the the mechanical chest because it absolutely was a contraption stuck to the front of my body and it really did start blowing up and blowing up. And I remember the day that I showed a photograph to my oldest pal, Ali, who kind of, she's threaded throughout the book because she's been there throughout my whole life. I showed a photograph to her and honestly,

she nearly burst a blood vessel in her eye with laughter. And I thought, there is definitely a funny book in this if I get the tone right, because clearly people do die and it's not in any way funny, but if you live, then how can you survive it without thinking that these things are preposterous and you're surviving it? And it is at the base of so much humour in life anyway, is the horror that we all have to face.

Because something dreadful is coming for all of us. Oh, yeah. You know? Yes. And we have to find ways to get through it. But what you do, you're so much at pains, and I really praise you for this, for emphasising how grateful we need to feel for health.

Oh, absolutely. And I don't think we are that grateful. Most of the time we just, oh, yeah, of course I'm all right. And we moan about all kinds of inconsequential things. But all those days where you can enjoy just food and drink. I know. Just love it, savour it, enjoy the taste, the feel of it in your mouth. All of these things that you just couldn't do for a big, big chunk of time.

Yes, exactly. There was no greater lesson, I really feel, other than that banal ordinary everyday normal really rather sometimes rather boring life that we all take for granted is the only life that you that you need it's all that you need is just to wake up you feel reasonably okay do you have a roof over your head uh you know do you have a support network somewhere along the line do you have people you can laugh with hopefully there will be love somewhere in your life surely there is for most of us wherever it's coming from if you have the basics and they're solid basics and everything else is you

know it's they are all the things that that actually are the the beautiful sparkly bits if you like but the basics once they start to be taken away from you it's only then how preposterous for all of us that it's only then that we actually appreciate them for what they are the the very ordinary stuff is the little it is the little things are the biggest things we are mid conversation with our guest this afternoon sylvia patterson author of same old girl staying alive staying sane staying myself um can we talk about your life in music journalism? Because at one point you say in the book, and it really saddened me, that you think music journalism is pretty much finished.

Is that really what you think? Well, generationally speaking, for my lot, there are, you know, well, there aren't any, the print press magazines are done. Let's face it. There's heritage magazines that are left and there's quite a few of them. The broadsheets obviously have their own music journalists there. There are online things, online platforms.

And the young will always love music. Of course they will. But how is anyone young now actually going to be paid for doing this for a living? It's definitely, you know, the young will always have to have their five side hustles sort of a situation because they're going to be writing for things online and that's not going to pay them a living. You've been pretty clear yourself that you haven't made

that much money from music journalism. No, other than when I worked at Smash Hits. I've been a freelancer now since 1990 and money was never... No-one takes up music journalism because they're interested in the money, but it's just much more difficult now than it even ever was. It's funny, isn't it, that people don't't because i used to treasure not just smash hits but my copies of the face and then i

read q when i was a bit older and i did read the word for a while as well and they're just not around anymore so what is the difference i mean i used to sit there and fondle these magazines and gaze at gaze at them for hours yeah he's looking at me as though I'm a complete maniac. But I was just genuinely wondering what is lost to the younger music fan through not having them. Because if you can find a really wonderful, lyrical description of a new band on just a different platform,

then you are still accessing somebody else's opinion, aren't you? You're still managing to find a place. But what do you think has gone forever? What's the magic that's gone forever? It's the interest in really words because everything's become so much more visual now. I mean, the absolute tsunami, and it really is, and coming into my inbox still of new music,

obviously directed at the young, is enormous, it's absolutely enormous but where that's going isn't into anything that's tangible in our world as we used to understand it, it's going into TikTok, it's going into all of these other areas where a 14, 15 year old, we're not expected to know what's

happening on their phones most of the time, why should we be nosing into their world? At the same time, they can be, I mean, I met a 25-year-old a couple of months ago with his Neo Young T-shirt on. You know, there's just, there's just, because all of music is with us all of the time now. It's just, of course it's unrecognisable to us.

The young are still interested in music, but it's not at the centre of their culture anymore. The phone is and everything that it can do, and music is just one aspect of really the whole of entertainment culture to them. It's just entirely different days, and of course it would be. So you were there at the right time. Tell us about some of the more bizarre encounters you had with the pop stars of the heyday of smash hits

crikey um and smash hits days blimey would lovely bros bless them bros yeah you spent time with bros backstage with bros i'll never forget looking at i think it was um i think it was his brother matt's brother luke uh confessed to me that they called Matt Pampers because he was so hopeless that he was unable to even quite literally make himself a cup of tea and I thought that was really rather marvellous and quite revealing and you interviewed Pete Doherty

who we were just checking up he is still alive I don't mean any disrespect but the man really did punish himself didn't he? He pushed the envelope, Jane. I think he really did. And there was a really, really...

There's an entire stationary cupboard, let's face it. A bunch of rhymes. You see, that's the kind of review you don't get on TikTok. Yeah, that is. That is exactly the point. There's a great description in this book about you interviewing him whilst he smoked crack through a, I think it was a miniature Bailey's bottle. That's right.

So it was a sawn off Bailey's bottle. That was for the Word magazine that you remember too. I was rung up by the editor out of nowhere. I was on my couch, possibly watching some snooker. Peter Docherty is in Hackney. Get in a car and go and meet him kind of thing. Okay. Met him in Hackney, get in a car and go and meet him kind of thing. Okay. Met him in Hackney.

He was quite dreamy. And let's say he was in the methadone dream state, shall we say. We got into one. I think we got into, he had a Jaguar at the time, a really dilapidated old Jaguar. He wasn't driving clearly. Anyway, we went back to his flat in Hackney. He decided that we would do the interview while he was on his bed. Anyway, we went back to his flat in Hackney.

He decided that we would do the interview while he was on his bed. And I was sitting on his bed with him, a crumpled purple duvet, as I recall. And his home was, well, it was a crack den, let's face it. It was a crack den. There was young people around with no shoes on. And we were, because we were told to take our shoes off. So we were tiptoeing over needles. But eventually, there we are in his his bed and he decided he would he would get out his crack pipe and there's nothing you can do about that when a crack addict is going to

start smoking crack in front of you and it is the one and only time that i've ever actually being interviewing someone while they're smoking crack but i'd never actually seen anybody smoke crack full stop before that and the interview you just left it you just stayed silent did you for a couple of minutes i don't know how long it takes yes because it's just like this huge rush will come over someone as i could see him in his eyes and because he has huge eyes and huge big eyelids and his eyes i could see his eyes moving underneath his lids side to side side to side side to side and then he woke woke up and everything was hyper, was very heightened to him. He could hear things away in the distance and noise was really clear to him and he was

really agitated and all of those things. And so it wasn't much fun in the crowd, to be honest, you know. It doesn't actually sound like it. And then he got his guitar out and that was that. He was off singing and that was that. The interview is not going too well here, do you know what I mean? It's like, Pete, maybe we'll just leave it for today. Well, it was good of you to turn up, Sylvia. You were sent there and you went.

Was it a very good snooker match you'd had to leave? What was the final score? I can't remember that one. Couldn't have been too good then. Couldn't have been a Ronnie. A Ronnie. That was Sylvia Patterson. And same old girl, staying alive, staying sane,

staying myself is out tomorrow. And actually, I'm a big fan of audiobooks. Do you like an audiobook? No. Well, I'm a big fan of audiobooks. And Sylvia was telling me that she reads the book on Audible and other places where you can get hold of audiobooks. And I think it would be a cracking thing to listen to, actually.

She's got a beautiful voice. Oh, she has, yeah. So I'm sure it will be. It's just a question of taste, isn't it? I've tried audiobooks, Jane, a lot. Have you? I love them. I can't hold... I need to be able to see it on the page.

I just can't. I just can't listen. I must admit, I never thought I would be an audiobook person, but I so am, and I'm just loving them. Anyway, actually, at the end of the interview there, Sylvia was just remembering that occasion when she interviewed Pete Doherty and I mean drug addiction is no, it's

an awful, awful thing but I think to actually see it being played out right in front of you was just it must have been pretty horrifying, well as she outlined there so well. Anyway, Sylvia's book, well worth either reading or listening to, trust me. If you'd like to get in touch with the podcast, we are janeandfeeattimes.radio. We take any of

your inner thoughts that you'd like to make, outer thoughts. We read every single email that comes in to the inbox. It's always lovely to hear from you. Just to let you know, over the next couple of weeks, we've got some big things happening in this country. We have the Eurovision Song Contest. This will enchant our American audience. Very much so. I think that Eurovision is turning into one of the great events in our calendar, don't you? Yeah, it is. It was always well celebrated, possibly a bit niche and laughed at.

But now I think it's genuinely like, yeah, get your revision! And it's in Liverpool this year, but I wasn't going to mention that. And also the week before, of more historical significance, some people might say the coronation of King Charles III. And so to our American audience and others, we're bringing you all the coronation tittle-tattle and more. And we found out today that on the event itself, we'll be required to report for duty perhaps a little earlier

than we'd been anticipating. Fee's face was an absolute picture. So we are going to be in the pound from seven till four. Yep. OK, let's not think about that. I always think it's better not to anticipate. Well, I'm just already thinking, what snacks will I need?

We're also in a facility that, well, can we mention where we are? Yes, I've said it on air. OK, so the Methodist... The Methodist Hall. Now, the Methodists don't drink. And whilst they've been incredibly kind to allow us some balcony space on the big day,

I think that might rule out alcohol. I don't know. But you're not going to... When would you have your first tipple? Oh, I just think a little small bottle of Carver on the day would be all right. It's what the king would want. I am not going to operate with you if you've been drinking. Oh, God.

No, I'm not. Because you had one sip of Kylie's Carver. You had a gulp of Beefy Botham's Sauvignon Watsit or whatever it was. And I couldn't speak. And you couldn't speak, lady. But I think something from the Dookie original range will be all right, won't it? No. Really?

Sober as a judge or you're not coming. That's The Coronation here on Times Radio on Saturday, May the 6th. But you're not listening to Times Radio, you're listening to Off Air, which is from the Times Radio stable. Okay. Good night everybody. Bye. Well done for getting to the end of another episode of Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover.

Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. And don't forget, there is even more of us every afternoon on Times Radio. It's Monday to Thursday, three till five. You can pop us on when you're pottering around the house or heading out in the car on the school run or running a bank. Thank you for joining us. And we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon. Don't be so silly. Running a bank? I know, ladies. A lady listener. I know, sorry.