Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Britney Spears in the US presidential race

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

Fi's episode of The Weakest Link has finally landed - were you watching? Fear not, they're about to discuss it as well as Simon Le Bon, Puy lentils and naked ghosts. Plus, Jane speaks to film-maker Dan Reed about his new Channel 4 documentary 'I Am Andrew Tate'. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfi Assistant Producer: Eve Salusbury Times Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

VoiceOver describes what's happening on your iPhone screen. VoiceOver on. Settings. So you can navigate it just by listening. Books. Contacts. Calendar. Double tap to open. Breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. Welcome. Do sit down. It's a very beefy talk sport podcast or something being done in the next studio, isn't it?

All they're laughing. Bants. It's Bants. Man Bants. Bants all the way. We cannot dream of such things. I think we've had enough emails about Sue Barton, but thank you. Because I wondered whether I was just fantasising about the whole thing. But lots of people read Sue Barton. She was a nurse, you know. And some people, an amazing number of people,

then went on to have nursing careers on the strength of it. And then many of you didn't, decided in fact that reading about Sue Barton was quite enough nursing and you certainly didn't want to become a nurse. Yeah. But anyway, thank you very much. I love this book recommendation from a listener who says that she wants us to talk about this book,

Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt. It's about the relationship between an aquarium cleaner and a Pacific Coast octopus. I saw that. It's very atmospheric. Read the Pacific Northwest Coast. Well, I bet it is. I'm sure it is, but...

Is it just me? Well, have you watched The fantastic octopus teacher is it called the octopus teacher on netflix heard about it a really amazing documentary about the diver it's somewhere off the coast of south africa who makes friends with an octopus and i thought at the beginning i was a little bit cynical it was about whether or not I'd stick all the way through. It was unswitchoffable, deeply moving, and I won't eat another octopus or squid again either. Because the emotional intelligence, there was just something there.

There was something there, okay. And the kind of devotion that the octopus developed towards the diver was just really beautiful and spooky. And you also kind of think well of course we've just not ever seen that before have we because you haven't had the technology to film something like that

so I'd happily give that a go but I think actually we have chosen something different haven't we? I'm not quite sure on what criteria but thank you for that suggestion. I think you should just read that in your own time Jane.. No, actually, I'm sorry. I feel somewhat chastened and I will certainly look it up. Come back and let us know.

I've never eaten squid, really, or octopus. Have you not? Do you not like them? Knowingly, I don't think I've not drawn to it. Oh, okay. I think twice about a prawn. What happens when you're on your Shirley Valentine holidays? Well, I've got one of those coming up.

Isn't it lovely when the turn of the year and you suddenly get an invitation, something pops into your inbox. You can book a cheap flight. You can book a cheap flight. Well, not necessarily. And find yourself basking like a great big whale by the sea. But do you not have a little bit of fresh octopus?

I like to picture you at the end of the jetty being served by that handsome hirsute man. Which leg of the octopus would you like, madam? I'll have number six. You're speaking to someone who spent a long time yesterday afternoon making Nigella's vegan bolognese, which I think is on the menu at home tonight. And actually, in fairness, Nigella, she's worth it, isn't she?

In every way. Yeah, it can be a faff, but my goodness. Because vegan bolognese, you know, it doesn't always hit the spot, probably just me, but I really followed it doesn't always hit the spot. Probably just me. But I really followed everything that she suggested in the recipe. So is she using a minced corn? No, it was just lentils, but three different sort of lentils. Okay.

Green, red, and I never quite know how to say the other ones. P-U-I. Pui. Yeah. Okay, pui. And have you got a great big dollop of like a miso or an umami or something? Well, the old porcini mushrooms and then you pour over the hot water and leave them to steep. So they're doing the heavy lifting, aren't they?

I mean, I barely got a wink. I was up half the night doing that for this evening's dinner. Well, I hope you enjoy it. Thank you. I always think with bolognese, it's just, you can down quite a large mound of bolognese in about three twirls, can't you? You can, and yes, you're absolutely right to point to that, because it's a meal that can be quite faffy to make, but is

gone in an instant and not much discussed. Can you put a timer on it tonight? Because genuinely I'd be interested. I think you can probably do it in 90 seconds. I see the flow of conversation at our dinner table every evening. We're there for hours. Are you? No.

OK. Can I just start with a very funny one, and then will you do your porn one? Because you've, well, it's not porn, really. You've cropped up in somebody's dream. Thank you. Sorry. Press on. This one comes from Angela, who says, a bit delayed, catching up in the new year. Press on. This one comes from Angela, who says,

a bit delayed, catching up in the New Year, apologies. Nothing to apologise for. It might surprise you to know, Angela, but we don't know when you listen to the podcast. You don't have to apologise. We're not tracking you. Who do you think we are, the post office? Don't make a joke about that.

There's nothing funny there. Regarding the conversations about the weight of boobs, I remember the following, which took place make a joke about that. There's nothing funny there. Regarding the conversations about the weight of boobs, I remember the following which took place several years ago in Jersey, the Channel Islands, and thank you for pointing that out. It was, I think, reported in the national press. At this time, all fruit and vegetables were weighed

at the checkout counter. Following weekly supermarket visits in Jersey, people were becoming increasingly concerned about the price of the fruit and vegetables they'd bought. You're doing that very noisily. I'm so sorry. Yes, I am listening.

Yeah, yeah. Just do one of those TV shuffle papers where they don't make any noise at all. I haven't been on that course. And then do those things where they write lots of things. You do wonder what they're writing, don't you? They're not writing anything.

Back to the story. They were shown on their receipts as costing much more than advertised. This was reported to the supermarket manager and following a thorough investigation it was found that one of the ladies who was working at the checkout and was rather well endowed was mistakenly leaning over when putting the fruit and

vegetables on the scales. As a result her boobs were also being weighed at the same time. That's adding considerable weight to the fruit and vegetables and increasing the price. Still laughing about it now. And Angela, so are we. It shouldn't be that funny. But it is. Probably quite easily done.

Reign them in, everybody. Reign them in. Minimize a bra if you're working at a checkout, please. Yes. Yes, it is. Yes yes it's a good idea and also by the way i did not mean in any way to be um dismissive of the post office thing because that's just bloody awful and to people listening outside the uk this has been an unfolding saga over the course of a couple of decades actually hasn't it but just to very briefly explain it it's it's now being widely regarded as the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history.

And loosely speaking, it's about a group of people, sub-postmistresses and masters, who run quite small businesses, but little post offices, relatively speaking, not the huge mega ones. And they were accused wrongly of nicking money, basically, from the post office. And there have been some quite sinister elements of this story, haven't there? Hugely, because it's turned out that there was a glitch in the system. It's called the Horizon system, which is a computer system made by Fujitsu. And there are some amazingly serious allegations being investigated. So we can't say too much about them, about the kind of practice that was involved on both sides,

with the post office and Fujitsu, regarding who they chose to believe and also the rigour that they examined their own computer system with. And I don't think we can really say much more than that. We can't really, but suffice to say, it's come to the fore, I mean, it should have been in the fore of all of our minds for many, many years because of a series on ITV over the last week about a dramatisation about this episode. Isn't it interesting that if they'd done it as a documentary,

it wouldn't have got anything like the traction? No, I agree. And also, I think if they'd done it not so well, it wouldn't have got the traction. But it's because it's a remarkably, I think, well-scripted programme where people are saying real things in a kind of real tone. The acting is superb. Toby Jones is cast in the lead role

and I think he's one of those actors who is brilliant at eliciting empathy from the viewer without milking it, if you see what I mean. So I think it's because the drama is so good and so watchable that people have really, really, really keyed into it. And all hail ITV for doing it. Yes, I don't know why

the BBC didn't, to be honest. There's a bit of a mystery there. Maybe you could ask your friend. Do you have a friend at the BBC? Not really. I seem to have burnt bridges there. Why don't you write to feedback or maybe points of view? I will do. I stood behind Toby Jones once in a queue at Pret at Paddington Station.

That's my showbiz link to him. That's lovely. Yes. I just want to mention this listener, Caroline, who says, I had to have my 17-and-a-half- half year old cat put to sleep on New Year's Day. And this is sad. Bentley had been Caroline's constant companion, never let her down by her side always. And they used Bentley and Caroline used to sit in the garden together listening to our podcast. And she says, you've always cheered me up when things were tough and i know you won't let

me down now oh gosh well we're going to try not to let you down caroline but you know before i became a cat owner i might have dismissed that email and just thought well for heaven's sake but i absolutely don't now and i'm very sorry that bentley is no longer with you um that must be tough and you know sadness in terms of pets it's inevitable isn't it because they don't they don't live as long as we do and they're going to go at some point. But it does sound like that particular cat, Bentley, had a pretty good innings. And we send love. I think it's just a horrible time of year to lose a pet.

Yes, rotten. Because you want to be, you know, you want those dark nights to be accompanied by a nice loud purr. Now here's something fruity from Bina. I felt compelled to email following a very lucid dream I had the other night about Jane. Now steady yourself against something firm, everybody, and don't read too much into that. No, sorry, Fi, you didn't feature.

That's all right. But please don't get in touch with dreams I have featured. I'm not interested in those either. They're just featuring, Fi. Couldn't care less. Jane and I were having a good old snog. You are horrible. No tongues, but very passionate.

But we were thwarted on several occasions. This was down to the fact that we were on a drive-through safari. What do you do? Get to the barrier and order two leopards and a giraffe? For some reason, we decided to do this on foot. The lions in particular were keen to interfere with our smooching. I haven't previously thought about Jane in this way. Why not, Beena?

And I'm not sure what triggered this. I am on HRT. Oh, well, that can do it. This is good. I'm on HRT and the weeks with the progesterone do give me some very interesting dreams. Now, this is interesting because I've had the most fabulous dreams since I've been on HRT and I do think there's something in that.

I really do. So I'd be interested in more of this sort of stuff. Ever since this dream, I've been thinking about Jane rather differently. If you have a free moment next time you're in the Liverpool area, do you want to go to Knowsley Safari Park? I'll pay. There's a documentary series about Knowsley Safari Park? I'll pay. There's a documentary series about Knowsley on at the moment, isn't there? I think it's on Channel 4.

Apparently it's very good. It's a good safari park, that. If you're interested in looks, and that helps in your decision, says Bina, I've been told that on the very best day, I have a slight look of Halle Berry on her very worst day. Who told you that? That's a really unpleasant thing to say.

I bet you're gorgeous. Because I think Halle Berry, even on her worst day, is going to be gobsmackingly beautiful. So I think you could do worse, Jane. I'd head off there. Do you want to leave now? Well, I am in the Liverpool area very soon,

but I've got a lot to squeeze in. Have you? Whether I could really take a detour to the Safari Park with Bina, I don't know. But listen, I'm flattered. I had an extremely clear dream the other day that Britney Spears had entered the US presidential race. And my overriding feeling was one of profound relief

because at least now people had someone sensible to vote for. Isn't that saying something? That really is. Yeah, anyway. But I think you're on to something with the change in hormones and dreams. And the dreams, yeah, I do too. Because some of those incredibly vivid dreams, they're just at a different volume, aren't they, to dreams before?

The technicolour is ratcheted up and the most extraordinary things start to happen. Yes. I've had some really good ones. I've had some very frightening dreams as well, some sort of really quite violent and unsettling stuff. Anyway, happy days. Right, OK.

But, you know, be a little bit careful about repeating too many of your dreams, if that's OK. Glyn has got a piece of advice for us regarding ghosts. When you get dressed each morning, it's worth bearing in mind that whatever you choose to wear that day might be what your ghost ends up having to wear forever. It really makes me think I should make more of an effort some days. Best wishes as ever.

Well, Glyn, that is something to think about, and you're absolutely right. I don't think I'd want to be trapped in what I'm wearing today forever more I've got a bit of a Monday outfit on today you're very smart I hadn't given this any thought but Glenn's on to something yeah you really are because ghosts are always dressed aren't they

they are you never get a naked ghost have you ever heard anybody tell about seeing a naked ghost that's such a good point no and also ghosts they never I mean we've done this before they they never come from 1975 they're always from the 17th century

but also they just never cut they're never carrying a handbag or they're never doing anything sensible are they no I shall keep my bag very close to me in the afterlife I think you should well because there's all sorts of kit in there, isn't there? Yeah. We've got somebody with a chance encounter with Simon Le Bon. Have you seen that one? I have. Go for it.

But let's just do trolleys first of all. Camilla says, I definitely think men see supermarket trolleys as substitute cars. On the few occasions that we shop together, my husband criticises my trolley driving skills and says I can't push in a straight line. He therefore prefers to push it himself, just like he insists on being the driver when we go out together in the car.

However, he has what he thinks is a hilarious trolley anecdote. Once, when doing the supermarket shop on his own, he mistakenly took off with somebody else's full trolley in the middle of the store. He only realised several aisles later, and rather than return the trolley, he just left it there. He went back, blithely collected the right trolley, and steadfastly ignored the person who was wandering around asking in a confused tone, where's my trolley? I've got no idea whether the poor person ever found their trolley or whether they had to start their whole shop again. I realise my husband might sound rather doddery,

but actually at the time of the incident, he was about 25. Oh, that's not great. I mean, actually, I don't know your husband, Camilla, but I do think he could have done a bit better there. I think it's very poor and not very British not to reunite a full trolley with its real owner. Yes. It's like the people who don't take their trolley back to Trolley Bay.

No, they're the worst sort of individual. Well, there used to be a £1 impetus to do that, didn't there? Quite a lot of the supermarkets have just ditched that. They've abandoned that now. Because nobody's got a quid. No, nobody has a quid. But I just think you're a very poor quality of individual if you leave your trolley just marooned in the car park.

Take it back. It's only a couple of seconds out of your life. It's the thin end of the antisocial wedge, isn't it? Actually, sister, you're right. Am I getting older, do you think? No, not at all, darling. You don't look a day over 60. Roz says, I've been a loyal listener for many years now.

Well done, you. Just to say, Frasier's producer was called Roz. And you're absolutely right. What a terrible mistake to make. Because Daphne was the housekeeper forward slash friend who ended up marrying Niles, wasn't she? Daphne was the English one, wasn't she? Yes.

So Roz is a producer. So I'm very sorry about that. And this one comes from Camilla, who says, on the subject of Christmas TV, I just wondered what you thought of Mr Bates and the post office. I'm only halfway through, but the acting is brilliant. I'm both gripped and horrified. It makes me not want to use the post office ever again.

And I think you are right that Mr Bates and the post office, for me, has been the best thing that I've seen on television over the festive period apart from obviously The Weakest Link Jane which you're now seamlessly going to mention What was it like appearing on television's hit quiz show The Weakest

Link? Thank you and I'm mentioning it because it's up on the iPlayer now if you want to go and look at it then you can It's a spectacle. You can laugh away and it won't take too much of your time either. If you didn't want to watch it all the way through, you'd be okay. And just the tiny, vaguely interesting point about it, Jane, and stay with it.

Come on, nod. I'm nodding, I'm nodding. So I went on The Weakest Link. I thought people would ridicule me because I got the answer to something which lots of people seem to think is very obvious Well it wasn't obvious to me, I didn't know the answer What was the question?

Well the question was which is the Nirvana album with the baby swimming underneath I've had a clue So anyway I went out on that thing Did you get a question right though? I got about four right before that but no no I went out on that thing and so I was a bit embarrassed about that Did you get a question right though? I got about four right before that but no no I went out very early on but nobody gives a monkeys

people just want to know where your clothes are from that's all that's all that happened is where's your top from and actually I've had the top for about 20 years I can't honestly remember but anyway can I just say that if I had one I would have been playing for AdFam which is a tiny charity that just does amazing work

supporting families affected by addiction. They are absolutely lovely, and I'm sad not to have won the money for them because it was a charity thing. So does it feel pressure then, additional pressure? Well, it would be nice, wouldn't it, to be able to win a stonking amount of money and also to give him a big plug.

So I'm just trying to give him a big plug here. Well, that's good. What is the potential amount you can win? Oh, gosh, I think you can win up to about £20,000. Really? I mean, it's a lot. Okay. Yeah.

And I don't want to give it away who won, but he was very tall. He's the tallest bloke there, just in case you're watching. Annoying. Bloke and tall. And he won. There was quite a funny moment when we went onto the set, because it's a huge shiny floor set, and

you've got all of these podiums with your first name. Did they film it in Hollywood? Well, no, they filmed it in Salford. No, Glasgow. I can't remember, actually. I went somewhere Salford. Salford? No, Glasgow. I can't remember, actually. I went somewhere for a night. Was it Glasgow? It might have been.

I don't know. Anyway, so when we all lined up behind the podiums... Yes. Did you have a special? They had to shut down the lights and rearrange the set because I was standing next to the very tall bloke and they said that they just couldn't do the camera thing. It would have to bob down too far when it got to me.

And even after they'd changed it so I could stand next to somebody of median height, they then brought along a little kind of standy-uppy stool, you know, like the one that you might use in your kitchen when you needed to reach the spices on the top shelf. Well, that's me almost every time I need a spice. So I had to stand on a little thing and I couldn't stand next to the very tall bloke. So it was in no way humiliating.

Oh, no, it doesn't sound it. None of it. But it's really fine. It would all have been completely worth it had you raised the money for AdFam. Yeah, thank you. The charity. Well, I'm sorry about worth it had you raised the money for AdFam. Yeah, thank you. The charity. Well, I'm sorry about that, but you were a good sport for doing it. When are you going on?

No, I'm not going on anything. No, because you were going to do Squeaky Chair, weren't you? Celebrity Mastermind. Yeah, I got out of that. Why didn't you want to do that? I think I said pandemic. Okay. What would your specialist subject have been?

It was going to be Liverpool Football Club. Which would have been pretty good. It would have been fine, actually, I think. Although that's one of those subjects where you can appear a prat quite easily. You know, you overrate your knowledge and then they'll ask you something and then all the Liverpool fans will think, well, she doesn't know what she's on about there. So I think I'd have been better doing smash hits 1978 to 1979.

Yeah, probably. Yes. And actually quite a lot of people do choose that, don't they? Well, they choose very narrow areas. Harry Potter, chapter four of the third book. Yes. Which is my name. I haven't read a word of Harry Potter, I'm sorry to say.

No, I didn't really get on with it myself, but my kids loved it. OK, this one is anonymous. As a child of divorced parents, this is because we were talking about blended families and having Christmas dinner about seven times, and this really hit home for our correspondent. As a child of divorced parents, we would often spend Christmas and the Twixmas days on the M25,

shuttling between relatives for another turkey-blinking dinner, and as an adult, I've always campaigned for an alternative. However, my husband is from a traditional nuclear family and has always found this suggestion to be very challenging. This year was going to be different our son's first christmas he's nearly one i wanted to have christmas day at home which we did with my in-laws who insisted on buying the turkey we then spent the next week away from home visiting all of the other family members who were desperate to see our son and eating cold cuts

ah well maybe next year, maybe next year. Maybe next year, but I think you've got to actually draw a line in the sand there and you've got to mark out some territory because otherwise you're going to end up, even though you've married somebody who's from a nuclear family, you didn't have to do lots of dashing around, you're going to relive your childhood when you shouldn't be. You should be able to just stay in one place with your own child. The first child, and the child is very young they won't remember that christmas anyway

so i guess the key ones are the ones that the child will will be able to recall yeah i think it's one of the hardest things to do actually is to negotiate that who's going where and to whom and right at the beginning of a relationship or when you have kids you know to to kind of say say this is, you know, I need this bit and you're going to need this bit. And this is how we're going to do it because there are suddenly so many people you're going to offend. It gets terrifically complicated. But listen, we're months away from worrying about Christmas 2024. Well, in my case, we're a couple of weeks away from starting to worry about it. I promised you Simon Le Bon. So here he is. a couple of weeks away from starting to worry about it.

I promised you Simon Le Bon, so here he is. Back in 2010, says Jackie, I was on a family trip to Rome with my husband and then 10-year-old son. We were staying in a hotel out of town that had a shuttle to the centre. As we got back to the hotel, we got out as another family were getting in. I was convinced it was Simon and Yasmin Le Bon. My husband wasn't sure. Later in the evening, I decided to invent a need to go down to the bar early for dinner

while the boys got themselves ready. To my delight, Mr Simon Le Bon was sitting by himself at the bar, so I braced myself and seized the opportunity to go up and speak to him. He was lovely, although clearly not hugely delighted to be interrupted in his moment of quiet contemplation. After the initial niceties, I then went full-on fangirl and just blurted out, I've been in love with you for 30 years.

This not only served to make us both feel incredibly old, but cut our conversation short. If looks could kill, she says. And five years later, Jackie flew to St Lucia for a New Year holiday. She's got quite the life, hasn't she? And who should step off the plane with us but only Simon Le Bon in a neon green shell suit. I don't think he'd recognise me.

Or maybe he's just been stalking me ever since Rome. I think you're putting an optimistic spin on that, Jackie. But I'm glad he was initially rather nice. But then it got a bit shaky after she'd mentioned the 30 years, because that's, it is a long time. I mean, I hold a little bit of a what's it for him, having seen Duran Duran live at the Birmingham Odeon in 1982. And they were so in their pomp,

and it was without question one of the best nights of my life. And it is difficult, isn't it, when you've had that kind of uh fan frisson with somebody to know what you would say to them in real life i don't know well i've no idea what i'd say if i met simon now do you know jackie i'd say that woman who's been following you around or have you been following her? The thing that I take from that email actually is how unwise and uncomfortable it would be to travel to St Lucia in a

neon shell suit. I mean that would be sweaty. Yeah but not when you're Simon I don't imagine he's sweaty. He'd be very crinkly. No. No, no, no. He's a bonbon. Voice over describes what's happening on your iPhone screen. Voiceover on settings so you can navigate it just by listening books contacts calendar double tap to open breakfast with

from 10 to 11 and get on with your day accessibility there's more to iPhone. We are going to announce the Book Club book in the podcast tomorrow. Thank you so much for all of your suggestions. And Chris Metcalf has emailed in to say that we'd mentioned a book which sounded very good. It's by Helene Thurston. And she thought, it may be a he, Chris, apologies if it is, I said that she'd written other ones called Procedurals, but they're not actually called Procedurals. They're in the procedural police drama genre.

Right. So the book that we were talking about, which has gone into the pile for the book club suggestions, is An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good, which I think is actually a book that's not in the same series as all of her others. But that's gone into the pile and we will announce what the book club book is tomorrow. Okay, now the interview that we're going to play out in this edition of Off Air is with a man called Dan Reid. He is the executive producer of a documentary that went out on Channel 4 in the UK last night, but you can now access it

on all four. And it is called I Am Andrew Tate. And if you're thinking, well, I don't want to know anything about Andrew Tate. I'm not interested. I think he's awful. He is pretty awful. Well, he's more than a bit awful. He's terrible. But this documentary does attempt to tell his backstory. But this documentary does attempt to tell his backstory. And if, like me, you knew of him but had chosen to avoid him, it's a valuable lesson in just how deeply offensive he is, but also how odd he is, how peculiar, and indeed, at times, how pathetic and vulnerable he is.

I mean, if you don't know anything about him, he's a hugely successful influencer, a particularly popular with young men, in fact, boys, really, rather than young men. Perhaps both, to be fair. And what is important is that it doesn't actually matter at all that I think he's an idiot. It's totally irrelevant what I think. He may well be having all sorts of an influence on younger members of your own household. So I'm not saying you shouldn't watch the documentary, but listen to Dan first of all before you decide

whether you're going to watch it or not. So Andrew Tate, he's this man who mixes really quite unpleasant misogyny with a sort of cod psychology and some get-rich-quick schemes, which he's been very successful at, in all fairness. He smokes cigars, or at least claims to. He often appears topless or in a silky dressing gown. And he speaks in quite a strange mid-Atlantic accent. He refers to women as chicks, and men are usually dudes. He really would be funny if he wasn't so successful at what he does, and if he wasn't so good at reaching his young audiences. Now, there are also, we should say, serious allegations of

sexual assault and trafficking against him. These allegations are things that he denies. Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan are now based in Romania. Dan Reid is the executive producer of this film. And it went out last night, as I said, on Channel 4. It wasn't quite the film they'd planned to make. It wasn't quite. I think we ended up with something a bit more interesting, luckily. But the original programme was full access, all areas, you know, tapes like behind the scenes, nothing that we couldn't film, no question we couldn't ask him, apart from the one condition

that we couldn't film his screens, his phone and his laptop screens. So that all left me wondering what he was doing on his screens. It was fair enough. So we agreed on those conditions. And then he was arrested back in May, at the very end of 2022. And so we lost our subject. But he recorded so much content over the years and been so brutally frank about who he was and what he was doing and his attitudes to women and his job as a webcam pimp, which is how he described it, that we suddenly came across so much amazing material. Have you met him? Yes, so we went to Dubai really just to look him in the eye

and say, look, mate, you do know this isn't going to be a puff piece, don't you? We're not just going to go and film you buying expensive jewellery and driving nice cars. This is going to be a proper no-holds-barred look into your life. And he's like, yeah, sure, no problem. He was staying in a villa in Dubai, a big, very big empty villa, just the Bugatti in the driveway and just empty.

And it sort of felt a bit sad, really. Didn't really envy his lifestyle. You've been quoted as saying he just came across as a bit vulnerable. Yeah, yeah. I mean, vulnerable isn't the first word you associate with an entertainer. But yeah, just a bit sort of lost boys rattling around a palace. You sort of wondered why they didn't seem to be enjoying the situation more.

A lot of his propaganda online is about the lifestyle, the cars, the cigars, the women, the this, the that. Actually, there didn't seem to be much pleasure going on. Maybe I caught him at the wrong time, I don't know. And then after Marguerite, the director, and I met in Dubai, she filmed with him for a day. But beyond that, you know, he just disappeared. So what we learn from the film is that he was born in the United States,

father is American, mother British, and the parents' relationship broke up. He came to live on the marsh farm estate in Luton with his brother Tristan and his British mother. And what happened at school? Do we know anything about his school days? We don't know a huge amount. I mean, he seems to have, you know, we're very reliant on Andrew Tate's past recordings to give us biographical pictures. There are obviously huge chunks missing, but enough, I think, to make it interesting and meaningful.

His school days, you know, I think he was a sort of quiet kid at school. And he didn't start kickboxing until he was in his late teens. And, you know, one thing that stuck out for me is he's walking home with a bunch of his mates and they see a Ferrari drive past him and Tate says and that made me feel so angry and I looked around at my friends and said does that make you feel angry and they're like so clearly early on he had this incredible drive to to get

money to achieve to be seen in a in an expensive sports car for lack of a better phrase but that's certainly an ambition he's fulfilled. Yeah. His dad played chess and he, in the course of your documentary, says his father was diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. Tate himself, Andrew Tate, says he doesn't have it, although I think anyone who'd watched this documentary might doubt that. Yeah. I mean, we all had a chuckle when we saw that clip because, you know, anyone who's got that disorder, he says, thinks they're absolutely invincible.

And that really is, I think, certainly how Tate comes across. He puts across this image of invincibility. You know, his drive to be admired, to be loved, to be worshipped is very, very strong. And so you wonder what it's like being Andrew Tate on days when he's not being the most Googled man. Probably quite a lonely place, but that's just my speculation. I could go on at some length about how ridiculous I find him,

but it is actually utterly irrelevant what I think of him. The real question is, why does he find an audience? What's your answer to that? Well, he finds an audience both because, you know, for the well-known reasons that a lot of outrageous people online find an audience is because the biggest social media and the way content is boosted favors outrage favors controversy and favors people saying shocking things and he learned that very quickly and he's brilliant at boosting at optimizing

his reach um second thing is i think you know and know, and people have said a lot, talked a lot about this, is young men, maybe growing up now, you know, they have, it's not very clear what it means to be, to be a man, to be a young man, who your role models, what are you, what are you supposed to be like, you know, the whole idea, there are new ideas about gender, and people, the Me Too movement, new ideas about gender and people. The Me Too movement, I think, had a big impact. So I think maybe young men feel hemmed in, feel a bit lost. And unfortunately, some of the, particularly the very, very young ones, we're talking about 11, 12, 13-year-old boys,

see Tate as this sort of larger-than-life exemplar of what a masculine man should be, which is kind of terrifying because, in fact, you know, if you look at his life story, such as we tell it in the documentary, it's just not someone that you want your little boys to emulate. Would he have had a message for you when you were growing up? Gosh, I don't think so, because I was a bit of a weird kid growing up. I didn't really sort of do the whole fancy cars and, you know,

enhanced women, cigars and all that. It didn't mean anything to me. I think where Tate is brilliant is he's very funny, intentionally a lot, but he's just very funny. You know, on the production team, we've been sort of quoting some of his lines that just have become sort of embedded in our everyday. Yeah, I must admit, I wouldn't have said funny. So give me an example.

Well, the whole, you know, the Bethlehem line is, you know, some people say they don't like my Bugatti because it's like an orange Bugatti. And he goes, and I asked them, what colour is your Bugatti? And so what colour is your Bugatti becomes this sort of catchphrase. color is your bagate and so what color is your bagate becomes this sort of catchphrase but um you know that sort of infects everyday everyday conversation and maybe you don't find that funny it is it is he is good at the quips he's incredibly confident so yeah shouting and ranting all the time so he's this large people like the you know the internet on social media suit these people

who have no flicker of doubt in their eyes, like President Trump is an obvious one, Alex Jones, who I'm also making a film about. They're very rarely female. They are very rarely female. So that is another thing about Tate, is that he leverages all, in a completely spurious way, all the qualities,

the appearance of male qualities. I don't think he is an honest man. He told us when we were in Dubai, you know, when I shoot these scenes on my yacht with all the girls dancing and we're having a great party, what that really is, is sort of four minutes of someone holding up a camera and me saying, right, girls, that party.

And after four minutes, it's cut. We get back to whatever the people are doing on our laptops. So it's completely contrived. It's a puff of smoke. That whole thing, his lifestyle is an illusion. But it's worse than that, isn't it, Dan? He has faced allegations of sexual assault in this country.

I know he denies them. And then he fled effectively to Romania, saying in public that he didn't think much of the Romanian police, who have since, of course, started to investigate them, investigate him themselves, which doesn't suggest he's the brain of Britain, or indeed the brain of America, or hadn't really thought it all through. And he's now, as I understand it, not under house arrest in Romania, but he can't leave the country because he's accused there of trafficking and other offences. Yeah, that's right. He's still facing trial, apparently. The Romanian authorities, I think they've just given him his cars back, his assets.

And also there are these young women in the UK who are trying to mount a civil case and indeed, I think, trying to revive the criminal case against them. So, yeah, I mean, there is a really sordid, dark past from his history as a webcam pimp, coercing women, controlling, trying to control their lives. I mean, he says a lot of very unwritten things I can't really repeat on here

about his techniques for coercing women, using sex, using strangulation. I mean, he's quite open about that. And so these are some things he's been accused of. So in a way, he's his own worst enemy. He's got a lot of stuff out there on the web that has now come back to haunt him. So what do you think his fate is likely to be?

Gosh, he seems to be quite lucky and he's incredibly sort of persistent and he's got some money. And I think, you know, let's see, I think so much hinges on whether he does actually face trial in Romania. The Romanian authorities, they seem to be struggling to put together a really strong case, or maybe it's just the inherent slowness of their judicial system. But it's been a year. It's been more than a year now since his arrest. And, you know, we don't,

I don't think we have a date set for a trial. So, you know, he could walk away. He could, the whole thing could fall apart and he could walk away. And then he'll just, you know, his empire is part of the attention economy he needs to get people to subscribe to his to his online courses of how to get women and how to get rich and how to really sell bitcoin or other sorts of slightly grifty stuff um but yeah he'll you know he's 37

he'll carry on at least until the mid 40s i think yeah i'm asking money and um he's very popular in parts of the world outside, even outside the English people, rather than probably in the Middle East, in popular places. Well, yeah. He has converted to Islam, hasn't he? Supposedly.

I mean, I find that sort of hard to believe, given his illness, but I'll call him Sigal Hazan. Yeah, and his weird propensity for being topless. Yeah. We're like, mate, put your shirt on. It's all right. Put your shirt on. Topless, and he goes around topless

and with his little skimpy little shorts, which is hilarious. I think, you know, a lot of, I remember chatting to him by the poolside in Dubai and he was stacking all this sort of stuff, the anti-vax, the US election was stolen, various other sort of staples of the alt-right. But there was a little bit of a sort of stuff like anti-vax and US electoral stolen and various other sort of staples of the alt-right. But there was a little bit of a

twinkle in his eye. Part of him is very conscious. I think part of him is sort of manic and really sort of believes in all the stuff he's spouting. And part of him, he's not stupid at all, part of him knows that it's just, this is what you say if you want to get attention and make people mad, make people angry, outraged.

So I think there's a very sort of cold, deliberate manipulation of the media message. And let's face it, he makes for interesting telly. I'm not going to say great telly. But should you have made the documentary? Should you be giving him the very thing he craves? Well, I don't think we gave him the attention on his terms that he usually gets when filmmakers go and encounter him face to face i think that often sort of goes against them i think what we've given people is um the true story we've given them a way to understand who he is and where he came from and also very importantly i think a lot of parents just don't understand what kind of content their

kids especially their young boys are consuming and i think this is a way for, you know, anyone over the age of 16, 17, or particularly anyone who has kids, to understand who Andrew Tate is and the kind of messages that he is putting out there and that their children or their loved ones may be consuming. Dan Reid, executive producer of that documentary, which you can now see on all four, it's called I Am Andrew Tate. I mean, a lot of people, there have been some reviews of the documentary saying, you know, why have you made it?

Why the last thing we need is more attention for this man. It really will be interesting to see what happens to Andrew Tate. I think he does need more attention in exactly this kind of place because it was the underground nature of his YouTube videos, his platforms, you know, his message that made him so powerful because he didn't have the scrutiny of right minded individuals. Actually, that's how he managed to corner the youth market so much

because nobody, people like you and me, weren't looking at it going, geez, that's unbelievably horrible, unpleasant, degrading to women. You know, he's an idiot. So I think the more we talk about him, the better, actually. But he was so clever, Jane, because the Hustlers University, which was his big thing, was actually something that wasn't all bad. The notion that you should work hard, you should have some kind of a side hustle

so you can earn your own money, you should dedicate yourself to quite a disciplined routine in your teenage life. All of that is a good thing. You know, what parent wouldn't essentially be saying the same thing to their teenagers? And it allowed him to then send out all of his other messages from a position of

credibility. I think what the film does reveal is that he is well, I mean, Dan was not entirely certain, but his Andrew Tate's father emerges as a, let's say, deeply troubled individual, probably rather more than that, rather nastier than that. Certainly somebody who'd been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. And it's very likely that this was not a happy home. I'm treading carefully here. But so Andrew Tate, far from being someone who is in control of his own life and in the way he does things, is actually almost certainly the victim of pretty unpleasant circumstances, none of which explains or in any way justifies his horrible, horrible content about women, the way he talks about them.

It's just horrendous. I thought I knew what to expect, but actually it was worse than I imagined it would be. So I just think it is, if you have teenagers, you probably do need to make yourself aware of what this man is pumping out there. Yeah and if you do watch it and then you need something nice to watch

afterwards the Scandinavian Nature Program three parts is absolutely glorious most of it is just very beautifully shot animals and snow falling off trees. Right I'm back in the safari park with Bina lovely. No tongues. Well.

It's a very odd detail. Yes. I thought we probably could have done without that, and I don't thank you for repeating it. Now, have a very good evening. Do wrap up warm if you're in the United Kingdom. The temperatures plunge, which is not something we're expecting in winter.

Yep, have a lovely evening, and please do make sure that you join us tomorrow because we will talk about Book Club. Jane and I get very excited about Book Club, don't we? Yes. And I think we're about to choose Cracker, not least because it's 184 pages long and that's a January length. I'm not going to contradict her.

Agreed. You did it. Elite listener status for you for getting through another half hour or so of our whimsical ramblings. Otherwise known as the hugely successful podcast Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. We missed the modesty class. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler, the podcast executive producer. It's a man. It's Henry Tried.

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