Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Any Jane will do - with Cariad Lloyd

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

Jane's taking a well deserved day off so Fi is joined by our second favourite Jane, Associate Editor of The Times Magazine, Jane Mulkerrins. Comedian and podcaster Cariad Lloyd joined Fi and Jane 2.0 in the studio to talk about her new book 'You Are Not Alone'. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Assistant Producer: Eve Salusbury Times Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Podcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So, unfortunately, Jane's met a very nasty accident. I've got an alibi. I'm sticking to it. But she may be away for some time. I'm only joking. Jane had a day off today. So it is just little old me on the podcast today. I did have in the studio, though, the wonderful Jane Mulkerins as the sit in for Jane. And we did laugh, actually, that all that had happened this morning was somebody had just gone around News UK and just shouted Jane very loudly. And she had been the first Jane to answer the call. So she usually works on the fantastically stylish

and glamorous Times magazine on a Saturday, but she came in to do the double-headed bit too. And do you know what? We learnt so much about her in the space of half an hour. She's a Cambridge graduate. She was president of the Drinking Society. Her parents took a gap year later on in life and went to work as teachers in Palermo in Sicily, but they didn't join the mafia.

And then there was something else. Oh, I think she had an affinity with Greenland. So I'd asked her where she'd like to go on her holidays because we'd just done a very evocative feature about Tanzania full of warm, sultry nights and all of the senses being tickled. And she said she'd like to go to Greenland because she'd seen it on all of those murder specials in Scandinoire. So there's something a little bit dark about her, but she's nice on the outside. She also got very excited today,

and here comes a tape, about dogs in jumpers. Well, if anyone was suffering from a bit of blue monday i think the antidote is in today's times dogs on a catwalk um now if there's anything better than a good dog i think it's a dog in a jumper personally well we had this conversation outside the production office it was almost a row listeners because i think it's just dogs in hats i don't think you need to fully dress them up. There's a photograph that does the rounds of some greyhounds in shower caps. And if you'd like to Google search that, I don't mind if that's where you spend the next couple of minutes of your time. It cannot fail to cheer you up. But you're right, this is about something far more expensive than a shower cap isn't it yes apparently um the first actual

pet wear catwalk um fashion show has taken place in florence piti umu which my dad would being italian tell me off for my pronunciation um but the show dedicated a pavilion to animal apparel at the 16th century fortezza di basso um designers brought along their canine models and muses. So apparently the star of the show was Booby. Booby is a dog, a greyhound chihuahua cross, who's got quarter of a million Instagram followers. Sorry, let's pause for a moment. A greyhound chihuahua?

So, I mean, literally, how does that happen? Well, would you like me to start at the beginning no um I mean there's not going to be a very furry dog is it a greyhound chihuahua cross no uh the prices in that piece uh just absurd as well I'm just thinking though a greyhound chihuahua cross is like a modely dog it's gonna be really thin really thin, it is. And I'd actually like to see pictures of that cross because I'd want to know which of those breeds is dominated. Whether you just get a very, very, very, very small greyhound or a huge, huge, huge, huge chihuahua.

But I think some of the clothes, I mean, they're just ridiculous. Oh, yeah. And don't you find sometimes at the moment, we are in a cost-of-living crisis. Most people are really worried about putting the heating on, really worried about their food basket, you know, not being affordable. And then you'll read pieces like that about a five thousand pound dog coat. And you just think our world is so polarised, isn't it? There's no there doesn't appear to be any kind of shame attached to the people who are still living that life spending

that amount of money on a dog no and i think at the other end of the spectrum um i was talking with a friend this weekend um that kibble is actually best one of the best things you can give to a food bank because people even who are struggling to feed their family and put the heating on will prioritize their pets so if you can give pet food to a food bank, that will really help families who are struggling to look after their animals. I hadn't thought about that at all. And as a pet owner, I'm ashamed of that. Good point. There's a very good piece today by Libby Purvis. It's her column in The Times, which is good riddance to the personal statement. There's a little bit of a difference in our ages. I'm 53, about to be 54. And let's just say that

you are in the UCAS kind of phase of life. I was in the UCA phase of life. So that dates me, I think you're about 10 years younger than me. So you did a personal statement. Can you remember what you said in it? And was it the same as they are now? So kind of 500 words, boast about yourself, it goes along with your university application? Yeah,'t remember the details but I do remember it being the sort of first piece of nauseating self-promotion I have ever had to write um you know a bit sort of having told you about my triumphant grade five flute and you know being the lead in kiss me Kate both of those things are actually true. The university took you in, Jane.

Well, not a bad one. No, where did you go, Jane? I went to Cambridge. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't think it was on the strength of my grade five flute exam. Shuffles papers in the background. But I do remember it just being, it felt artificial and uncomfortable.

I also feel really sorry for the admissions officers having to read them. I mean, they're just sort of incredibly formulaic. What do you really know at 18 before, it's before you've had a gap year, before you've really done anything. I mean, I honestly do think that you should do your exams, then apply for university, you know, then just go. And I think all of the sort of interviews and essays and things really i mean yeah this is libby's point exactly in her piece uh she says uh worse than a cv more

treacherous than an interview this is the ucas requirement to define your character and ambition in 4 000 characters decent modest kids must promote themselves shamelessly not for likes or retweets but for a distant anonymous judge who actually matters the result will be read quickly often by an admissions officer whose job i notice is usually advertised at a shade below the national average wage as some universities such as king's college london have admitted some statements don't make it through an initial paper sift and that that's such a shame. And the point that she wants to make is that it's very different in America. And she believes that actually quite

an intense process in America to recruit university students actually really respects everybody within that system. So the universities go out of their way to try and find really deserving students, rather than the way around that we have it in this country, where people want to be, you know, pretend sometimes to be a deserving student, or have been helped to be that student along the way. And so the universities have that kind of power. And it does seem incredibly pointless, because so many schools are employing people to help the students write their applications. So it's not even a great kind of truth that you're revealing. And the idea that you might have been sifted out just because, I don't know, you hadn't used long

enough words or you put your grave five flute in the wrong place. That's just absurd, isn't it? Yeah. And I think we know that it's not a level playing field when you come to applying for these things. And if you do go to, for example, a large and well-resourced public school that can afford to pay for people to train you to do this, they're the same people who would train you for interviews and things like that. I went to a state school, which was a very good state school. We didn't have anyone to help us, you know, in our university applications. And you do, you get to university, you think, gosh, everyone else had a

very different experience of how they got here. You know, and it's not just about merit at all. It's about training, which... Yeah. Did you enjoy your time at university? I had a great time. Did you? Yeah. You've got a twinkle in your eye there, Jane. I suspect you have a great time everywhere. That was Jane Mulkerins. You're listening to Off Air without Jane, but with Fi today. But we still got all of your glorious emails. And this one comes from Julie, who says, Dear Jane and Fi, thank you for the podcast. The reason for the email is Fee's love of Nancy. Now, Nancy, if you're a new joiner, she's my ex-racing greyhound.

She's an absolutely beautiful thing. She's brindle. She's 33 kilograms of love. She is incredibly stunning. She's quite big. But we really, really love her and she's been a very welcome addition to our family for the last six years.

She is quite dopey and I don't want people to think that I've just been incredibly mean about my dog. I tell her to her face and that's probably why we bond. Anyway, Julie sent this email saying, I've wanted to email for ages but just never got round to it. I remember crying with laughter whilst trying to get to sleep at an interview programme that Fee did late night live on Five Live

many years ago regarding Battersea Dogs Home when, unless my memory is playing tricks on me, Fee had a distinct lack of affinity with anything canine. Do you know what? That's terrible, Julie, because you've completely and utterly caught me out there because I think that may well have been me, which just shows what a terrible, really, really shallow showbiz turn I am for now pretending, because I've fallen in love with Nancy the greyhound,

that I've always had some kind of a marvellous affinity with dogs. And sometimes when you're doing radio programmes, I don't think I'm the only radio presenter to send out into the ether something which is patently untrue but in the moment feels really really good maybe i am this one is anonymous dear jane and fee as someone who's just the wrong side of 50 well there is no wrong side of 50 once you're over 50 it's all good i'm reluctantly economically inactive as a solo mum to two wonderful little people under the age of six And you say that you listen every night and through the night as I'm woken many times by my children's nocturnal shenanigans. And I just wish you all the

best of luck. I think actually being just the wrong side of 50 and having kids who still don't sleep through the night must be something approaching the fourth circle of hell actually so I really hope if we can provide any kind of comfort to you then that's a reason for me coming to work in itself. On the programme today we had comedian and podcaster Cariad Lloyd who is just a fantastic guest. She's written a book all about grief. And this is after her really extraordinary podcast, Griefcast, has hit multi award winning levels of success. If you've never listened to Griefcast before, it does exactly what it says on the tin. invite somebody in to talk about someone they've loved and they do that in a very celebratory fashion and then they talk about how that person has dealt with grief. And it's all because Cariad's dad died when she was 15,

something that she talks about in her interview with us. So the book that she's brought out is called You Are Not Alone and she hopes it will provide a roadmap for all of us dealing with losing people we loved. We began by asking the modest Cariad about that success of Griefcast. Griefcast? Yeah, it's surprisingly, again, I don't want to sound braggy. Maybe that we should be more braggy as women. Get over yourselves. You've got a very successful podcast.

Very successful podcast. I've done nearly 200 episodes. You've got a very successful podcast. Very successful podcast. I've done nearly 200 episodes. It's my 10th season. And yeah, we've been going since 2016. And it's won various awards. It's done very well. I'm owning that.

It's done very well. But I think I never expected it to. And I think it's always a bit of a surprise to myself and maybe other people that people want to hear people talking about grief and death on a weekly basis in a way that's not depressing, hopefully. So yeah, it has done well. I'm owning it. I'm owning it. people that people want to hear people talking about grief and death on a weekly basis uh in um a way that's not depressing hopefully so yeah it has done well i'm owning it i'm owning yeah you know you did you did well but i would say you still need a bit of work on that yes that's good

because you seem to have to force it out yeah do do you ever find it a bit overwhelming for your professional life to now lie in the same place as your personal life because I'm about to ask you about your dad you might not want to talk about your dad uh you know on a Monday afternoon in the name of I mean let's be honest about it selling a book yeah it's weird I definitely didn't um I'm someone who doesn't really think about things and then I do them so I think that's quite how I get into the places I get into and then I think oh, did you want to talk about him all the time? I think, no, not really. But well, here we are. And I often think things sort of happen, not for a reason, but in a way that maybe I, when I started the podcast, I did want to talk about him and I didn't know how to.

So I sort of had this idea to talk to comedians about grief on a weekly basis, and that it wouldn't be depressing because I'd be talking to comedians who would crack jokes but there must have been a part of my brain that was like you want to talk about that's why you're doing this and so with the book um which yeah is out this week and I've been but I've been writing it for about three years it's it's definitely sometimes difficult that I have to speak about my dad on the way there and I think I'd rather just you know I don't know have a chocolate bar and hot chocolate and not talk about him um but also I feel like I can and I am able to and there's something in that that other people who are grieving can't

and then it felt like well then I should so that became something that I did I think it's one of the loveliest things about your podcast actually that you ask people to talk about the life that has made them stricken with grief and to celebrate it. And actually, it is one of the worst things, isn't it? When somebody dies, when everybody tries to put that person, you know, behind, literally behind a curtain, in case, you know, you say something in case that person can't be there in the moment and discuss them. But often we really want to, don't we? Yeah, and I think that's why the show has done well and why people want to come on the grief cast.

Because most of the time when we know that someone has lost someone, we're often asking about their sadness. So we'll sort of say, oh, how are you? And someone will say, oh, I'm okay. You know, my dad passed away. I'm not feeling great. And then we move on from that. So we don't really ask about the person. We're just kind of looking at, oh, are you sad?

Is the subtext of that question. Are you very sad? Are you going to cry? Am I going to have to deal with you crying? That's sort of what we're asking. Whereas grief cars, when they come to the studio with me, I say, the first thing I say is, who are we remembering today?

And it's for an hour. I'm not going to change the subject. I'm not going to ask you not to talk about them. I'm not going to say, the first thing I say is, who are we remembering today? And it's for an hour. I'm not going to change the subject. I'm not going to ask you not to talk about them. I'm not going to say, well, anyway, I'm just going to keep asking you about that person who's not there anymore. And it's very rare in today's society that we let dead people be discussed for an hour without interruption. So just tell us a little bit about your dad. It's really hard to describe him um so that's one of the main reasons I find it hard because all I can describe is you knew he was in the room so he's one of those people like he was just very loud not necessarily like vocally loud but like he thought loud he ate loud he breathed loudly

you just were aware that he was in the room and I describe him as like a tornado dad like having him around was sometimes exciting but also quite terrifying like you didn't quite know what's going to happen uh adventures would sort of begin and so it was often quite stressful so um and we had a really complicated relationship we didn't really get on very well and also he died when I was relationship. We didn't really get on very well. And also, he died when I was 15. So we particularly didn't get on very well because I was 15. So, you know, we really were at the absolute peak of me eye rolling anything he said, just thinking he was like, what was the point of him? And then he died. So I we didn't get to get past that bit of the relationship as well. So it's it's hard to describe him because he's sort of like a bit frozen in time

in that relationship in a way. But if you knew him, you wouldn't forget him, should we put it politely. How did that also affect your relationship with your mum? Because I think losing, you know, not just your dad, but her partner, the two of you, did it bond you in a special way? Or was it very difficult especially in the first few years yeah it was really hard so I've got an older brother as well and it bonded us extremely tightly which I think is quite common when you lose a parent young it's like the the

remaining family kind of like glued together and they're like well we're just not you're never allowed to leave and you're not allowed to do anything dangerous because now now we're a parent down like you know we like it's like I don't kidneys, you get two, don't you? But like, if one goes, you've got to be extra careful now. So, but my mum is amazing. She's an amazing person. And I feel very lucky. I've spoken a lot to Julia Samuel, who's a famous grief psychotherapist. And she has said to me, you know, one of the factors of mental health of children who lose a parent is the other parent so if the other parent remains stable and and can be consistent that's actually a very good thing for the children's mental health so I'm very grateful

that my mum who I would describe as the stable secure calm one was the one that we were left with because she does always joke like, oh, if it'd been the other way around, you'd have been in trouble. We would have. We would have been in trouble. We would not have been getting to school and on the right time. And we would not have had packed lunch. You know, all of that stuff would have been out the window, which is important when you're a kid, that stability. And he died. He was diagnosed in the February and he was dead by the April. So it was very sudden and very shocking and quick so when you've had something a death like that as a teenage or a young person you really want everything else to stay exactly the same because something massive has really

changed so yeah hats off to my mum basically she was amazing. Have you had a lot of thoughts that perhaps those of us who haven't had that experience might not have had when you've been reading uh about harry and how he was told about his mother's death and how he has tried to deal with it yeah i have a weird thing so i'm like the same age as william and so i remember obviously diana dying a year before my dad died so I remember watching these kids and having everyone say oh gosh they're so young it's so awful and I watched the funeral as a 14 year old and then the next year or next actually it was about eight months because my dad died in April that I was in their position so I have always felt a weird affinity to them of being like oh I was a

teenager around the same time we both lost a parent obviously very different circumstances I I'm not I'm not an expert in um I mean I'm not a Greek psychotherapist I'm just someone who's read and spoken to a lot of people over six years and all I hear when I read anything from his book is grief. He's just, he's grieving so badly. And when you hear about how it was dealt with, it makes me so sad because I just feel like, and that's not to excuse, you know, any of his behaviour. It doesn't mean you can behave however you want

because you're grieving. But what I can hear is a very angry teenager. And I was a very angry teenager. And I was lucky that I was brought up in a very emotional, literate household. Like I got lots of hugs and I was a very angry teenager and I was lucky that I was brought up in a very emotional literate household like I got lots of hugs and I was allowed to cry I wasn't at boarding school and then I you know have had a career where I could make mistakes and have therapy and you know talk about it in this way and process a lot of the grief but I know if I hadn't processed that

processed it and if my parent had died in a accident which you know when you look at it from a certain angle could have been prevented I can understand where he's coming from with that obsession and that anger and that feeling of not being heard so I think what's important with sometimes to think maybe not to take this bigger not just with Harry but with people who've lost people when they're young is it it's for it really forms you and it forms a lot of your opinions and how you see the world those opinions aren't necessarily right but it's hard to let go with them because that's the person you were when the big death happened so i i just see a person who seems to be in a lot of pain uh can you tell us a little bit, Cariad, about Gwendolyn Light Craving, who she is and what we could learn from her?

Oh, gosh. So Gwendolyn Light Craving is the lady that I invented because I had to write about the Victorians. So with the book, it's a mixture of my grief, kind of like my memories of how I got through certain aspects of the grief. And then it's a mixture of things that kept coming up on the podcast all the time. So one of the things that came up was people feeling this pressure to kind of be over it by a certain time period and when I started delving I was like this is Victorians

like like so many things are life like Christmas trees and you know all of this stuff is just inherited from the Victorians and Gwendolyn Lightgraving is a lady I invented who's sort of your typical Victorian widow so if I say to you know she's you know is a lady I invented who's sort of your typical Victorian widow. So if I say to you, you know, she's, you know, got a black veil and she's coming down the steps into a carriage, a horse-drawn carriage and dabbing a lace handkerchief at her eyes, like, you know what kind of way she's going to behave, you know what kind of person she is. And that's so like embedded in us, this idea of Victorian grief. And I think what I'm trying to talk about in the chapter is that we think that's correct. Like we think that's the right way to do it. It's the morally correct way to do it. And actually it's not, it's just a historical

way to do it. So I'm trying to kind of throw away this idea that there should be a set mourning period. And basically after a year to two years, you should be inverted commas over it because that, that isn't true that isn't how humans work and it's yeah an old-fashioned idea I also think Gwendolyn Light Craving could be a Californian psychotherapist just saying oh sure yeah she could be I think I think she could transmorph in that way um so do you think in 2023 we do still grieve like Victorians or do you think in 2023, we do still grieve like Victorians? Or do you think there's been improvements in our country and as a culture at the way we deal with it, talk about it, help people through it?

It's really tricky, isn't it, historically? Like, I think we have this habit of throwing away massive chunks of things and then keeping weird things. So with the Victorians, we've thrown away this idea that a widow should wear black for a certain amount of time and then be allowed to wear dark gray and then be allowed to be purple and in victorian times if you if you lost your husband if he died you didn't lose him down the back of the sofa if he died and then you remarried a year later you'd be allowed to go into your bridal gear and then the next day you'd have to go back into your morning gear

can you imagine how awkward that was for husband number number two? So like, we've thrown away that kind of, that really restrictive idea. But we've lost this Victorian idea of respect for grief. So you know, we don't have black armbands anymore. We don't know if someone is grieving until they tell us or we accidentally, you know, ask someone, oh, you look a bit sad. Someone died and they burst into tears and say, yes, actually they have. And so I miss that kind of Victorian idea that we have where where grief and death were very respected and and very you know everything was humbled by it was important you took time out you did take a year off to grieve but I'm very glad to obviously get rid of the restrictions and the colonialism like

I don't think we don't want that anymore so I think in 2023 we are obviously better at talking about things definitely but I still think we have a time period I think we think it's okay for someone to be if I was burst into tears you know if you work with me and you bumped into me and by the coffee machine and I was crying and I said oh so sorry my dad died six months ago I think many of us would go oh gosh are you all right but if I burst into tears sorry, my dad died six months ago. I think many of us would go, oh, gosh, are you all right? But if I personally said, oh, sorry, my dad died 20 years ago and I'm sad today, I think a lot of people would panic. Why is she still sad? It's 20 years.

Is something wrong? Is she having a breakdown? Rather than accepting, yeah, people can still be sad about this for years afterwards. That doesn't mean they're not okay or they're broken or they need therapy like stat. It just means we can still be sad about it so i wish we would allow a longer time period definitely there's a kind of accepted wisdom about the five stages of grief isn't there but i was very interested to read about the dual process from about to get these names wrong strobe and shoot

stroba and shoot i think yeah well i had to really really google it for a lot so yeah the five stages is something that lots of people like land on when they first start grieving and i i pull it apart a lot i think it's a useless piece of theory to be honest with you it was invented in 1969 it doesn't serve us anymore it was also apparently invented for the terminally ill not for people who are grieving because they've lost someone absolutely which i think is really interesting how we've somehow got that wrong it's it's it's the weirdest thing she she elizabeth kubler-ross wrote it in her book on death and dying she was working in hospitals she was dealing with people

who were dying mainly of cancer you know not that's not the only way to die that's what specifically what she was talking about was was dying of terminal illness and she posited that if you told people they were dying they would go through five distinct stages you know the five stages and then they would die and one of those last stages was acceptance and then somewhere along the line it got turned into grieving and it doesn't make sense for grieving because when you're dying of something you're going to die that's your full stop that's for grieving because when you're dying of something, you're going to die. That's your full stop. That's your acceptance. But when you're grieving, there isn't a full stop. You're living. And so that's why I hate it. I hate it as a theory because it's so unhelpful. Whereas the dual process model by Strouba and Schurz, I apologise

if I don't know if I'm saying that right. I'm just using a German accent. That is a new theory, which I love. And basically that posits that is a new theory which I love and basically that posits that you go you have two states the state of grieving where you're like crying and snotting and weeping can't get off the floor and the state where you're in a kind of restoration like maybe you go with friends or you just watch telly or you you wake up and think god I haven't thought about it today and most people feel guilty about that side they oh my god that's so bad I'm not grieving whereas actually they say you have this dual process you oscillate between the two and that's what grief is you

know the crying then your brain has a break and that is how you grieve and once i read that i thought oh my god like i don't have to feel bad how i breathe that's how i grieved i kind of dipped in out of it all the time and actually that is your brain processing someone's gone. And that's so much more helpful than the linear idea that five stages offers. One of our listeners this afternoon has said, I've longed for morning time and clothes, not to say it has to end at a certain time, but to bring grief into our ongoing life. And the best I could do was buy black hair bands as I previously had brown ones.

And actually you brought in something though, didn't you a badge yes that people could wear so that other people knew that grief was overcoming somebody yeah I had this amazing artist Camille Bozzini got in touch with me because we kept saying on the show god we need a badge we wish we had a badge and she got in touch and was like I've designed one and it said please be kind I'm grieving and it was a pin badge with like two little hands reaching out and then there was one that said I'm in the club DDC which is dead dad club or DMC dead mom club and we had DPC dead partner club dead sibling club and she drew this little ghost and it was like super cute and pastel and lovely and I just literally couldn't keep up with how many people wanted them because it was me putting them into envelopes myself um and they sold out every single time and that's when I realized oh people are

desperate to tell people and then they would email me and say oh I was wearing my badge and someone came up to me on the train and said oh I've just lost someone and I would like a badge where did you get it from so this loss of the black armband and I agree with your listener like there's loss of morning clothes or an outward signal in the way that we have baby on board or I can't wear a mask like it's really helpful when people give you a little hint of what's going on with them so yeah I wish we still had something a bit more. Do you think that we missed a trick learning more about how to experience and deal with grief during the pandemic a time which hopefully will never be repeated in our lifetimes when there was a huge shared loss yeah it's interesting i don't know we missed a trick but what i did notice was everyone was

willing to talk about it so everyone was like very i was asked to come on interviews and everyone really wanted to talk about grief and what i feel lately is it kind of the door closing like there's a definite kind of well we've done it we don't need to talk about it and we don't need to remember it and if you did lose someone during the pandemic, then you are still grieving. You are still trying to cope with maybe you didn't have a funeral or you couldn't be with them or you couldn't go and hug your mum after your dad had died.

Like there's so many people still dealing with the trauma of what happened. So I feel like people are trying to close the door a bit too soon. It's like it only just happened. Why are we all acting like, well, that's dumb. so we don't need to think about the grief because there's it is we all went through quite a big thing comedian and podcaster cariad lloyd the book is called you're not alone and i would highly recommend reading it even if you've not yet lost someone who you really love because grief is one of those extraordinary things that we just don't prepare ourselves for at all and I'm sure that lots of you listening would agree that when it first hits you when someone you love dies especially if it's suddenly you can find yourself just surrounded

by people who are incredibly well-meaning but you might for a moment really really really lose sight of yourself and I think just from personal experience, if I'd read a book like Cariad, I wouldn't have been able to cope any better, but I would have felt a little bit less alone, as the book's title suggests. So I just couldn't recommend it highly enough. Final email.

This one comes from a worried mum, 42, in Essex. Hello, Jane and Fi. I'm a long-standing listener and for the first time felt the need to write in and say, yes, please, please, please let someone with the power get Ross Kemp onto a programme interviewing the likes of Andrew Tate. As a mum of 16 and 12-year-old daughters, it's all we're talking about recently. I also have a nine-year-old son who thankfully hasn't been exposed to this yet, but it won't be long. I think it's so important to talk it through. But I think he was implying that men will stand back and at least listen to Ross Kemp as he's also seen as a man's man to get across a different point of view. I completely agree with that. And I think, you know, if Ross doesn't do it,

then if you've got any men in the broadcasting arena who are listening to this or you've got access to them, then somebody should encourage a young man or certainly a nice man, maybe of any age, to think about doing that. Because there's just no point, I think, in women trying to challenge men about their misogyny. There's already this extraordinary kind of gap. You know, you are

the enemy of that man. And I think actually a nice man would have better access to getting the truth out of the likes of Andrew Tate. And I would certainly, certainly watch that. So I don't know whether Jane, when she was doing the podcast on her own, had a similar problem. I'm starving. Because one of the absolute joys of doing a double-headed show is I can just have a bit of a snack sometimes when Jane's doing a very, very long link, or we're sharing out what I think Asma referred to as the hard quarterways, which I thought might be some kind of Scottish tablet. And it might be, you know, something that we could eat. But apparently a hard quarterway is actually just that junction

that you have to do at quarter past and quarter two. So I haven't had my snack. So I'm afraid that's it from me. But don't worry, Jane's back tomorrow. And I think probably, what would it be? I might stop off and see whether I can get from that you know the slightly Japanese-y takeaway place, you know when they sell off their sushi late at night I think I might have a little plate of sushi on the tube on the way home, I tell you what

that's a first world thing isn't it? Goodbye! Goodbye. You have been listening to Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Ben Mitchell. Now you can listen to us on the free Times Radio app or you can download every episode from wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget that if you like what you heard and thought, hey, I want to listen to this but live, then you can, Monday to Thursday, 3 till 5 on Times Radio. Embrace the live radio jeopardy.

Thank you for listening and hope you can join us off air very soon. Goodbye.