Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Am I in danger of sounding a trifle pompous? (with Ben Macintyre)

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

Fi's still at home but feeling better. However, relationships with Nancy are somewhat tense. Jane and Fi chat cable-tied wreaths, house guests, and going out after dark. Plus, historian, author, and writer-at-large for The Times, Ben Macintyre, discusses his book The Siege. Get your suggestions in for the next book club pick!If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

just, he gets worse and worse. Yes, okay, there's no other thing. There's nothing you can do about him except to go, ah, ah, ah. ["The Last Supper"] Now, welcome to Off Air. We're in a slightly different studio. I know people love this detail.

And Eve's in charge with me here in Times Towers but Fee is still confined to barracks where Nancy has been providing support of a kind but are relations between the two of you getting a little bit stretched or tense? What would you say? Well I think, Jay, the truth is that we've just said all that we need to say to each other, really. So although we can exist in companionable silence, it is also true that I think she just needs to, she needs to find some new things to do, maybe some new positions to be in, maybe a different room apart from the one that I'm in to sit in. But I love her very much. And I think as many many dog

owners will sympathise that you do love your dog enormously when you know you come back to them and they greet you you know with that adoration and they can't believe that you're home and that's all marvellous and you have a surge of love for them actually when we're just tapping around the same room together 24 hours a day we find each other to be ridiculously annoying. So my son has just taken her for a walk, all's good. Okay fantastic. I think. Yes. Okay now we have that there's some engineering work going on here at Times Radio. Yes now what's happening? I don't really know but it just means that we can't talk for very long today that's some which I know is going to break your heart, but I think it might help your throat

as well to get a little rest because you're definitely coming back tomorrow, aren't you? Oh gosh, I very much hope so. Gosh, yes, you're correct. Yes, very much so. But are you in a different studio to the one that we usually record the podcast in? Yes. They're going to be a different vibe. Which one are you in? Are you in the creative? I'm in the one known as the other one. That's where I am. So if you can just picture the scene. And I've just had a turkey dinner sandwich and I'm already slightly regretting it. So stuffing has a place but honestly does it need to be in a sandwich? I ask myself that.

Well the thing is Jane that you've been eating a variety of the Christmas dinner now for three weeks already. I don't know how you can do it. I don't know either. I do. I approached it with real gay abandon in November and enthusiasm does begin to pull round about the 25th of December. I start to lose interest, but I'm loving it at the moment. I think Christmas preparations are getting to Eve, who I know has made a series of purchases whilst at her desk this morning. Stop it, don't dob the staff in. Well no, look we've all done it. This is from Rachel who says, I'm responding to your ongoing

discussions about doing things alone. I became disabled rather suddenly at the age of 39 and prior to that I was actually reluctant to do things on my own. I was even afraid of going to art galleries feeling that being alone and not part of a group or a couple would make me very visible in a setting where I wouldn't be sure I was behaving properly. She says I wasn't taken to galleries as a child. After six housebound years and then becoming a wheelchair user my attitude just changed completely. I think I felt I'd become a mixture of visible and invisible in some way. Wheelchair users are often invisible to the general public. I've been overtaken when trying

to get through doors that have been held open specifically for me and even pushed out of the way in supermarkets. But we are also highly visible in places where there are special facilities for us such as theatres and cinemas. After starting to use a wheelchair I started doing more and more things on my own. I did go to art galleries, I went to the cinema and I travelled fairly widely. I even went to Iceland and Australia alone. Well that is fairly wide travel, it has to be said Rachel. It wasn't necessarily easy, she says, being stuck on planes and trains because staff had forgotten about me was a frequent occurrence. But I felt that unless I was being determined to fit as much into my life as I could, I was representing other disabled people as

well who perhaps didn't have as much confidence as me and by being just visible I was helping the general public to see that more access was needed so that disabled people aren't forgotten by the planners. Rachel, I think you sound phenomenal, I'm hugely impressed by that and I do not mean to sound patronising, but I think Rachel's right isn't she, that if she does it, it will make the rest of us aware of the changes that need to be made to make it all easier for people like Rachel. Well I would imagine so and I commend her positive attitude too and it's got to be a truth hasn't it, that you know if you go to gigs now, especially in the big stadium, you will see what I hope are really good facilities and good vantage points actually for particularly wheelchair

users. And most big gigs will have a place for kind of people who are struggling a bit with some of the sensory aspects of crowds and whatever. And it's got to be a truth, hasn't it? That the more people use that, the more promoters and managers and owners and planners are going to think that's worth my while doing it. And that's just, that's not being cynical. That's, I think that's just being realistic, isn't it? Because presumably if you're a slightly kind of, you know, if you're guided entirely by

your profit and loss sheet and you don't care enough about accessibility, then you're going to make the changes because people actually want to use the facility. So I think that's absolutely, absolutely terrific. And what a remarkable attitude to have. And I, you know, I hope that traveling to and from all of those places becomes easier as well, because we've heard so many stories, haven't we, particularly from Tanni Gray Thompson, and recently from Frank Gardner, about just the absolute indignity of some aspects of public transport, and planes and disabled people being, you know, left on planes and Frank, you know, couldn't use the toilet on a plane. I mean, just really appalling, appalling stories. So there's still much work to be done, isn't there? No, there really is. In fact, I talked to Tanni Grey-Thompson recently at an event and do you know what, we should get her on again, actually, just for a longer interview because she's a she's an extremely funny woman I mean some of her comedy is she can be darkly

humorous about her own experiences and I just think some of what she says it really really properly hits home and she's she's well worth talking to you and just something else I wanted to mention because I was thinking about exactly this last night this is fromany. Have you seen this email about walking in the dark? I don't think I have, no. Okay. Bethany says, I am, sorry, I'm heading out to dinner with two friends. Two friends I made in the trenches of motherhood. And I've been very brave and I've decided to walk the 15 minutes to the restaurant in the dark. Am I brave or am I to believe that I'm stupid? I have put my headphones in to listen to you two as I walk, just the one headphone

I'm not that silly. What annoys me is I haven't seen a single other woman walking on her own but there are men everywhere. They're nipping to the shop, they're running, they're out with the dog. It's made me quite angry. In the winter months I feel quite oppressed by the dark. My days seem so short. Something inside me tells me I must stay indoors when it's dark outside, because to do otherwise would be foolish. I remember my mum in the early noughties telling me I mustn't walk home from school in daylight listening to music in my headphones in case somebody came up behind me. I'm not sure what defense she thought I could offer were I to have the few seconds advance notice. Anyway I thought you'd like to know I did get to

the restaurant safely. I'm sure my friends will insist on a similar message message tonight when they hear that I'm boldly walking home alone. There was something about what Bethany said there that really I just wanted to talk about because I think she's onto something about that idea that women and girls are made to feel this compulsion in the autumn and in the winter to keep out of harm's way by staying indoors much, much more. the winter to keep out of harm's way by staying indoors much much more and it's it is noticeable she's right that when I do walk in the dark and I do although never without thinking about it beforehand I do notice loads of other men around and very few women I don't know what what do you think about that? Well I think it is ingrained in us isn't it from a very very young age don't

go out after dark and don't definitely don't go out on your own. And there seems to be very little evidence that that is something that we can just casually dispense with. But you know what, I think technology has such a welcome part to play in this now, Jane, because there are a couple of really good apps, aren't there, that you can use, which if you're walking on your own, you can use them so you are being tracked by somebody. And there's a fantastic one. So there's definitely one called Walk Safe. I'm going to look them all up, actually, and give everybody better details of them tomorrow, because I was at a bus stop in North London the other day. And I saw one where you can actually talk to somebody,

a real person in real time whilst you're walking, if you become scared at all, which just seems like a remarkable facility to be able to use. And it's definitely, it's a charity and it's staffed by volunteers. So I will find the name of that because sometimes technology can

alarm us, but it is definitely here to help us as well. So that's got to be a good thing. And, you know, I would feel safer if I had that on my phone, let alone, you know, advising my kids to have it on theirs. Because sometimes you do, you know, when you've been in a cab and you just start to feel a little bit wary or you don't recognize the route that's being taken or whatever, you know, the most sensible thing that you can do is to phone somebody so that the driver knows that you're in contact with somebody else. So that should apply, shouldn't it? Whatever form of transport you're taking. But I'll have a look and put out details of that tomorrow. Will you remind me when I get in here? I will remind you. It's such a busy time of year though, isn't it?

It's so busy. There's a lot of lists going on. There's a lot of listing. Helen emails to say that she really hopes our respective Christmas garlands and wreaths are still in place. What have you got to say about that? Is your wreath still there? Yes, well it is because as I said before it's rather unknickable. I mean you'd look at it and if you were of that kind of criminal fraternity Jane you would think well I'm only going to get about two quid for that so we might as well leave that one there. Well Helen says she uses a couple of cable ties to attach her wreath to the door knocker, for what she describes as peace of mind.

Having planned to get a doorbell fitted for the last decade, never quite getting round to it, our postman knows to knock hard on the window if we have a parcel, as the wreath means the door knocker is out of action for a couple of weeks. Yes, that can be very problematic. Yes it really can. She says she's enjoying the chat about bell ringing and wonders whether I've been to the top of the tower in the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool. Yes I have and it's a trip well worth making if you happen to be in that north western city I can honestly say that that is one of the things you've got to do. Go to the top of the Anglican Cathedral and look down upon the whole of the city and the glories

of the River Mersey and the North Wales hills beyond. Well we've all been transported suddenly. Can I bring you number two in what is going to become an infrequent delve into the world of unsolicited spam that we receive in our email inbox? Yes, tell me. This one comes from Ronald Conedra. Hi, I hope you're doing well. Just now I saw your website on Google, got a chance to read some of your articles. I am willing to work with this kind of blog.

Please let us know the price in US dollars To to two line spaces. Yeah general post price two line spaces link insertion Two line spaces waiting for your positive response. Thanks. Well, it'll be a lot There's no positive response and if you're going to send us spam, then at least post the price and at least insert the link because really you're wasting our time. This is a good one from Caroline. Did you see it? And I think it's very, very relevant to this time of year. It's about house guests. Oh yes, guest tell me gone. Love the part I take you to bed whenever you're available.

Thank you, Caroline. I often think of writing in and then the moment passes, but this time I'm doing it. I'm interested in you and your listeners thoughts on sorting the little things in life, those irritations that we all learn to live with. What are the perfect phrases that shift the way things are? I was working recently when we had an engineer around who needed to access the room I was working in. My husband explained that I was working in. My husband explained that I was working, I do crisis support, so was in intense online conversations with people in imminent danger. The engineer, in brackets, male, went on to have an extremely loud conversation

inches away from me, even though he could see me typing fast. Other examples include the house guest who leaves the fridge door completely a jar whilst doing something like making a cup of tea. Now we're all going to have house guests aplenty aren't we over the Christmas season and some of their habits, they are difficult aren't they? So we may want to share some more habits and we may want to glean some advice. Caroline ends by saying maybe all those times when people bring their way of doing things into your home, everyone has their quirks and oddities and I'm sure that I have as many if not more than those, but I would like to think that when I go

into somebody else's home I look around at how people do things there and I try and follow their systems. Might there be magical phrases that help nudge people into the right direction? Keep up the good work and Merry Christmas. Well, Caroline, let's wait and see what pours into the inbox. Well, I mean, I for one have got no quirks or oddities, so I can't respond to that aspect of the email. Yes, I do think the person who comes into the house to do some work but disregards what they might be keen to dismiss as the lady work going on, you know, by a woman who does seem busy at a laptop. That can be incredibly infuriating, can't it?

Obviously, I do vital, you know, DJ work from home very occasionally. And I would lose patience with somebody who'd come into the home to mend something who didn't respect my very, very important work. But I'm possibly, am I in danger of sounding a trifle pompous there? What do you think? Well, never, Jane, never let that be said. No, no, I'm with you on that. But also, you know, the point that Caroline makes about houseguests who just kind of bring themselves and all of their habits with them. You know, it just...

Yeah, it should leave your habits at home, shouldn't you? But it doesn't take an awful lot to just rein yourself in. I mean, you know, we've all got a relative who kind of insists on bringing their own food with them, their own tea bags with them, their own, you know, I need to sit down and watch this particular programme at this kind of time with them. And I think you can be forgiving up to a point. And then it does just make everything a bit jangly, doesn't it? So Caroline's in search of that lovely way of asking somebody to just stop it. Yeah, stop it! Stop it! Yes, exactly. I just think we should learn from the king who doesn't he go everywhere with someone

who's ready to mix his cocktail and he's got his loose seat as well. The two are not necessarily connected but I mean let's just be grateful that most of us this year will not be having to entertain a guest who brings their own lavatory seat. Well didn't we learn from some royal tome this year that actually the the king or the late queen used to take their own bed with them somewhere, didn't they? I remember that strange detail. Yeah, no, you're right. I think it was the current king, but he had back issues and therefore I think there was a special mattress that was required. Anyway, I'm overthinking this

because it's not been an easy week for those of us who did have a crush on Prince Andrew in the 1970s. Well, it's never been an easy week, Jane. When was the last time that you had an easy week on that, school love? You're right. About 1972. It's been a rocky road, this. And he's dreadful, isn't he? He gets worse and worse.

Yes, OK, there's nothing you can do about him except to go, oh, because there's just... But also, Jane, one of the surprising details about that is just how honest a member of his staff appears to have been about him. I mean, if that's your top person, you would have thought had some kind of sworn loyalty to you, if that's how they're describing you, you're in all kinds of poo really, aren't you? Yes, well, there we are. What a happy time of the year this is. Fee, I'll put it to you.

Would you like to hear Ben McIntyre now? Yes. Anybody of a certain age remembers the May Bank holiday in 1980, the snooker final being played out between Alex Higgins and Cliff Thorburn, and the longest news flash in television history, minute by minute coverage of the SAS storming the Iranian embassy and ending a six-day siege there. Ben McIntyre's book The Siege takes you right to the heart of what happened, why it happened and the lasting impact on many of the individuals involved. It's also worth

noting at this difficult time that at the height of the tension Prince Andrew announced that he was coming along to watch. Ben McIntyre, good afternoon to you. Hello, hi. Can we just deal with the Prince Andrew element of this? Until I read your book I didn't know about that but he really did. Oh, nor did I until I started researching it. No, go on. What an absurd moment actually. It's actually the only moment when the great police commissioner who was handling the whole thing actually totally lost his temper

was when Prince Andrew then a kind of a young prince of a helicopter pilot but nothing like the sort of notorious figure he is today absolutely insisted on coming around and said I don't really mind I just want to have a sandwich and watch while everyone's doing what they're doing and he insisted a few times before he was told in no uncertain terms that that wasn't going to happen. Right, he always has been a first-class chump, I think that's one way of putting it. Let's move on then to the geopolitics actually of the time in question. So Margaret Thatcher had been Conservative Prime Minister for about a year, the Iranian revolution had happened the year before and the war between Iran and Iraq was about a year away. Iranian revolution had happened the year before, and the war between Iran

and Iraq was about a year away. So this was quite an interesting time to put it mildly. Absolutely. In many ways you can see the events that took place at Prince's Gate at the Iranian embassy as the sort of first battle of the Iran-Iraq war. Because what lots of people don't really realize is that the gunmen who attacked that embassy were bitterly opposed to the new fundamentalist Iranian government. They were enemies of the Ayatollah. They were trying to win rights for the Arab part of Iran. Again, many

people don't really know that there is an Arab minority, a very oppressed Arab minority in Iran. There was then. So, in a way, this was the first battle there because these terrorists were actually being bankrolled and financed and armed by Saddam Hussein. This was an Iraqi plot to destabilize the Iranian government. And they chose Britain as the backdrop to do it because they thought that the British police were a soft touch and they would be able to get home, that they would be given a plane to fly home in. So for all sorts of reasons it really is quite

a critical, very significant geopolitical moment. Now the terrorists were called the group of the martyr and is it right that in fact those people, the Arab population in Iran, they still haven't achieved what that group set out to achieve? Absolutely, I mean in a way like most terrorist spectaculars it achieved absolutely nothing. That battle for rights down in that part of Iran is still as obscure today as it was then. The name that they chose, the group of the martyr, was actually rather misleading because it gave the impression to the people handling this crisis that actually these people were intent on martyrdom. They intended to kill themselves. That is not the case. These Arab gunmen believed,

perhaps naively, that Margaret Thatcher would agree to their demands that they would have their cause publicized on the BBC, that they would be able to use hostages as bargaining tools really to have political prisoners released in Iran, and then they believed that the Thatcher government would provide them with an aeroplane and simply allow them to fly home. It sounds extraordinarily sort of naive to our ears today but actually at that point governments were still negotiating with terrorists. Yeah, did they know, did all the terrorists know they were funded by Iraq? No, no they had been trained in Iraq, they knew that. What they didn't realize was that they were really being manipulated by the Iraqi intelligence

service, who were the people who provided the weapons and the explosives and so on, which were all brought in, by the way, through the diplomatic bag. They were brought in through diplomatic channels. But no, they were pretty naive, these six. The leader, not so much. He kind of did know who was behind the whole operation. But the others were really just sort of foot soldiers swept up in a situation they really didn't understand. So how did they get in?

They came on false passports issued by the Iraqi intelligence service. They were accompanied by a man called Sami Mohammed Ali, who was an officer in Saddam Hussein's incredibly brutal intelligence service, who arrived, brought them here, set them up in a flat, issued them with guns and explosives and then vanished. He said to them, by all means, do not start this operation before 11 o'clock. What he didn't tell them was why. The main reason was that he was on a plane at 11 o'clock when the whole thing kicked off. It's just another proof of how these people were pawns in a much bigger game. What's so fascinating about this book is the way that the individuals caught up in this

could easily, in many cases, not have been caught up in it. They just happened to be there when the terrorists arrived. And the staff at the embassy were a really mixed bag because some did support the new Iranian regime but not everybody. That's absolutely right. I mean this was a situation which nobody had seen coming obviously. At least half the employees, there were 26 hostages taken on the first day. Now most of those were diplomats or diplomatic staff or ancillary staff at the embassy, but only a minority of them actually were representatives of the new Iranian government. Only a handful of them actually agreed with the Ayatollah.

And then you had all these other people who just happened to be there purely by accident, including two journalists, a rug salesman, a Pakistani tourist who just happened to have sort of taken sort of taken a bit of a rest in the waiting room thinking that he was meeting somebody that he knew inside the embassy. Actually, he wasn't. He'd got the wrong place. So he was a completely accidental person swept up in the whole story. And in a way, that's what I love about this story is it's it is a story about the SAS and the astonishing de Numeau of this story but it's also a book about what ordinary people do when they get swept up in appalling situations they can't control and we all like to think that we would behave in a heroic way but this is a

story that tells us that while some people do that some people find incredible reserves of courage and resilience they didn't know they have. We're not all made of straight grained timber. People behave in different ways and you can't really know how you're going to respond to a situation of lethal jeopardy until you're in it. That's the kind of final part of this. Yeah, you're right, there are so many fascinating individuals, I'd love to talk about all of them, we don't have the time, but can we focus on Trevor Locke, the police officer, who had a pretty routine job guarding the embassy, didn't he? But he kept his gun, can you just explain how he was able to do that during the course of the siege and actually the price he paid for trying to conceal his weapon?

Absolutely, I mean Trevor Locke is in a way the unsung hero of this story. He had volunteered for the Diplomatic Protection Corps because it was boring, because nothing ever happened. He simply stood outside the embassy smiling at the visitors as they came in and out. But Diplomatic Protection officers were issued with guns. He was carrying a revolver and in the moments after the attack took place the gunmen did search all the hostages but they missed Trevor Locke's gun. They didn't see it. They didn't find

it and so he kept it hidden underneath his coat and he was wearing the full police uniform underneath his jacket in incredibly hot weather and he realized very early on and this is one of the more sort of in a way absurd parts of this story, he realized very early on that if he went to the loo, the gunmen accompanied him, and therefore he'd have to take his jacket off, and therefore they would see the gun. So he made a decision very early on that he would not eat or drink anything,

because if he did, he knew he would eventually have to go to the toilet. And in a way, it sounds absurd, but actually it was an incredibly difficult thing to do to try and hold on that long. And he managed it. He kept going for four days before he actually worked out a way to get to the loo, but they never found his gun. And that gun plays, I don't want to give it away for your listeners, but that gun plays

a very, very important part in the final chapter of the story. Without that gun, this would have been a different story. Right. I mean, listen, Ben, I'm almost as keen as you to make sure that people either listen or read this, listen to or read this book, believe me. So we don't want to give everything away. But I was actually surprised for what it's worth by Margaret Thatcher's lack of, relative lack of personal involvement in the decision-making because she seemed to have emerged from what happened with quite a lot of credit but what did she actually do?

Well that's a very good point you make. I mean what she did is something you almost never hear these days is that she devolved authority but not responsibility as it were to the people in charge, the people who really knew what they were doing. Very early on she said, it's in your hands, but if it goes wrong, the buck stops with me. She made that absolutely clear that she was gonna take the fall if it went wrong, which it has to be said, it very nearly did. Her role in this story is in a way rather ambivalent one.

I think it shows both the best and the worst of Margaret Thatcher. In many ways, she was very resolute. She made it absolutely clear what was and what was not gonna happen. She said they will not be going home, they're not gonna get an aeroplane, keep them talking as long as you'd like,

but they are not gonna get their demands. So in a way, she gave very clear instructions. On the other hand, that didn't leave the police negotiators with very much to negotiate with, because it became quite clear right from the beginning that they were, and the gunman realized this, they were not going to get what they wanted. And so it also brought out her obstinacy and her sort of determination to get her own way. It's my belief that if the negotiations had been able to continue for another 24 hours,

and this is a view shared by the psychologist who was there at the time, if they'd been able to string it out just a bit longer, those gunmen were so exhausted, they were ready, I think they would probably have given up. And, you know, we'd never have heard of this story. And in fact, oddly enough, we'd probably never even have heard of the SAS, because at this point the SAS was wholly obscure. Really no one had have heard of the SAS because at this point the SAS was wholly obscure. Really no one had ever heard of the SAS. I remember that distinctly finding out about this incredibly fascinating secretive unit only on the strength of what had gone on at the Iranian

embassy and you do say in the book that you think the SAS has struggled to balance celebrity and secrecy ever since. How do you think they're doing at the moment? Well, I mean the spotlight is permanently on them. I mean it's very, you know, one of the people, one of the key figures in this story is a man called Michael Rose who was the commander of 22 SAS, the regiment. And he believes that the Iranian embassy siege was the worst thing that ever happened to the regiment because they were exposed from this moment.

Everybody wanted to know what they were doing. And it's very, very hard to carry out secret operations in the limelight. And it's a very difficult thing because while in some ways they're incredibly proud of their celebrity and their notoriety, the fact that people do want to know about them, they're still the elite regiment of the British army. On the other hand, what they lost in 1980, almost

overnight as a result of this operation, was the secrecy and the anonymity and the opportunity to operate entirely in the shadows, which by this point bear in mind they had already been doing for getting on for 40 years and yet no one in the British public had ever really heard of them. It did lead I think to blokes turning up hopefully with a balaclava and basically saying, well take me, I can do what I've seen on the telly. It just doesn't work that way, does it? It really doesn't work that way. You can't really volunteer for the S.A.S SAS that way. It takes a great deal of training. But you know, look, I mean, to be realistic, actually, in some ways, it was the saving of the SAS. There were already rumors and pressures going around in 1980 that the SAS

should be disbanded. They were playing very difficult operations in Northern Ireland. They were already becoming quite controversial in some areas of the British establishment. And there were people saying, look, we should just fold them into the real British army. So in a way, this event both made them terribly famous and created this kind of fascination with them, which we see in all those programs,

Who Dares Wins and all the things where it's all about how tough you are. Actually, of course, that is a slight misimpression itself because the SAS isn't just about being stronger and faster and quicker with a gun and faster up a mountain. It's also about intelligence.

It's about being able to respond very quickly to changing circumstances, very kinetic circumstances on the ground, which again this operation reveals completely. So in many ways it's the key moment in the history of the SAS. It's a turning point in all sorts of ways. And it's also just worth saying that some of the men who joined the SAS were lost souls, weren't they? They were people who really had never known any kind of stability in their life.

There's one character in the book who'd grown up in care and who also ends up dying young, but then he, I think he tells his wife that he was never going to, you know, it was always going to happen, frankly. It was, it was fate. Yes, that's a man called Tommy Palmer, Corporal Tommy Palmer, a man of incredible bravery. I mean, his role in what happened is quite extraordinary but he was a very damaged individual. People are often drawn to this kind of very violent world by having troubled pasts and actually the impact of events like this on individuals can also be extremely negative. I mean in fact I think it's true of almost everybody that was involved in the 1980 Iranian embassy siege. They

were all affected in different ways and some of them very profoundly and of the ones I've met and I think I've met most of them now, I think not one of them would claim that they had come out of that experience unscarred. Post-traumatic stress takes a long time sometimes to appear but it almost never goes away entirely. Ben, it's a fascinating tale brilliantly told. Thank you very much for appearing on the programme this afternoon. Really appreciate it. Ben McIntyre, known I'm sure to many of you as a Times writer, but his book The Siege is about the Iranian embassy siege in 1980 and it's out now and I hope you've got the message it really is absolutely brilliant. Now Fia I haven't got you a book for Christmas I've got you something else and you do need to be back

in order to receive it because... Oh are we going to exchange gifts tomorrow I can't wait well so much thought has gone into my choice of gift for you Jane. Well you bought mine quite some time ago I remember because you you really put the wind up me because I hadn't got you anything and now I have, so I'm feeling much more relaxed. We could wait until Thursday. Are we going to do? No, let's not wait until Thursday because come Thursday we'll be giddy and I don't think we'll be in control of our emotions. But I do think that we should do the unwrapping of our gifts in the way that the young people like to do

them now, which is very much a kind of public display, isn't it? I mean, it is a whole thing, isn't it? On the YouTubes and on all the socials, the unwrapping of things is apparently something that can make you a lot of money with clicks and streams. So I think that we should join in. Oh, my goodness, are you not across this? It's a phenomenon. The reveals. Okay, so as I unwrap my Lily of the Valley, whatever it might be, I'll explode with joy and we'll go viral. I can't wait. Yes, yes, we will do exactly that. We will do exactly that. Eve's just sent a message. I say sent a message, I mean it's very sophisticated, she's written these words on a bit of paper, I'm not here tomorrow.

Well, why does that matter Eve? She wants to be there when we open presents. Okay, we'll see what we can do about that. Maybe we will wait till Thursday, who knows. I hope you're feeling better tomorrow, but honestly, you know, treat yourself kindly because this lururgy, I was at my doctor's this morning with my daughter who needed some jabs doing, and the phone,

they were just, well, the phones in the surgery were ringing off the hook. And the receptionist was really working hard to try and answer all the calls. And you just kept hearing the same questions from her all the time, she was saying to everybody, what kind of a cough is it? How long has he she been coughing? Have they got a temperature? I mean, whatever it is, it's everywhere.

There's a lot of it around, but I very much think that I'm in the home straight and on the mend. So I shall look forward to seeing you tomorrow. I will sneeze into the crook of my elbow if I need to be sneezing and I leave you with that germ-laden thought. Hmm, okay everybody. Well, take care, love to Nancy and I hope she's better behaved when she gets back from her walk and you've got homes under the hammer to look forward to, I'm sure, a little bit later. Okay, escape to the country, That's what I'm watching.

It is Jane and Fia at Time Stop Radio. And we wish you well. And we wish everybody good health. Congratulations. Congratulations, you've staggered somehow to the end of another Off Air with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live, every day, Monday to Thursday, 2-4 on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale, and if you listen to this you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online on DAB or on the free Times Radio app. Off Air is produced by Eve Salisbury and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler. Music