Off Air... with Jane and Fi - But we've already humped? (with Kevin McCloud)

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

Jane shares, what she considers to be, the biggest issue of our time... washing pegs. Yes, really. They also discuss Tony's pepper mill, baths with steps and mound music. Plus, they're joined by Grand Designs' Kevin McCloud, who was speaking ahead of Grand Designs Live, taking place at the NEC from the 4th - 8th of October. 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.

Oh, the podcast is now underway, so there'll be no more of that. Right, welcome to Off-Air. Thank you. Wednesday already. I can't believe it, actually. And you were, because I said today was our hump day and you said that we'd already humped. Yeah, I think I hump as soon as I arrive at work on a Wednesday. I feel as though that's the start of the beginning of the end of my working week. Oh, you went up at the end and excited. Well, yes. Well, that's not uncommon.

Can we just say that we've had enough pictures now, gigantic pepper mills. Oh, no, I haven't got nearly enough. No, you haven't. I think Tony, hello, Tony, yours is enormous and you must be immensely proud. So, yes, well Tony's so big it doesn't even fit on the page. No, he needs two pages. Oh, stop it, stop it. And actually, where's the email saying that we're basically channeling the great Victoria Wood?

And I think that was right. Yes, here we are. It's from Errol. Hello, Errol. And Errol says, do you realise that you were channeling Victoria Wood? First the reference to Lark Rise to Candleford made me think instantly of Victoria's spoof Lark Rise to Cranchesterford.

Yes, I mean, I think that was in a Christmas special, wasn't it? It was extremely funny. And then, of course, she had a sketch about gigantic pepper mills. I absolutely love Victoria Wood. And, you know, I mean, there are a lot, let's be honest, celebrity deaths occur, or own deaths will occur. Celebrity deaths occur very frequently. But that death really got me.

I was really sad about Victoria Wood. And I do, I think I probably do still laugh at something she said or did, you know, most weeks. Something will crop up. So I think you're absolutely right, Errol. It's always in my head. So there's a new book of kind of compilation of her best stuff. Yes, have you got a copy? I've got one.

Chunky. Chunky it's called. Yes, I've got one. Which looks amazing. Yeah, well, it's lovely. I've got it on my sofa and I just occasionally just dip in and revisit a sketch. I mean, the got one. Chunky. Chunky, it's called. Yes, I've got one. Which looks amazing. Yeah, well, it's lovely. I've got it on my sofa and I just occasionally just dip in and revisit a sketch.

I mean, the funniest one, partly, I think, is the channel swimmer. I know, who just went off and never came back. A mum and dad didn't, or a mum in particular was really not that bothered.

So that was a whole spoof documentary, wasn't it? It wasn't even a sketch. No. It was a whole half an hour. Extremely funny. Yeah. Can I just mention parish notices

that we have decided our next book club book. So it's Boy Swallows Universe. It's by an Australian journalist called Trent Dalton. Forgive us because Jane and I had never heard of Trent Dalton, but lots of our Antipodean listeners have and they've sent us rather worrying emails saying, brave choice. So we don't know what we're in store for there.

We don't. At all. But we will give it a go and we were quite determined to read something by a man. So there weren't very many suggestions actually. So I mean if Trent's listening to this he's not going to be thrilled to see that criteria. there were loads of suggestions but not many of you mentioned a male author yeah and we did just want to just let people know that our church is broad so broad

our nave is long it really is yep and the font is always closed. And for people who aren't Christians... No, we can't go through every single... Shall we just get the kind of FNAF and ARS out of the way and then we will read some slightly more serious emails? We've got some quite serious emails about body part names, haven't we? Well, we have, but can we just get Almond Joy and Mounds out of the way? Oh, yeah, go on. So lots of people have sent in the same link to a video that you can get on the Tube of You, where you can see an advertisement from 1978 for Almond Joy Mounds.

We can't play it out because we are governed by music publishing copyright law. But if you'd like to just go and take a look at it Jane and I just laughed all the way through it's from a time when when you just can't imagine what the brief was for the advertising copyrights it's a chocolate bar yeah but it features a running race there's a horse race somewhere in there there's some snogging it's extraordinary I think it comes from the golden age of advertising yeah It's a truly brilliant ad. Yeah. And what was the slogan?

Sometimes you feel... Sometimes you want nuts, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you feel like a nut and sometimes you don't. Almond Joy Mounds. It really, I think it's a great slogan. I think it's a great tune. We wish we could play it for you. And it also has an almost pornographic bit of footage

of the mound being made. It's extraordinary. Which you don't get that kind of thing anymore. You're not allowed it. Where the chocolate is sort of slathered over. Anyway, if you look it up, you'll see the pure joy. Yeah, it's two minutes 38. Very, very, very well spent.

So just enjoy it. And I'm sorry that we can't play it out here. But thank you to everybody who sent in stuff, particularly Rachel, who always likes a little bit of a listen and I think was chortling away when we were talking about mounds. Right. Okay, let's

invite Adam into the podcast room. Many, many years ago, I got a text from a male colleague who was sitting quite close to me. It read, can't wait to work some magic on you this evening. My wand is ready. When he heard my phone ping, our eyes met as I looked up at him. And it dawned on both of us at exactly the same moment that he'd inadvertently sent the text to the person at the top of his contact list and not, as intended, to his wife. Okay, that must be quite difficult if you're at the beginning of the alphabet. Is that something that happens a lot? Yes, maybe it is. I mean, I've put double A

in front of all of my most important people on my phone so that they do come up at the top and sometimes I do ping the wrong double A. Yeah. You're still under J. Yeah, that's all right. We never actually speak, do we, outside of school? As long as we can help it. Okay, I wonder whether that is something that happens regularly to people who find themselves through no fault of their own but pure alphabetical chance at the beginning of everybody's contacts. I think it happens increasingly on WhatsApp as well, doesn't it? I have done that quite a few times. So you can be the victim of endless bum calls. Yeah, or I've just lifted something, you know, a piece of text or whatever it is,

and I've screenshotted it, and I go onto my WhatsApp, and it just falls onto the first group that's up there where I've been chatting and they can be very inappropriate. You know, the parents from school don't want to know some of the inside gossip from Times Radio. Don't they? I'm amazed. Actually, Adam goes on to say these days HR would get involved. Well, you know what life's like now, Adam. It's crazy, isn't it, with all the wokery. He thinks he might have been offered counselling. I think he would. I think he would. But then, of course,

his life just became a misery, as naturally the text was shared with the whole office. Oh, God. I actually feel a bit sorry for him. And it's quite, I mean, it's a very sweet message. Yes. It could be so much cruder. Yes. Yes, I mean, it's in its own way

rather romantic. It's got a touch of the Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee. The Takara deep-soaking tub has ruined my retirement, Jane, because I was very, very much hoping that I was going to make a fortune out of baths that had places that you could sit in them and little shelves that you could rest your elbows on. And Alex says, don't give up the day jobs. All of these baths already exist.

And you've sent a very nice little picture there. So that's just me done for, really. I did ask whether the kitchen jeopardy in Boiling Point is actually real life. Ew! Yes, right. Play the casualty music there. And Nafisa has emailed.

She's a regular correspondent. Always good to hear from you. Hope you're OK. She says, I volunteer in a church cafe. It's open between 10 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. We do the usual sandwiches, paninis, toasted tea cakes. Oh, I'm getting hungry. Baked potatoes and so on.

At our busy times, it is so hectic. When I prepare and serve food, I make sure each plate is absolutely perfect, just as I would like my food served. Everyone in the kitchen has their role to play and they've got to be on top of it. If not, the whole thing can turn to chaos. All food has to be freshly prepared, all dates in the fridge and the freezer checked, all particular requests of diners have got to be met. It is so intense and that's just a small cafe. I can truly appreciate the huge pressure of a five-star kitchen. I think Boiling Point is brilliant.

And so do I, by the way. Best thing I've seen on telly for ages. And you haven't watched it yet, have you? No. And I'm unlikely to. But I don't know why, because genuinely you would enjoy it. Well, I'll tell you why. Because we did try watching The Bear,

which is all about the chef, and we couldn't carry on because it was just so stressful to watch. And it's not what I want from my, you know, lounging on a sofa weekday evening watching. I don't want anything that's really, really stressful. You've never watched anything about the war? No, well I'm currently, I had to stop watching Laura Koonsberg's fantastic documentary

series called State of Chaos about the demise of our democracy so I was finding that a bit stressful too. I sought refuge in some more episodes of Fisk which I am really loving. You're not the only person to recommend it. Yeah, loads of our listeners have which is why I started watching it because I think it was a recommendation after some of us had finished watching Colin from Accounts, which you wouldn't watch. Okay, well, we've both got a form there. Carry on. This one comes from Carl, and it's apropos of something that we were discussing on the programme yesterday, which was about stags and hens. And I think the mayor of Seville, or the head of the tourist office in Seville has just asked stag parties,

particularly from this country, to just calm down and stop blowing up your penises and wandering around and disturbing the locals and thinking that you're hilarious and they're not the only city in Europe to do that. And Carl just says,

is it just me that thinks that those who make such a big deal about celebrating their singledom are probably a little unwise to be embarking on marriage and I wonder what people think about that and I would love to hear some stories about stags and hens that have been really over the top because I think that's such a modern thing Jane to have these whole weekends and you know you've got to have a life drawing class halfway through and everybody's got to, you know, make something and bring something and it costs a fortune and it's kind of like, oh, this isn't even the wedding.

No. I think the cost, I think there's a time in your life, if you're not careful, where you can find yourself attending, I don't know, seven or eight weddings across a year or a summer and the cost is absolutely off the scale because you've got to pay for a hen or stag weekend. Then there's a gift. Then there's buying something potentially to wear to the event. It's just crazy. It's a lot of drama. There's a lot of drama. And I'm here to tell you quite a few divorces. Yeah. So shall we work out whether or not there is some kind of a matrix going on there?

And thank you for drawing our attention to it, Carl. I you're right actually i think you're right uh kate says uh in the 1970s we spent many a holiday b and b-ing around the west coast of scotland and we never booked accommodation in advance gosh by the way i think that's unwise which as you can imagine caused all kinds of marital bickering between my parents. Why then didn't they book? I mean, just a suggestion, throwing it into the mix, if it caused them upset. Anyway, they arrived as a family in Fort William, late one August afternoon. You been there?

Yes. Yes, I have too. My mum was apoplectic with prophecies of having to sleep in the car, but luckily the tourist information lady had got one vacancy left. The only drawback was that the owner was new to the B&B game. We arrived at an unpromising wee pebble-dash house to a kitchen table laden with all sorts of goodies. Bless her, the landlady had obviously been preparing for hours

just in case she got a booking. She would never have made a profit had she continued to cater on that scale. The pièce de la résistance was her homemade bounty bars. As I recall, they were covered in Bourneville chocolate, so the desired dark variety. I hope that lady continued to great success in the B&B game, actually, because she sounds like someone committed to the cause.

So I would have thought, which is not to do down this particular landlady's creativity and culinary art, but presumably it's not that hard to make a bounty bar, actually. Wouldn't it be desiccated coconut, lots of kind of sugar syrup? Maybe pop it in the freezer? Well, hang on, because we have more help in that direction from Sarah. One way to satisfy a craving for a dark chocolate bounty is to get coconut yoghurt, coconut flakes and then melt some dark chocolate on top. Just pop it in the

freezer for 15 minutes and a very tasty snack awaits you. Hope that helps. Well I think it will, thank you very much. Would you like me to try that? Yes please. Ok, I'll see what happens. Now we've been told off because because philip larkin isn't from hull he was born and bred uh in lisa's hometown of coventry which she says is almost as exciting as hull but he is celebrated in hull and the university library is named after him was he at the university i think he was the librarian yeah so, so there we go. Hello Fionnuala, I felt compelled to stick up for the Peugeot pepper grinder. This is where it all started. I too had no idea that Peugeot made grinders until I visited a fancy kitchen shop whilst on holiday in France. My husband had been

on the lookout for the ultimate grinder set after some previously disappointing results with another popular brand. What a guy, Lisa. His excitement was palpable when we bought this set which has five different settings of coarseness. Does yours? Oh no, it's nothing like it unless I've just been using it wrong which with me is always a possibility. The grinders have a satisfying twist and I feel your pain Jane in yours being out of action. Never apologize for the mundanity of life. Another of our pursuits is to find the perfect peg for the washing line. Thanks for keeping me entertained on my journey to and from work.

Well, Lisa, I'm with you on the perfect peg thing because if you get the plastic pegs, they just spin round, Jane. They're just not clippy enough. And it's quite hard to get a really, really decent wooden peg anymore. I mean, I'm with you. It is an incredible hard to get a really, really decent wooden peg anymore. Yeah, I mean, I'm with you. It is an incredible... It's a false economy to get cheap pegs. It is.

That much I have learned. Cheap coat hangers go into that category too. Also coat hangers. But I think more so pegs. I'd also put tights in that category. Although, on the other hand, if you snag an expensive pair of tights, that's infuriating. Snag a cheaper pair, you don't care quite so much.

But pegs, you're absolutely right to highlight this as one of the big issues of our time. There was no mention of it from Sunak. You cannot get decent clothes pegs in this country. I'm always buying them, and that shouldn't be the case. Environmentally, it's just really dodgy, isn't it? Yeah, but, well, if you're buying the plastic ones, yes. I've tried them both both and they just collapse.

They just fall apart. Is it the weather? No, I think it's just badly made. OK. We started something. It will be finished, don't worry. Now, this is an email, it's a serious email and it comes from a personal perspective

and it's about the segregation of the sexes in hospitals and this was something that we did talk about on the programme yesterday, the radio programme, not on the podcast. And that the woman in question says, please don't mention my name as I'm terrified of any backlash, which I guess is an illustration of just how difficult some of the conversations around this issue have become. But she says, if you've ever been admitted to A&E

or onto an overnight observation ward, there is no privacy. I have heard it all from the young man who'd overdosed on Viagra and half the clinical team and ambulance crews came to have a chat and a laugh. To the obvious distress of an elderly lady having to talk about her prolapsed uterus and the rattling of the chains on a trolley of the prisoner next to me chatting away to his male warders while I was asked about my gynaecology symptoms. At least if you're admitted to a female ward, as my mother was following a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, there is some knowledge and empathy from the women around you. She would have been humiliated if ward rounds were conducted with trans women in the bed next door. Thank you for the email. You've obviously been there yourself and witnessed all sorts of. Well, I mean, I think in any if you were admitted to hospital, you are your most vulnerable. That goes without saying. I think it is.

I mean, it isn't fair to suggest that every trans woman in hospital poses a threat to anyone. That's just not true. But I do feel for this correspondent, who obviously has been in a situation where, well, I mean, there were no trans women involved in the conversation, sorry, in her experience of being in hospital. But she is right. You are, you are exposed to stuff going on around you. I mean, that's certainly being in hospital. But she is right. You are exposed to stuff going on around you. I mean, that's certainly true in hospital. There's just no getting away from that. Yeah, and especially in that triage kind of place.

And it's very hard to see how that could be solved. The nurses and the doctors are doing the very best, aren't they, in sending you off to the place in the hospital where you should be. Maybe we should just explain the story. It was because the health secretary had announced at the Tory party conference that trans women would be able to have a separate space, actually, and wouldn't be on female wards in the future. on female wards in the future. Yeah, although that wasn't what Steve Barclay emphasised. Steve Barclay emphasised the fact that trans women wouldn't be allowed on female wards.

So you're right, because they did suggest... Well, if you read up on it, it suggested that there would be, quite miraculously, if you know anything about the NHS, space made available for trans patients. Well, that's easier said than done, I suspect. But we talked to somebody from the organisation Gendered Intelligence, who basically, in her opinion, the government was solving an issue that just didn't actually exist. We don't know that either

in truth, do we? So I suppose we've got to be very careful. But I just wanted to read that email out because there is no doubt that that view exists. and there's no doubt that you can feel very much on edge if you're a patient particularly admitted suddenly to hospital yeah but that includes trans women it includes everybody who's admitted to hospital yeah yeah yeah but thank you for the email and actually do we have said before that we want this to be a place where people can you know talk about talk about stuff but that may perhaps not be that easily expressed and may not get a hearing anywhere else so I think that there's there's so much in that email but that very very telling plea at the end to just stay anonymous in case there's a backlash it's just not the place that we should be in at the moment where you feel that you can't express an opinion and therefore enlighten yourself

because nobody's going to get anywhere. And this isn't a criticism of our emailer, but that fear that people have of saying what they're feeling at the moment, there's just no way to air other thoughts, other experiences, and get to a place where people might feel a bit happier. So yes, treat us as a

safe space, overused term but that's what we are. Can we just briefly mention, as we did, I referred to, not gynaecological well it kind of is the names we give to private, so-called private parts private parts

Yes, Susan says my son went to an infamous, stroke, famous to private, so-called private parts. Private parts. Private parts. Yes. Susan says, my son went to an infamous, stroke, famous boys' boarding school and had a female English literature teacher. She insisted that they didn't use the word vagina as it was a Roman term for sheath, implying, of course, that it was just a receptacle for male bits.

Now, that's true, and it is outrageous. She decreed that the old English word, and you know that one, but I won't be saying it, was a much more feminist term for the female anatomy. And that was the term the boys had to use when discussing references in literature to that part of the female body.

Gosh, that's quite bold. Well, kind of right. Yeah, I find that word, I know it's been reclaimed. I still find it difficult to hear and say. Sorry. So, I think I've said this before, but I don't mind saying it again. We chose the term Wendy Bits in our house for female private parts

because I don't like the term vagina and I don't like the really kind of... Well, as a number of listeners have pointed out, it's the vulva, actually. The vagina is the internal space. Yes. Do you know any Wendy's? Well, that was the problem. We didn't know any Wendy's at the time.

Yeah, exactly. And this is the problem. But then when we did meet a Wendy, of course, it all fell apart. So back to square one with that one. Here's Kevin MacLeod. Thank goodness. Kevin MacLeod was our big guest today.

He could be held responsible for a whole modern syndrome, the one where you, a person with absolutely no experience of the building trade or architectural practice, set out to build your own home, preferably starting at the beginning of a very wet, cold winter with not quite enough money in the bank. if you're expecting your first baby you win the prize it's the grand design syndrome isn't it which we love to watch as green roofs are hoisted up on old farm buildings and kev uses phrases like mechanical heritage and authentic brickwork in a

slightly erotic way kevin is more than just the presenter. He's been involved in several large house building projects himself. He's a keen supporter of the net zero trajectory this country was on until the Prime Minister diverted from those targets last week. So I spoke to Kevin as he was preparing to open the gates for Grand Designs Live, which is in Birmingham this year. I asked him how he thinks that they're due in comparison with the Conservative Party conference. Will people go to both? I couldn't comment on that last question, but I think we'll be back next year.

OK. So that's probably the, you know. Yes, I hear you. We'll be here. I mean, I dare say they'll be having a conference next year, too. But maybe we'll see. Who knows? Yes, I hear you. Yeah, we'll be here. I mean, I dare say they'll be having a conference next year too, but maybe, we'll see, who knows. But I wonder, I mean, when people go along to something like Grand Designs Live,

what does the kind of person who goes there, what does it tell us about our love affair with our homes, our aspirations for our homes, our whole kind of notion of home it's a very interesting question i think it tells us that um the attachment to place you know the attachment to um the hearth the heart of the home the idea of home as the sanctuary as a place of refuge, as a place of personal expression is as strong and perhaps stronger than it ever was. I remember after we had the great crash of 2008 with Iceland and the banks, I think our

exhibition opened on the Tuesday or something, two days afterwards, and we thought no one would come. And actually, we had one of my best years ever. And I think the point about the exhibition is that it offers a great deal for anybody who enjoys the show. So there's a sort of way in which it, of course, springs that alive. And I do enjoy meeting our customers because there's no other way for me to meet them. And it also, I think, offers people that opportunity to just engage with makers and do-doers and people who are responsible for the made and built world. So most of us, of course, we consume in a very remote way.

We click a button on a phone and stuff arrives from china and we don't know who's made it or when or where and whereas i think to be able to find somebody i once bought some placemats at the exhibition grand designs live and i've also bought a table and i bought some garden furniture and in every case i've met either somebody who works for the company uh or i've met the maker themselves and and as was the case with the placemats and the table and the the joy of commissioning something or buying something knowing that there's a narrative behind it a human meaning adds value to the object to the experience makes the experience of buying it of course meeting them memorable and it engages us with things that are made.

It helps us understand just how hard it is to make things and to make things beautifully. And I think that's long, that understanding and that meaning has long been separated from goods. It's rather like seeing the photograph of the you know the farmer on the front of the lamb chops in the supermarket of course the huge problem now in this country is that so many people can only afford the placemats they cannot afford the home and they're never going to be able to afford the home so i wonder what your thoughts are on that as a house builder yourself you've been involved in the actual projects of house building and also somebody who's had their, not just their toe, but the foot in the door of that building world for quite some time.

pricing and costs it's volatile in terms of the energy markets of course it's meant we've been delivered a cost of living crisis and um and we don't take any of that lightly at the organizers certainly don't i mean the exhibition is not just makers and retailers it's also activities there's we have three theaters we have exhibitions of young green graduates, my green heroes. We have expert advice centres. We have an advice centre entirely given over to green living. And those expert advice centres, anybody can just turn up with a drawing or an idea or just want to have a conversation about their energy bills and find advice from people who are really skilled and expert

and give of their time freely. And that's always been the case with the show. And it's sort of my favourite bit, partly because of the way in which these experts all come and, you know, just give of their time so generously. But we also have, right in the middle of the show, a house that we built, which is full of technological ideas. But it's also been made zero carbon by OVO, who have come along and decarbonized every tech that's gone into the building, whether that's heating, lighting or TVs.

or TVs. And that, I think, as much as Grand Designs, the television series and the programme thrive in times actually difficult and prosperous. So I think because we point to the future, we're showing what's coming down the line, I think that's hugely important in terms of helping people understand

where they might be in five years how they might be living but also to provide some notion that there is a future that there is hope that there is stuff going on that people are kind of trying to solve problems and also deliver high quality affordable housing and all the rest of it yeah so can I push you a little bit politically because I know that in 2015 you endorsed the Green Party, whose candidate at the time was Caroline Lucas, no longer available to you. So in this coming election, would you be prepared to endorse a political party for their Green credentials? Yeah, in as much as I live in Herefordshire and we have a potential candidate here, Ellie Chown. So yeah, I'll be supporting her.

Yeah, of course. And what do you make of the government, Rishi Sunak's recent announcement and his comparison actually between the pressures being put on Britain financially and our ambitions to be net zero? Well, he talks about conservative pragmatism. What's one of my views?

I mean, I agree with Caroline Lucas that I find the thing immoral and I find it an abandonment of principle and an abandonment of policy, which previous governments of both colours have pushed through. It seems to be betraying a great number of conservative backbenchers, not to mention other parties. And it's fundamentally, it's fundamentally, it contradicts all the advice that the Climate Change Committee have been providing government and the government and the House of Commons have agreed that they will not only take, but take on and absorb and abide by the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.

So, yeah, I mean, it's a very, very backward step. And it's the latest in a number of backward steps, in fact. Yeah. But do you have sympathy for, you you know just the individual person who's listening to this who's thinking well you know i would love uh to buy an electric vehicle i would love to have a heat pump i would love to live in a completely carbon neutral house but i can't afford it you know my my money has to go on just keeping going at the moment and and that is the person that rishi sunak is calling to, isn't it? And that is a person who's feeling hardship. I think that's the person he's attempting to call to. I don't,

put it this way, if you want change to happen in society, you don't just simply appeal to voters a year before an election in the hope that it'll sway some policy or, you know, a party getting elected. If you want to change things, you appeal to industry, you appeal to the city, you appeal to investment, you appeal to banks. You create a strategy, you create a long-term roadmap. We had this problem with solar power in as much as long-term objectives were given by Gordon Brown. 2016 target of zero carbon was given by that Labour government. And that long-term objective is crucial for businesses to invest. They don't invest in the life cycles of government.

They don't take the investment strategy of a five-year cycle. They instead say, no, we'll invest for five, 10, 20 years. We'll build a factory, in fact. This is what's happened with heat pumps. So one or two European manufacturers, Valent, for example, have built factories in the UK with the view and the understanding that they were going to be delivering into a market that was going to be matured for them through legislation and through deadlines being asserted in legislation by government. And this didn't happen. It's been reversed. So I have great sympathy for these companies who are trying to plan, who are trying to advise, who are trying to work with the Climate Change Committee and work with government in trying to develop a strategy for electric cars making them affordable i mean we're

only going to get affordable heat pumps and affordable electric cars in five or ten years time if we scale up if we just produce them in dribs and drabs we're not just one tiny question that both jane and i've become rather obsessed by kevin how can you ever have a heat pump if you live in a flat? Well they can work on balconies in fact you know there are many many flats around the world that have air conditioning units just parked outside on a shelf outside the window and they work they're about the same size and they work in an extremely similar way they're like a air conditioning unit backwards really so but actually I think the most interesting thing comes when you start talking to social housing landlords, for example, and councils and housing associations about providing community heat systems for residents in high-rise flats, in multiple occupancy schemes. And that's where you get the real benefits because you're getting a benefit of scale as well. And talking to the heat power manufacturers, many of them seem to be excited by the idea of this model being applied across the country eventually street by street to private residences. So you can imagine at the end of your street might be a little power unit.

You might, as a street, collectively own that. You might collectively own some solar as well. And you end up benefiting from the scaling of that and a district heating system, effectively, and a district power system. Kevin MacLeod was our guest on the programme this afternoon. We decided to play a little game of Grand Design's Bingo with him, starting with, does he have a heat pump?

I've just ordered one. OK, good goodness wow okay only just in there do you have bifold doors at home kevin no i don't have bifold doors no do you have a cantilevered roof no i certainly don't no mine's fairly fixed have you ever lived in a small caravan on site whilst waiting for your home to be completed? No, I haven't. Well, you don't qualify in that case, do you? I have lived in my own house. Currently, I have no kitchen and I'm camping in one room. So I think it's actually worse to be living in the building while you're trying to knock it down around you than it is to be in a caravan.

building while you're trying to knock it down around you than than it is to um to be in a caravan yeah um grand designs is such a feast for the eyes isn't it and and also i think increasingly over the series and i don't know whether you'd agree with this we we are being asked more and more to kind of emotionally invest in the people who are doing the grand designs themselves and uh i mean sometimes you do think is this couple going to survive at the end and actually some of them don't do they no some come out really scarred and and the thing about architecture and building is of course no people no architecture no people no cars no people no houses and and all of this the the idea particularly building something that's very um All of this, particularly if you're building something that's very, let's use another bingo word, bespoke.

If you're going to do that and you're going to record that, then inevitably the narrative that's going to unfold isn't a narrative of concrete and mud. That's always there. That's process. But the narrative that unfolds will be the very human one of people's journey and I think I mean somebody's once said to me it's like it's one of the big adventures that we all imagine we can still go on you know trekking to the south pole yeah sailing around the world building your own house I mean increasingly uh you know we are watching it because we kind of probably can't do that ourselves actually and some of the designs are just so phantasmagorical are you always sincere in that lovely end piece that you do Kevin when you arrive and everything looks beautiful and wonderful and it doesn't matter how much

you've said I don't think this project's gonna work at the end you you I mean you have you have to be in aberration of it actually don't you well that's a good point so we start always by picking projects that we like that we really want to do that we think are going to turn out well and and we don't pick projects deliberately that we think are going to run over or fall into some disastrous hole so um we we you know much as these things usually happen um i love it when things go right the as to the piece of camera at the end you know, much as these things usually happen, I love it when things go right. As to the piece of camera at the end,

you know, these people have let us into their lives, often for years, and we're not there to pick them apart, and we are there to try and celebrate what they've done. And I suppose, in a way, that final piece of camera does sort of, it does sort of reveal the the the the kind of quiet hidden thrust of the series which is to celebrate what people have done it's sometimes very hard

because the projects can go so badly wrong that there doesn't seem anything there that you can talk about in which case we talk about the difficulty um And if there's nothing else, perhaps the hope that there might be some future. There was one episode which many people remember, which was an unfinished house on the cliffs in Devon. An enormous thing built by Edward. And his marriage fell apart during the construction. He lost control of the project. It got bought out by venture capitalists, I think, and other investors. And he just about kind of retained some small ownership there. of the project it got bought out by venture capitalists i think and other investors and he

just about kind of retained some small ownership there and and in at the end of the program i i i sort of wrote a piece to camera about um about reaching overreaching about about about trying too hard about hope being that emotion which which takes us to the edge of the cliff and then pushes us off it was quite negative and then we went back for the revisit and he had actually finished two years later and and actually it then became a little easier to talk about um the next phase of his life which which felt more redemptive you know yeah that was an extraordinary building actually i mean it obviously was an extraordinary building, actually. I mean, it obviously remains an extraordinary building. Is there any other one that's really stayed with you, perhaps just in terms of innovation, in terms of style, you know, somewhere that actually you might like to live yourself? Ah, yeah. Well, I've long since given up on that because I've realized that that's the road to misery.

Or envy. Yeah. If all you're doing, I mean, I've now reconciled myself to be very lucky to spend time in these buildings with these people. When the buildings are finished, they're often in extraordinary settings and the experience of the building, whether it's urban or rural or wherever, is nearly always phenomenal. And I've learned to drink that and then move on to the next thing and maybe be inspired by, you know, a material where I've written the name down or something. But generally speaking, to go through life, yeah, envious of other people is a hiding to nowhere. And we've had over 200 projects, so heavens,

I mean, I'd be, I think, a wreck or a husk of a human being if I wanted all of that. No, in a sense, it sort of placates the acquisitive architectural being in me. So I enjoy it all vicariously. And that is, it's a huge privilege that. Yes, of course, there are projects which I love. But just as there are teams and colleagues that I love

and enjoy working with still after 20 years. And there are great projects near great pubs with fantastic lunch sometimes too. So there are all kinds of great pubs with fantastic lunch sometimes, too. So there are all kinds of reasons why a project is memorable. Can we just return to really serious kind of big matters for the last couple of minutes, Kevin? What does solve the house building crisis in this country? Because the pledges made by government to build, I think, in excess of 300,000 new homes every year. I mean, it's just impossible to meet, has not been met in the past.

Is it a realistic target? What will actually happen to this whole generation of people, especially the younger generation, who can't see home ownership as ever, ever being available to them? Yeah. Well, I think for a start, we have to be pluralistic in our planning of the market. We have to think about a fracturing of the market. Look, the construction industry doesn't enjoy one crisis. It's several. The construction industry doesn't enjoy one crisis, it's several. There is extremely poor and deliberately confusing legislation in place from central government. There are cities like Lancaster, others around the country that are trying to set their own very high standards of building regulations so that they can produce passive housing as standard.

They can demand it of developers and builders. And in Lancaster, ironically, this stuff is being built by the private sector, companies who are making profits building really high quality housing. So Lancaster have a tremendous track record here. And yet the policy from central government suggests that on a Monday, you might get your local plan passed and on a Tuesday you might not. There is a fantastic degree of ambiguity in government legislation over what it's asking of the housing industry. Meanwhile, half a dozen major house builders, the largest of which turned over last year to March 22,

£4.5 billion with £1.1 billion of profit. That's persimmon. That's an enormous amount, a phantasmagorical amount of money by anybody's standards. That company is one of six who are just churning out the standard product. And they have tremendous, because of their size, huge control over the market. Now, we also have, because we haven't trained anybody since the 1980s properly, we have an enormous crisis in skills, made worse by COVID because of the number of people that left the industry, particularly the older guys and women who were really skilled and

we all hope would be passing down their skills to the younger generation. So we have a crisis of land too, and land availability. But one thing's for sure, in my mind, if we fractured the supply chain, if we said, actually, do you know what, in Austria, six to 8,000 small suppliers doing all of the homes, let's move to that model. Let's try and create diversity of supply, diversity of tenure, diversity of ownership models, diversity of construction methods too, and design and architecture, then we move to a model which is closer to that of Germany, Austria, continental Europe and would no doubt lead to much better performing buildings. What's the longest queue for At The Grand Designs

week? Is it underfloor heating? Is it one of those boiling water taps? What is it? They're all there. They're all there. Yes, great. The longest queue may be to get in in the morning. It's a very

funny thing, but we open the show. I'm opening next morning. It's a very funny thing, but we open the show. I'm opening next morning. We have a little ribbon and, you know, we say a few silly words. And, yeah, people are kind of quite keen to get in there early, which is fun. We have a little marching band to take us in, which is all rather sweet. Kevin MacLeod talking ahead of Grand Designs Live, which takes place at the NEC from the 4th to the 8th of October.

So that's today, isn't it? He's cutting the ribbon today. Oh, today. How exciting. Grand Designs Live. Would you go? I am not particularly ambitious design-wise. Oh, come off it. We had a fantastic conversation about carpets today. Well, we did. We did? Yeah. Only because I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I've not actually changed the

carpets in about, well, put it this way. One of my kids' bedrooms has had a solid lump of something in the corner of the carpet. She's at uni at the moment so I was moving her bed and I discovered this revolting other ecosystem type world under her bed. It was truly dreadful. There was a baby Bjorn, long neglected, a collection of snow globes, the cat has obviously been making merry under there for many, yeah yeah exactly but there was this bit of stuff which I thought was candle wax and I have interrogated her on the telephone and she tells me it was solidified slime which dates it doesn't it really it really does so how long has that been there long and short of it she needs a new carpet so

you could head off to Grand Designs live and you could see lots of different floor coverings. Yes, there is an absolutely dizzying array of floor coverings in the average carpet shop at the moment. I'm completely out of my depth. It's a little bit like back in the day when you went to Blockbusters, isn't it? And you just couldn't, as soon as you got into Blockbusters, you didn't know what you wanted to watch. Well, exactly.

You just ended up with Dirty Dancing again. So you will, you'll wanted to watch. Well, exactly. You just ended up with Dirty Dancing again. So you will. You'll go to the carpet shop. You'll just end up with exactly the same carpet that's in your house. Well, more or less, I've come home with a couple of samples. Oh, OK. So the night wolf, the evening will fly by as we analyse it. Well, won't it just?

Yes, the evening. And then you'll be experimenting with your Peugeot pepper grinder in front of Boiling Point. Happy days. Happy days. There's still time to get tickets for Shirley Ballas with us at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Monday afternoon. It's at a good time.

I mean, it won't ruin the day. It's at, is it half past three? It starts at half past three. Well, the live show starts at three, but Shirley will be on at half three. Yeah, it'll be really good fun. So come along if you can. It'd be nice to see you.

Yeah, and Cheltenham has a range of possibilities. There's restaurants, coffee bars and a very secret government building. Oh, not that again. Right, OK. Well, if we haven't lost her to the world of international espionage, it'll be Jane Garvey and Fee Glover with you again tomorrow in the final instalment of this week's Off Air. Good evening.

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 Tribe. Yeah, he's an executive. Now, if you want even more, and let's face it, who wouldn't, then stick Times Radio on at three o'clock Monday until Thursday every week and you can hear our take on the big news stories of the day as well as a genuinely interesting mix of brilliant and entertaining guests on all sorts of subjects. Thank you for bearing with us and we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon.