Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Don’t do a Madonna (with Kate Mosse)

Episode Date: July 5, 2023

Today Jane agonises over her trainer socks, Fi is worried about appearing on The Weakest Link and they discover that the herb dill hangs about all day. Novelist Kate Mosse also joins the pair to discuss her latest book, The Ghost Ship. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail]. Follow us on Instagram! @JaneandFiAssistant Producer: Elizabeth HighfieldTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

VoiceOver describes what's happening on your iPhone screen. VoiceOver on. Settings. So you can navigate it just by listening. Books. Contacts. Calendar. Double tap to open. Breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. What happens now?

I don't know. It's day three of our week. It's day two of our filming of the week, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Because the studio was doubled. But, well, Hugo Rifkin was doing something much more important in here yesterday. A man.

Yeah. Well, it will be more important, won't it? Yeah. So we went back to just our audio. But now we're back in vision, everybody. Hello. I had to agonise slightly over my trainer socks. I don't know whether they're in vision or not,

but they are fresh. They're brand new. They're box fresh trainer socks. Because I don't know about you, but we have in our dirty washing basket, just right at the very bottom, there are some discarded items that I think have been there since 1978. And then there's just a mound of grey trainer socks. So that is exactly the same with ours. And the other things that are in the bottom of the bin, I can't identify what they ever were.

No. They're strange kind of, they're like fabric packaging of things. You just think, what was this ever all? What was that? What was it? Do you know one day I'm going to properly chuck stuff out? Yeah.

Well, you said that before because you did get skipped. Oh, I've had several skips. During the course of our friendship, I've probably done three skips. That's just scary. It was scary. But I never seem to make the right amount of progress. Now, we are talking, Probably done three skips. That's just scary. It is scary. But I never seem to make the right amount of progress.

Now, we are talking, we were talking, well, we had an email, didn't we, from a man in Kazakhstan. Oh, Alan. Alan. Alan, dear, dear. Alan was perfectly entitled to express his views. They were wrong, but he was perfectly entitled to express them. But he started something. It was a little bit like, you know, when you get a mosquito bite,

if you just leave it, it'll heal, Alan. But if you scratch it, it just spreads the poison around. Yeah. And that's pretty much what he did. But I think in fairness, we haven't heard again from Alan, have we? No. So he's probably re-thinking his views, she said, ever the optimist. But we have had this lovely email from Philippa,

who's in another stand. Oh, she's in the Uzbekistan. Yes, because I asked if you're in a stand or you've ever been to a stand, let us know what they're like. And this is a lovely email because Philippa did something really interesting and important and something I just didn't know. I just didn't know this existed. She said, partway through the lockdowns of 2020, I started supporting a team of Uzbekistani science teachers to write new science textbooks. And for two years, we met weekly on Zoom and with the help of extremely patient interpreters, created and refined the books. I got to know the team really well. They joined the Zoom course from the office, their home, school, doctor's waiting room, even a wedding. They took the camera down the street to show me preparations for the spring festival

of Navroz and I met their gorgeous children and their grandchildren. Finally, after more than a hundred online meetings, I went to Uzbekistan in real life and team leader Zemira Opa met me at the airport at three in the morning with a huge bunch of white roses and a big hug. Tears all round, she says. And she just goes on to describe just what sounds like an absolute, just a stunning visit to a place I don't know anything about. She says it was a whirlwind of workshops in the stunning 2,000-year-old Silk Road cities of Samarkand and Bukhara and also the modern capital Tashkent. Highlights of the workshops were impeccably rehearsed displays of science and dancing

by 10-year-old children in identical checked dungarees, with their teachers in matching waistcoats and the long late lunches afterwards, tables filled with warm bread, dill garnish salad and the best fresh watermelon ever. And that was just for starters. And also, she says, no alcohol. So all of this, she can remember it. She can remember all and she heartily recommends Uzbekistan. That's from Philippa. Philippa, thank you. That's a lovely email to get. Thank you very much. Do you think that that might tempt you to travel a little bit further than the mainland Europe on your summer vacances? I don't think it will, but it's lovely to hear that other people

have done it. It's just when you hear, I mean, it does sound impossibly exciting. When you hear the Silk Road, you just think of intrepid travellers from days of yore don't you yeah and that was what was so beautiful do you remember Michael Palin

oh yeah into show Name Drop yes to talk about his Channel 5 documentary series which was

reconnecting with Iraq wasn't it and some of the places that he visited had exactly that kind of

feel to it it's a for us you know stuck in our baguettes and sunshine holidays of Europe it does sound impossibly exotic and evocative so I love those descriptions but you know I wouldn't be a big fan of the dill salad if I'm honest oh well I had dill in my baguette today I know know, and you were raving about it. Oh, absolutely. I was raving about it. This is a bit niche, but the new Pret smoked salmon, cream cheese and dill, well worth getting. I find that dill lasts a very long time.

Can you smell the dill on me now? Yes. Okay. Bye. Thanks for breaking it to me so gently. So that was Becky Starr. And actually, that reminds me, our big guest is Kate Moss today. You'll hear that interview in a moment.

She's the novelist. She was talking about, well, you'll hear it in the interview, the Canary Islands. And it's only really recently that I've come to understand that the Spanish conquered the Canary Islands. They were not Spanish. They had their own indigenous populations. And I only really thought about that about six weeks ago, if I'm honest. So that's terrible, isn't it? The Spanish come along and conquer the Canary Islands. And then what happens? We go on holiday there. Yeah. And really, what would be the right verb for our arrival in the Canary Islands? Decimate.

Decimate. Something like that. I mean, some of the mass tourism that we have promoted has really ruined parts of it. But actually, Kate Moss is interesting about it because she finds a kind of writer's piece in the beauty of Gran Canaria. Perhaps that's another place that we might like to hear

a little bit more from. Well, it actually makes me feel quite ashamed because I went on a very early foreign holiday of my own with my then boyfriend to Gran Canaria. And I'm very sorry to say that I don't actually think we really left the hotel. Oh, it was a long time ago. Sweet. No, it wasn't. Actually, it wasn't that. No.

That's why. I didn't. No, let's just move on. No, forget wasn't that. No. That's what it sounds like. I didn't think... No, let's just move on. No, forget that. Right, OK. Let's talk about something else. We had quite a few really beautiful and understandably anonymous emails

about transgender children. Yeah. And this was because we'd had an email from a listener who was really feeling a sense of loss about the change in gender in her child who she adores and loves. But just having seen a future that is now completely different was the bit that she was struggling with. So we asked for similar experiences in that lovely way

that actually I think our audience really comes through for people. So here we go. Good morning. I'm just listening to your podcast and to have heard you discuss transgender. My child, now 26, had very turbulent adolescence, but I never saw transgender coming. So it was a big shock. Ultimately, as parents, we only want our children happy, whatever that looks like. However, it was extremely difficult for me. And I think the best advice I would give is to allow yourself to grieve. You are losing the person you thought you were going to have, although in reality you're not.

He's so much happier and that's what makes it OK for me. Love the rambling chat. Well, really. But we completely take your point. And it's one of a number of people say exactly the same thing, that what you're feeling, you shouldn't feel bad about at all. And it's a natural process to go through. And when you come out the other side,

you'll be much better for having allowed yourself to do a little bit of grieving. Yeah, quite. Well, this kind of takes up the theme from another really helpful, anonymous listener. Thank you very much. Listening to the email from the mother of a transgender son, my heart went out to her,

as I'm a mother of a transgender daughter, and perhaps a little bit further along the journey. I instantly wanted to say, yes, I know, I understand, and I felt all of those things too. Please reassure your listener that all of the feelings of grief for the loss of the child she thought she had, for the loss of the name she gave him, and for the future she saw for both of them, is felt by so many other parents. However, three years on, although I still have moments when I grieve the loss of my child's name, and look enviously at Facebook posts with mums and their sons,

it all feels a lot easier. There's still a lot that I need to support my daughter through, and each step can bring a little bit of pain, but I have noticed that it lasts only a short time now. I've never had the opportunity to talk to other parents of transgender children, but felt sure that, like me, above all, they would want their children to be happy, to feel loved and supported and to be their authentic selves and we will do all we can to help them but we are transitioning too and I'd like to reassure your listener of this and to say that any feelings she has are perfectly understandable and are not necessarily how she will feel as the time goes by so that's also that's a really good

perspective from somebody who's been living with this for just a little bit longer. Yeah. One suggestion as well from another mum, I think probably, who recommends some poetry by Claire Dyer, D-Y-E-R, a little book called Yield. And she says, I particularly love Parcel Post,

which is about having to put on a thick skin. We met Claire at a funeral and I bought the book more out of curiosity about her writing than anything else. But I do love it. It communicates so much pain and joy, but in such a gentle way. So thank you for all of those. We hope that that really works and does some business. Yeah, but I would want to say, I'm sure I've said it before, but don't be misled by those posts of saccharine happiness and good cheer in family life that so many people put up out there on the socials as though in their domestic settings there's never a crossword. I just think there's a real, it's artificial, isn't it, all that stuff?

All of it is. So it's quite a newcomer to Instagram because I haven't been really very fond of it in the past. But I'm, you know, I'm embracing it. I know, we're both making changes. We're all in on the Insta hit. Oh, very much so. So I now get that screen, you know, where Instagram compiles some pictures they think that I might want to look at every evening. And so there are loads of greyhounds

which is fantastic I love looking at those but obviously because somewhere in my algorithm I've talked or liked um you know other people's pictures and descriptions of very early childhood I'm getting a lot of mums and babies and mums and toddlers and they're all so beautiful. They're so clean and clean. Wonderful. And it's just like that's just so far removed from the reality of having a toddler at home. And I admire the mum. I mean, they just look amazing.

I keep on getting pictures of mums in bikinis, you know, holding their little ones and, you know, they're all wearing crochet. I mean, I could no more wear a crochet bikini than, you know, I could box fresh trainers and get away with it. Do you know what? Boris Johnson's wife has made public some very sort of peculiar, if peculiar is the right word, but very, very English country living,

slightly saccharine, tripping through fields of daisies images. She's not doing the Madonna. Do you remember Madonna when she bought her mansion in Wiltshire and she was going through her phase of being the lady of the English manor? She was on the front cover of a magazine feeding her speckled hens with grain. It's just like, OK, on every level. For a start in the country, you don't do that. Because if you leave your hens out in the morning, you've just got fox tragedy. And also nobody is out there in a beautiful kind of chiffon gown in full makeup,

chucking pieces of grain at little birds. Well, Carrie Johnson was pictured from the back, so walking through a field, a meadow of some description, with her adorable, and they are beautiful children, we should say, photographed from the back. She's holding her daughter and the young boy is sort of slightly walking ahead. So we don't see their faces because they're obviously very keen to keep their faces private, and Carrie is currently... Well, can I just say, just don't photograph them at all.

That's sort of what I'm thinking. Carrie Johnson is very heavily pregnant at the moment. I would just say exactly that. We really don't need to see these images. I don't know why you're sharing them with us. And I don't like a pixelated child either. No. You're right.

Just don't make them a part of your package. And also I can recognise people from the back. I can recognise you in a crowd last from the back. Yep. That's if you've come out of the bedroom. Whoa, whoa. That's good. I really didn't mean that. Anyway, it's now time to talk about

you appearing on The Weaker Slink. Oh, okay. No, this is so we're building up. We are Wednesday. So when are you going? So where do they do The Weaker Sling? So we're recording in... I'm so jealous.

Go on. Glasgow. Yeah. Glasgow. Glasgow. Glasgow. And they're doing it all over the weekend. And Louise Minchin, who was here last week,

she's in a different one, actually. Oh, so she's doing it. Which we commiserated with each other about, because it would be quite nice to have some kind of feeling of solidarity. I've completely forgotten how it works. I'm going to have to watch a couple of episodes to make sure that I play it properly. We're all playing for charity. So there is some kind of imperative to actually do well.

Right. And it's Romesh Ranganathan hosting. And I'm a bit worried about the podium. Will it be big enough for you? Well, yes. Will it be podium there?

Will only the top half of your wonderful blouses be visible? Yeah, surely they'll make arrangements. Well, no, because, you know, they're going to have to choose

an average celebrity height, aren't they, for all of the podiums because you can't have this podium, this podium, this podium, see Glover.

That would be really unfair. Which charity are you working for? I will be playing for AdFam. Okay. So that's the organisation that helps the families of people who are living with addiction. It's a small charity, but it really does amazing things. So I don't want to let them down.

No. I just really want to win them down no change because we really want to win some money for responsibility so you know the dropout moments that you had in the program today shifts uneasily in her chair there were a couple of moments where I was but I was just enjoying the conversation and I actually completely forgotten that I had a paid role here which is actually to contribute to the conversation from time to time. So I'm worried that I will just have those moments where, A, I'll be a little bit overawed with all of this because I'm just not very good at all of this lighting, stuff like that.

So there's that, and then there's an actual question that you have to answer, isn't there? And in the moment, I'm just going to forget everything. I know I'm going to forget everything. But it'll be you. And which celebrities would you like to meet? Joe Swash? Oh, I'd like to meet quite a lot of... Emma Bunton? Yes. Oh my goodness. I mean,

if there was a Spare Spice girl, I'd be absolutely thrilled. I think any member of an early 90s band I'd be very happy with. I'm not sure that I'd recognise a Blow Monkey, but if there's a Blow Monkey band I'd be very happy with. I'm not sure that I'd recognise a Blow Monkey but if it's a Blow Monkey I'd be very happy. Anybody, I think it would have to be television

from the 1980s into the 1990s and otherwise I'm absolutely lost. I don't really know. No, your general knowledge is rather good so I think you'll be fine. No, it's really not. Who was the lead singer of the Blowmonkeys?

I can't remember. Dr. Robert. There you go. I mean, if that was the question, I'm already out, aren't I? You are the weakest link in life. He wasn't a real doctor. But was he a real Robert? Possibly.

Shall we hear today's big guest? Oh, let's. Yeah, let's go on. By the way, it's not out until September, but I'll be able, I'll just be able to give you a signal, I think on the Monday after next. As to how well you did. To whether or not it was diabolical. No, I don't think it will be.

Or really vaguely acceptable. I just hope I can see you. That will be the main issue. Kate Moss was our big guest today, and we really like Kate Moss, don't't we for lots of reasons so she's an amazing best selling author

just author will do I got the number of million copies of her book wrong in the queue and she was brilliant wasn't she? I said she'd sold two million copies of Labyrinth which is a brilliant book set in Carcassonne, starts the whole kind of,

you know, shindig of romance and stories and adventure that she writes so well. So I said she'd sold two million copies, which is very impressive. And she just went like that in the studio. Eight million copies of Labyrinth has been sold, a lot of books. So her latest novel is called The Ghost Ship, and that is the third in the Joubert family chronicles. More on that in a moment. But also things worth knowing about Kate. She's the founding director of the Women's Prize for Fiction. She does quite a lot of speaking as well about care because she has looked after both sets of parents, actually, her husband's parents and also her own parents. parents actually, her husband's parents and also her own parents. She's written a memoir about that.

She's also done two live tours, one of which is about warrior queens in history and the other was a really extraordinary show that she did after Brexit with some other famous authors and we do talk about that in the interview. So we began, by dissecting the title of her latest novel, The Ghost Ship. I grew up in the 60s and 70s. And my favourite book was the Lady Bird Book of Pirates. And in the Lady Bird Book of Pirates, it was all, you know, Captain Kidd and Captain Cheech and all of these terrible, terrible, fearsome men with big beards. But there were two women, Anne Bonny and Mary Read. And I never forgot them. And I loved pirate stories, and my dad used to read me pirate stories, and even then I would get quite cross-thoped that where were the women? There were no women in them. And then as I grew up,

I discovered and researched that there had been quite a few female pirates, and I put this all at the back of my mind. And then when I was coming to write this novel, The Ghost Ship, it is the third of four in the Jube family chronicles, but I deliberately wrote it as a standalone novel so people could just read this one because I suddenly thought this is my moment to write the pirate novel I've always wanted to write. And what I love about pirates is they are outsiders and they are people who have decided for whatever reason they maybe because of a crime or maybe because they have to flee or because they have a horrible circumstance that they are going

to forsake society and go and create a completely different world elsewhere and so my lead character Louise Joubert is precisely this person that she's wealthy enough to choose not to marry she's wealthy enough and this is in 1610 and then 1620, to decide that she will buy herself a ship and it's bad luck to have women on a ship. And then one thing leads to another. And before you know it, she's a pirate queen. It's a swashbuckling novel for you. That's all I have to say. There is a wonderful turning of the tables of gender as well, because in terms of love, she has managed to find herself in a position

where she can fall in love with a servant who's a man, that man can love her back. It's a perfect flip side, isn't it, of what we usually read about in history? Yes, and the thing is, all of my stories, as you know, they're adventure stories, but they have unheard and underheard women's stories at the heart of it, and theyheard women's stories at the heart of it. And they're imagined characters set against the backdrop of real history. And this is the Huguenot diaspora in the moment that France is falling to pieces. And the novel starts with the assassination of Henry IV, the great French king. And it's not fanciful to say that if he had not been assassinated in May 1610, the French Revolution probably wouldn't have happened. And so I'm always choosing a period in history

where a completely different story would have been told. But Louise Joubert doesn't quite fit in, into society. She is from a refugee family. Her family are part French and part Dutch. And we learn quite early on that there's been something traumatic in her past, but we don't know what it is. And she decides essentially that she will refuse to live the sort of life that women of the time are told they have to live

and the only way to do that is to go and to be somewhere else and when I started writing I knew it was going to be a pirate novel and I knew it was going to be set Amsterdam La Rochelle but mostly on the high seas around the Canary Islands, because I love the Canary Islands. And I've always wanted to write about Gran Canaria. But I didn't expect it to be a love story. But when I was writing, I suddenly thought, oh, hello. Oh, hello. She's a bit lonely at sea. She's a bit lonely at sea. And look at this. And, you know, so I don't make those decisions like I'm going to write about this or that I do do all the research and then I start writing the characters and see where they go there are some lovely uh wry turns of phrase in all of your books Kate and there's one point it's quite early on in the book where Louise I think she's

basically um you know she's uh thinking aloud and she says to herself things are really turning for women uh in the year 1601 and you just think, gosh, are they? Are they? Yes, exactly. And she says to her grandmother, you know, in your day, women couldn't do this, but now these are the modern times, you know. But, of course, that's why everybody always feels, you know, that their times, they've kind of got it right.

Well, we don't feel that right at the moment. But that is quite important. But what I wanted to do with the pirate story is that there is all this stuff about pirates, and And of course, real pirates, it's not funny, and they're not romantic, and it's awful. But there is also the idea of pirates being the highway women and highway men of the sea, that there is some kind of moral code. And it is true that a pirate ship is a floating republic. It isn't governed by the rules of the land in quite the same sort of way. And there's this wonderful pirate novel called Captain Blood,

which was published in 1922 by Raphael Sabatini. And it was made into a very famous film with Errol Flynn. That's the pirate that everybody knows. And there's a beautiful phrase in that saying that he, you know, describing all the things that he's done as a pirate, but he still retained some rags of honour. And this was important to me that Louise and her pirate ship, they are all misfits. They're a band of brothers, though, with her as the commander. But there's a purpose to what they're doing. And what they're trying to do is disrupt slavery ships. And so they're not just X marks the spot looking for treasure. But I did want this novel to be just great fun, you know, proper summer read that people will be going,

oh, my God, you know, there's the bodies mount higher and higher. Yeah. And presumably, as you did your research about what life would be like on board a ship, back in those days, it actually would have been horrendous. It would have been quite stinky it's true and it's very claustrophobic i did a lot of research because all of uh the central character in almost all my novels you know whether they're the gothic fiction or the adventure

fiction is landscape but here it is the sea and the sea is not something that i know um you know i like walking beside the sea and looking at the sea i do not like being in the sea or on the sea is not something that I know. You know, I like walking beside the sea and looking at the sea. I do not like being in the sea or on the sea. So I really had to do a lot of research. So I spent time in the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, of course, in historic Portsmouth dockyards, the Mary Rose, the Cutty Sark, Nelson's flagship, of course, the Victory,

and just trying to get to grips. But a friend of mine who is a retired rear admiral said to me, what you've got to do Kate is listen to the song of the ship, just shut your eyes and listen to the song of the ship and the minute he said that I thought oh no I can write that. So it's the idea that the ship is all the time moving and creaking and sighing and the wood is contracting and you can hear the singing in the shrouds and you can hear the rigging and you can hear the drag under the water and people lived on top of each other really quite literally most people didn't have beds they just lay down when they went to sleep but a lot of people live like that on dry land you know we

have so much literature about the 17th century and, of course, the 16th century, but so much of it is just about the court and a tiny band of people, but most people were still living in relatively medieval conditions in crowded spaces. And so there is still a romance to a pirate ship. The only thing that I couldn't get my head around to start with was, how could on such confined space women go undetected? How could they disguise themselves as men and not be recognised? And then of course a historian said to me, Kate you forget that people wore the same clothes year after year. They didn't undress, they didn't get washed, even if they were going to do the things that everybody needs to do,

they would go up to the edge of the ship and, you know, sort of... And so people saw what they expected to see. And, of course, women who were pirates were strong, powerful women. You know, they were not, bless her, Keira Knightley. You know, they had buttons on their shirts. She wouldn't have lasted more than a day on the ghost ship. And I'm not being mean about her. No. But it's true.

I mean, you would have been covered in so much dirt, it would have been hard to tell. And people didn't take their clothes off, you know. Tell us a little bit more about Gran Canaria. Because I had never heard, I mean, it's proper name to call it Las Islas Afortunadas. Yes, that's the name of the archipelago, the Canary Islands, Islas Afadrinadas.

And they are, you know, there are seven main islands. And I've always loved the Canary Islands. I know it's unfashionable, but I've always loved the Canary Islands. Why is it unfashionable? Well, you know, people always go, oh, the Canary Islands. You know, we're going to the Maldives. And you go, well, it's a long way, isn't it, to go all that way? I have no idea.

Canary Islands, they are very guaranteed sun. Rainals. And some of the freshest air and cleanest air in the world. And everything is there. They grow everything. And at this period in history, the beginning of the 17th century, they are at the absolute still point of the developing world. So what is the indigenous population of the Canary Islands then?

They are called the Guanches. Right. And there are different views about their heritage. Some people say as old as an Aboriginal heritage, others think probably Berbers from North Africa that at some moment, but a very, very ancient group of people. And they were almost completely wiped out by the Castilian invasion in the 15th century, in the 1480s. And the islands, the archipelago, became a Spanish colony, essentially.

But the different islands fought at different ways. So in Gran Canaria, the king there was called Duramas, and he still remembered the main park in the centre of the capital city is named after him. And it's really interesting because you suddenly think, of course, they're at the Canary Islands. This is the moment in history where Europe is looking out to the world. It started to realise there's a much bigger world than just Europe. And so every ship that was going either down the Portuguese Gold Coast or to the so-called New World or down to the Cape or to Batavia, which is now Jakarta, either stopped in Madeira or Gran Canaria. And when you read or go and see a Shakespeare play and you hear them talk about

Canary Sack, that is Canarian wine and it was the most exported wine in the world. So it was this tiny, powerful powerhouse. And I just loved the history of the Canary Islands and just wanted to get a bit of that in. So, of course, my lot do dock in Las Palmas, but, of course, the minute they're on dry land again, they have to revert to the roles that society has said women should have. So, of course, they feel trapped and uncomfortable. And, of course, it's where Columbus three times stayed

when he was looking for the countries he never found, but he did end up in America instead. Voice over describes what's happening on your iPhone screen. Voice over 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. Kate Moss is our guest this afternoon. As well as talking about the current book, we wanted to talk about a tour that she went on with, wait for it, Ken Follett, your favourite author of all time. Wow.

And something of a mate now. You've had lunch with him. I have had lunch with him. At The Ritz. There we go. But thank you, because that was paid for by... Agent A. Agent B, to whom I still owe a huge debt of thanks. It was for charity.

Yeah, and she was so generous. And I hope that A.T.B. is still listening to the podcast. So there was Ken Follett, Lee Childs, Jojo Moyes and Kate Moss, who went on stage to do a little tour around Europe after the Brexit referendum. It was Ken's idea, and we all know each other, and Ken just felt, like many people, the sadness of this. And also, we all have a lot of European readers.

We're all translated into the European languages, and Ken just wanted to kind of essentially go and say, we still love being part of Europe, but we want to be part of Europe. So he said, I'm going to do a friendship tour. And we were all like, what, really? It sounds quite strange. And then he said, no, no, trust me, trust me.

He didn't say it like that, obviously, because he's much more elegant. But his idea was that we, as a group of four writers, Ken and I write in a similar kind of area. Jojo, obviously the queen of modern women's fiction, I would say. And Lee, you know, what is it? You know, every six seconds somebody in the world buys a Lee Child novel or something extraordinary.

So, you know, these superstars, they are superstars. And he just thought, well, we would go to four capital cities and would hire a theatre and we would just do a gig, well, we would go to four capital cities and would hire a theatre and we would just do a gig, essentially, between us. And the Spanish newspapers did describe us as super grouper and, of course, we therefore felt we were ABBA ever afterwards. And we went to Milan, we went to Madrid, we went to Paris and we went to Berlin

and we did events in theatres with thousands of people and we just talked about our writing and why we wrote and what we cared about, about being part of Europe. And in the audience, were there people who had been upset by this country's decision to leave the EU? Or did most people just come along to see you because you're amazing writers and they'd love your books, whatever happened?

I think a bit of both. I think, truthfully, this is the the point that everybody in Europe just thought oh god they've obviously gone mad. They weren't upset they were just like this isn't going to be good for the economic health of the country. You know it was that more than anything else. You know I think we all felt that people might feel that you know we're we're turned up, but actually nobody cares. They just thought it was a very strange thing to have happened, as indeed I think a lot of us did. And I gather now a lot more people realise that it was maybe not quite what it was sold to be. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a different conversation being had now amongst people who did vote to leave that, you know, may be informed by different things than they were informed by at the time. When you get together in your super grouper, is there a hierarchy? Can you genuinely not be competitive with each other? It's, funnily enough, I think the thing is

that writers, by and large, not all of them, of course, but by and large, most writers feel that if somebody reads one book, they're going to read another book, that we kind of think we're all in it together. None of us really have to think, oh, you know, they're bigger than me. You know, everybody's got somebody who's much bigger. Nobody sells as many copies as Lee, but Lee is just the most wonderful, mellow guy who doesn't do any of that. So actually, we all were a little bit apprehensive. We weren't quite sure what we were getting into. But when it came to it, it was just like going on a school trip. We had

a complete blast. And it was this strange period of about eight days, just before COVID, you know, November 2019. And we now look back on that and think, did that even happen? You know, it was just so extraordinary. But it's lovely being on tour with other writers because normally we're doing what I'm doing now. You're on your own, you go and meet lovely people like you, you talk about your book, you go away again. You meet readers and that's fantastic.

But you don't normally tour with other writers and you're not normally talking to them about their writing. So it was a fabulous experience. If there was the last book you ever read, would you pick a Ken, a Lee or a Jojo? Oh! Or one of your own, Kate? I think I would choose The Ghost Ship.

Terrible answer. Terrible answer. What did the French think of you taking their history and making merry with it? You have absolutely put your finger on the thing that worried me most about that. And I obviously, we've had a little house in Carcassonne for over 30 years now. And I fell in love with the history of the region and was writing about it. That's one of those walled cities.

Yeah, the walled city right down in Languedoc in the southwest. And finally, I plucked up the courage to ask somebody because my books sell really, really well in France. So I thought, well, that's interesting. And a woman came along to a signing I was doing, I can't remember which book I'd just published, in Carcassonne. And I said, you know, in a kind of slightly English-y, self-deprecating way, I was a little bit worried about, you know,

what people locally might feel about me appropriating their history, you know. And she looked me in the eye and she said, better an English woman than a Parisian. Whoa. There we go. Okay. Well, I mean, thinking about it, what do you think of, I mean, we were all glued to the events happening in Paris and other major cities last week. It seems to have calmed

down a little bit. But I think we're probably, we shouldn't be too smug here, should we, about what's going on there? No, I mean, this is why I write historical fiction, historical adventure fiction. If we don't know the history, all of it, not just a little bit of it, or just the tiny band of people that always get written about about then we don't know the real history that runs under the surface that will suddenly then explode so i don't think anybody in france would necessarily be surprised at what happened because this is a long-running conversation and we had precisely the same if you think a few years ago suddenly paul's grove was on fire there were lots of riots in London

there are things that if they are allowed to fester or are not acknowledged will in the end explode it's as simple as that it's got to go somewhere do we approve of looting and rioting and people going mad and breaking no of course not but do we need to address the fact that there might be people who feel that the society that is supposedly for everybody is not for them? Yes, we should address that and see, you know, leadership should be about bringing people together. And unfortunately, we're living in times that a lot of political leadership is actively and deliberately divisive for power. And that is the opposite to what leadership should be. We've run out of time, Kate. I'm sure Jane and I could talk to you for another half an hour at

least. But thank you very much indeed for coming in. Just a one word answer if you can. Does it ever upset you that your hugely successful novels don't win the prize that you set up for other women's writers? I never win any prizes, actually. So, you know, no, of course not. Of course not. It's all about the more the merrier, let's say, the more the merrier. You want to try writing one of those so-called literary novels. I don't think I've got the chops for that. That's the problem, because you want to write a novel that doesn't sell as well as yours. Exactly. You write books people want to read. Okay, that is your audience's challenge. Buy all the books tomorrow and then I won't need to worry about not winning any prizes.

So you heard it here first. Buy all of Kate Moss's books all the time and she will never have to win the Women's Prize. But it's an interesting distinction, isn't it, between those people who do win awards and those people who sell truckloads of books and give enormous amounts of pleasure to loads of us who just love a good story and a cracking yarn and you know I'm a massive fan of Ken Follett well and I'm a massive fan of Lee Childs and yeah yeah I know yeah I know it's it's there's nothing wrong with winning awards but you do know when you're reading a so-called well sometimes you feel you're reading a novel that's trying very hard to win an award.

And it can feel, well, let's be honest, it's often less pleasurable. And I love from time to time to just immerse myself in a cracking adventure. Nothing wrong with it. So I think it's really interesting that Kate has set up that award, which, as you pointed out, she knows she's unlikely to win. And there's this sort of absurdity there, isn't there? But anyway, I hugely admire her for doing it. I know there are some people who say, oh, you don't need a Women's Prize.

Oh, no, you do. But I think you do. I think you still definitely do. Yeah. And just because it puts on people's radar authors who just aren't getting the kind of lift off that they otherwise might, you know, puts thousands on to your sales if you win it. And also, I think it just gets loads and loads of really good women together. if you win it. And also I think it just gets loads and loads of really good women together. And all of the women who do the judging

and Kate who's in charge of it and the women who win, they always say the same thing, that it's not a women's prize of fiction so that only women can read the books. It's just a women's prize of fiction to highlight great female writing so men can identify good books to read too. And we know that men don't buy what is, you know, in a slightly derogative way called chick that they don't enjoy that kind of female romance.

you know, the Crime Fiction Awards and the, you know, the Dagger Awards and stuff like that, which can often be won by a man as well as by a woman. It just helps you, you know, fill it out a bit, doesn't it? You have reminded me that Valérie Perrin, author of Fresh Water for Flowers, which is our book club choice, we're discussing it on the 27th of July. You're brilliant today, which is just as well because I haven't been. Doesn't speak English. Good points. So, what we've decided to do

is to see if we can get a voice note, as the young call it, from Valerie in French, which many of you will understand. We might even understand some of it. Just to prove to you that we have attempted to make contact with her. And we'll translate it.

And we will translate it, yeah. Because it's actually, I'm sure she's delighted to be our book club pick. Although, as you pointed out yesterday, she has sold millions, quite a lot of books already. She'll still be tickled pink. Oh, she'll be tickled pink. Now, in the UK, it's the 75th anniversary of the NHS today, which is an imperfect institution, but I think we can all agree it has helped so many of us.

I know what I owe the NHS, which is a huge amount, actually, but the one thing I'd pick would be that they spotted that my youngest child had something wrong with her hip when she was six weeks old and it was treated. wrong with her hip when she was six weeks old and it was treated. We used to go for appointments. She had a little orthopedic harness. We'd go to the appointment every week for a couple of months, actually, which at the time felt like it was going to last forever. But let's be honest about it, it means she can walk without a limp. And without the NHS and without them saying that she needed a scan because she'd been a breech baby, we would never have known. it's that it's a it's not a simple thing but it's a thing that she doesn't remember but I will never forget yeah so what would what would you point to gosh well I'd have to I have to spread it out very evenly but it's to do with my two when they were babies as well so um my son and I did not have an easy birth and the NHS was just amazing.

And I think if I'm honest, if I'd been born in a different country that didn't have such good maternity services, and I know that there are some really very challenging and challenged maternity services in the country, but we were lucky. I think that that would have gone very badly wrong, actually. So I'm eternally grateful for that and then my daughter was premature and she was quite unwell after she was born so again you know we just literally just dialed those three digits and life-saving treatment was available to us for free so you know in know, in both of those cases, oh, I've got a little kind of tingles talking about it. Because you're absolutely right to draw attention to it, actually. You don't let your head often revisit those moments, I think, of what might have happened.

But we were incredibly lucky. So, yes, I would say happy birthday, NHS, as well. Yes, absolutely. And in other parts of the world, something that people will have to worry about is the cost of it. Yes. And you're absolutely right. For all its imperfections,

the thing we don't ever worry about is where will I get the money for this? Yeah. Because it's there and it's free. Yeah. Thank you very much for that because that's an important thing to say. No, you brought it up. So I would say thank you to you. We've ended the day well, Jenny.

If we have fees on holiday next week, and I know she's looking forward to it, we'll muddle on here. From what I've been told, there's probably me and about one other individual in the office next week, so we'll do what we'll do. Let's see. Let's just see what we come up with. Tell me what you're going to have to concentrate on. I will concentrate. Drop a house. I to have to concentrate. I will concentrate. Drop a house.

I'm going to concentrate. And on that note, have a very lovely evening. Yes, have a lovely evening. We're bringing the shutters down on another episode of the internationally acclaimed podcast Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. But don't forget that you can get another two hours of us

every Monday to Thursday afternoon here on Times Radio. We start at 3pm and you can listen for free on your smart speaker. Just shout Play Times Radio at it. You can also get us on DAB Radio in the car or on the Times Radio app whilst you're out and about being extremely busy. And you can follow all our tosh behind the mic and elsewhere on our Instagram account. Just go onto Insta and search for Jane and Fee and give us a follow. So in other words, we're everywhere, aren't we, Jane?

Pretty much. Everywhere. Thank you for joining us. And we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon. I'm tap to open breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11 and get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone.