Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Beware the Breton jumper - With Nick Grimshaw

Episode Date: October 26, 2022

Jane and Fi discuss the risks of horizontal stripes, and Nick Grimshaw talks about his new memoir, 'Soft Lad'.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Producer: Kate LeeTimes Radio Producer: Rosie CutlerPodcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to Off Air with me, Jane Garvey. And me, Fee Glover. And we are fresh from our brand new Times Radio show, but we just cannot be contained by two hours of live broadcasting. So we've kept the microphones on, grabbed a cuppa, and are ready to say what we really think. Unencumbered and Off Air. Hello and welcome to Off Air with you, Fee Glover and me, Jane Garvey. Oh that's thrown me completely.

No it's good. That worked well. That sounded a little bit like the beginning of The One Show, which if I hurry, I'll get home to catch. No, we don't have to sit on each other's knees, do we? It's still going, The One Show. I do occasionally see it. And, well, because I'm waiting for, you know,

I'm just about to cross over to the other side, Channel 4 News, and sometimes you get a little bit of a glimpse of the one show so far. But Alex Jones, she's still good, and she's there with a whole cross-section of televisual humanity these days. You never know who she's going to be on with. She's got 27 gears, and all of them are smooth. She's very polite as well to everybody, because my eyes would just go boss-eyed with incredulity sometimes.

Right, anyway, back to our show how are you yes all right wednesday's always i think it's hump day for a reason isn't it everybody feels a little bit better when wednesday's over yeah we've broken the back of the week and we always have wellness wednesday now on our show which is just turning into a hilarious feature where we just don't really get anywhere with anything well um so the first week there was the lady espousing the idea that you should have your tea at five o'clock and no later. What was week two? Can't remember. No, I can't. It can't have anything to do with improving your memory. At least I hope

it wasn't. Today, it was mushroom coffee, which is actually available in any number of good high street stores, probably some ropey high street stores and i did try to drink a relatively large amount of the mug but there was a sort of skin forming on the top by the time i'd yeah by the time we got to about five past three it was not at its peak i know but the woman who was telling us about it she looked amazing that's the thing isn't it so you're probably bathing in it right now. And actually, when I mentioned mushroom coffee, I did, I was inundated. Oh, it was cold water swimming last week.

Oh, that's right. We know we quite liked him, didn't we? We thought he was good. I was inundated. In other words, I had two DMs from people saying, no, don't knock it, actually. It is a really good thing. And that fungi is the future. So I fungi is the future. So I might take the mushroom coffee home with me and give it another whirl.

OK, we'll see if you start your Thursday with a big, big mug of mushroom coffee and let me know how you get on. OK, it was slightly unfortunate that the first sip you took had grit in it. So you couldn't continue. There's a little tickle in the back of my throat. I couldn't actually continue with the item.

I thought I was going to have my first Times Radio on-air coughing fit, although they have been, let's face it. I mean, everybody has them wherever they go. I mean, there's a lot of stuff in the papers today, inevitably, about Rishi Sunak, who is Britain's prime minister. I don't expect listeners outside the United Kingdom to be gripped by this. But nevertheless, it's big news for us here.

And the thing about Rishi Sunak is he's following Liz Truss, who I always thought she had her knockers, but she looked very smart. She always looked smart, did Liz. She wore a lot of sort of close fitting dresses and she's she always looked like she was, well, playing the part of a prime minister, frankly. And before that we had Mr Boris Johnson, who was not so high in my estimation, sartorially, because he always looked like he had just sort of rolled out of wherever he'd spent the night and someone had helped him into a jacket and trousers. But it never really, he didn't carry it off for me. Whereas Mr Sunak, Anna Murphy in The Times today is saying that

he's the sharpest dresser we've ever had at 10 Downing Street. Now, do you think that that says something very good about him or something not so good about him? You mean that a man shouldn't care too much about how he looks? Yes. You see, I would say that if we're going to judge a female politician by her appearance, we must do the same for a man. And I mean, I'm enjoying the fact that when I next see Britain's Prime Minister in a lineup of global leaders he won't look like a sack of spuds yeah so I agree that you should be presentable for whatever job it is that you're undertaking and if you're on a global stage and you're always going to be photographed you should have a bit of a think about that yeah you should um but i'm i don't know whether i don't know whether i like the really intense amount of attention being spent

on how rishi sunak looks well and how tall he is yeah and uh you know what he does with his hair and how much that might cost or that I find that actually a bit too distracting already Do you? I think it's, I don't know Anna talks about how he's doing his best to look statesman-like at 5'6", and you're right we probably shouldn't make too much of this I mean, he's certainly a lot taller than either of us but Anna says, Sunak's approach is the fashion crowd's favourite

cropped trousers these are the truths that just end before your shoes start, leaving a gap of... An ankle. A couple of centimetres. Yeah. And this is a trick that apparently makes your legs look longer. Yes, you're doing it now.

Winston Churchill was the same height as Sunak. And did he expose his ankles? He didn't, no. But we do know that he would regularly give briefings naked in the bath, Winston Churchill. So I'm not necessarily sure that he's an example that we should all follow in that respect. Although I don't want emails from big fans of Winston Churchill, who I know did many good things and some not so good. Do you think that Rishi Sunak might start dressing down a bit?

Because the problem with the level at which he's dressing is that he's wearing very identifiable fashion items that you can immediately find on the internet. I never know how people do that. Know the exact price of his Prada loafers or his Hermes suit or whatever. Well I think you just take a photograph

and you put it into the image search. For fashion isn't there? Yeah. So he's going to get flack if he continues and flack if he doesn't. If he turns up in a 30-quid suit from Zara, then there'll be a story about that now as well. And I think it is a little bit distracting. I'm totally with you on needing to look right for the part.

All hail to him for that. But I just think there's quite a lot on at the moment, Jane. I'd like him to get a crack on with that. Well, I would suggest that he goes to Blue Harbour at Marks and Spencer's and seeks out some of their sensible tops. And I think that would be sending a message. All the right sort of messages will be received

if I see him in a Blue Harbour striped, horizontal striped polo shirt. Like a Breton jumper Breton jumper's dodgy I think There's a hint of Hello Sailor about them which doesn't always, I mean Ted Heath could have carried it off but I'm not so sure about it And also that just invites another article about how

the horizontal stripe does no favours for the vertically challenged Thanks to the three or four people who absolutely showered me with advice on how to deal with my cat Have you been inundated? Totally inundated. People slid into my DMs and elsewhere to tell me that what I needed to do to discipline my rescue cat, Tabby Dora, is to spray her with water. I've tried it.

It doesn't work. Our big guest today was Nick Grimshaw, who used to be the host of the Radio 1 Breakfast Show, but is also a man about town. Back in the day, he was all over Channel 4 as part of their intense youth venture in the 1990s. And he's also got the most incredible Celebrity Friends address book. He was always falling out of Kate Moss's house

and into Sadie's house and lighting a scented candle with Lily Allen. It was just an extraordinary time for him. And he's written a little book about it, which has got a lovely title, hasn't it? Yeah, it's called Soft Lad. And actually, it's a very engaging memoir, this. And slightly unusually for recent memoirs that I've read, it's a relatively... He had a happy childhood.

He had that rare thing, a kind, loving, funny family who really nurtured his eccentricities. And I really liked that about the book. And I like it about him. But he did tell us right at the start of our conversation that he wasn't sure he'd be able to write the book. So the first chapter, which he sent to the publisher, was all about how he wasn't sure he'd be able to complete it. So I think you asked very cleverly how that went down with the publishers. you'd be able to complete it. So I think you asked very cleverly how that went down with the publishers.

They didn't love it at first. No. Well, do you know what? I have a terrible attention span and I had this sort of momentous task to do of sitting and writing a book. And when I sat down to do it, some days it just sort of flew out of me

and it was really great. And I was like, great. And then they were like, okay, now we just need like 65 000 more words and i was like oh for god's sake and then sometimes you just couldn't do it and you'd sit and like weeks had passed and i like you know i was going mad thinking that i can't do it i've got nothing to say i can't write at all like i can't do it and then one night at like half nine, I was like, you know, just to get that this just to get right in, let me write exactly how I feel right now. And how I felt that moment was I hate this book. And it's do my head in. And everyone's gonna hate

it. And it's gonna be rubbish. It's a great sell. It's a great opener. But I thought, let me just write that just to like, get it off my. And then actually it sort of cleared some sort of blockage. In a way, as a radio presenter, you protect yourself from all of that, don't you? Because you can choose when the microphone goes on exactly how much of yourself you want to put out there. And often the joy of it is that you can put a shinier, happier, nicer version of yourself on air. So when you sat down to write the book did you

deliberately have to make that gear change did you have a sense of how much you were going to tell people not not really like i love that feeling on a saturday or sunday when you get the supplements and you can sort of flick through and like read all different things like that's i that's my optimum weekend feeling of just flicking through bits so i wanted to make a book that was like that that had sort of snapshots of stories of my life and i wanted to be honest so i definitely wanted to not just portray like it's hilarious interviewing pop stars and parties are fun like i wanted to talk about growing up and how important my family were and how they shaped me and um i guess it's like all different stories.

I guess the common thread's like transitions. It's sort of me figuring out who I was and figuring out my sexuality. And then the transition from going from like suburbia to the city, from the north to the south. But I didn't want it to be all, everything's perfect. Tell us a little bit about your family, because it's intriguing. You're much younger than your siblings aren't you yeah so I technically I'm not an only child because I have a older brother

and older sister but they're 11 and 13 years older than me so I sort of grew up feeling like an only child because when I was like four they were like 15 and 17 or 15 and 18 so they were like they're not like they're such adults to you when you're five so I never like played with them so I did grow up feeling like an only child but I never felt lonely or anything they always included me and I was expected to always be able to talk to adults and hang out with their friends or hang out mum and dad's friends but there's a lot about my family and how they shaped me and i'd never really thought about that until i had to sit and write about it that would shape you in an extraordinary way yeah because

you're just privy to so much adult life that you wouldn't ordinarily have been privy to yeah and like the music and stuff you know like my dad would be like on the school run would be like frank sinatra and ella fitzgerald so i'd be like going to school singing those songs but it does sound like a very lovely childhood actually a really happy family and your dad's job will you just tell us about your dad's job yeah so my dad so my dad um he was born in 1941 and he was born my my gran raised him as like a single mom in the in the 40s and 50s and i think he got a job when he was like 14 or something he was like that's it so he sort of became like the man of the house super young and and he was a proper grafter and really really

worked hard and always had a job and was obsessed with you know having a work ethic and us having a work ethic and um yeah he worked in sales for like frozen food for like nestle and they looked after like fab 80s and 90s brands like lean cuisine and like finders crispy pancakes and please it's the french bread pizza french bread pizza which i thought was like i thought it was like so chic that we were having like a pizza i bet you didn't have that at home did you we did have it well we did we had quite a lot of finders was was the advertising legend success on a plate for you was that oh was that finders i don't remember but we used to we basically grew up on exclusively frozen Finder's food. My brother had more of it because my brother was born in the 70s

and he thinks the reason he's bald is because he exclusively ate frozen food. And he's like really angry at my mum and dad. But yeah, my dad used to get all like knock-off Finder's stuff. So I write all in the book about all the stuff that we used to have like for our tea. We'd have like, you know, like a faulty Kit Kat. Or maybe, yeah, you know, and it's not got the wafer in. Oh yeah, the solid chopper. Or a solid one.

There was always a rumour. But they existed. Yeah, they did exist. Yeah, yeah, loads of them in the 80s. So into this lovely, warm, close family is uh little nick who's realizing that maybe he doesn't have the same reaction to the calendars that other parents are buying their young boys every christmas yeah uh talk us through that element of realizing something about yourself yeah so i i remember it uh mid 90s probably when i was like 11 so like yeah like

1995 was like everything felt very laddy and the culture was very like alpha laddy and i didn't feel like a lad and it felt like there was um all these like an array of magazines like nuts and zoo and fhm and everyone was obsessed at school even when we were like 11 in first year secondary school of what calendar are you gonna get what are you gonna have a calendar and I like could never I always used to have to be like oh my god I've got to get a calendar of a lady I just had no sexual desire whatsoever so I'd sort of pick a lady that I thought would disguise the fact that he didn't fancy ladies. Just explain who you did pick. So I went for Kylie. Right.

Because I thought, she's heterosexual. She's very for the straights. And I didn't realise that Kylie was actually really camp. And anyone that I loved, I didn't realise was camp. Like, I loved Tina Turner. And I thought Tina Turner was like a good cover for a gay. And also Jerry Halliwell and Kylie. It's like the gayest people ever.

Or is that Madonna? She's quite good. Yeah. Actually, Madonna played quite an interesting part, though, didn't she? She did. In coming out for you. There are a couple of passages, Nick, in the book where you talk about essentially your terrible guilt that your religious upbringing made you feel about who you are.

And I mean, they're I mean they're serious passages aren't they yeah it was a serious thing for you can you tell us a bit more about that yeah so we we grew up like Roman Catholic and I went to two Roman Catholic schools and we do like you know church every weekend as a family and then I'd never seen like gays just having a bit of a laugh or a bit of fun or living a normal life but I remember watching a snippet of In Bed With Madonna and seeing Madonna be with gay men and being like wow she's like the most famous person in the world and she loves these gay people so I remember seeing that and it was the first time that I saw gay men having a nice

time or just being human, just being represented really. How much of a difference do you think it would have made to you if the Radio 1 Breakfast Show in your teenage life had been presented by a fabulous, happy, sorted gay man? It would have made a massive difference. It would have made a huge difference. My family definitely weren't homophobic and my brother used to love going to like Canal Street and the gay village in Manchester because he loved going to the clubs there with his girlfriend and they loved house music.

And my brother, my dad, sorry, loved Elton and raved about Boy George. So I don't know, there was like bits of gay life, but they always felt like so, you know, like Boy George and Elton John were like aliens. They didn't feel like they could exist in normal life. So I think hearing someone talk about anything, and they happened to be gay,

would have made a big difference, I think, growing up. You did go, and I think it's very sweet of you, to the football with your dad. Yes. Despite not having, well, there were elements of it you enjoyed. The journey there, the journey back. Yeah. Flicking through a magazine,

which may or may not have featured David Beckham. Yes. I think he was, I think I can remember the image that also played a major part in your awakening. He's in, perhaps it played a part in my awakening. He's sitting in a bath. Yeah. And he's just perhaps he played a part in my awakening where he was he's sitting in a bath yeah and he's just

pulling his hair yeah because it was such a big thing in our house football and um I still love the sound of it

like I still love having it on and if football's on on the weekend I love if I'm having a roast having the sound of like

I don't know whoever's playing United and Tottenham Hotspur I roast having the sound of like I don't know whoever's playing United and Tottenham Hotspur I love like the sound of football being on and I love the feel of it and I love like I love that people love it so I'm

happy for people to love it but I personally like find it really boring and there's just something really nostalgic about it it was such a big thing in our house so I used to go with my dad and my brother and my brother would go and sit in the Stretford end, which my dad would say was for yobbs and not proper football fans.

So we'd sit with the proper football fans who even if United won, my dad would be like, they didn't deserve it. He was like, I like sports. Whereas my brother was like, let's have a fight. So I'd go and I'd really try and every time I'd go I'd be like maybe I'll like it this week I'm going to really concentrate

but I don't think anything should be 90 minutes it's too long how long was your breakfast show? it was so long I'd get bored halfway through and then I wrote about in the book me trying to get into football. And I used to love magazines and I still love magazines.

And one week I was like, let me get a football magazine and I'll flick through it and I'll like, I'll find, I'll figure it out. Because it was all anyone talked about at school. And I flicked through and I saw this image that really struck me and I'd never seen anything like it. And I was young, so I didn't realise it was a sexual awakening. I was so young that I just was mystified by it.

It was like looking at a nice sunset or something, or like, wow, look at that horse. Or like, wow, look at its mane. And it was a picture of David Beckham in a bath, and it was like black and white, and it was just like him after he'd played football. i remember taking it to my mum and being like wow look at this like how amazing is this like it's beautiful and my mum being like yeah it is and i was like please can i put up my wall because my dad was like very particular about what we had on our walls and like you know dads were mad for like sellotape on wallpaper yeah big sin so my mum was like going ashidad

and i went out and found him and he was like you know doing a conifer like dads do or doing a conifer of a weekend up a ladder with a hedge trimmer man work man work and i was like that was a euphemism there doing a conifer and i was like please can i put this up and his only concern was not using sellotape he was like yeah but use blu-tack and i remember like getting it and pulling it out and and putting it on my wall and like that was a massive moment of realization where i was like i do like something football-y, but the reason I like it is because it's David Beckham. And David Beckham's face was like, man.

You know, it was like the perfect representation of a man. And then I was like, well, maybe I fancy man. We're in conversation with Nick Grimshaw. He's written his autobiography. It's called Soft Lad, and it tells us more about the amazing journey he's made from growing up in Oldham, eating Kit Kats to popping round to Kate Moss's place. Well, it was a mad time, really. Like when I first went to London, my family were, you know,

we didn't know anyone that had like gone to London or anyone that had worked in media or a creative industry. And they thought I was mad and I didn't really know what the job was. My mum and dad didn't know what MTV was. And I was there to be an intern in the International Creative Department. And they were like, what's that? And I was like, I actually don't know. So I went to London on a whim, because I really was precise about wanting to host the Radio on Breakfast show. And I just knew I needed to get to London. It's like my first step. So when I got there, I was working at MTV. I didn't know anyone in London.

I knew two people who were living in London, but they were in Mexico. And they let me live in their flat. And the deal was you can live in our flat for free if you flyer for our club and you do the door at our club. So I'd work at MTV like Monday to Friday. can live in our flat for free if you fly her for our club and you do the door at our club so i'd work at mtv like monday to friday and then on a friday night i'd like go fly her in and i'd do the door at their club and stuff and then like go into the club and make sure people got in and um i don't

know it was just a funny time i don't know if it's because i don't know what was in the air but one by one everyone sort of had like a mission i don't know if was in the air, but one by one, everyone sort of had like a mission. I don't know if it's because I attracted outsiders because I was one or maybe because I was on my own. I attracted other people who were on their own with a little mission. But everyone sort of ended up having a dream and not in an annoying way of like, let's hang out and fulfill our dreams. Like no one talks about careers. You know, like one by one, one of my friends became like a model or my friend became like a fashion designer.

And then we'd met Amy Winehouse from just bumbling around Camden. Like before she brought out rehab, you know, she wasn't like the famous Amy Winehouse. And then all of a sudden she got really famous. And then all of a sudden I met this guy, Jack, and his backing singer was Adele. And now Adele's Adele Adele. of a sudden she got really famous and then all of a sudden i met this guy jack and he's back in single was adele and now adele's adele adele so it sort of all mad happened really honestly by accident and it was like it was a bit like the pub that we'd all go to was a bit like in cheers

like you could go at any time and the same people would be there and there'd be all sorts of people there and because i didn't know, that was like my meeting point. That was the only place that I knew to go. And I'd know that I'd meet people and bump into people. Yeah. I mean, lots of people speak about that kind of time in London, that creative. I don't know what it was. I mean, if you're struggling to find words for it, I certainly would. Yeah. But did you have a sense at that time that your life

was I don't know you you were part of something that was really defining a whole creative thing in the country did you feel that no not not at all not at all I didn't feel that at all and it's funny now I'm doing a book event with Makita Oliver, who I used to do Channel 4 with, T4 with. And it's funny now, like if we're out, people will be like, oh my God, like young people. They're like, I used to watch you guys on T4 and like read about you. And me and Makita never really thought that people ever watched it. And I think because we didn't have an Instagram,

we didn't overthink, you know, like we what are we doing we were like we'll just go to D4 do that and then we'll go to the pub and I don't know I don't know if it was the lack of social media that made us less conscious about what we looked like or what we were doing or documenting stuff we just sort of got on with it. Your mum and dad came along for the ride as well, which is one of the bits in the book that I enjoyed the most, where they would actually accompany you to showbiz events. On one occasion, Lady Gaga asked your dad for a bit of advice about her breasts.

Yes, she did. Yeah, I always like mixing people together and including all sorts of people. And I've liked that since I was a kid. And so anytime i'd get invited some at fab i'd be like oh my god my mom had loved this or my dad had loved this so they should come and when they come down to visit me in london when i started doing telly they still didn't get it because they they didn't have sky they had like four channels or maybe maybe they

had maybe they're channel five maybe they had five channels but they didn't know what E4 was or MTV at all. So when they'd come down to London, I'd say, like, come with me to E4 and come and see what we're doing. And they'd be like, oh, we don't want to go to that. We don't want to. And one day I dragged them in and I was interviewing Lady Gaga

and she'd just released Just Dance and it was when she was just the fame was like simmering and she was about to become you know the huge mega pop star she is and um we went to this like quite rubbish little tv studio in in West London and when we got there there was just like one dressing room and because I was with my mum and dad Gaga was like oh my god get mum and dad in here bring them in she's like i don't need the dressing room she's like i don't even wear any clothes so come in and she went to do a performance with with gaffer tape on her nipples and she found like you know the hilarity in the situation of

like two oaps from oldham and her like direct from some club in new york with gaffer tape on her nipples and she was really like, Daddy, called him Daddy. Yeah, it's a bit creepy. Really creepy. Daddy, are my nipples covered? And he was like, Yeah, you're all right, love.

But you know what? For the rest of time, he was like, she did the performance and obviously it was amazing. And he was like, Yeah, fair play. It was all right.

That's what he was like. Yeah, it's all right. But for the rest of time, he'd refer to her as me mate Gaga. So he'd call and be like hey me mate gaga's on jonathan ross tonight i tell you what it's a lesson in where your kids lives can take your own it's a long way from a faulty kick it is can we move on to the radio one breakfast yes i mean it's extraordinary nick that you were managing to do a very demanding job whilst you had this extraordinary social life. I mean, getting up at what, 3.30 in the morning?

No, no, no, never got there early. Like five. Five, okay. Five's fine. Even five. I mean, there must have been quite a few mornings where, I mean, how shall I put this? You might have still been over the limit.

Yes. You might have still been intoxicated. Yeah. This was my rule with going out and going to the radio. I thought it was fine to go on air with a hangover or still a bit, you know, woozy. If it was an event that the country had been part of. So like the Brit Awards.

I don't think I could do it and be like, I've been around my friend Fee's and got drunk. It's like not the same. So I think if it was part, if I'd been to an award show that was on the telly or there was, I don't know, Wimbledon was on and then we talked on the radio like we're going to a party after wimbledon with something i think it was fine because it sort of carried on the narrative for everyone to be part of so definitely after the brits not on purpose every year so i'm

not doing it this year and i think we did about three times in in six years. So 50-50, where we'd not gone to sleep and gone straight through. And it is quite fun till about 8am. And then everyone starts getting really tired. And you've got to still be on the radio. So all the people that came in, you were like, that's so funny. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, I don't like it now. Like there's people arriving in the office.

And they smell. You smell. Yeah. And it's smelly and they don't like it now. Like there's people arriving in the office. And they smell. You smell. Yeah, and it's smelly and they don't like it. But I will say my two producers thought they were being really smart one year, Matt and Fi. And they were like, we are going to go to, it was like four o'clock in the morning or maybe a bit earlier. Maybe it's two o'clock in the morning. And they went, we're going to leave now and we're going to go to Radio 1 and we're going to go to sleep and we're going to wake up at six and start the show. And I was like, okay, I'm going to stay.

So I stayed out. I get in. I go to start the show at six. No mat, no fee. They had decided to sleep on, unbeknown to me, sleep on different floors of the BBC. So they weren't there and then just slept through their alarms and woke up at like quarter to eight.

So I was on air hosting the radio show with like drunk friends and the former producer from the show before who had to look after this mess, car crash of a show, it was her first shift as a producer. So she had to take over and then they sort of came round on like the third floor at 8am and were like, oh my god. So it did happen once or twice. look actually incredibly well do i and i know you went on a wellness retreat with makita oliver who i have to say could be my first choice she's very zen is she now um no i think we're quite balanced i think balance is the key but

yeah we did go on a juice diet and we did flee. It wasn't for us. Yeah, you escaped. We escaped. Yeah, we fled. And I agree with Jane. I thought you were going to look much worse. Nick Grimshaw, and we enjoyed chatting to him. What I forgot to mention in the interview,

but I had noticed in the book, was that his mum, Elaine, has got three kidneys. Now, this might seem like a strange detail to cling to but it's one of those details that once read never forgotten you cannot i mean for example i know that amberlynn had three nipples i wish i didn't know but i do know and i cannot forget and she had the funny finger and she had the funny finger going on so we don't know how many kidneys amberlynn had the late amberlynn if any of her descendants want to contact us i love that you've added the late Anne Boleyn

in case anyone's thinking Anne Boleyn, is she an EastEnders? Is she? Is she? I'm a celebrity. I always think what brings me great joy from history is that Anne Boleyn who met a horrible end, lest we forget, at the hands of Henry VIII had the last laugh

because she was the mother of Elizabeth I. So, you know, in the end, who's laughing now, eh? Not you, Henry. What was I going to say? Oh, yeah, three kidneys. I looked it up. It's a detail in the book, though not in the interview. It's very, very rare to have three kidneys.

Very rare indeed. I wonder how you ever find out that you had three kidneys. If only we had asked either of those two questions to Mr Grimshaw when we were with him. We'll have to book him again. Do you know what? I might just text him and see what he can tell us. Please contact us if you have an unusual number of internal organs.

Please don't send us pictures. No, we don't want images. No, we don't at all. A couple of lovely emails and do keep them coming, as we say in the trade. Jane and Fi at times.radio. Alice says, hello, I love being able to listen to you throughout the week. Hearing Jane mention the

warm weather hit a chord with me. Well, with me too, Alice, but mine was F minor. For weeks I've wondered why no one has been mentioning the weather. I found it really unsettling. Surely reaching 20 degrees at the end of October is as newsworthy as topping 40 degrees in the summer. It is. That's my point. Do you think as a society we are oblivious to climate change in action? And that is a very good point, Alice. I take that. Was that the point that you were trying to make?

Yes, I keep I feel I wish I'd made it i wish alice was actually here now to um help me through life but i i'm not phrasing it as well as alice has done i think it's creepy and i don't understand as alice doesn't understand why more people aren't up in arms or at least just wanting it referenced and you do keep referring to the very hot Halloween, which Deborah has identified as being in 2014. And she says, we were on holiday in Litham St Anne's at the time. Not surprised you thought it was 10 or 15 years ago, though, as we've had enough news just in the past six weeks to last us a decade. That's very true, Deborah. It's made everything go quite hazy in the memory, hasn't it? Yeah, Litham St Anne's, that's where I went on my very first holiday ever as a small

child and very vivid memories of a donkey ride. Actually, the posher part of Lytham St Anne's, which is a place called Bisbom. I think it's pronounced Bisbom. Anyway, it's near Lytham St Anne's. It's a beautiful part of the Lancashire coast. Well worth a visit. Do you think if you were ever

ennobled, you'd become Dame Jane Garvey of Bisbom? I think that would be good. There was a time when that wasn't really a laughing matter, but now we can just chortle about it. It's not going to bloody happen, is it? There's been absolutely nothing. I don't know whether I'm going to get anything

in Liz Truss's resignation honours. It's a very small possibility. You would never, ever want to be ennobled as part of Liz Truss's resignation honours. I mean, you know, the postman's going to laugh everywhere you go. The drop down menus are going to refuse you. I don't think that's an honour that you want. Right. Well, we should also say that over the last couple of days, we've enjoyed exchanges with Mr. Ed Vasey, who has been sitting in, as we say in Radioland, for Mariella Frostrup.

who has been sitting in, as we say in Radioland, for Mariella Frostrup. And he's been delighting us in any number of ways, Ed Vasey, not least because of the number of ways in which he says the name Mariella Frostrup, which I'm beginning to think it might be deliberate. I don't know. Anyway, the bad news is that Ed is not around tomorrow, but in his place is an absolute professional. Libby Purvis is back on Times Radio tomorrow. Do you think that Ed Vasey knows that out here in the newsroom where all the production staff

sit and where we sit before we go into the studio, there are large television screens of what happens in the studio and today he knows about 10 minutes. Everybody, everyone stopped to watch him eat a pot of birch muesli yeah and no one looks good eating birch muesli um whatever the circumstances and uh it's very very difficult to eat but the expressions on his face were just beautiful i don't think it was from curiosity to slight revulsion to shall i continue let's just pack it. Some of the best TV I've seen this month. I might write about that in my so far not so award winning Radio Times column.

Yes, watch out Ed, you're on screen eating your muesli. Probably a little bit in this, isn't it? But actually, how does nobody look good eating? It doesn't matter who you are. And I speak as somebody who squirted a load of pesto juice all over a bright pink top and looks like a toddler. So I'm a fine one to talk. I didn't even know there wased a load of pesto juice all over a bright pink top and looks like a toddler. So I'm a fine one to talk.

I didn't even know there was such a thing as pesto juice. Well, there is in my this chicken pesto bap that I'm currently having for my lunch. I've become rather addicted. I'm already thinking about tomorrow's. You are having the same every day. Are you actually a bot? I think I might be a bot. Right. Thank you very much indeed for listening. You can keep the emails coming.

We appreciate every single one of them. It's janeandfeeattimes.radio. Goodbye. Nice pause there. All right. 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.