Off Air... with Jane and Fi - BBC Director of eye level - with Ross Kemp

Episode Date: January 12, 2023

If you were thinking...er...Ross Kemp doing a light entertainment game show…how does that work? So were we. And so was he.TV tough guy turned Mr. Saturday Night Prime Time, Ross Kemp, joined Jane and Fi in the studio to talk about Bridge of Lies.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Radio Producer: Rosie CutlerPodcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I think we're ready. Are we ready? Yes. Yeah. Want to do some warm-up exercises? No, I'm fine. You meant to sort of... Isn't that what you're meant to do?

I think you're meant to Me me me me me me me me me Are you? God I haven't got the energy for that On a Thursday afternoon You must be joking Now listen hurry up

I've got to go to the cinema I really want to go quite quickly too Oh do you? Okay We shouldn't really do this In this mood or spirit Should we? No

Now today we had a lovely encounter With Ruthie Who has been a regular correspondent to Off Air. And it was really nice to actually see her, wasn't it? She came into the building for another reason. Yes, she was in the building anyway. Yeah. And she came to say hello.

She was wearing the most extraordinary bright green coat with matching handbag. And she had some of the most flawless make-up that I've seen in a long time. And Americans can really do make-up, I's not american no but she's lived in america for a long time i think this is quite a manhattan thing to is it to just have a very very perfect face yeah it was very nice to meet her she's very funny uh and i didn't realize so she's she's no longer an actress i suppose you might always be an actress actually but she's she's very funny and I didn't realize so she's she's no longer an actress I

suppose you might always be an actress actually but she's she's a photographer now she's got a studio in Dumbo she just seems to be living a very glamorous life Jane yeah there were a few things that made me wonder whether my you know an average week in my life is something I ought to reconsider yeah and she's got quite a life story, hasn't she? She's got an amazing life story. And when I realised that I've got lined up for tomorrow, yet more hand washing and the potential making of a cauliflower soup, plus pilates. Yes, no, there is that.

Yeah, so it's not a completely blank sheet of paper tomorrow. But, you know, I need to up my game. It's no secret that I need to up my game. Anyway, how are Brian and Barbara? Oh, Brian and Barbara. They're the kittens. They're the kittens, yep. to up my game it's no secret that i need to up my game anyway how brian and barbara oh brian and barbara so they're the kittens they're the kittens yep uh they've entered that hilarious phase where they just run at each other and then lock in in some kind of a rugby scrum embrace and then they scatter away again they're being hiding under sofas they take absolutely no notice of Nancy the enormous greyhounds

and Nancy just gave them a bit of a quizzical look I think on Tuesday night for a little a little bit of a long hard stare and then just went to lie on the sofa and went to sleep again. She knows which side her bread's buttered. So they're fine but they're still tiny and and they are just adorabubble adorabubble Jane. When are they having their operations? They'll be having their operations in four and a half weeks' time. We are not taking any chances. No, I think we all know what we're getting at here.

Love developing between Brian and Barbara. No, please don't do that. No. I know I was semi-hinting at it. Oh, no. Do you know what? We've spent far too much of this afternoon talking about audio porn. There isn't another type of new audio on the market

that we would have put four different excerpts into the programme as examples of. Yeah, but it wasn't my idea. No, it wasn't my idea either. Whose idea was it? A man. Was it? I don't know.

What was interesting about the audio porn, which we were discussing in relation to an article by Jane Mulkerrins in the Times magazine on Saturday, is the fact that it was only American accents that we were played and in the nicest possible way, I just don't think it works. It's not doing it for you. Well, I mean, it's a very, very personal thing, all this. We don't need to go into detail, but we all have. We're all very different.

And this just wouldn't work for me. But I wonder whether we really have entered a space where people would listen to that on their commute do you think people would i suppose i mean the great thing about it is the anonymity um no one would know they wouldn't and uh you and i have both been on public transport where porn is openly watched yeah and it's incredibly offensive. I suppose that's the interesting thing. You see, I would be deeply offended by somebody sitting next to me looking at porn. Yeah, me too. What would I think if I knew the person sitting next to me was listening to it? I don't know. I suppose, to be honest, it sounded more like erotica than

porn, the stuff we were playing, but it hadn't got to the... And I think the closer comparison is actually to erotica in literature than it is to filmed pornography. And because, as Jane Malkeran's piece says, it is different to pornography because it doesn't involve... What was her distinction? Well, it's no exploitation. I mean, you're not being paid to have sex.

You're not being filmed to have sex. But, of course, I would suggest that members of the acting profession who do audio porn are unlikely to be at the Golden Globes end of proceedings. Yes. They are going to be people starting off their careers, aren't they? But also I think she made the point that there's a greater point of view that you can choose, isn't there? So when you're choosing what kind of audio porn you want to listen to,

you can choose the kind of narrator. So you have a greater choice in it, and maybe that's not always available in porn. And as you say, you don't quite know what's happening on the set. So I think it'll take off, Jane. I would predict that it would. Everything seems to be highly sexually charged at the set. So I think it'll take off, Jane. I would predict that it would. Everything seems to be highly sexually charged at the moment.

Not in this room right now, really. That's very true. Yes, yes. Not the afternoons on Times Radio. I mean, that's one thing you can rely on. Between three and five, it's a nice, safe space. And actually, there's so much to worry about.

Our show today was packed with things to worry about. State of the NHS, the economically inactive over 50s. And I know a lot of people take issue with that phrase. And we were firmly put in our place by lots of listeners who just said, don't use that expression, economically inactive, because I've got so many things I need to do and I am doing. And I'm just not getting paid for them.

Yeah, totally. Which is very different, isn't it? And, you know, I'd like to I'd like to see a survey of how much activity the economically active, inactive are actually doing in just in terms of volunteer work. That's largely done by older people, isn't it? Yeah. And it is keeping food banks going at the moment. It's, you know, it's keeping education going. If you think of all of the people who are going into school to help kids read, you know, that they are probably economically inactive people. So it's a real, it is a challenging term. It's a heck of a conundrum because we know there's a labour

shortage. There's over 100,000 vacancies in social care but of course a lot of these people who are economically inactive are doing care for older folk and younger folk and if they were to go back into work that wouldn't help with the labour shortage in the social care field would it unless they go back to work in social care yes and are paid to look after somebody else's mother. I mean, it's just, it's a conundrum. It's a big squiggle on a piece of paper. It really is. But thank you to everybody who contributed to our discussion today. Janeandfee at times.radio.

That's the way to contact us via email, whether to the live show or indeed to off-air. And we do appreciate you taking the time. So who was our big guest? What a hunk. We had to come in quite early to speak to Ross Kemp, so we're very overexcited and tired now. I don't think it would be telling any secrets out of school

to say that we both got a message on the group WhatsApp for the programme that basically said, panic everybody because we had been told we needed to be in for 10 and Ross seemed to think we needed to be in for 9. And I felt the frisson when I saw that message when I came out of the tube. I thought, uh oh, we're going to have a difficult guest on our hands. Somebody who's been kept waiting, who thinks that we've got the time wrong. And it wasn't us that got the time wrong. It was one of those mishmash, you know, in between lots of other people. So I was

a little bit reticent about meeting him, but he couldn't have been nicer, Jane. He seemed a lovely chap. Not as tall as I'd imagined. Well, has anyone said that about you? Do people imagine you're going to be bigger when they meet you? I bet Ruthie, I bet she left the building going, they're not very big, are they? I didn't stand up in her presence, I'm not that daft.

I left her guessing. So Ross Kemp was in to talk about his new Saturday night light entertainment game show, Bridge of Lies, which has been on daytime TV. But it's been so successful on daytime, it's bumped itself up to prime time. And we also talked about lots of other things,

but we did start with the game show and we started with him explaining that he was a little bit surprised that Ross Kemp, you know, formerly a Mitchell, had ended up doing light end. It is a little bit like coming up to a junction. There is no traffic left or right. Indicate right and then turn left. So, yeah, it's something that came out of...

It came out of actually a nice place, really, because there was a lovely lady called Carla Maria who was in charge of daytime and early evening peak at the BBC. Early evening peak. Peak, early evening peak. And she's now left and gone back to New Zealand to look after her mum, who's not very well. But she asked me during the first lockdown

to go off and make some films about people doing good things. So people were making PPE in their homes. There was a really nice guy up in Newbury who's got a gin company, Pete, who stopped distilling gin and started making hand sanitiser for the local hospital and for the local GP practices. We made this film. It was just me, a cameraman, and my wife spat at old Volkswagen Beetle, and she saw it and she went,

oh, he's actually quite nice, I think, he's all right. And so 15 different companies bid to get this game show slot. STV won it, and when they won it, she said, I'd like Ross Kemp to present it, and they went, you're kidding. It sort of reminds me of early evening saturday television when i was when i was young which was you know when television was a different beast to what it is today and it's kind of warm it's eye level it's not condescending it's not looking up to you it's

not talking down to you it's straight in the eye is that a tv turn play along eye level is that one of yours i've just come up with that. That's very good. Sounds very good, doesn't it? Probably someone else will claim it. Well, within seconds there'll be a director of eye level at the BBC. Of course. You can credit yourself with that. Big eye level. Yeah. What's really striking about it is the enormity

of the set and actually you can't really do a big light entertainment thing anymore without massive kind of graphics and lighting up things and stuff. For people who might not have come across it yet, can you explain what that looks like? So it is a very big set. It's a bridge that lights up.

It's got stepping stones on it. I find it, and I've said this before, but it is true. I'm up on a gantry for the first four crossings. It's a team game. So a team of four turn up, family, friends or celebrities and they each have to get across individually then they come back as a team.

But I often view that bridge as a bit like my life. It was sort of going all right up until halfway and then it got really, really difficult. And then I started going sideways rather than the direction that I should be going in and that's what happens to most people because it starts with things like relatively easy questions and then it progressively gets harder, a bit like life.

And then when they get halfway across, there is a place where you can go to a safety zone on the kind of apex of the bridge. And that's where most people end up going for a period of time to collect their thoughts. Gosh, have you thought about writing a best-selling book about being the spare? Yes, well... Well, he knows all about sibling rivalry, yes yes yeah now listen i was i've been up since dawn doing some research on you ross and dawn yeah dawn's crack since

i've been researching you and there was a fantastic military term you know that well we'll talk military matters in a moment uh there was a fantastic headline from the Hales Owen News about David James, former England goalie, appearing on Celebrity Bridge of Lies. And the headline was Ross Kemp shocked by how much David James

knows about cats. And I am still overwhelmed by it. But how much does David James know about cats? More than the average vet, I would suggest. Incredible.

He's a very talented chap. I mean, he started off playing the cello before he started playing rugby and then sort of moved into football and became the England goalkeeper. He's a very talented chap I mean he started off playing the cello before he started playing rugby and then sort of moved into football and became the England

goalkeeper he's a very talented very very bright man and that's also kind of like sort of true for most of the celebs the you know

whether it's the Pussycat Dolls in Eternal or the radio presenters all of them none of them were well Ross

I mean were kind of you've been a fool there you've mentioned the radio presenters you're on, you want to come on series three beckons you I reckon you'll walk the bridge as well I think you'd be very good but having said that, it's like everything isn't it

when you're up in the gantry looking down it's a lot easier than when you're actually on the bridge gosh, can you just say that again when you're actually on the bridge. Gosh, can you just say that again? That's very sexy. When you're on the bridge. And also, I'll say this about bridge, particularly the daytime episodes,

because the celebrities are raising money for charity. But there's a real poignant moment in one of the episodes where it's a family and the two... I've got to be careful because I want to say... But the other family members fall away and this mum brings home the bacon and i look into her eyes when she makes that money and you know it's not a massive amount compared to other game shows but it was life changing for them and and i think it it really brought it home to me just how important things

like it may be like entertainment but it's made a massive different to that particular family particularly because of the economic situation many of us find ourselves in there yeah you did make quite a pivot though didn't you what was it like to suddenly decide or what i think i suppose i really mean what was the reaction to you deciding to make some pretty hard-hitting documentary shows again Again, it came by fluke. I was asked to stand at the last minute on a documentary. I was under contract to ITV after leaving the BBC. I was doing drama.

Somebody fell out at the last moment. They knew that parts of my family have a military background and they wanted me to go out and make a documentary about America's fascination with firearms. You can still see it on on on youtube um it's called fatal or lethal attraction in the process of making it i met a guy who'd been shot 26 times and i went nobody's been shot 26 times and lives until i met bloodhound and he lifted his top up promptly showed me how he'd been cranked open twice he'd'd taken six 9mms to his chest. While he was on the ground, they'd pulled the trigger under his chin.

He'd gone up, taken the end of his tongue off, exited by his left nostril, re-entered just above his brow, and it was taken out at the top of his skull. So it skimmed. Like, bullets often take the path of least resistance around helmets, and it'd done the same thing with his skull. And he was a fascinating man because he had, had he been born 15 blocks in a different area,

or in that area, but 15 blocks away, he probably would have been a school teacher or he would have been a police officer, or he would have been whatever he may have been, but he wouldn't have been a gangster. And albeit the fact that he was a hero in his local location, I could tell he was desperate to get out. I could tell that he didn't have what we were seeing on MTV in those days,

which is like, you know, a pneumatic blonde and a low-riding car. He was scared. He was living in poverty. He had a very lovely wife, but with two children on either of either hips and a blocked toilet. And I thought the image that I'm being presented on and in videos in those days was one of glamour and it's, you know, it's, you know,

get rich quick or die young trying type stuff. And the reality was poverty and fear and no options. And so I just wanted to make a documentary about it. And that's how I started off making gang documentaries. And then it progressed into other stuff. There's a lovely moment at the beginning of one of your documentaries about diving for shipwrecks where you meet your mum to have a bit of a chat about your family.

And I really felt for her, Ross, because she says, you say something about you know you don't have to worry about me doing this because she says you know diving down that deep is a bit dangerous and she just says I've had to worry about you since the moment you were born and you know you have deliberately headed off into into danger so many times I mean are there ever moments when you've simply thought this just this't worth it? I really may be jeopardising way too much to bring back the story. I think it became, Afghan for me became addictive. And it was in a certain part of my life

where I had no responsibilities whatsoever unto myself. And I didn't really give much for monkeys about myself at the time. So, yeah, that was, I mean, going back and forth on that regular, frequent basis. It got to the point that the Army, Navy was so happy for me to go out there. And they knew that I knew that I wasn't going to get in the way and mess things up for them or be stupid out on the ground. That I would just fly. I just live not far from where we are now and i'd i'd get in a taxi and i'd just go straight to bryson norton i'd have

my bag already packed by the door my boots my body on my helmet and with once i remember i was having i was having a pint of beer in a pub on albert bridge for a bit ridge at nine o'clock one evening and the next nine o'clock i was in a full-on firefight out of a place called Musakala and bullets whizzing past my head and going what am I doing here but I used to I became addicted to it and I love the camaraderie I love the the friend it's so different from acting you know acting is a very big big big thing there's lots of cameramen there's lots of people there's makeup and sound and costume. This is just me and a cameraman. Did you ever think you should just join the army?

Do you know what? I don't think I'd be very good at being told what to do. You surprised me. I think I was watching an episode of, I think it was Extreme World, correct me if I'm wrong, and it was only a couple of years ago. You were in Afghanistan and you go to a prison which is actually housing quite a lot of former

Taliban members. Yeah, Polisharki prison. That's right, yeah, and what's so chilling about it is that what you predict or what some of the contributors predict has emphatically come to pass and they were saying, you asked somebody what happens if the Americans leave and you were told, absolutely

the Taliban will take over. Totally, and we were continuously told that. And we continually tried to put it in the film. It became a bit... The famous... Well, I was told this when I first went out in 2006, stroke seven, was, you know, you have the watches, we have the time. And it's like any invading army.

You know, it's a four-to-one ratio, at least, as we're seeing in Ukraine presently, is that, you know know it will take four invaders to take one person who's fighting on his home soil and that was always going to be the issue unless you know the bank the money would eventually run out or the political will would run out or both would run out and public sympathy certainly ran out what do you do with that sense of futility then? Look, wars are generally pretty futile. I think history tells us that. Some are, some are just, obviously,

if you go back in history further enough, far enough. But look, there's often a lot of money involved. People make money. People make money out of wars. I saw a lot of money being made by by certain companies um and i saw arms manufacturers and yeah just everything from what i'm thinking about the ppe thing that's just happened recently the same thing happens during a war it's everything it's everything from socks food the infrastructure yeah hesco the thing that that we use the building blocks the lego

that you could make by filling bags with sand. Anything, everything had to get there. Yeah. You know, just think about the cost to the environment a wall creates. So they're costly things, but people make money out of them. This is Off Air with Jane and Fi, and our big guest today, Ross Kemp, who's turned his skills to hosting light entertainment on a Saturday night. He's got a new game show. He's now doing the celebrity version on BBC One of Bridge of Lies.

Is there anything this man can't do? Here's what he's up to next. I've done a second series of shipwrecked treasure hunters, Deeper and Further, apparently. Well, you did it. Is it Deeper and Further? Yeah, it is. We travel further and we dive deeper. It is factually correct. It had to be because they put that on the title before we actually did it. Is it deeper and further? Yeah, it is. We travel further and we dive deeper, so it is factually correct. It had to be,

because they put that on the title before we actually made it. Yeah, so diving, not only in the UK, but on Normandy, that was quite emotional, going to the graveyard at Omaha Beach. And, you know, I think there's a moment in it where I got quite emotional,

where the Marine, the American Marine who runs the cemetery now, and he gives me some sand from the beach and you wipe it across. You know that famous scene from Saving Private Ryan, those white marble crosses? You can't see the names because they're just carved into the marble. But as soon as you put sand across it, the name comes alive. And it's like shaking hands with that person all of a

sudden and he chose specifically a certain gentleman who had been in the u.s marine corps no marina all the american marines were fighting in the pacific at the time of d-day um so they're all army uh and navy and air force u.s and obviously british forces and french forces but uh this this guy had been in the marines um retired when the second world war came along volunteered himself got into the infantry as an officer and he was killed two days into into normandy and just outside of khan and i and i think it's for me you know one thing i will try to impress upon my kids is that there are many sacrifices that have been made over over time for us to have the world and the life that we live even though we criticize it continuously but it could

be a damn damn worse place than it actually is and and it if it wasn't for some of the sacrifices that have been made is there anything any amount of money on earth that could lure you back to doing a BBC popular East End set? I honestly say this, and it's not me playing games or being funny. I just think you can never say never. I'm a freelancer. Who knows? My days of running across open fields and getting rounds fired at me are probably diminishing rapidly.

I'm just thinking, don't you want to round off the time sitting in the queen vick nursing a who knows who knows do you know um that's not an easy gig necessarily you know you're not saying it is you've got to get yourself there you've got to get yourself back there's no chauffeur um what's the cool times change every day so you've i mean i used to drive from clapham up to l street nearly day, like six days or five days a week. And judging the track, you've got to be there every 11 Monday, you've got to be there half four in the morning the next day, and

all that, and then you've got to learn all those lines. You'd be absolutely kiboshed by the ULEs at the moment. Do you know what I used to do? I used to sleep in my dressing room, and I used to get serious security guards used to come wait until about four o'clock when I was in my deepest sleep, they'd come and wake me up and say, you shouldn't be in here. You broke the rules.

Final question from me, and I'm sure Jane has a finale, finale too. I want to know about David James and Cats. Oh, okay, we'll save that one up. Oh gosh, well, our questions couldn't be more different. A lot of the stuff that you make, Ross, I hope you don't mind me saying this, it's blokey. I feel it's, you know, it is quite a kind of masculine

television. But not represented by the demographic. Okay. No, no, fair enough. Okay, let's hear about that. Who watches your stuff? Well, the demographic split male and female, it's only about 2% more male. There you go. Yeah. No, I was just going to ask whether or not you would ever consider making some documentaries about the really appalling misogyny that's out there at the moment. I'd quite like to see you in conversation

with an Andrew Tate. Would it be applicable for a man to do that? Yeah, I think it... I think she's absolutely spot on. I think it's that conversation between a decent, right-minded man and a toxic man that we're not hearing

actually. I think you hear a lot of women, rightly rightly you know being upset and angry i'd love to and it just pings off them fascinates me the reason i always say that jokingly i said the reason i i fell into sort of documentary making it is because my dad was a police officer my mom was a hairdresser so i can ask you some pretty difficult questions then then wonder where you're actually going on your holidays this year? But that kind of soft and hard touch, I think I possess naturally from my parents.

And I'm not sure which one was which sometimes. They both had the capacity to be both things. But I think that's something that I've utilised. And also, three years of training as an actor does help you when you're engaged, you know, you're a journalist, when you're engaging with people know, you're a journalist, when you're engaging with people who are sometimes not feeling themselves

or have had an immediate moment of grief or whatever it may be, or are under the influence of narcotics and carrying an automatic weapon that they don't know how to use properly. Whatever it may be, I think you draw on what you are and who you are to get what you need from that particular situation to make your film work

your story stand up Fia's absolutely right, we want to see Roskamp on toxic masculinity I genuinely would love that you think it would be a thing of the past and also there are people out there that are encouraging it, as we know if one person at the moment is being held in custody

in a different country, I know you know who I'm talking about so I was absolutely shocked when someone explained to me that it's out there. And that blatant? Because, to be honest, I've generally gotten better with female bosses than I have with male bosses, for whatever reason. That's not always the case, but in general, I have.

Some men find that difficult to be told what to do by a woman. I've never had a problem with it, as long as were telling me what something that i believe was the right thing or the correct thing to do yeah well we jane and i would uh love to watch that series and i hope at some stage it gets commissioned maybe a final um hopefully at peak time never mind about the cats no it all seems just ridiculous and trivial no no, but it was surprising. It was amazing. I mean, Russian Blue. How does he know that a Russian Blue is a type of cat? He does, though.

TV tough guy turned light ent game show host. It's Ross Kemp and a celebrity edition of Bridge of Lies starts this Saturday on BBC One at five past six. If we get the invitation to go on the next celebrity Bridge of Lies, I think that we should just embrace that, Jane. Oh, yes, I think I'd give that a go. Yeah, I think because it's quite simple to understand how to do it, whereas the pointless thing we're just never going to get.

And I don't really understand the chase. Do you? Well, no, I don't understand the chase. I know loads of people love it, but I can't know. Well, I'm never at home, as you know. I'm far too busy working or thinking. Right, to email Corner. And what have we got from South Africa? From South Africa, we've got greetings.

And this one comes from Sally, who says, your mention of the Big Five with Michaela Strachan reminded me of a story from some years ago. Our Italian friend Claudia, maybe Claudia, was working as a tour guide on a whale-watching boat out of Mossel Bay. One day she had a party of young Italians to entertain for the morning. Important background info needs to be inserted here. There had just been several high-profile mafia murders in Italy.

Once the group was safely on board, Claudia Claudia went over to chat to them. Ciao, she said. Do you know the Big Five? The Italians all blanched and backed away as fast as they could, waving their hands in front of their faces saying, no, no, we just got here, we don't know anyone. Claudia Claudia had to retire to the cabin and guffaw into a seat cushion.

It's so easy to confuse people, isn't it, when you travel? And Dee is also in Cape Town. She's in Constantia in Cape Town. I think it was on yesterday's podcast that you mentioned having quite a few listeners in the US and also Australia. But I think you'd be amazed to know that you also have people listening in South Africa too. I'm waiting for the power to come on shortly

so I can work my coffee machine. First world problem for sure, says Dee. South Africans are pretty resilient and as Michaela said, many have generators and solar power and we have an inverter and battery which gives us silent backup power to run Wi-Fi, TV, a few important lights, the freezer and the fridge, but not the coffee machine. We've got to plan our days carefully as a result of the load shedding. That is how life in Africa rolls, says Dee. Yes, I think it has gone largely unnoticed, the constant rolling power cuts in South Africa.

I don't think we notice very much going on outside of the UK at the moment, Jane. That's probably true, actually. Yeah, it gives me another opportunity to insert a Prince Harry spare reference. Well, no, we need to build this up because this is now an essential part of the podcast. This is where Jane tells us something that has come out of the book that she thinks is interesting

that hasn't been glorified or picked over by the ravens of the press. Well, I haven't really got anything really new to say, except that he does have, he is genuine, he appears to feel an affinity with Africa. And he does absolutely love Botswana. Botswana was the place that he just took successive girlfriends to because he just absolutely loved the place.

But what I said on the radio show, which I repeat again here, just that if you haven't read the book, just reserve judgment on it unless you yourself have served in the military, in which case you might already know what it's like to go on a tour of duty in Afghanistan. It's interesting that those we're talking this claim that Harry had so-called boasted about his I hate to use the expression, but his kills in Afghanistan. It isn't, he's not boasting, actually. And because I don't know anything about military service, I thought it was quite interesting to read his account of a tour of duty in Afghanistan. So what I'd be very interested to know, if anybody's listening who is currently in the armed forces, is if there is actually some kind of code that is preventing other veterans from detailing their experiences in the way that Harry has.

Because some of the stuff that you've mentioned, what he actually saw in Afghanistan, I haven't heard referred to, I haven't seen it written about, I haven't read a thoughtful first-person experience. I've not come across that kind of stuff. I've seen it in fiction, but I've not heard it as a first-person experience. So maybe, I mean, whether it's a written code or an unwritten code, I don't know. There is just some, he does a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

He does two, of course, but he had to evacuate early from the first one because the media found out about it. And he was a forward air controller, which is an expression that I didn't understand. And he explains in some detail it basically is about guiding. I mean, this is a really simplified explanation. It's about guiding military aircraft through the night and through their shifts during the day,

making sure they're in the right place, using the right ammunition to target the right people. It sounded pretty stressful. And I think you really needed to know your onions to be able to do it effectively. And I just think there was another horrible incident where he's on patrol and a group of local Afghans come up the hill towards him with a wheelbarrow and a horribly injured young boy. And it is true, the boy is horribly injured, but he's actually been injured by the Taliban

as a way of trapping this patrol because they knew that he would be helped by the medics. And, you know, it's grim. And throw what you like at Prince Harry, but what you can't say is that he hasn't served in the military and seen some really awful things. Yeah. If you do have experience with the armed forces, though, do you get in touch? I'd like to know a bit more about it.

My dad was in the army, Jane, and served, you know, on active service on tours all around the world, and he never, ever, ever talked about it. Didn't say a word. No. So you don't actually know what he did? No. No.

And, you know, it just wasn't a go-to conversation, actually, ever. So I'm doubly interested by it now because I can't ask him now. No, and that's the awful thing. Yes, yep. So, look, janeofyattimes.radio

I was going to give out the text but there's no point. We're not live on air, are we? No thing. Yes, yep. So, look, janeofyattimes.radio. I was going to give out the text, but there's no point. We're not live on air, are we? No, this isn't live. No, it's not live. No, nobody knows what this is. And that's about it from us. Is that it from us? Have we got anything else to add?

Pretty much, no. Our very best wishes to Brian and Barbara over the weekend. May their gentle and innocent tussles continue. What age do you think those tussles aren't innocent? I'm just not going to answer that. I'm not a cat specialist. Unlike former England and Liverpool goalie David James. As we learnt today.

Yeah, absolutely. Who knew? I think he might have been called the cat. Oh, no, that was someone else. No, that was another goalkeeper. Was it Peter Benetti? God, I'm so old. I honestly don't know. I think he was called... He was a Chelsea goalkeeper. Was it Peter Bonetti? God, I'm so old. I honestly don't know.

I think he was called, he was a Chelsea goalkeeper. I think he might have been called Peter the Cat Bonetti. And was he called Peter the Cat because he liked cats or because he could affect a cat-like stance? I think it was very much the latter. Although it was slightly surprising to me that cats are associated with athleticism when, you know, beyond the age of 18 months,

all they do is sleep. Anyway, there you go. But when they're kittens, boy, they can move. If you've ever tried to catch two cats in the dark, you know, because you're slightly concerned that actually the benevolent large greyhound might not be quite so benevolent. In the small hours of the morning.

Yes, I can assure you they move at speed. Right, more of this sort of nonsense uh coming your way next week but have a reasonable couple of days and we'll be back on monday with more off air 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.