Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Abundant paraphernalia on the bed (with Cathy Newman)

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

Welcome to this VERY special episode of Off Air... It's Fi's birthday! Woo! Sadly, Barbara the cat didn't get the memo and has been leaving Fi undesirable gifts around the house... Jane and Fi also discuss political dandruff, designer vaginas and stale Freddos. Plus, they're joined by Times Radio and Channel 4 News presenter Cathy Newman to discuss her latest book 'The Ladder'. 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! @janeandfiAssistant Producer: Eve SalusburyTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Oh, Eve, that's brilliant. Thank you, nice fade. OK, so the cat peed on the bed. But I think, well, she didn't know. To be fair, it wasn't your birthday when she did it. No, no, but she, you know, she's, yeah, she is just known as Pissing Barbara. I tell you what, Babs, you're on thin ice, love.

She's on such thin ice. And now when she creeps around the house, you know, I just see malice in her face instead of, you know, the prettiness. So I don't know what to do, really. I think it was the fact, Jane, that... So she's just taken to peeing right in the middle of the bed. Last night it was in the middle of my pillows. Oh, dear.

So she managed to just... I mean, it's quite clever in a way she's got four pillows she's a calculating little shit yep two scatter cushions and a duvet the scatter cushion on the bed yeah I know

they're not really scatter cushions they're great big cushions but I have stopped short of doing the K you know the karate what do you mean? well you know when you go to a hotel now you have to spend ten minutes taking the stuff off you go to a hotel now, they have... You have to spend ten minutes taking the stuff off the bed.

Well, the big cushions, they have a karate chop in the middle of them. So they all look... They all have a dent in the middle of them at exactly the same place. Oh, my God. OK. Which is achieved by somebody... Karate. OK. I don't really understand why.

I think cushions just look fine as they are. I don't know. I mean, I'm not really one for abundant paraphernalia on a bed. I just want to get in it. You say that, Jane. I've heard different. I don't understand the cushion. I mean, also, who wants a cushion in bed?

Pillows, yes. Cushions, no. Well, no, see, these are great big cushions, so they're really, really handy for when you want to read a book in bed. So, you know, I have one huge cushion behind my back and then I have one huge cushion under my knees. Oh, I see, for a propping. And then you can read for hours in that position.

I don't like to read in bed too long because then you just feel you won't get the benefit when you go back to it. I like to make the bed just for, you know, night times. Do you? Yes. Okay. I do. Anyway, bed just for, you know, night times. Do you? Yes. Okay. I do. Anyway, happy birthday.

Thank you. And I'm sorry that Barbara really wasn't in the right mood. But no doubt she's probably planning something lovely for tonight. Better not be a big shit. I'm sure it won't be that. I'm sure it'll be something much, much nicer. Okay. Please,bara lay off um you see i um we have a litter tray inside and i actually i changed it this morning because i came down into the room with the litter tray isn't just oh my god what is that stench it's not the poo

it's the wee isn't it yeah oh it's absolutely astonishing it takes the hairs off the inside of your nose yeah and i've got all the sprays and I have to, but you do have to, you have to change litter tray quite often as well not just the litter but the tray itself can get extremely smelly on the base. Do you not do one of those and then we'll stop listeners don't worry. Yeah

there is more, there is less of this than what am I trying to say? A liner. Do you do a lift out liner? No I don't do a liner, should I? Well maybe I might lift-out liner. No, I don't do a liner. Should I? Well, maybe I might try with a liner. There's more plastic in my life, isn't there? Well, there is that. Yes, this is...

Welcome to our Current Affairs. Our chart-topping Current Affairs podcast on Fee's birthday. She's only 55. 55. Spring chicken. I went for a swim as well this morning, Jane. Can I just say, I was swimming up and down

and I thought, how amazing, actually, to be 55 55 because a couple of friends haven't made it to 55 which is just such a unbelievably sobering thought uh and uh i just thought this is a this is a lovely life and i i'm in i'm enjoying all of it well that's very good that is genuinely great and actually you're absolutely right to point to that because not everybody does and uh the older you get the more grateful you should be very much something i'll be reminding my parents of the weekend how's that going oh god well anyway i mean actually they're in pretty good form at the moment but you're absolutely right we don't say often enough how lucky am i yeah yeah no i did think today i thought you know um all is good in the world and some because there are so so many times when it's not

but when it is it's it's just worth kind of inhaling it isn't it i think it's a topic we could throw out to the group is is there a point at which older people i'm not going to say elderly but older people stop being glad to be alive and just stop complaining about how hard it is to be them because i do i do think there's a kind of turning point obviously not everybody's the same you you can't generalize and i don't want to do that but uh and i've no idea how i'll be if i were to make it to i don't know my mid-80s would i find less to be grateful for and a whole lot more to complain about? It is possible, isn't it?

Because I think your body starts to really, it's hard. Things that you take for granted are just not that simple anymore. God, of course. And I suppose as well, it is just that feeling of not having very much in front of you realistically. Because the ages that we're at at the moment you know god willing and all of that uh there is still a feeling that you know there's a road in front isn't there there might be some turnings and we might go this and we might go that yeah

actually when you're 85 when you're 87 when you're 89 that's just not true is there long life in barbara's do you know? I don't probably my parents are still alive they're 25 my longest living cat was Bob who lived to be 23 oh well I think Barbara's got that

she's got that target she's going to go for it don't let's make the rest of the podcast a Barbara free zone please otherwise I'll be unhappy can we go back to Dandruff? yes let's.

Because there's never a bad time. Oh, our big guest is a good one today. Who's that? Cathy Newman. Out of Channel 4 News. Well, out of Times Radio as well. And Times Radio. Sorry, I should have mentioned.

She's our fellow DJ here at Times Radio with her super show on Sunday afternoon into the evening. Friday. That's right. Oh, no, I did know that, actually, because I've been on it. Oh, again, right. Again. Yes, Cathy's show is on Fridays.

Yes, it is. Yeah, and it's very good, and it contains a little section called The Ladder, where she always talks to a woman just about how they have made it up the ladder. And that's the bit that we've been on, haven't we? But we're not included in the book. No, no reference to us at all.

We won't mention that. We both went to the index. Obviously hopeful. Nothing there. Nothing there, Cathy. Anyway, something we'll put to you a little... No, we won't mention it. Right.

You probably will. Just a bit. Did you really look in the index? Of course't mention it. Right. You probably will. Just a bit. Did you really look in the index? Of course I bloody did. Did you? Every book. Every book about the media I go, especially about women, I'm in there.

I genuinely, genuinely don't. Oh, I always do. Political dandruff. Please keep me anonymous. Oh, so we will. Your discussion about politicians and dandruff, where else do you get this content, reminded me of one of the tasks that wasn't on the job description when I was a civil servant

working in a cabinet minister's private office. Either side, at the 2001 election, I worked for two different ministers, both men in their 50s. I'd better not say who they were or which government department it was, because one has to remain relatively discreet about all sorts of things, even after all these years. Most of the job of a private secretary is high pressure and long hours with each of the four or five private secretaries to a secretary of state having responsibility for a defined set of subjects to progress the minister's agenda. They also though accompany the minister on official visits and other activities which often involved a little bit of mothering to prevent any embarrassing mishaps.

Many's the time, says our correspondent, many's the time I had to do a visual sweep of a train carriage to make sure my minister hadn't left a coat, a phone or any official papers behind. For one of them, I also carried an emergency bar of chocolate in my handbag for those hangry moments when a finger of fudge or a Kit Kat could calm down touchiness between engagements. I regret to say, I also quite often found myself brushing dandruff off the ministerial shoulders just before a media interview or opportunity for a photo. It was never spoken about, it just happened.

Perhaps they thought or hoped it was an innocent piece of fluff. Needless to say, this aspect of my former role has never made it onto my CV. Happy days, says our, still to be anonymous for security reasons, correspondent. But thank you. It would be fascinating to hear any more anecdotes about the kind of additional extras that people have been expected to do in jobs or have volunteered to do in jobs yeah because i bet there's quite a lot i bet there are quite a lot and that mothering thing which i think well i will say that our correspondent is female uh that mothering thing that you might that would probably not be asked

or wouldn't be expected of a male um person in that environment i don't know whether um so what was our correspondent's official job private secretary so very very high up um in a cabinet minister's private office um you know this is this is important stuff well it is but but i i've got a sneaky feeling that along the way, very prominent and pre-eminent female politicians might have expected some quite strange things from their male private secretaries.

Like what? I bet Bernard Ingham was lopping the top off Maggie's eggs of the morning. Handing her a finger of fudge when she got hangry. I tell you what, a finger of fudge, I mean, I always thought that was one of those, um, are you alright, Eve? that was one of those Are you alright, Eve? That was one of those bits of confectionery that just was never big enough.

I'm afraid it didn't help. But don't you think they'd acknowledged that in the meeting before they did the ad, which went a finger of fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat, because it was acknowledging that actually it wasn't. It was the elephant in the room. It shut them up for about two minutes.

Yeah. And then they'd just want a sherbet dip or something a bit more substantial. Yeah. I had a stale Freddo the other day. Don't want to go there. Right. They're utterly pointless, Freddos.

Well, they are, but for a while they were kind of, they were always 20p, weren't they? I should think so. Yep. You get two bites on your Freddo and you were happy with your lot. Now this one, it's a criticism. Can take it is it about mental health yes no actually that's really

a really interesting one so yeah so this is from helen in ilkley who does start by saying jane make no mistake you are my all-time favorite broadcaster that's a promising start yeah none taken helen however it drove me bananas when you said we didn't used to have mental health I grew up in the 80s and 90s when the government started closing asylums and introduced community care and that's why we didn't used to have mental health because we just locked people up if they were experiencing mental health challenges and I think it's a very good point to make actually care in the community relied on there being a community that wanted to care for people

and after it was put in place under Virginia Bottomley wasn't it as health secretary a very long time ago did she bring in care in the community it was under her kind of time in office and you know there wasn't a community out there for many people was there well I mean in fairness to me I was quoting somebody who'd whatsapped us during the programme yesterday There wasn't a community out there for many people, was there? Well, I mean, in fairness to me, I was quoting somebody who'd WhatsAppped us during the programme yesterday saying we didn't have mental health when we were growing up.

What I meant, Helen, was that I was backing up our listener because we didn't have the ability to discuss in public our own mental health, for lack of it. We certainly had asylums, because actually that was something that I talked about to Caroline Quentin when she was on the week that you were off, because Caroline's mum had been in one of the asylums because actually that was something that I talked about to Caroline Quentin when she was on the week that you were off because Caroline's mum had been in one of the asylums. And Caroline, I think relatively unusually, although it's not completely unheard of, spoke very positively about the impact that that hospital had had on her mum. In fact, she credited it with saving her mum's life and said it was absolutely a place of sanctuary for her mother to be.

And she did get better and she came out and she lived, I think, a relatively quiet but content life for many years afterwards. So I think I totally agree that care in the community is, well, perhaps, well, it wasn't funded in the right way. It still exists because those asylums don't exist anymore. And increasingly, I think there are people who are saying, you know, it wasn't funded in the right way. It still exists because those asylums don't exist anymore. And increasingly, I think there are people who are saying,

you know, they weren't altogether bad as long as they offered a decent amount of treatment for people. And they kept people safe and away from the rest of us because we are capable of great cruelty to people who are going through a mental health crisis. There was a woman, I don't know if you... Were you at London Bridge tube station today? Yes was i don't know if you went past the poor woman that i went past who was just crying she was slumped up against a wall um she was in a truly truly desperate desperate state crying and a young guy most of us ignored her you couldn't

completely ignore her but a young guy went over to, bent down and tried to give her some money. He completely out of the goodness of his own heart. And she just gave him an absolute volley of abuse. And he kind of backed off nervously and just for an instant locked eyes with me. And I sort of smiled at him in a kind of, you did the right thing there, mate, and well done you for trying. And he sort of smiled a bit weakly and then we both just walked off. And it's just, you think, did that, I mean, was that happening back in the 90s? Were the people clearly in such distress in incredibly public places? Yes, there were.

Were there or were they, had they already been, were they in a place of safety? I don't know. I mean, I don't know what that poor lady's issue was, but she was. It's not often you see it in such an exposed place and somebody in so so just desperately in need of help but i think if you just went and sat in a and e in a in a hospital uh you know over a 48 hour period you would see so much mental health distress. And so many doctors say the same thing, that there isn't the onward conveyor belt now. So apart from anything else,

most A&Es will have a mental health assessment room, which now ends up being used as the place where, you know, people who are, you know, in incredibly vulnerable positions, likely to harm themselves, are just kept. It's not an assessment. There isn't room or a place on a ward or a place in any kind of mental health wing for them to go to. But look, this is two people who don't know enough about something,

trying to make our way through a conversation about something. But also, can I just say about the looking back in in time thing um sometimes when i hear those conversations we're having it at the moment aren't we because the resolution foundation's study was revealing about the very poor mental health of of 20 to 24 year olds i think it just adds nothing to the conversation for us to make a comparison to our own youth, because so much has changed. The experience of 0 to 20 now in the world for young people bears no comparison to our experiences. So I think if you're a young person in distress, you hear lots of older people, who apart from everything else are just still alive.

You know, they haven't harmed themselves to the point of oblivion you know when you hear people going oh you know it's all feelings I think that must be incredibly difficult I think what I would say here is that sometimes you do find that not everybody with a mental health issue officially diagnosed or not always understands that everybody else has also something else going on. And I think some young people do think that their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, whoever it might be, nothing ever happened to them. But sometimes, Jane, that's the prerogative of youth, full stop.

We were like that, weren't we? I mean, how empathetic were you about your grandparents' experiences in the war? You know, I'm not sure we can credit ourselves with being such marvellous creatures by comparison in our 20s. No, I think... We were pretty rubbish and pretty selfish as well, actually. I don't know, I heard a lot about the black market butcher. But I'm sure that only happened in parts of suburban Liverpool.

My granddad was in a pig club. Can I just see the two PSs from Helen and Ilkley? Sourdough is the devil's work. And the PPSs, I had a third degree tear with my second. During the stitch up, the midwife stopped and called in her colleague. Her colleague came in and they both had a good look. The colleague said, look at that symmetry. The midwife beamed at me and said, I'm very pleased with that,

even if I do say so myself. Goodness knows what it looked like before they stitched me up a designer vagina it's not uh thank you very much for that helen i'm sure it's a designer vagina let's not boast about the state of anything we've got ourselves uh i just want to mention this from because it's okay look to yourself it's going back because mine's totally designed although it took it i was i think i used to delight in telling people that everything was designed do you remember when people used to go on about oh it's designer i've got a new coat it's designer yeah but everything's even what what's so special about a designer item? And people still say it as though certain things are designed

and other things have just grown. It's just not possible, is it? No, darling. Everything in this room is designed. Some of it not very well. This is from going back to what you were saying, actually. I was listening to your podcast and found the topic of mental health awareness in the 70s quite triggering. As a woman who grew up

in the thousands, the noughties, is that what we call them? I think so. And is navigating having a young family in the current climate. I'm thinking that the world we're living in has just become so weird, unpredictable and ridiculous, economically speaking, but also with regards to the feeling that peacetime is drawing to a close, that it's actually really hard to keep going through the motions of the nine to five. It does all feel a bit pointless, like at some point everything we've worked towards will be worthless as a result of economic failure or war. I feel like my generation has grown up with some of the lingering traditional views from the past decades, marriage, buying a home, etc. Some of us wanted to reach those milestones, but it's simply not the same world anymore. It's no wonder mental health

is often at the forefront of conversation. We've been working towards goals that don't fit the current climate, and we don't really know what we should be doing with ourselves. In the 50s through to the 90s, as long as you worked hard, you could support a family and progress through life. But now it's all much, much more difficult. That's from Maria. Thank you. And I think that you do make a series of good points there. And I think the housing crisis is something that I just think is really at the heart of so many people.

I mean, why would you want to invest in a society when you haven't got the hope in hell of ever owning a property? So it was the very good thing that Michael Gove said about two weeks ago, wasn't it? That if the current government or a future government doesn't solve the housing crisis, then it has no right to ask its younger generations to believe in democracy.

Well, I think it sounds a bit apocalyptic that but it is very hard to expect people to work yeah and to be part of all of this yeah to pay tax stake in it yeah if you're going to end up at the fag end of it with absolutely bugger all for your efforts and actually i i would say not just younger generations. I think it's anyone who can't feel certain about where they live. I think that's a terrible thing. But I think he's just so, I think he's really put his finger on the equation, the ask, because it's just not there, is it? You know, the only permanent thing that you can look forward to is an STD.

It's, you know, not much of a a horizon and on your birthday as well he's jotting that down editorial should we should we move it on uh right um oh i like that one this one yeah dodging the camera yes oh it's uh it's quite sad but i think it's very telling. It comes from Libby, who says, I felt compelled to write to you after listening to the message sent in by someone in their 40s who hates having their photograph taken as they're not happy with how they look. Last year, my husband died suddenly and both my daughters were absolutely devastated

because there were no up-to-date photos of them with their father that could be used at the funeral, plenty of them when they were younger. My husband didn't actively avoid having his photo taken it just happened however i always have been guilty of avoiding being in any pictures and there are very few photos of me with my girls as i hate the way i look so my message to everyone is please have your picture taken with loved ones as much as possible you never know what's going to happen since my lovely husband's death i've been in as as much as possible. You never know what's going to happen. Since my lovely husband's death, I've been in as many photos as possible with my daughters

and I'm determined that they will have many photos to remember me by. I'm sad that when they were growing up, mum is missing from most events. If I could turn back time, I would have behaved differently. We live and learn. Well, Libby, huge sadness there. And thank you for taking the time to write because I think that's not something

I'd thought about at all. And gosh, of course, I mean, you know, we're two, and I'm not saying your husband was vain at all or that you are, but if you're a bit camera shy and you dodge out of the photo, you're not thinking actually about why people might want to look at that photo

in years to come. So I think that's a great thing to point out. Yeah, just get, I mean, it doesn't ultimately, what does it matter? Just have the photo taken. It's the moment that matters. And sometimes we do focus too much on taking an image. But my mum is 90 next week, and we are having a family lunch on saturday and i will be taking lots of photographs or at least as many at least a couple of half decent ones with the grandchildren because these moments are really precious and frankly it's an achievement it's an achievement on everybody's part um and it's we should be you should recognize it and and also just how much do you love looking at photographs

of old relatives from bygone eras? It's always fascinating. You can't tear yourself away from looking into their faces. A photo album does matter, doesn't it? I've got one relative which I just put really... But I print them from my phone because I'm so conscious that an album of photos is so much more pleasurable than just looking on your phone.

I mean, I don't want to look at my bloody phone to look at photos. And even children well into their late teens love looking at baby photographs. And, you know, that day you went to Digger Valley or whatever it was. You know, they love all that kind of thing. Terrible at the time. But reminiscing 15 years on from a place of safety it's hilarious come in Kodak

I'm willing for your sponsorship I don't think they exist anymore Peppa Pig's causing issues isn't she in the States is she yes people are complaining that Americans

are complaining that Peppa is teaching people how to speak properly she's teaching American children how to speak properly yeah and also she's just being a bit belligerent she is belligerent

yeah a bad example she's quite a grumpy pig but you know she is belligerent. Yeah, a bad example. She's quite a grumpy pig. But, you know, she gets her feelings known and that's no bad thing. Okay. 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. Shall we move on to Cathy Newman? Yes, come in Kathy. So Kathy is our colleague here at Times Radio

and she has got a new book out called The Ladder in which she talks about other women's journey to success in various shapes and forms and sometimes actually success is just dealing with the vicissitudes of life that have been thrown people's way and it's

always a good listen and in this book she does this very clever thing, Jane, doesn't she, where she doesn't just detail another woman's life. She's actually put experiences of life into very thoughtful categories like dealing with imposter syndrome, becoming and belonging. I didn't realise that was a quote from a famous philosopher. The things we learn along the way. And in fact, that's where our interview started with

kathy and her own thoughts of becoming kathy newman oh god that's such a big question and those are the kind of questions that i ask people and now the boots on the other foot um i think like many of the women in the book actually it is not i kind of i called the slot the ladder for times really on friday drive um and the book also because and it's sort of tongue-in-cheek because it's not a straight you know one foot after another up the rungs it's not like that for anybody it wasn't like that for me it's not like that for the women in the book so I wanted to be a violinist and I basically wasn't a good enough violinist so then I decided I we didn't have a telly when I was growing up so I kind of didn't know what I wanted to be until I was about 16 and we got a telly and I saw Kate Adie.

I think it was the first Iraq war. She had a flak jacket on and I just thought that is an incredible job. It's really interesting. It's really important. You know, that's what I'm going to do. And I have actually never... I haven't got up the ladder to become a war reporter, so, you know, that's still to come. Have you met Kate Adie? Yes. In fact, for my last book, Bloody Brilliant

Women, she I sort of made a passing reference to her in that. So I went to a book festival and she interviewed me for that. Although actually, I've got to say, it was sort of, yeah, me interviewing her, I didn't really get much of a word in. So yeah, you're chuckling, you know, if we cast our minds back, actually, it's almost terrifying how few women were on television. And it was it was really, you know, I think if we tried to explain it to our daughters now, they think we were exaggerating a little bit. But it was honestly, it was, well, most sort of public facing jobs were kind of jobs for the men, weren't they really? And so as a young girl growing up, I mean, my mum used to say to me, oh, you know, why don't you become a PA? And, you know, I kind of thought, well, I could do that. And then I looked around and thought, oh, maybe I'll be a lawyer, because that's, you know, what people say they want to do, isn't it, when they don't really know what else they want to do. And, yeah, everywhere you look,

it was sort of men doing the interesting jobs, wasn't it? And on telly, as you say. It was mostly women were sort of typecast, weren't they? And doing, you know, they weren't doing the sort of tough, gritty jobs, which is why I thought, oh, I want to be a war reporter. I just never managed to make that happen because I got sidetracked and got interested in politics instead so you know and you were you were in quite a male dominated world education wise weren't you so you were a girl at a boys well it was initially I went to the local state school

first of all and that was mixed but then I went to a girls school girls private school and I hated that because I think there was that real mean girls thing and you know I think it is different these days I think girls are kinder to each other and they're sort of more supportive of each other I think maybe that's a rose-tinted spectacles but there it was quite mean girls in those days so I didn't really like that and then I got a scholarship to a big public school charter house and yeah I found that very difficult because there was so my dad was a teacher there for start so I was kind of my card was marked I was really you know I was a scholarship kid and I was quite studious I liked playing music so I was instantly not going to be part of the

cool gang and yeah it's very male dominated and you know when you went into assembly in the morning in chapel you could hear the boys sort of grading you out of 10 as you walked past. And so you're, yeah, it's, it's a good training for life. Yeah. It's a sad training for life, isn't it though? Really? Yeah. But I suppose all those, you know, a lot of the things, a lot of the people you deal with in Westminster over the years or in business there's still those attitudes remain and I talk about some of those in the book um for example you know when I went in to interview a big media boss when I was on the FT he he couldn't believe I was from the FT because um I was a woman and I assume he just said oh no no there's got to be a mistake I was

being interviewed by the FT and I was like well I am the FT sorry I am you got me so I think it is it's a you're right it's a sad training but it's a useful training and I think attitudes are changing and a lot of the reporting I've done in my job has been about you know the fallout from me too in in Westminster or in business. And I think attitudes that we would have shrugged off when we were, you know, first starting our journey up the ladder, they wouldn't be accepted today and you'd complain about them. But then there's this terrible acid rain of misogyny as well, isn't there? That's a good phrase.

So the more empowered women... I wish I'd put that in my book. Feel free to have it. You've brought me cookies. We gift you that. But it comes at you all the time, doesn't it? So, you know, you're a very visible, high-profile example of female success. And I think of confidence.

So when I see you on television and I go, hooray, there is still a certain type of man who sees exactly the same person on television and thinks, I'm going to get her. Yeah, and you see that online all the time. And I've had a lot of trolling and death threats and, you know, stalkers and all that sort of all the things that go with the territory. But I think what I find liberating about, I'm 50 this year, and I find, and a lot of the women in the book said exactly the same, that older they got the more confident they got and the less they worried about the noises off and I do find that the first time it happened and I got this wave of death threats online and it was horrible you know I was doxxed my address was put out online my home address um and you know I was worried for my kids

and family but then you get through it. And what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And actually now I care so much less about those faceless people online. And, you know, you say I project an image of confidence. I feel confident. And I think that does come with age and wisdom and experience. And just I'm not going to put up with this rubbish anymore. Yeah.

Well, I'm glad that you do. Because I think when you talk about imposter syndrome in the book, it's such a massive thing that women suffer from. And it's not to say that men don't suffer from it as well. But I wonder whether it's quite such a universal condition. Well, I think it was Aisha Hazarika, our colleague here, who interviewed Tony Blair and asked him about imposter syndrome and he hadn't even heard of the phrase. He really hadn't heard of it. But you mentioned, actually, just going back briefly to the trolling, and I don't want to dwell on it, but you tried to explain it to Jon Snow and he didn't really know what you were getting at, did he?

Yeah, and I think, yeah, it was interesting because, you know, he wasn't being unsupportive, he just literally had no experience of it. And I think that was in the early days i think it's changed now a bit because i think it's just become such a sort of pit of vitriol twitter that i think everybody gets that anyone who's outspoken older white men yeah really yeah but not as much i mean okay you know whatever you think of her politics i think there was an analysis done soon after twitter sort of became mainstream of abuse and trolling, and it was found that Diane Abbott got a disproportionate amount

of all the trolling because she was a woman and because she was black. So, yeah, it's something that definitely isn't shared equally, but I feel I spend less time on Twitter now. I think that's probably partly self-preservation i don't really look at the notifications so much i do a bit more blocking but i don't really want to spend all my time blocking stuff because it's just an extra sort of tax on being a woman isn't it it's like why should i spend that time so i just go on it less yeah i mean it's a very polluted pool and if that was a thing in real life you'd just get out of it yeah you just

wouldn't stay in the water there's that thing of you don't refuse to walk down the street because you might get attacked do you i want to be able to walk down the street on twitter and not be attacked yes i'd like that too and i'm sure jane would but while there are just so many idiots throwing stuff around yeah you know it just takes a lot of energy to keep ducking all the time. You do it a bit less, I think. We do want to talk about your husband's amazing cooking. We'd like some recipes. He's a bit embarrassed, actually.

Is he? This is the headline on Times 2. I don't ever cook a meal at home and I paid my husband to transcribe my book. Confessions of the news presenter, Cathy Newman. Well, my husband, when he saw that, he said, husband cooks a meal shock. And I just thought it wasn't actually really big news anymore.

But I suppose, I don't know, I think a lot of women who are the ones going out to work and their partners are staying at home, I think probably a lot of them don't do the cooking. But I suppose maybe they swap at the weekend. Well, the fact is, it's not really a feminist thing. I'm just not very good at cooking and I don't really enjoy it. And my husband is good at cooking and he enjoys it.

So it's like, why would you not split the roles that way? It's not really me making a feminist statement that I won't be chained to the cooker. But, you know, we wouldn't eat otherwise. I mean, you know. It's funny, isn't it? Because you might not remember this, but you came on our previous incarnation of our podcast i do remember it was lovely for

your other book about uh bloody women yes yeah and you're brilliant no sorry i'm so sorry you you of course would know the title of your own book i can't remember the subtitle though but you told us about your uh your husband doing all the cooking and the fact that you didn't cook. I mean, that would have been, what, four or five years ago. And I hate to say this, but Jo and I didn't really bat an eyelid at that. I think we just slightly laughed at the fact that you didn't have a signature recipe that you could take.

We've never been able to spot a story, have we? We had no idea how outrageous it was, Cathy. But nobody picked up on it then. Yeah, well, I think Christina Lam, who is an amazing foreign correspondent, actually tweeted the interview yesterday and said, it will be news when it's no longer news. You know, we'll have finally reached equality

when it doesn't actually matter who does the cooking. Yeah. We should talk about some of the amazing women who you mentioned in the ladder. So this, you know, what we all do for a living is incredible, isn't it? Because somebody comes into the studio and you can ask them, you know, whatever you like. And there's something about conversation, I think, when it's live,

where people tell you things which they might not tell you if you were just writing it down or actually you had the pressure of the cameras in a TV studio. So I wonder who's really stayed with you from this studio, who's told you something where, you know, the tingles have come across you. Yeah, the hairs on the back of your neck have stood up. Well, I mean, honestly, this sounds like

puff and it's not, but virtually every week I come away from the discussion going, oh my gosh, that's amazing. What a story. Because most of the women who sort of qualify because they've done something amazing in their lives or they've reached a certain point of success, they've done that in the face of adversity or, you know, terrible sort of trauma. And, you know, I could so I could literally name most of the interviews that I've done. But just to single out a few, I mean, we've mentioned already Rosamund A Adukissi Deborah just to have that grief of your child dying and you know I'm not saying she turned it but she she out of that grew this amazing campaign to tackle air pollution that was inspirational and you know I I can feel when I'm interviewing someone like that about terrible personal trauma I feel moved to tears but the amazing thing about Rosamund is she has that positive energy as well. So you're sort of crying one minute and laughing the next.

So that stands out. Jocelyn Belbonel, who was my very first ladder interviewee, I was actually really nervous because it was a big deal. It was this new slot. It was half an hour. It had to go really well. And she's this incredible astrophysicist who should be a household name, but isn't. She discovered pulsars, which are stars that have reached the end of their lives. And without her discovery, we wouldn't have discovered black holes. So it's a pretty big deal in astrophysics. And she told me how she did it.

And actually, it was imposter syndrome in a way that led her to that discovery, because she was so worried that she wasn't good enough to be at Cambridge University, that she worked twice as hard as everybody else. And she poured over the data that much more diligently. And so that was how she discovered this anomaly in the data, which led her to discover pulsars. So, you know, someone like that, you just think what an incredible story

of turning a sort of, in a way, a lack of confidence that many women share into a great strength. So I learn a lot from the women. Tawakol Karman, a Yemeni activist, Marina Litvinenko, both of them said to me, you know, you kind of think, how do you, Tawakol Karman constantly put in jail for her protests. How do you stay positive in the face of that? Marina Litvinenko, her husband, was poisoned by Vladimir Putin's regime. So how do you retain hope? Both of them said the same thing, that they have to retain hope. And the inspiration of, you know, I'm quite a moaner,

you know, if I have a bad day or, you know, the hair is wrecked by it raining outside or something, or I have a difficult journey to work, I tend to sort of let off steam about that. But when you're talking to these women who have faced incredible threats to their personal safety, or they've lost someone incredibly dear to them, you feel totally humbled by that conversation. And so yeah, I feel really privileged to have this opportunity to talk to these women and now to put some of them in the book. If you were a young woman now starting out,

would you choose journalism? Yeah, it's interesting because both of my daughters, I can see that they're slightly drawn to journalism, but they've, at the moment anyway, they've both kind of said no I don't think so and in a way I don't blame them because I think it's a much tougher world than it was in some ways and in some ways not than when I started out I think I spent about a decade on newspapers and actually that was an incredible place to get to learn what a journalist was and how to be a journalist and

I think that training ground doesn't exist in the same way as it did and I think that's really worrying I think um journalists on the way up are incredibly badly paid and it's hard to make ends meet if you're living in London for example well if you haven't got a connection in London somewhere you can sleep exactly it's hopeless impossible and I you know I mentor a lot of people and I I do actually say to them we'll try channel four in leeds or try bbc in salford because i think it's easier to cheaper yeah cheaper and you know just easier to get a foothold so i'm not you know i i worry about the future of particularly investigative journalism as well because how many outlets actually do proper investigative journalism now you know the the cutting back of news night i think is actually a real concern if the bbc is

sort of pulling back from that kind of hard-hitting news coverage so i think we're at a bit of a crossroads and we've got social media pumping out misinformation and public service broadcasters like the BBC, Channel 4, you know, are incredibly important. And I should add the journalism that the Times does. Oh, well done. I was waiting for that. But I mean, no, it's true, though. I mean, foreign correspondents, we talked about Christina Lamb, you know, the work that people like that do. And there is a lot of investigative reporting on the Times. That's all really important, but it feels to me that it's sort of slightly swamped or at risk of being swamped in this morass

of kind of misinformation and vitriol that isn't really being regulated. Are you looking forward to the election? I am, because I love an election. I love the stories that come out of it. I think it's going to be a very bitter election. I mean, we've seen a foretaste of it this week, haven't we, with the row over Islamophobia.

So I would not want to be a politician in that election, particularly not a female politician, when you look at all the... You know, I know people thought, some people thought that what the Speaker said was a sort of ruse to get Labour out of jail, but actually the safety threats to female MPs are and MPs of all descriptions but particularly women are are really real and I think yeah I wouldn't I used to think about going into politics I wouldn't want to go into politics now and that's a bit of a worry for democracy not me not going into politics but no that's a worry Catherine which party just out of interest can

possibly tell you well we'll hazard a guess during the bulletin, if that's all right. And who is the interview that's got away? Who's on your list that you've never managed to get? Oh, Vladimir Putin. Ooh. Yeah, really would love to. What would your opening question be? Are you a killer?

Well, the answer's yes, though, isn't it? So, I mean, why are you a killer? How many people have you killed? I mean, yeah, I would have liked to have interviewed the Queen. Never got to do that. Got to meet her, didn't get to interview her. But yeah, Trump as well. My colleague Matt Fry interviewed him a few years ago.

But yeah, I'd love to have done the interview that Piers Morgan did, except do it differently. Just say better. Well, we're in the same building. Well, no, we're not now anymore. I can't remember. Oh, maybe we're in the same building well no we're not now anymore i can't remember oh maybe we're not jane doesn't always know where she is no no do i we could be anywhere actually yeah it's very pleasant anyway wherever it is and now we've got cookies jane kathy newman there and her book the ladder is out now so if you'd never had to cook a meal in your life, Jane, what else would that have made time for you to do?

Well, write all those books. Absolutely. I mean, honestly, the truth is, when I was married 150 years ago, actually, to be fair to him, the man could cook. He did cook. Yeah, but I slightly... So what did you do with your time?

I don't know. I think I was just de-knitting the kiddies. Actually, I probably was. Just making yourself look nice for dinner yes probably that will be it i was having treatments um why am i doing that voice oh you've encouraged me to do that um uh what was i doing good question uh you see i got a low nose no the kids were quite young, so I probably was doing some parenting, as it's known. But was it ever a bone of contention? Because it's often a massive bone of contention when it's the other way around.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I... No, it wasn't that I didn't do any cooking, but he was a good cook and he wanted to cook. And also, of course, when you're cooking, you don't need to take somebody to the park or to active what sits it's do you you because you're doing the roast at home so look swings and roundabouts um and i genuinely enjoy knocking up

a meal now actually i take great pleasure in doing it because but then i've got time on my hands and there's always a podcast to listen to isn't there so it's glorious but i think i really i mean kathy's just being completely honest you know she, good luck to her. No, definitely, definitely. And she's bringing home the bacon in the old traditional way, so surely she can't be expected to then come home, it must be quite late by the time she gets back, start doing a dinner. I mean, it would be 10 o'clock before the 8.

And all of that doesn't suit every woman. No, it doesn't suit every man. That it's actually a kind of thing of note. Yeah, and of course if it were a man who says, oh, I don't cook, we wouldn't be talking about it. Well, he wouldn't offer the information, would he? He wouldn't say, oh, I don't cook. No, it wouldn't be a point of conversation.

The only time that we discuss this is when a man boasts of never changing a nappy. Like Jacob Rees-Marg. Those sort of funny men who occasionally say, just to, weirdly, just to emphasise how butch they are, they'll say they've never changed a nappy. And I always think, well, let's hope somebody's willing to change yours, buddy, when the time comes round.

That's what I think. Anyway, a bit of feminism there. Okay. Happy birthday again. Thank you very much. I'd really miss cooking if I couldn't cook what was i going to ask you a question do you miss would you miss i find it the the most fantastic yeah it's nice debriefing of the day in my head and i would really miss it and and if i can be very honest

sometimes uh i i know that i've been that slightly kind of, I would like this kitchen under my control person. Yeah. And I've got a budding chef in the house at the moment, a really superb cook, my son, he cooks brilliantly. And I have to go and lock myself up in pissing Barbara's room. So I don't do that terrible kind of fuss pot thing of, oh, you sure you want to do, oh, using a pastry brush? You know, because I do, I feel it's my kind of fuss pot thing of, ooh, are you sure you want to do... Ooh, using a pastry brush. You know, because I do,

I feel it's my kind of place of safety, actually, in the house, the kitchen. So note to self. Yeah. Well, also, can I just say, it's not so much the cooking, it's coming up with what to cook, isn't it? That's the problem.

Yes. Especially if you're working, you've got other things. Just the ideas are a massive pain in the backside. But once you've decided what you're cooking, you've got other things. Just the ideas are a massive pain in the backside. But once you've decided what you're cooking, it's fine. Chop, chop, chop. Here we go. Toast, beans, bit of butter or flora, and you're good to go. Lovely. Right, we're off to gouge out the very, very beefy,

chocolatey eyes on a Colin the Caterpillar. Always the nicest bits, aren't they? I'm having the end. And we'll be back with you tomorrow. Sorry. Have a lovely day. 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 don't do that. A lady listener. I'm sorry. Voice Over 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 from 10 to 11 and get on with your day accessibility there's more to iphone