Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Daddy pig really is a useless lummox

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Fi's pitching her latest invention to help women to avoid bathroom queues, and Jane wants Russell Crowe to come around and give her an exorcism.They're joined by award-winning investigative journalist and author Paul Morgan-Bentley, who's written a book about parenting equality.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail]: Kea Browning Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

VoiceOver describes what's happening on your iPhone screen. VoiceOver on. Settings. So you can navigate it just by listening. Books. Contacts. Calendar. Double tap to open. Breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. So we've made it to the heady heights of the... No, I've gone again.

Yeah. I've gone again. No. Yes. Back. Forward. Move. No, just don't move, Keir.

Don't. No. Touch nothing. Stop it. Don't move. Stop it. Stay still. I want to make it clear we are very nice to our junior staff.

Stay still. We've just got one hanging out the window with an aerial attached to her head at the moment just to make sure we can carry on podcasting. But she doesn't mind. She's young and enthusiastic uh where were we oh yes so so the the telegraph the daily telegraph we often quote them don't we it's doing quite a long piece about uh bad exits from the bbc yeah yeah okay Radio 4 seemed baffled by the popularity of Jane Garvey and Fee Glover.

Well... To be fair, they weren't the only ones who were baffled. Blindsided when they both left for Times Radio last year, even though any listener could have told the BBC what made them great. Oh, read that bit out again. Both are funny, clever and appeal particularly to people over 40. Miss out the last bit, but read it out again.

Clever, funny and appeal to people. That's all we need to say. Not that we don't in any way welcome the over 40s. No. And I'm reading this out because we're very much hoping that Ken Bruce is going to come on the programme sometime this week. I've been in a high state of drama as to whether or not... Are you liaising with Ken or his people?

I'm liaising with Ken and come in Ken please because we'd very much like to talk to you. So hopefully that might happen tomorrow or sometime later on during the week. Good You never got to go on Popmaster? I always thought you would have done quite a good celebrity children in need Popmaster. I don't think I'd have been

any good up against the clock I mean I rate myself for some general knowledge questions but not at speed. And I think music, I think, you know, I kind of know them but only after the person's come up with the right answer. Yeah. And there were some quite obscure Popmaster questions, weren't there? Oh my word.

You know, the intro to a 1980s dance classic that got as far as number 17 in the, you know, I wouldn't know, I wouldn't know any of that stuff. But it is going to greatest hits radio with Ken, isn't it? I can't take it with him. Because very sensibly, he copyrighted it way back when. If we'd had a really great idea, we could have copyrighted it.

I always say to my kids, don't faff. I mean, just invent an app. You're just sitting there. For God's sake, why can't you just invent an app? So me and my son thought we had a fantastic idea when he was in his football playing days of creating a football boot that was joined to a sock because trying to get shin pads on you know a football sock is an

incredibly tight it's like a surgical stocking yeah and you know the the young guys and girls when they're playing football their shin pads always just fell down their socks and then you'd have to stop the game because one of them got all that kind of stuff. So we thought you could have a shoe sock, a shock, that you just zipped up the back that had the shin pad inside it. And? So it was just like a boot that you put on. Yeah.

Well, I wanted to give up work, obviously, and develop it. And had you got a name for it? The shock. Oh, yes, sorry. Do pay attention. Key in. You're being paid.

Key in for now. Switch off as soon as I leave the room. But we never got round to it. But that's how I was going to make my fortune. But it's one of many ideas that you just look at askance at me, including I thought my best idea ever, Jane, was the she-wee truck that would just drive round the West End of London,

allowing women to avoid the queues in intervals when they're at musical theatre. Oh, so it could just park up outside? Yeah, and you could just dash in and have an extra 30 stalls inside it. I thought that was genius. Talking of weeing, I was doing an Empowering Women event on Thursday night. How did that go? It was young women in the media, going into the media

or wanted to go into the media. But one of the other contributors, I won't name her in case she doesn't want publicity for having gone there. She was very good of her to give up her time. But she was only in her 20s and she'd just come back from Ukraine as a war reporter and she was saying that it's a genuine issue in war zones because the men

just pee anywhere and for women it's yet another of those situations where quite frankly you just have to do it where you can and of course there's a lot of landmines so it's incredibly difficult and shiwis I don't think they really they're not unless you're wearing a skirt the shiwi isn't really a solution is it no because, because you've still got to take off, you'd have to take off your trousers and who doesn't? I haven't been to a war zone but if I ever did go to one I would definitely wear trousers and not

a skirt. Jane, I think that's one of the most sensible things you've ever said. Thank you. But it got me thinking because you just forget sometimes about the practicalities of that sort of journalism and I just thought that was a really interesting insight yeah so I've always thought as well about periods in for foreign correspondence if you're you know stuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere and you can't get out or you're an embed as they call them an embedded

journalist actually just going through a really yucky period must be so hampering to your daily job. I wonder in a situation like that where you would just be better off just taking the pill every day so you don't even have to think about it. Yes. I hope that becomes a thing in the next generation's lifetime because there's increasing medical evidence that that... You don't have to have periods for your good health.

No, you don't. We have discussed it. But I'm just looking, interestingly, at Bryony Gordon's column in The Telegraph, second mention of The Telegraph. We must mention The Times. Times, Times, Times. But her headline in her feature in her column, Mad World, this week, is if contraception caused cancer in men, we'd have a solution by now. So there are still conversations about what hormone if contraception caused cancer in men, we'd have a solution by now. So there are still conversations about what contraception, hormonal contraception does to women.

I've just had a text saying my HRT's ready at the chemist. Oh my God, okay, let's try and do this at speed 1.5. Hi, Fionn Jane, if I switched on to the TV at 8pm on a weekday night, I'd love to see a programme about embroidery that wasn't a competition. Stop it! It doesn't bother me very much,! It would always be a competition. Can we not just enjoy watching people enjoy crafting in the same way we love watching people watching TV on Gogglebox?

Thank you from Claire. And I think that's a very good point. I think there's just such a huge need on television to turn everything into a format, whereas sometimes you just don't need it to be there. So case in point, is it called Race for Life when couples compete to get across a vast wilderness? This season it's Canada.

Oh, is it? There are, I think, five couples. And you don't have any access to Google or a smartphone. You only have a certain amount of money and they've got to get all the way from Vancouver over to St John's on the other side of Canada. How far away is that? Well, that is across six states, five states, all the way across.

We've got listeners in Canada, so they'll be able to tell us. Yeah. But why that has to be a race, I don't really know because I was really enjoying just watching all of these couples make their decisions about how to save time and all that kind of stuff. The fact that one couple got there two minutes before the other couple, that's when I got up to just make myself another drink.

I'm not really bothered about the winning. No, no, no, no. It's formatting, formatting, formatting. It's not about winning for you, is it? It's just about the taking back. No, don't be mean. I just, I find that kind of... It does seem unnecessary.

I find it a bit patronising to us, the viewers. Well, that's what people are saying about the BBC's sexed-up Great Expectations. Which you sat through just to make sure that it was sexed-up enough. I just think... I suppose the really big question is, why don't they, what classic book never gets done on telly? I was racking my brains to try and think of one.

It is actually quite hard to think of a classic book that you genuinely love to see on television. Oh, that you'd love to see? I think I'd quite, well, just for the challenge, I think I'd quite like to see Silas Marner. Because that's just a very odd man sitting there.

Gordon Bennett, who's going to tune in on a Sunday night for that? I tell you what, there's a poster in the Underground, if you've seen it, Russell Crowe. I think it's a new film coming out in April. I think it's called something like The Pope's Exorcist. No, we wouldn't have that in East London, darling. Russell Crowe, you know, looming out at you on this enormous poster

and you think, ooh, Russell, come round and exorcise me. Any time you like, pal. Have you seen the pictures of the current Pope in his white puffer jacket? I haven't. Are they available online? They are available online. What's he doing in a puffer jacket?

Well, because it's very cold. So they've made him a puffer pope. Like a quilted jacket? Yes. There were just some very, very funny captions during the rounds this weekend. My favourite was, do not inflate your pope puffer jacket

whilst inside the plane. Do have a look. Don't inflate the pope. Yeah. Okay, Kate has written um learning english in another country and she lives in france and so she has experience of the french education system and yes um like the english the french do also ask silly questions of their pupils during oral exams including questions about the whereabouts not of greg's as Jane suggested, but of a man called Brian and his sister Jenny.

So these are the names chosen by the French to illustrate the average sort of British people. Where is Brian? Brian is in ze kitchen. And how about Jenny? Ze sister of Brian. Jenny is in ze bathroom. Now I've become German and that's very unfortunate. It is a refrain familiar to any French person over the age of 40, and now even to younger generations, thanks to comedian Gad Al-Malay.

Al-Malay? Gad Al-Malay, who popularised the phrase from the school textbook Speak English that was prevalent throughout France in the 70s and 80s. Never a week goes by without me being asked whether I know where the elusive Brenny, Brian and Jenny have disappeared to. When I grew up in Worcestershire, like many of my generation, my French lessons revolved around the adventures of Monsieur and Madame Bertillon and their three children, Philippe, Marie-Claude and Alain, not forgetting Miquel Le Chat. That's the cat, isn't it? Your reference to the

question, that was you, wasn't it? Ouey Ladoan. Yes. That's the customs. Brought it all back to me. Wasn't Monsieur Bertillon a customs officer at Orly Airport? I wonder where he is now. Happily retired, I expect, and glad he didn't have to keep checking passports until the grand old pension age of 64 in a post-Brexit era, I expect. But isn't that weird? That's another country that's over-focused on passport control in an attempt to teach a new language. That's a bit weird, isn't it? Because everyone's going to come across that, I get that, but it's not the place that you spend the most time at when you visit another country unless you're very unfortunate or you're trying to smuggle. Exactly. Yeah, you tend

to move smoothly through customs without lingering. But you're right, it is a bit weird. But I didn't do those textbooks in French, did you? They don't ring any bells with me. No. No. Do you remember the family we had to learn about in Latin? Oh gosh, who were they?

Well, they were the poor, because you knew their end was not going to be pretty, because they lived in Pompeii. Oh, so it's always kind of, oh, God, let's just cut to the chase. Why are we waffling about the dog when we know they're going to meet a very unpleasant end? It's a bit like the man who's mending his own conservatory at the beginning of an episode of Casualty. It only ends one way, doesn't it? Right, Pamela sends greetings from across the pond

listening to us in Vancouver. She says the question regarding what programme your listeners would commission has given me the chance to email you. I have even pitched it to a production company, though, with no success. Pamela says for the last eight years I've worked as a freelance archival researcher for documentary films and occasionally TV. I have an MA in costume

studies and I've taught fashion history in New York and Montreal. All to say I dream of creating a short series that looks at some of fashion's perennial favourites. Think of the striped mariniere shirt. Do you like those, don't you? I do, yeah. The classic trench coat and traces them back to their origins. I'd visit the Mariners Museum and the St James factory in France and I'd share the story behind the original great coat, how trench coats were practical and soon fashionable in World War I and haunt the Burberry archives to discover the trajectory of their beautiful beyond-reach-for-me coats.

Pamela says, that's my dream and I'm sticking to it. Thank you for asking. It feels great to put this down in writing and thank you for your audio treat. Greetings from across the pond. Well, Pamela, tell us a little bit about the distance, please, between Vancouver and St John's and you will remain a friend for life.

That's a good idea for a TV show, that. I mean, that's a really good idea. But unfortunately, she doesn't have the ins that Tony Robinson had. No, but maybe we could lean on Tony. He's not much bigger than either of us, is he? So we probably could. Lydia says, just a quick note to share something that I believe you will both find to be of great importance.

Last year, we had, of course, the platyjubes. So I would like to propose the corribobs, e.g. what are you doing for the old corribobs? Probably having a barbie in the garden while trying not to think about the cos he lives. That's the cost of living crisis, suggests Lydia. Yes, I mean, it's a bold attempt at patriotic fervour, Lydia, but I'm not sensing a lot of chat around the...

Shall we go for it and call it the Corrie Bobs? The Corrie Bobs I think I've heard absolutely no chat at all. You and I are desperately trying to get a place on the balcony somewhere in order to be able to identify hats

basically walking into a church Yeah well we'd love to do it but I'm not sensing, I don't think we're'd love to do it, but I'm not sensing... I don't think we're having a street party, at least I'm not organising it. There's not one in my hood either. No, but we live in a very alternative part of the world. No, but that's the interesting thing,

because on our local street there has been a celebration, an Easter knees-up celebration of all of the weddings of the royals and the coronation uh the the funeral sorry it's very bad you had a street party for the funeral did you no there's a commemoration a commemoration so uh so no people in in the east end feel uh quite a lot of fervor someone gets out a piano and everybody sings along yep people coming all dressed up pearly kings and queens they're walking with their thumbs tucked into their waistcoats. And then the craze.

Nope. Stop it. Stop it. It's not like that at all. Well, can I just do a serious one before we head off into the proper guests that we've got? Oh, yes, go on. This is from Helen, who says, I listened to your episode when you talked about the seemingly endless ways the media find to guilt parents

about how particular aspects of their parenting are irrevocably damaging their child. And I recall being very guilty about my front facing buggy. I found other wonder parents also bought into this and tutted at my choice. I was lucky enough to be able to breastfeed my two kids, now 14 and nine. And like Fionn, her EastEnders addiction, I found I had to read to have able to breastfeed my two kids, now 14 and 9, and like Fionnuala, EastEnders addiction, I found I had to read to have a fighting chance of staying awake. I got through a small library of books with my daughter. When my son was born, a health visitor told me that I mustn't read

as it meant my child wasn't getting eye contact from me, which would lead to untold future attachment issues. I apparently had to gaze adoringly at the guzzling infant at all times, just in case. After two nights of this, fighting off drooping eyelids, I decided it was bollocks

and carried on with my kindle. You'll be glad to know he survived. Any attachment issues yet to manifest themselves can be attributed to my multiple parenting fails since that point. Parenting is hard enough without front-facing buggy guilt. FFS. And that's exactly what we were talking about, Helen.

It's just out of proportion. It's unhelpful. It's unwise. It's unfounded. Just don't. Don't fall for it. No, don't. Fiona, who describes herself as another one, you did mention breastfeeding,

so it's given me the opportunity to include this email. It was about, you were talking last week about the rather eccentric things your dad would put into jelly at home. Yeah. And Fiona says, I've got fond memories of our 1970s pale blue bunny mould. Orange jelly was my favourite. I have to say the thought of lime jelly with tinned peas or tuna did sound quite vile. Well, my mum used to make something she called Ooby Pudding. Pink blancmange set in two of those shallow Tupperware bowls and topped with half a glacé cherry on each. She would present it to us with the sing-song,

Wibbly Wobbly Booby Pudding. It was very progressive. Fiona's in Adelaide. Well, there we are. That's Australia for you. I don't really know what to say about that. Was your mother a feminist? Was she just an early embracer of the whole free yourself movement? Who knows? Our big interview today was with award-winning investigative journalist and author Paul Morgan Bentley. He's head of investigations at The Times. He broke the story that debt collectors were breaking into vulnerable people's homes. But that isn't why he came into the studio to talk to us today.

He came in because he's written a book called The Equal Parent. His son, Solly, was born in 2020 via a surrogate to him and his husband, Robin. And he wanted to ask the question, can you really share the parental load? We were really interested by this book, weren't we? Because basically, as a gay couple, they have taken away the gender prejudice and discrimination that often occurs with heterosexual couples where a doctor will immediately turn to the mum the midwife will turn to the mum a school will phone the mum always always those things and so they've been able to look at the world of early years parenting with completely different goggles on actually yes i have, I have to say, if I'm honest,

I was rather jealous of that first night that they got to spend with their newborn son when the two of them were in a room at the hospital just being with their newborn baby. And, of course, this is a ridiculous observation, but because they hadn't been through the birth process because the surrogate mother had given birth, they were physically able to be in the moment

and to have this very precious time with this little tiny bit of humanity. And that's not an experience that any woman who's given birth will ever have, is it? I'd like to hear more, actually, about people's realistic first moments with babies because I think the pressure on you as a new mum to have this overwhelming joyful experience is a little bit too much because you're quite often really knackered you've been a bit traumatized you're definitely quite frightened

there's a lot of cortisol terrified flooding around the place and and I found I mean I was lucky you know both births were horrendous but not traumatic births but I remember both times actually welcoming my babies into my arms to be a bewildering that is the only word that I would be able to find to describe that moment I think there's a lot of pressure for it to be joyful and amazing well hopefully we've got to a stage now where we're just more honest about this and we do say to to people we care about if they're going to go through this don't be expecting anything other than a really tough time yeah perfectly honest and then that fades if you're lucky it's not for everybody either no but do you know do you know what i mean that kind of you must have skin-on-skin contact for an hour

and you must bond. And it's back to the staring into the eyes thing. It's always possible. Never forget, you will be leaking from orifices you didn't even know you had and you've had no sleep for the previous 24 hours and you're getting no sleep for the next decade. Yeah, and it's a little bit like roadworks as well, isn't it?

Loads of people standing around with their arms folded and they don't seem to be doing much, but they're definitely operating. And then you get the classic, the person who's never breastfed telling you how to breastfeed. But let's not revisit some of my trauma. Let's move on to hear from Paul Morgan Bentley. Well signposted. He began by telling us the circumstances surrounding Solly's birth.

So Solly turned three on Friday. He was born on the first day Solly's birth. So Solly turned three on Friday. He was born on the first day of the first lockdown. So Boris gave his stay at home speech and the next day he was born. And yeah, he was born through surrogacy in the UK and not many people know a lot about that, but it's legal in the UK to go through surrogacy, but it's not legal to pay a surrogate. So it's non-commercial. And Rachel, our friend who we met through through surrogacy, but it's not legal to pay a surrogate. So it's non-commercial. And Rachel, our friend who we met through a surrogacy organisation, did it purely altruistically, you know, recovered expenses and things like that. But she has a family, she has a husband

and two kids and just really missed being pregnant, but didn't want any more kids. And so we went through egg donation with a different woman and and then uh rachel um was the surrogate that carried our son and you and your partner had you discussed how you would do the care no it's funny actually when i speak to women they they always talk about how before having children how much thought will go into will i have to cut down hours at work and all things like that? And actually, it was really interesting and naive and ridiculous that both of us just hadn't really thought about it much. There was so much involved with trying to plan to have a family and how that would work that we kind of thought everything would fall into place afterwards.

And actually, a really formative experience of ours was just how little is expected of fathers after you have children. And this was the basis for me deciding to try to write the book. And we kind of thought our experience would be framed by being gay parents and the lots of people would have lots of questions about being in a two dad family and surrogacy and things like that. And actually, on a day to day basis, that isn't massively the case. You know, we just go through life like anyone else. And we've been treated like everyone else, we don't feel exceptional or different. But we were repeatedly finding that there was just such a low expectation of fathers generally. And you kind of go to work naively. And you look across the room and you think, oh, you know, we're getting to a good place for gender equality.

The women are all taken as seriously and they work as hard and and yet you have a kid and there is no expectation of equality at home no i mean there's some very funny advice on the nhs website isn't there i mean you quote it there's stuff where dad might think about making his lady wife a cup of tea if he thinks that might be helpful and that appears to be about the most that's expected it's extraordinary yeah well one of the things, a few things were happening that were prompting these ideas for the book and one of them was during a night feed

and I'd just finished feeding Solly. He was a few months old. He was kind of on my chest and I was scrolling on my phone and I probably should have put him down but I was kind of half asleep and I was looking through advice pages on the NHS and one of them from a hospital,

I just couldn't believe it. And it essentially was saying to dads, you know, your partner, your wife might have no one else around. So, you know, she might not have her parent, her mother around, or she might not have friends around. So it's a good idea to keep in mind that you might need to help her occasionally, and maybe offer do a food a feed or maybe take over to give her a rest occasionally and there's no i mean that is an extreme example but but there is no expectation that this baby is born and as two in a couple that as two adults you should be sharing the responsibility and that's right from the start there's just no expectation right from the start obviously biology is important and obviously if a woman is pregnant with her child there's going to be an imbalance there but from

my point of view as soon as that child is born and if the mother wants to do this wants to share the responsibility then actually the moment the baby is born that is when dads should kick in and and be there not just helping the mum by making her a cup of tea, but taking on proper responsibility. I was really glad that in the book you talked about that first beautiful but also terrifying night with your newborn son when you are responsible, the two of you, for this little scrap of life and it's just the three of you and you work your way through the night, both terrified that something's going to go wrong,

so you might stop breathing or, you know, something else might go pear shaped. And it's a colossal, huge mental load. This weight of responsibility just drops onto you. And then frankly, doesn't leave you until you take your dying breath, I imagine. And that is something that most women simply go through on their own, day in, day out. I hadn't really thought back to my own experience of it until I read your book, actually. And it's amazing, actually, when we think of it, if a woman had an accident and lost a lot of blood, the partner or a family member or a

support in some form would be expected to be there round the clock. And yet you have a baby. And as part of the book, I did freedom of information requests and found out that the majority of hospitals in the UK treat dads or partners like visitors. And they're only allowed to attend during visiting hours after their children are born. In some cases, as little as one hour per day. And yet the woman's gone through this huge thing. And actually, that's when you form your family.

We were very lucky. We had solely three surrogacy. And part of that's when you form your family. We were very lucky. We had Solly's three surrogacy and part of that involved lots of planning. And we met the head of midwifery at the trust near where Rachel, Solly's surrogate lives. And we had a whole plan in place and they were amazing. And also, I guess because we, you know, we were in a less busy part of the country, it was quite quiet. And in the the end we were given a private room just me robin and solly after he was born and rachel was in a separate room and we could see each other whenever we wanted she could have been with us but chose to have go to sleep and

and rest for a bit before coming back in the morning and all kind of cuddling and leaving together um but it dawned on us that so many of our male friends don't get that experience and so many of our female friends have that experience, but also having been pregnant and giving birth or having had emergency surgery. And yet they're left by themselves. And that kind of sets the expectation really clearly straight away. And we are failing, aren't we, in terms by comparison to other countries? failing aren't we in terms uh by comparison to other countries uh i think you note that sweden does a much more kind of family oriented thing right from the get-go doesn't it and actually it pays forward in terms of reducing levels of postnatal depression reducing all kinds of other stresses on both parents it's a worthwhile investment isn't it yeah there's a lot of talk

about skin-to-skin contact with mothers and how that encourages breastfeeding and things like that but actually what I found out is sometimes when babies are born and the mother is rushed for an emergency c-section the baby will be left in a cot in some cases instead of being given to the father to hold because skin-to-skin contact is seen kind of generally as this thing mothers do but actually there are studies now that show that if the mum can't do it is it's incredibly important for the baby. And they benefit in lots of ways if they do it with someone else, preferably a father. Talk us through your crying in the night experience and the speed of response to Solly when he was upset in the middle of the night. So something that we found, I took the first part of parental leave. So I was off with Solly for the first six months of his life. And then my husband, Robin, took over for

the second half of the year. And there's this cliche that mums wake up first. And I was waking up first. And I did not know what was going on. I was furious with my husband that he was lying next to me and snoring while Solly was screaming. And I was waking up kind of, I felt so urgent and kind of panicky and anxious about it. And I was waking up kind of, I felt so urgent and kind of panicky and anxious about it. And I kind of couldn't understand why I was responding in a different way to Robin. And actually, as part of writing the book, I looked into the science, and there's really good science around this now, which totally kind of seems to explain what's usually called the mother's instinct, but also shows how dads are absolutely biologically capable of it.

And there are two kind of key things that have happened in science. One is they've measured oxytocin levels, which is the bonding hormone. And mothers get rushes of that bonding hormone through pregnancy and childbirth. But they've also found now that dads get their levels of oxytocin rise really quickly and actually so high that they match levels of oxytocin rise really quickly and actually so so high that they match levels of new mothers as long as they're actively involved and that means you know the oxytocin goes up as they do stuff with the baby as they hold the baby care for the baby it's all about kind of rolling your sleeves up and getting involved in fact throughout the book you make the point

that the more you do of the care the better you get at it it is as simple as that and yes and as well as that being kind of common sense actually when scientists have looked at the body at the hormones that absolutely plays out and then the other thing about waking at night is they scanned new parents brains and there's a part of the brain that's all to do with kind of urgency and panic and in new mothers it's four times the size of new fathers. And that seems to explain why they wake first at night. However, they've done the same with gay dads through surrogacy. And they found that whoever the primary caregiver is,

their brains look like new mothers, essentially. That urgency part of the brain also quadruples in size. VoiceOver describes what's happening on your iphone screen voiceover on settings so you can navigate it just by listening books contacts calendar double tap to open breakfast with from 10 to 11 and get on with your day accessibility there's more to iphone We were wondering, actually, Fee and I, what the reaction was when you announced to your very manly mates, I'm sure here at Times Towers, that you were doing this thing called paternity leave.

What did people say? Well, usually people are back after two weeks, and I kind of now can't even imagine doing that. I bet it used to be two days, didn't it? It used to be two days, exactly. The response was brilliant. And I should massively credit a colleague of mine called Tom Whipple, who's the science editor of The Times.

And he, a few years before I did it, took extended parental leave. He took almost half a year. And actually, it was interesting. He kind of stood out. And in a way, it's almost like the glass ceiling and women at work, but kind of countered to that. And he was brave enough to step forward and say, I think it's fair that I share this with my wife. And he did it and it was fine. And he carried on with his job. And he's, you know, an amazing journalist. And after he did, it was interesting because more and more dads started taking extended parental leave here.

And so I guess in a sense, it was a brave thing to do to announce I'm taking six months off. But I also did it knowing that other senior people at work had done it already. And it is so important to have visible paternity leave, isn't it? And to see men be able to return to the same position at work, to know that it hasn't adversely affected their career. Chris Mason at the BBC took quite an extended paternity leave, certainly longer than the two weeks that a lot of our former BBC colleagues felt able to take. And good on him for doing that.

I mean, look at him. He's absolutely flying. And I think it is a real responsibility for men at work to be really visible about being dads and the sacrifices that should mean. Women, when they fall pregnant, they can't hide it from their employers, even if they wanted to, or their friends or everyone, because their bodies show. They visibly change. And so you can't kind of hide behind anything. I think men at work who become dads, it's very easy to kind of pass in a way and to to kind of play out this idea that nothing's changed, and that no expectations have changed. And so, because you can kind of hide, and if you need to leave early, you can, in theory, say things like, oh, I'm going to a client meeting, or, you know, things like that. I actually think it's more important for men to be really

honest and open, and men in senior positions, and say, I'm leaving because I'm picking up the kids from nursery. What about generational attitudes? I wonder whether the generation above you and indeed above that, what they would make of a man prioritising childcare and being at home with a small baby? Yeah, it's interesting. You get, our experience is a lot of praise. I think we get a huge amount of praise from particularly women of an older generation to me who just are kind of in disbelief and think, wow, good on you, you're such a hands-on dad.

I went to the pharmacy, this is a few months ago, to pick up a prescription for my son. And there was a lovely woman behind the counter who said something like, oh, it's so great to see dads doing this. And she meant well, but I just kept thinking, this is the very bare minimum. This isn't doing much for my blood pressure, I've got to say.

But go on. I'm literally, but it plays into that idea that men's time is more important than women's time. And that if a man is picking up a prescription, like, oh, you're taking out time from work to do this, well done. There's all the kind of, oh, look, he changed a nappy, let's give him a round of applause.

I mean, it just, it really, we should have got beyond that by now, shouldn't we? Could I just ask you, Paul, because you are such a good journalist, could you just put into a nutshell what the actual law around parental leave is in the UK at the moment? So in the UK, we have kind of theoretical equality, we have shared parental leave. And that means you get two weeks paternity leave for a man and you get 50 weeks parental leave, which usually, you know, typically it would be maternity leave, but you can legally share it however you see fit. So there's lots of flexibility. You could take kind of six months each or you could,

the woman could be off at the beginning, come back to work for a bit, then take the rest of the year off. It sounds great. And actually what we've found is the people that benefit most from it are gay couples, because we can just split it down the middle and share it like that. There's much more complicated dynamics that come in when there's a woman and a man, because the woman has been pregnant and given birth. And there's all societal expectations for generations on her that means that she will take that first part of the year, but also probably feel guilty if she doesn't take a full year. Because she'll be judged if she doesn't. Because she'll be judged and feel like a bad mother but also there is the breastfeeding thing in there as well which i think sometimes doesn't get talked about enough you're encouraged

some people would say pressurized into breastfeeding for i think the you know the the guidance who guidance is for at least six months at least six months so it is difficult to then be in two places at once exactly and so it's really important to earmark that period for mothers and where where countries have done this successfully most most kind of successfully in nordic countries is by having earmarked leave for mothers and fathers because also dads often they might in theory want to take share parental leave but they don't want to take the mum's time that she has always imagined herself having and don't want to feel like a bad partner by taking that from her so what experts argue is there should be earmarked leave for mothers and earmarked leave for partners

and some ability to transfer between them if you want but but the fathers if they don't take their allocated leave they just lose it in heterosexual, is there a chance that some women, some mothers do gatekeep the whole baby care, child care thing? Perhaps without intending to, but they do end up, we end up deciding, no, I know best, he'll get it wrong, let me carry on doing it. I think it's really, really hard to lessen control if you're the one that's been expected to do this. And I can't speak for mothers, obviously, I'm a man, and I don't want to, that's been expected to do this. And I can't speak for mothers, obviously, I'm a man, and I don't want to, but I've listened to a lot of mothers talk about this and how hard it is to let go. But the very nature, if you want to parent equally, you have to be able to let go in those moments. And you have to be able to just trust your partner, and they might

do things differently to you. And they might not feed them the same food you would feed, but they're not, the child's not going to die and actually the more your partner does it the more they'll gain confidence in it form really strong relationships and that there is this idea that with men often we kind of they get the fun side of kids they come home from work and chuck them in the air and get a bit of bonding time but you kind of need there's there's this writer Nell Frizzell who I love and she talks about men needing the beast as well as the beauty of babies and when we talk about absent fathers actually maybe it's because they are kind of they don't have that time alone with their children to feel that real sense of full responsibility and that makes it easier to leave but don't you think also it's it's because men

are excluded almost from the moment after conception from the journey of pregnancy there is no requirement for a dad to be in the room when you're having scans or whatever I mean you know you don't even have to turn up to the birth so I think for many women quite understandably it then feels like you're kind of handing a car to the 17 year old on their birthday without having had any driving lessons so the answer surely is to just completely change the conversation around pregnancy and acknowledge the other person who's been involved in that and i think to change the conversation about dads i think there's this narrative in society about the kind of useless

yeah the stereotype is daddy pig you do mention and i've forgotten what forgotten what he's useless, Lummox, isn't he? And the whole joke about him is that he's useless. And we do this to dad, no matter how capable they are in other aspects of life, they're going to be terrible with the kids. And it's why we get lots of praise for doing really basic things. But if the central kind of idea of the book is that if we want equality, you're never going to get equality in the workplace. If at the same time, you expect more of women at home. And yes, in the first few months, of course, there's biological

reasons that women are going to be there, and they should be there if they want to. But long term, there is no reason that the responsibility can't properly be shared. Really good point. Thank you very much, indeed. And the book is called The Equal Parent. Can we just have a quick chat about the debt collection story? Because it was a great thing that you exposed, really. Are we certain now that it isn't happening anymore, that debt collectors are not breaking into vulnerable people's homes? Well, so this is to do with the energy suppliers, and right now they are not doing it because they've been banned. It's a suspension until they can sign up to a new legal framework to protect vulnerable people. And at the moment, that's the case.

But what we need is long-term change. And currently, after our investigation, there's lots of different new formal investigations going on from Ofgem, the energy regulator, in the energy department, and two parliamentary committees have also been looking at it. And the idea now is we need to see that play out so that there's more formal long-term changes. So something is going to happen to make sure that that cannot happen in the future to people who are already really going through it. They're not going to have some strange person getting into their house and turning off their electricity and their gas. Yes, the key thing is that vulnerable people will be protected. The cases will be scrutinised properly because in the past, these cases have been signed off at court in their hundreds and no one's properly scrutinising them. Everyone's had faith that the companies like British Gas are kind of doing their own checks.

Yeah. What we found out is they've not been doing their own checks properly. And so that is going to be a key part of the changes. Do you worry that in becoming a visible spokesperson for equal parenting and people knowing your face, you won't be able to do your investigative job quite so well? People go, oh, there's that bloke. Well, it's amazing because I've been quite kind of open on social media and things like that.

I use my name in the paper. It's not like with Insight, for instance, at the Sunday Times where traditionally they haven't had bylines. It never kind of ceases to amaze us how no one googles when you apply for a job so i'm certainly not planning on stopping undercover work now we won't blow your cover should i mention your name again or not no paul morgan bentley and his book is called the equal parent and i just want to squeeze in the fact that we've had a lovely email from Ian, which has got the amazing headline, Frank Boff's wife, Nesta. I've got a lousy memory. However, I could have told you, too, that Nesta Boff was Frank's wife in an instant.

And that's because of the smell of Reeves and Mortimer. Vic and Bob had a song that went, I've given birth to a Ford Fiesta. I've given birth to Frank Boff's wife, Nesta. Right. I didn't know that. I Boff's wife, Nesta. Right. I didn't know that. I'm grateful. Ian, thank you for listening. Jane Raffee at Timestock Radio and we'll be delighted to hear from you. Anything that we're

talking about, stuff we're not talking about, basically just be in touch, be with us. Ken soon. Goodbye. goodbye. Well done for getting to the end of another episode of Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. And don't forget, there is even more of us every afternoon on Times Radio. It's Monday to Thursday, three till five.

You can pop us on when you're pottering around the house or heading out in the car on the school run or running a bank. Thank you for joining us and we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon. Don't be so silly. Running a bank? I know good bank i know lady listener sorry voiceover describes what's happening on your iphone screen voiceover on settings. So you can navigate it just by listening. Books, contacts, calendar, double tap to open.

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