Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Concealing a 5G tower in my bra

Episode Date: July 21, 2026

Jane and Fi have read a good news story, and it's left them buzzing (literally). With all their renewed energy, they cover silent discos, being full of chickpeas, The Pitt, little knobs of Parmesan, and the perils of a cross-body bag. Plus, Harry Hardisty, life coach and founder of DadHugsForYourSoul, reflects on how he got to where he is. You can buy tickets for Fringe by the Sea: https://www.fringebythesea.com/off-air-with-jane-fi-and-special-guest-jan-ravens/Our book club pick is a collection of short stories! 'Interpreter of Maladies' is by Jhumpa Lahiri. You can check out our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@OffAirWithJaneAndFiOur most asked about book is called 'The Later Years' by Peter Thornton.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producers: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's a lot revolting. Some people will immediately have switched off. But we're doing ourselves good because I'm reading here in The Times. Five coffees a day could perk up your health. It's quite a lot, isn't it? It's quite a lot. I've got to say five. I think it would do for me, if I'm honest. This is an article by Health Editor, Eleanor Haywood. Researchers from the American Heart Association said that having two to four cups of coffee a day

was linked to a lower risk of heart disease, diabetes, heart failure and stroke. A coffee has about 80 to 100 milligrams of caffeine. T's got about 50, a can of Coke has got 33, a can of red bull 80. Right, we've never had a red bull of you. I had a red bull once, and I knew that I never, ever needed to have a red bull again. It was about 15 years ago. I think I'm still a little bit high because of it. On the strength of it, okay.

But it's good to know that coffee, I mean, I've got to be. I've got to say five. No, that would tip me over the edge. It would be too much. Well, quite often I over-cafinate in the morning because I don't stop myself in time. You know when you're trying to teach your kids something sensible about drinking? And you say, wait half an hour between glasses. Drink a pint of water. Yeah, all that type of stuff. I don't take my own advice over coffee and I'm so excited by being caffeinated by cup number two.

I think, yeah, I'm just going to go straight in for cup number three. I'm doing it with a stove pot these days instead of a French press thingy. Right. So this is, you boil it up. So this, that's, it's one of the little, I always think they're very, very Italian. The ones that you, you feel, they look a little bit rhomboid. Do you think that's the right shape?

Who knows? Go for it. Yeah. And you put water in the bottom, coffee in the middle, screw the top on very tightly, put it on the stove. Yeah. And it steams it all up, doesn't it?

I've made a directional hand movement. Which, as I find helpful, it just sounds very mindful and part of your early morning ritual, and we all have them, don't we? It's such a good point, Jane, I think that's why I do it. Yeah, I like to do all of that kind of hand-eye coordination whilst having a little fuss over the kid cats. Also, on this same page is a picture of a silent disco at Cue Gardens. Do you like a silent disco?

I'm going to punt it out. What's the bloody appeal of it? silent disco. Honest to God, what's the bloody point? I mean, I thought the whole point of dancing like that was to do it, you're all in unison. Oh, Debbie Downer. Sorry, I don't get it. I don't get it. They're very good fun because everybody slightly loses an inhibition. It's really weird. Yeah, but why not lose your inhibitions to the same bit of music? Because sometimes it is a bit, I find it more liberating to not be in tune with everybody else than in with everybody else. And also it's very, very good for the neighbours.

Yes, I don't care about mine. So take it or leaving. You definitely need more coffee this morning. Yes, please explain to me genuinely. I know that lots of festivals, they have like a silent disco option. I've heard this from my youngsters in the early hours of the morning, don't they? They have, you can, I believe the phrases, you can come down with a bit of a bit of silent disco. Would that be right? I just don't know. I'd have been fast asleep since 9 o'clock,

but anyway, also just something else I wanted to mention, because I'm afraid this really struck a chord with me. Hillary Rose has written in The Times Today, I've realised what's bothering me, our new Prime Minister fancies himself. And Hillary has just said that Andy Burnham, unlike some of his predecessors, isn't a buffoon or a loon, he just fancies himself. That's it in a shell knot. And I'm kind of with a... I have to say. Andy Burnham's biggest fan is definitely Andy Burnham. A Burnham. But he is, I don't think he is the man for all times,

but I think he's the man for this time. It's the time for this week, certainly. No, because that's the type of person who is really getting on in the world. So you might as well have one of them up there. You know, if you really enjoy making a TikTok real, and if you really enjoy laboriously choosing your outfits, if you have a personal style, you know,

all of these things are very, very now. And I just think, okay, we'll go get them. And you've got, there's a very, very, very fine line, isn't there? Between self-belief and narcissism. And we will have to wait and see. We will. And our listeners to times radio. Maybe there than 24 hours.

Less than 24 hours. What were they saying yesterday? I mean, we've got lots of funny WhatsApp messages, but people, you know, I'll give him a week. or in some more optimistic cases a month or two, people abiding their time and not prepared to rush to judgment until next week when they will, obviously rush to judgment. Why are we talking about this when we could be in the presence of a record breaker? Oh, this is Eve, coming in.

Well, honestly, why are we bothering with politics when we need to get to the real meat on our podcast bone? So I went down to Hastings where they host an annual pirate festival. It was the first time I'd... got involved in this sort of thing. Is it? I'm told I was part of a world record. So apart from the dressing up, what do you do?

I mean, do you bring in some illegal rum? On the Sunday there is a parade and there's some live music. Is the live music the kind of rum-tidly um-tum-tum. Yes, you sing some sea shanties. But it's good fun because as soon as we got on the train, some people came up and we're all chatting with each other. Lovely. You know, you see your fellow pirates.

I have no particular affiliation with pirates. Well, I'm glad you said that, because what they did was actually illegal. I know there were lady pirates. Who's the famous one? Grace O'Malley, I think, was the famous. They're also coming in on small, medium and large boats. Yes, absolutely. That's proved tricky for this country recently.

Well, what a lovely thing to do just out of interest. And why was it a lady's only event? Because it's my friend who's got a house down in Hastings. Okay, so is this why when I entered the building? Today you were all discussing second homes and trying to persuade Jane to buy one so you can all go and stay in it. Yes, that is more or less it. Hastings didn't really cut the mustard.

I was really glad when you arrived today. Not that I'm not always glad, because I was being put under a tremendous pressure. I can barely maintain one home, never mind the idea of taking on another one. It's gone from buying a round of coffees in the morning to a second home somewhere outside centimillion, and that's quite a leap, isn't it?

Leave me alone to enjoy my doted. But it is true. I did say the other day that actually having a holiday home is of enormous and luxurious benefit to your friends, but it's really hard on the best for you at all. No, it's because it's a colossal responsibility, isn't it? Very much so. And obviously it's a luxury and it's beyond the reach of the overwhelming majority of the population. But, yeah, the people who benefit from people's second homes are the mates of people who've got second home. Because you don't have to go over there and, you know, get the boiler going.

Don't worry about the guttering. Just turn up. But also to dwell on this for a moment, you did say that when you went to France, you actually found that you were very welcome in that part of France. And I thought that was interesting because I think we sometimes only hear the bad stories,

don't we? We only see the sharks fill in the bay, which is that some expat communities really aren't particularly welcome on the continent anymore. But you felt that there was a love of the Ross beef. Yes, we just got a very, warm reception in shops.

I mean, obviously, I was with, rather, if I say so myself, a non-threatening group of middle-aged women. And obviously, we were very polite. And we had two fluent French speakers in the group, which really helps. I mean, I won't, as you know, I'm not one of them. But that really does help. And people do warm to you, I think, because of that. And we spent money in local shops.

But also, there is still, how can I put this without sounding horribly you know like some old git that there are still memories of what happened in World War II I think in parts of France felt perhaps more keenly in some parts of France than others so look there we are I'm not in any way anti-German I think

it's a great country let's stop this I'm just annoying people I'm with you but do you know I'm often struck when we used to go to the same part of France every year when the kids were much younger in the Midi Pyrene which is such beautiful rural France and every single village would have an obelisk in the town square

naming all the young men who didn't come home and you felt because there's no new development around many of those villages and towns and you just knew that it was their entire male population who went off to fight and didn't come back it was so moving

and I know that we have similar commemorations in this country, but it doesn't feel like the number of names on the board in the local church or on the obelisk actually outweigh the number of people who ever lived there. So it was really struck me as a beautiful, beautiful part of the world

where your sadness, I think, would still be quite connected, I suppose that's what I'm trying to say. Well, I think sometimes in this country, we don't have it in our collective muscle memory, the idea of invasion. No, we don't. We went toward.

It didn't. It came to us in the form of terrible bombing and obviously lives were impacted but we didn't have foreign troops on our shores apart from the Americans who came over to help out and of course the American forces who remain on our shores to this day. But let's get lighter.

Let's get lighter. Let's get lighter. Let's get lighter. And also because I wanted to, do a plea to Ali to come back, come back. So Ali, Ali and I were friends over the airwaves through this podcast, but I've let her down, yeah. Well, massively litter on two fronts. Yep. So Ali couldn't believe my views on chickpeas and Little House on the Prairie.

Firstly, chickpeas are delicious. When cooking them, I always sneak a few teaspoons straight out of the tin, even the standard ones from Tesco. I do love the bowl beans ones, but I'm now worried about what's in the jar, and we'll read the ingredients thoroughly next time. We were just trying to work out why if it's so tasty. Well, yeah, there is something in that. I'm, do you know, I made a very nice recipe? Do you remember Hugh Fernley Whitting store came on? He's not dead. No, no, I know, but he came on. I can't remember how long ago he came on, but he came on a couple of months ago, and I had the cookbook from that, and there's a very nice recipe, white beans and courgettes.

It's kind of, the idea is that you have them on toast as an alternative to bake beans. Anyway, I made that over the weekend. Really tasty. But I used a jar of the bald white beans. But they come in this sort of gloopy soup. Yeah. And you're right to ask. What's in the gloop? What is that? And why is it so lovely?

And does it, is it the juice of the white bean? Because I don't think they have juice, do they? I don't know. Where did they come from those white beans? You definitely, you don't want to pour the gloop away, do you? Well, no, you're meant to keep it. You're meant to add it. It actually was added to the cochettes.

Can I just, sorry, we'll get back to you, Ali, in a sec. It's an important culinary question. How did you prevent your corsette? from going slimy? Did you have to do that soaking with salt first? No, I know, I just fried them. I just fried them with an onion. Interesting.

Right, so we're back with you, Ali. Secondly, Little House on the Prairie was one of my favourite TV shows like Jane. I also had a crush on the dad, but loved it all, really identified with Laura. I'd read the books but still loved the TV series. It was repeated on Channel 4 when I was 17. That was in 1989.

So we're quite close in age as well, Ali. And I loved watching it all. over again. On a Sunday morning I'd do some driving practice with my dad and come home to watch Little House, followed by the Waltons, a perfect Sunday. I'm not sure I want to watch the new series, although I felt the same way about Poldark and in the end fell in love with the new version almost as much as I'd love the original one fee. I'm sorry, but you're wrong. So I've been told and I haven't even given the new Little House on the Prairie ago. So I will do that after I've got to the end of the pit, which is making me a little bit worried before going to bed.

Okay, but you're on the first series, aren't you? I am, yeah. I know what you mean. It's very, very nerve shredding, but I do think it's brilliantly done. It is brilliant, but it is visceral. Yes. And they do that thing where they're slightly out of tune with your normal algorithm about programs like that.

So if you've watched one episode where something horrendous, horrendous happens in the patient doesn't make it. You feel that you rather deserve in the next episode for something good to happen. That's the way that it usually works, isn't it? And they don't do that. No, they don't.

No, they don't do that. So I've been finding that a little bit tricky but addictive. So I will dive in. I might do the double there. I'll dive into Little House on the Prairie with a can of chickpeas. Yeah.

And Ali, come back to me. Perhaps provide photographic evidence. No, there's no need for that. There's enough photographs on Instagram now. It's been circulated around far too many family members. Keep on trucking. You can laugh, but don't laugh like that. No, exactly.

Yes, I know exactly. There is laughter that's joyous and strangely life-affirming. And then there's the other kind of laughter, isn't it? Which is cruel. Yes, which is plain cruel. Celia says, I was listening last week, while Jane talked about how she carefully measured out 150 grams of Greek yogurt and was shocked to see how small the portion was. It reminded me.

of one of my several attempts at Weight Watchers when, knowing that if I only stopped eating bread and cheese, I may actually lose some weight, followed a recipe. It said, to taste this recipe, you can add a treat of 40 grams of cheese to this meal. Well, these treats were the extra special things we could have very occasionally in our diet. So I duly weighed out 40 grams of cheese and was horrified to see that it was about the size of the piece that I was usually left with after I'd finished grating and just popped in my gob. Suffice to say that cheese is still my downfall. I'm so with you, Celia.

If I didn't eat while I was cooking, I'd be the size. I'd be like a little pencil with legs. I really would. But everyone, or at least I think everyone eats while they're cooking. And everybody eats that piece of cheese. Yeah. Because you get to the point where you'd actually be shredding your fingers if you went any further.

And what are you meant to do with that? You can't put the great big knob of cheese into your coffee. I mean, parmen. In particular, I absolutely love a little knob of parmesan. Super. You're very classy, aren't you? Philippa says she enjoyed our discussion on Greek yogurt, but I was dying for you to say, what percentage fat you buy? My husband has got high blood sugar, so he insists on nought percent.

But anything higher is so much tastier, and the higher you go, the more delicious it is. Please discuss which is healthiest, and if even 10% fat is better than none at all. Okay. Well, neither of us are qualified nutritionists. But that's not stopped us in the past. So here we go. So listen up. But there's increasing evidence, isn't there, that A, the higher the fat content and the protein content,

the fuller it makes you feel. So if you're actually using nought percent as a means of weight loss, you're probably going to be starving and eat something inappropriate, like your knob of cheese about 10 minutes later. And fats are good for us. And fats are really, really, really good for us. at a certain age in our lives. That's right. Now.

Yes, like now. So I'm never quite sure what a good fat is, but I think I'm dimly aware that there is good fat in yogurt, Greek yogurt in particular. And I can't, it's interesting, we were having a little discussion about this in the office the other day.

It's quite rare to find the 2% Greek yogurt, but apparently it's quite prevalent in East London. Yes, it's very prevalent. Can't I get it in East, West Kensington at all. You can only get Norton 5. Right, the 2% is very available. So in my, we call it, we call it, laughing you've

I know she's high as a kite since their record-breaking weekend she's got an air and grace about her which you don't have last week which you don't really associate with pirates In our local cost increases there is a whole shelf dedicated to the different percentages

of yoghurt and a whole shelf of kimchi as well so you can have various different types of kimchi and all manner of cheeses I think equal space is given to the sheep cheese the goat's cheese and the normal cheese Sorry. I've been a little bit bovine prejudice there. Yes, you should say normal.

No. A lot of people are very offended by that fee. Robin says, I can't speak for modern Greek yogurt, but traditionally Greek yogurt would have been made from sheep's milk. Is that true? Well, I guess so, because you would have had an awful lot of sheep on the hillsides of Greece and an awful lot of goats, wouldn't you? And very few cows, they don't. Yeah. Have you seen cows when you've been in Greece?

I haven't. I haven't. Does Greece have any cows? They have loads of goats, don't they? So wouldn't it be... I don't want to undermine Robin's knowledge. Wouldn't they have more goats than sheep? I don't know.

Fascinating. We'll continue. Eve's currently looking it up. We do have a guest. Who's the guest today? Our guest is Harry Hardesty, who started posting on the social's thoughts about his love life and rejection and difficulties with your head,

when you relationships fail and stuff like that. And he really struck a chord with people. And he's built up the most enormous following. He's British. So he's become, yes, he is. He's become something of a phenomenon. So there was a very good article in The Times. We've mentioned the newspaper a lot.

I tell you what, ever so well. We're going to get a proper bonus. Ever so well. Today's pod. Yeah, we are both a little bit corporate cafe today. I think it's fascinating. There's the obvious questions to ask about whether or not you do have to be qualified to offer therapy to people

and what I liked about his stuff was quite an honest conversation about rejection. And I think in the world of relationships dealing with rejection is incredibly difficult. I mean it ruins some people. people's lives. And if you can flip it around a bit to being a pretty simple equation about if somebody didn't want to be with you, did you really want to be with them? Is that a lifetime of happiness? It's a conversation that I enjoy having. Okay, well that sounds interesting. So, and he's

coming in? He is coming in. Right. Yes. He's coming into our upstairs studio, which has really divided opinion on the station. We're having to disappear up to Talk Sports studio at the moment because ours is being rebuilt and it will be full of juzh when we go back to it in September. Even I just went past and had a little look in the being under construction new studio and I'm no techs bird, but I think we're some months off. Well, I don't think we go back until September, do we?

I think it's all a bit up in the air. Yes. The man who's building the studio did seem to be quite interested in his phone. Well, one guy was on his phone. Oh my gosh, what a dobbor-inor you are. No, we're just saying. Wow. Well, next time I see either of you two on your phones at work, I'm going to call in the bloke from the studio.

I just hope he's not Googling how to build a radio studio. I hope he is. I wanted to work. But the one upstairs at the moment, Chayden I absolutely love because it's seen better days. It reminds me of local radio. It's dark. Happy, happy times. There's no view of the outside world. Yep. There's no space. strip lighting or LED fandangos going down and quite a lot of it doesn't work which I just find reassuring.

It's very reassuring. More seriously, neither of us has had a funny headache since we went up there because as you say, there are none of those really bright lights. So we say, don't worry, you stay on your phone in there, Roger, and take your time building the new studio. Obviously, when we go back into the new studio, we'll be full of beans. Oh, gosh, yes. Full of beans, all sorts of chickpeas and other pulses.

Still unclogging wastes after all of these years is a fantastic email from Patricia. I can never say that. I'm going to call you Pat if that's okay. As a long-term listener to you both right back to the version at the old place, I was amused yesterday to hear Jane thinking about chemical removal of hair from the shower. I never unwind the long, tangled cord of hair from the waste pipe of my bath without the thought of the chopsticks method of removal from fortunately flashing through my mind and making me smile.

As I regularly fall asleep to the comforting sound of you both and the hum of the hive in my headphones, chasing away the worries which otherwise would stop me sleeping. I woke this morning thinking again about that long gone episode. Putting the query, hair from a waste pipe using chopsticks, unfortunately with Fee and Jane into a search engine, the following was what AI came back within seconds. And it does.

I mean, this is so spooky, isn't it? Details of the chopstick discussions, about 500 words about what was in that podcast. Oh my God. It was entitled a slightly sticky envelope with James Nocti. And, I mean, my apologies to Big Jim. I just can't remember interviewing James Knox at all. And neither can you.

I can't remember. I mean, whether he'll remember his encounter with us. I mean, let's just own it. He might not. But no, I don't remember. So it wasn't one of our forensic investigative episodes where we discovered some new truth about something. And what's come out of it is a very insightful member.

memory about chopsticks. Well, what was very funny about those podcasts back at the corporation was that we were often interviewing, let's just call them people from the old school, who had absolutely no idea what we were doing with our new, shall we say, fresh and funky approach to podcasting. I mean, it was a whole, it was an alien environment, wasn't it, some of the old timers who we were obliged to interview. and they looked utterly, utterly baffled by the nature of our inquiries. It was just peculiar. It was deeply peculiar at times, often extremely funny.

Certainly we thought it was funny. But some of the older types were absolutely bamboos or vital. What is this? So maybe Jim was in that category. Yes, possibly. I'm not saying he definitely was. But the domestic hack for clearing a blocked bathroom plug hole was to use those chopsticks that you get

if you ask for a delivery from certain places. My motor skills are so poor, I can't use chopsticks. No, I know. Well, do you remember I bought you? A special little clippy thing. I know, you've been ever so good over the years. It's not made a dent. I just think I need a new shower.

I'm sorry. I would use it as an excuse to have a new shower because our new shower, which was forced on us, by the old shower. Forced desperately. The authorities came round to Feet's house. Put a shower in. No, but also because, you know, the house is on the market.

Oh, yes. Of course, yes, absolutely. Still on the market. It's a slow time. I hope it's for Andy Burnham. So it didn't need replacing. But we're all just, we just feel cleaner, more hygienic, fresher, more centred. It's just been a beautiful thing, Jane.

I couldn't recommend it highly enough, and it was quite reasonable in the end. Reasonable, right. Dear Jane and Fee, I'm currently on a commuter train out of London, writes Susanna. Why is it that when there are two empty seats next to each other, women sit in the seat next to the window with their bags on their laps? I'm looking at quite a few now, but the men, however, sit on the aisle seat and put their bags on the free seat. People getting on now have to ask them if they can sit down.

Why do they do this? It drives me mad. It's so rude and inconsiderate. I have in the past asked if certain pieces of luggage have a ticket. A man put his fold-up bike on the seat next to him and then had a go at me for rolling my eyes. The bike was eventually removed. The train is now packed with people standing

and one man is still hogging two seats. I can't wait until I retire. So Susanna, who's probably not having her greatest day of commuting from the sound of things, but I do understand it can be incredibly irritated. that kind of behaviour, although I've got a say fee, I think women are equally guilty here because I do, I had to ask a young lady on the tube last night to move her bag off a seat. Why do people do that? They spread their doings across several seats on public transport. It shouldn't be allowed.

No, it shouldn't be. Or just move it when it gets packed. I think fair enough if you're in a... Put your bag on the floor. It doesn't need to be. It's not a creed, it doesn't, it's not a tired bag. It's just a bag. It can be on the floor. No, I put my bag on a seat next to me, but if the train gets busy, I'd take it off and I'd put it on my lap or the floor. Another area of conflict between the two of us. And I also like to wear it as a cross-body bag, so sometimes I don't have to move it at all. Although that comes with apparel, because I bumped into one of our colleagues yesterday, I didn't realize that the cross-body bag had actually pulled my dress down.

I had a conversation. Mostly bra. Not very much of me, mostly bra. Was it one of your pretty bras? No. What are the others? No. It was a very Monday bra.

Right. No, it wasn't great. And I don't know whether or not to write an apology and draw even more attention to it or just leave it. I think I'm just going to leave it. They did well, though, because they maintained eye contact rather than... Yes, I know who it was. Yeah, let's not go. No, he wouldn't be unpleasant.

The crossbody, but I have one as well. And I used to think it was better, but I wonder sometimes whether it actually puts strain on part of your... On your hips. What do you think? Well, depends what's in it, doesn't it? It does depend what is it and what's in it. And sometimes if you do have a bubage, it can be unbelievably unflattering. I mean, sometimes I've seen other women with a cross-body bag where you actually win some pain when you walk past them

because it's doing a kind of dividing routine that seems to be quite cut and thrust. Right. Yes. Yeah. So I'm not sure about that. But I just can't do, I can't do a rucksack to work. Well, I was wondering whether that might be the safest thing to do. I'm sure it is.

And look at Eve's face. Oh my word. It's real pirate grimace. What's, you don't do a rucksack? I hate that you can't just quickly get something out of your bag. You want your airports. You want your pass to get into work. You want to grab your phone.

Swinging it around, opening it up on your chair. Oh my God, I'll never do it again. Yeah, I'm with you, completely with you. And I'm also a little bit nervous that if I haven't zipped everything up, it's actually an invitation for people to just delve. Yeah. So no, I don't get it at all. No.

Well, another area that you can get yourselves involved in. I agree with you. I'd be worried that if there was a tasty-looking compartment... Someone would just... They'd just nip in. Yep. But I suppose the key is not to put anything. I mean, my old mum, when she travelled to London back in the 80s and 90s,

when both her daughters were living in London, and she was very uneasy about the capital, she always put 20 quid in her bra. Very sensible. And it was very sensible. Yeah. Yeah. I quite often put my phone in my bra. I find that quite handy.

What kind of perception do you get down there? 5G. At least, I would have thought. Harry Hardesty is a tech consultant from Newcastle. He is 53 and divorced. Last year he had four followers on TikTok. Now he has 360,000. That rise is due to the advice he started giving

about dealing with heartbreak. Based originally on his own experience, he started making reels about dealing with rejection, picking yourself up, knowing the mistakes you made, choosing better next time, and the advice took off. Now he has a platform of his own, Dad Hugs for the Soul. You can sign up for membership. He's got a book on the way.

You can even take Dad, hugs, courses. He is particularly beloved by women of a certain age, perhaps, and he's here now. What could possibly go wrong? Harry, you're very welcome on the show. How are you? But am I beloved on the show? Well, yes, we're very open-minded women. Very open-minded, Harry.

I'm very well, thank you. Thank you for having me. What was your relationship experience that had led you to wake up one morning and go, I just want to tell the world something about the pain that I'm feeling? It was kind of, it was more historic than that. The time that I actually created the first video was a little while after. after my last relationship breakup. But it was more a pattern kind of recognition thing of saying, well, this seems to be happening to me regularly.

I seem to be either choosing very poorly and then ending up in situations where I feel like, and I'm sure you haven't experienced this feeling, but of trying to earn somebody's love, trying to sort of earn my place in the relationship, and never feeling like I quite deserved to be in the relationship. and the relationship having an inevitable ending that was approaching from the very beginning. Right.

And being in that kind of clinging on state. Right. What did you say in that first video then? I spoke about how to actually detach from somebody that you've been almost obsessed with, somebody who you've been ruminating over for years, and how to really get some practical distance from. them and I spoke about the fact that I'd been to therapy for these things a couple of times and I'd always come out of therapy and I am northern, you may hear the twang and I am very

practical and I would come out of therapy and I'd sit in the car and I'd say well that's wonderful I understand why I do this. I know what this is. It's okay so this is anxious attachment. This is my attachment style. I know why I do it. You know I had an emotionally absent father and tried earn his love and now I'm repeating the pattern and all of that. So I was very aware of what it all was, but it didn't really help me knowing. And I remember sitting in the car outside the therapist thinking, well, that's fine, but what the heck do I do? Like, what can I actually do to feel better? And so I kind of went on my own little research mission, as we tend to do these days, where we have access to social media,

watched and read as much as I could, and found the kind of familiar, found the stuff that I was experiencing in reels, and books and everywhere else, and sort of got to the point where I thought, do you know what, I think I can actually attack this, I can do something about this. And a huge component of my healing was getting to the point where not only had I this historic understanding of it that hadn't helped me, but compiling these kind of tools that would help me never do it again. So that's so interesting. So you didn't start out by just kind of, you know, pouring my heart out.

blurting yourself out. No. You actually did thoughtfully want to get a response that would help you? It was a mix, I think. I'm an emotional man, right? And I am very... Never, Harry, has there been a better time to be a slightly older, northern, emotionally intelligent man. They're having the moment. Are they? I hear this. But yeah, and I think I've always been sort of... I'm very interested in people. I'm... always going to take the most human approach I can to a problem.

And having worked, it was never a job for me at that point. It was just me explaining what I'd been through and saying, look, this is how I fixed this. This is how I've moved through this. And I reckon you could do it as well. However devastated you feel you are. And I'd spent the majority of my relationship life. And I mean from first girlfriend through to,

I was married for 14 years. And it went away then because it was a very secure, calm relationship. And then the marriage ended and I went straight back into the pattern. And so the majority of my adult relationship experiences were repeating this really painful kind of pattern and being heartbroken every couple of years. And understanding something was going on, but not really understanding how to fix it. And then once I found that actually I can move through this, I can do stuff that's going to make me feel better, I found the stuff that the therapist hadn't given me in the office. How much of all of your relationships that didn't succeed

was about you and how much was about them? I'd say about 70% me and 30% them and it varies, of course, because humans are different, right? And some of the people that I chose objectively were difficult to people to be in relationships with. But one of the biggest things that moves most of the people forward who come to me and speak to me is this accountability and the fact that they speak to so many people who don't make you accountable.

who don't say, right, okay, what can we look at in your own behaviour? What pattern could we find in your own relationship history of what you felt in your childhood? You know, were you parented consistently? Is it possible that you have an abandonment wound and you're working to be in a relationship where you experience the pain of that wound again and you try and earn the person's love? Because that's kind of the situation. Right, so you're basically trying to write past wrongs through your own romantic. experience. When did you realise that you were really touching a nerve out there? Because to go from

four followers on TikTok to 360,000 followers, it's quite a leap, Harry? Yeah, I mean, that's across all my socials, I should say. That's not just on TikTok. But yeah, it took off immediately. And it took off because it was, at the beginning, it was more sad. It did feel more sad because obviously it was more recent for me, but also because the motivation at the beginning was to explain more what I'd been feeling. And then the motivation became to explain how I stopped feeling it or how I moved it through me. So I think there's a very real connection between what I put out and the people watching it. I don't do the thing that most social media people do, which is, right, I'm going to look where the views are. I'm going to find out where to get all the followers.

So if I write a reel about, I don't know, anxious attachment, which is what I talk about, but if you choose a subject based on how many views it has and then you create the content, there's a disconnect. People see that. Whereas if you talk about experiential stuff honestly and have no fear of what's going to come back at you, so people just immediately kind of align with it and say, oh, yeah, wow, okay, you've definitely been where I am. And that's what I get the most is this kind of, oh, you've definitely felt this. Are you targeting women or are you targeting men?

I don't target anyone. Everybody. Yeah, they follow me. It's 91% women, my followers. And I think that's more their behavior than mine, I'm very proud to say. So at the beginning it was about 40, 60, male, female. And what I found is that between the genders, what happens is women take more practical action. I mean, in most things, right, but certainly in emotional things, what seems to happen is when women are bereft, heartbroken, and in that phase that's just happened where the relationship's just ended and they feel there's no way forward, what do I do?

That question, what do I do, is a serious question where they're actually looking for steps, things to do. And the men that I speak to take it much more kind of as this kind of personal injury that takes long. for them to get past the whole, wo is me part, the whole I am destroyed, I can't get out of this. And although I have had, I used to do one to one, so I've had male clients who I've sort of walked through this process and got them out the other side and they've been fabulous and fantastic, the women are much more, take some direct action, let's fix this thing. Do you worry that you don't have qualifications? Have there been moments when you thought I'm with someone who's vulnerable?

and I actually don't really know what to do about it. No. I did at the beginning. When I first sort of raised the idea that I was doing this, everyone around me, of course, said, well, you're not a therapist, you can't talk about this stuff. And I said, yeah, of course. And I lead with that. I do open with that and say, look, I'm not a therapist.

This is experience. This is what I've been through, and this is how I recommend you deal with it. I should say as well that I have about 15,000 therapist followers who recommend me to people, but also, and one of the new products that I've built, I'm not plugging it, but that has over a dozen psychotherapists, psychologists, sleep doctors, all sorts of things who help people get through this breakup process, this heartbreak process.

But actually, it's not about me sort of espousing theory and saying, these are the things that you should do. It's more about me saying, well, this is what happened to me. This is what I felt, and this is how I fixed it. So what are the basic lessons that you're trying to pass on? You've talked about practical ways of helping yourself after a breakup. Can you tell us about some of those? So the first thing is to force reality.

And this is definitely the northerner in me. But it is many, many times people come to me and say, I've just lost the love of my life. They've just dumped me. They are my perfect person. My life is not worth living now. I'm destroyed. And my response to that is, it sounds a little glib,

but the first part is, well, they're not the love of your life, if they've done that to you, first of all, that's not your person. Your person doesn't do that. But secondly, it's kind of this idea that building your emotional home in someone else and providing that person with the opportunity to then make you homeless is a dangerous way to live. And it's a dangerous way to live in every area of your life,

you know, offloading this enormous amount of, responsibility for your emotional and mental health to somebody else is always dangerous. And the difference that people don't seem to see, but the difference between secure people, emotionally secure people and people who are less secure, isn't that the secure people feel safe all the time, it's that they recognise that that person could walk out of their life at some point, and they would not be utterly destroyed by it. And I learned that by being utterly destroyed by it. You do have some advice as well just about how to treat yourself in very kind of micro levels. So tell us a bit about that.

Jane and I are probably going to be incapable of following this, but it's about looking at ourselves. Yes. And what? You can do this in a mirror in a Bordeaux hotel room. Bordeaux? Why have you brought that up here? I get some mind contact.

I follow. I watch you. I follow you. But yeah, the idea is that amongst a. number of things that happen seemingly to my audience, which is women in midlife and beyond, and people who are perimenopausal, menopausal, who've experienced a long relationship and then often a breakup and then found themselves in a place they didn't expect to be. They're not, they've never been asked certain questions, which are things like, very basic things like,

what is it that you really like? Outside of relationships, what do you really enjoy? That's the first thing but also part of that advice that you've just sort of mentioned is getting eye contact with yourself in a mirror properly and being kind to yourself and that is already making I can see the discomfort on your face for most people but it's just very short-sized is a part from anything else is your mirror dirty it's jane and i work together too much i look in the mirror i see her oh dear yeah okay not not that one then but yeah the idea that that you know a kindness given by yourself It sounds so twee, right? And it's the same as, you know,

when you mention things like breathwork to people and they sort of flinch and think, oh, come on. But actually... Well, what is it? What is it, Harry? What is breathwork? Well, breathwork is just breathing in a deliberate way that actually calms you, that calms your nervous system a bit.

And anything that relates to that, I used to really sort of turn away from and say, that's just enough to me, that can't be. But these things happen in your body. You know, breakup happens in your body. Oh, yeah. And there are physical impacts, no doubt about it, physiological impacts, I should say. Just a very quick question.

I mean, you've mentioned parents and the role of parents. I know this is not an original question, but at what age really must we stop blaming our parents for the way we behave? I love that, yeah, I love that question. Very often, people who come to you who are in emotional pain will roll that out first. We'll say, oh, you know, I had this terrible upbringing. Or more often, because of my female audience, they love. love to provide excuses for the partner that's just been abhorrent to them. Right.

So quite often I'll hear, oh, but he had a terrible childhood. You know, his dad was really awful to him. And I think, well, yeah, my dad wasn't great to me, but I didn't end up doing that to people. And I think the question of when do you have to take responsibility as an adult for stuff that happened to you as a child and say, yeah, that's the past. It's pretty young, I think. I think early in your relationship experiences, you're going to have to sit up straight and say, do you know what,

this is me, this is my behaviours. Because otherwise, that crutch can follow you for the rest of your life. There are people in their 70s that I have spoken to who are still saying, you know, well, it's because of this that happened to me and that happened to me. And absolutely, those things are valid and awful. Some awful things happen to people in their childhood and as they grow up. But also, there is a life to be lived.

and there's space to be taken up in the world. And that's everybody's right. And as well as that right, you have this responsibility of saying, do you know what, I owe it to myself, actually, to be my own parent, to be my own adult now. And a lot of advice around the breakup thing is about parenting yourself. And instead of writing letters to people who've hurt you and writing paragraphs of this is what you've done and this is why you've do it,

you've done it. If you start writing that stuff to yourself, then you're kind of parenting the situation yourself. You can read it back and say, Actually, maybe I've got a part in this. Very thoughtful messages from our listeners this afternoon. Janie says, as a trainee counsellor, I wish Harry had seen the kind of therapist

who offers exploration of the how as well as the why. It's so great that he is now compassionately sharing his experience and knowledge, top human. Thank you. And Steve says learning about attachment theory has been without doubt one of the most helpful things in my life. Following separation and then divorce three years ago, I was in a difficult place

and dating was a minefield, attachment theory help me understand myself better than anything else. It has real world application. It helps you understand what presses your relationship buttons. I would encourage anyone, whether in a stable relationship or not, to look into it. And Will says he sounds like an over-emoting, over-therapies ball. Oh, bless you will. There's always one.

There's usually more than one. Oh, I'll show you my inbox. He does ask the question, though, are you still friends with your... ex-wife. Is that... Yes. Yes. Yeah. That would go. And Will says, I would say that that will tell you plenty about him. Thanks. Thanks very much. It just has. Thanks, Will. I'm not friends, I should say, with the ex-girlfriends that I had the unhealthy attachments with. Good. And I don't recommend that people are. Have you heard from any of them? Oh, yeah. Recently since you... Yeah, quite recently. Okay.

Not this morning, but yeah, fairly recently. That's interesting. That's interesting. That's a book number two. Yeah. Harry, I wish we have more time, but we're out of time. Thank you very much, indeed, for coming in. So people can follow you. Not by your name though. So the platform and the thing is... Well, the easiest way to find me is Dadhooksfree.com

and there's some free stuff on there rather than having to follow the whole thing. But yeah, go to Dadhooksfree.com and you'll find some free guides and bits and bobs that I've given away. Harry Hardesty and you can find him on your social media platforms. We would love to hear from you about this.

I truly value the work of very decent therapists. I think they save lives. I think they're incredibly canny people. They've put so much time and effort in. And apart from anything else, Jane, they spend their lives listening to people's deepest, darkest fears. I admire them for being able to do that day after day after day. Not many people can.

But equally, there are some moments, aren't there, in everybody's life, where I bet you've received wisdom from somebody that surpasses what you might find in a therapy session. so is one better than the other? I don't know. I mean, I doubt it. But some people carry with them an incredible wisdom that's enormously helpful.

And that's what Harry has tapped into. So we'd love your thoughts about it. Our guest tomorrow is a retired doctor called Richard Coker, who has said some quite controversial things about death and in particular assisted dying. I should say his book actually covers all sorts of very complex. areas, including quite a big section on the link between death and sex. And there's quite a lot of, I'm going to say, quite difficult material in this book.

But what has drawn people's attention in particular is his belief that all, and this is a direct quote, all good doctors have assisted dying, is what he says. So Richard Coker is our guest tomorrow. Congratulations. You've staggered somehow to the end of another off-air with Jane and Feith. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live every day, Monday to Thursday, two till four, on Times Radio.

The jeopardy is off the scale. And if you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online, on DAB, or on the free Times Radio app. Offair is produced by Eve Salisbury, and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler.