Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Drunk Funcles

Episode Date: December 29, 2022

In today's final best-of before Jane and Fi return next week, they talk to the award winning food critic, columnist and broadcaster Grace Dent, about her hit podcast Comfort Eating.Plus, Hollywood director of Bridesmaids, The Heat and Ghostbusters, Paul Feig, talks all things cocktails.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Producers: Kate Lee, Emma Sherry, Eve SalusburyTimes Radio Producer: Rosie CutlerPodcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell 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. Hello and welcome to the best of Jane and Fee. I'm Fee Glover.

Who are you? I'm Jane Garvey. She says confidently. I love the fact that you had to look down at a piece of paper for that. It's been a difficult period. It's been a very long year. It's Christmas between New Year, whatever it's called. It's a very harrowing time. This week we've been looking at some of our favourite

interviews from our first couple of months on our new home. We are loving it. First though, we talk to Grace Dent about her culinary arts. Hello, Grace. Hello, how are you doing? Yeah, very well, thank you. If you were a guest on your own podcast, what would you choose as your comfort eating treat? Well, it used to be oven chips with powdered gravy made in a mug with some mint sauce on it, which gives you all of the joy of the roast dinner on a Sunday with none of the arduous tasks of making any of it.

I've changed it recently. I'm eating a lot of cauliflower. You know that riced cauliflower? Got to leap there. I'm making riced cauliflower into rice pudding with Weetabix. You what? I wish you hadn't asked that question, Fee. I know.

Look, look. Yes. with Weetabix. You what? I wish you hadn't asked that question, Fee. I know. I know. Look, look. Yes. I advise you to follow me as a food expert. It kind of gives you all of the snuggliness of a rice pudding, but with cauliflower. So you're keeping those carbs down. Take it from me. Okay.

I don't know about you. I'm sensing some pushback.back yeah i've got a little sicky burp actually at the moment just the thought of weeterbix and cauliflower well let me prevent that from developing uh i just what i will say grace is that oven chips we haven't got a lot to celebrate in life but oven chips have significantly improved in my in in my lifetime they they start remember the originals were dire but now you can get some really properly decent oven chips, can't you? Yeah, they've started to make them very oily and, yeah,

oily and, well, salty and delicious, all the bad stuff, all the bad good stuff. And then they just freeze it and then you can have them in the freezer and then you get your air fryer. Don't start me about the air fryer because having given up almost all of the vices in my life and i walk around parties telling people how quickly you can air fry things oh my kind of girl no i like that i like the air fryer myself uh comfort eating is an interesting thing though isn't it great on your podcast do

you find that most people uh you know when they start thinking about a comfort food will automatically reach for something in their childhood almost irrespective of if that childhood might not have been great we remember the food don't we as being possibly better than it was i think it's really telling how many people choose the thing that reminds them of school, school dinners, because I think that a 60s, 70s, 80s school, especially the comprehensive school day was horrible. And it was it was relentlessly mean. And then at 12 o'clock, a bell rang and you got some sponge pudding with some pink custard. Yes. And I think that that stays with people for the whole life. What happened to that combination of chocolate sponge and pink custard?

Yes. Yeah, I mean, Jay Blades was on the podcast recently, and he was talking about that. He had a horrible time at school. But when at lunchtime, he used to, you know, have this amazing sponge pudding. His eyes just came alive talking about everything they had in the school. You know, those amazing ladies in tabards serving up love. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, look, people come in to do comfort eating, and they think in tabards serving up love. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, look, people come in to do comfort eating

and they think they're going to talk about toasties and they end up talking about their relationship with their dad and their divorce. And, yeah, we go deep. We go deep. You know what it's like. You do the same, ladies. Well, not so much these days, Grace.

We're here for a good time, not a long time. She lied. Tell me about the first exotic food that you ate. Oh, gosh. The first exotic food. I think the first time I ever saw absolutely posh food, it was my grandmother's 50th wedding anniversary and we went to a proper slightly fancy restaurant and they had as a starter as an option

a florida cocktail which which means what is that chocolate with pineapple i think it was just segments of orange and pineapple i mean this would never happen now this was like 1982 in outback Cumbria but yeah I think that was and I always remember that one of my aunties who was who was who was you know you know you've always got one of those posh aunties he's just a little bit posher than everybody else. And she turned up and she ordered it. And I just thought it was the epitome of glamour to sit there and just pick a piece of grapefruit. Yeah. Interestingly, my first exotic experience, because I knew you were going to ask me what mine was, Grace, was my posh auntie who wore a boiler suit, joined the SDP and gave me my first olive.

Oh, word. but i'll never forget it that's a triple whammy yeah i honestly think that the first time you put an olive into your mouth is it's an absolute it's a cornucopia of emotion isn't it it was a lot like it looks like a big grape and it it tastes satanic just for a while and then reveals itself as something delicious. Do you think that the human palate changes through time? I mean, does the modern kind of seven-year-old offered an olive have the same experience that you would have had if you were offered an olive? Oh, gosh. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, you definitely get modern seven-year-olds now. I mean, I go to fancy restaurants where they're still sitting up at the table at 9.45 at night eating foie gras.

That's unnecessary, isn't it? where should I say, Nobu, for example, Nobu Shoreditch. And you go downstairs and you get the guests there who, they've obviously came into Britain for the evening and they've got 11 or 12 children all just sitting on one big table by themselves and each one of them's got a huge iPad and they're getting through thousands of pounds worth of sashimi. I wonder if Nobu will be annoyed at me for saying that, you know, I don't care. Well done, Grace. No, why should you? But you started, let's talk about

restaurants, because I read your review, I think it was in The Guardian, was it your most recent review in The Guardian, in which you go out for a meal in Brighton, which is, well, it's an Italian meal that I have to say is less than satisfactory, Grace, but you're there to review the food and that's what you did. But you also say that you can't really believe that people are out there eating in such numbers, that we know that we're in recession, we know some people are having a tough time, but the people are still out there, aren't they? They absolutely are. I mean, there's a massive discrepancy between the doom and the gloom that we hear and we're all involved with, we're all telling each other these stories every day about how we're cutting back,

what we're cancelling, how Christmas is going to be tighter and smaller than ever before. But then you go out on Saturday night across the country and it's really, really busy. And it's the chains that I think are still thriving. You know, the places places you know the pizza express and wagamamas and all those places that are dependably good but you know they're really really busy and people look I think it's going to be a different story in January and February it really will be but uh right now right now because we are British we're drinking through the pain yes you don't drink anymore though, do you?

I absolutely don't. No, I stopped drinking about 18 months ago. I stopped drinking. I just, I just, you know, I felt like I'd had enough drinks in my life. I've been drinking since I was 14. I'm from Carlisle. Well, yeah, we should say, I mean, and you drank snake bite, Grace, Carlisle. Well, yeah, we should say, I mean, and you drank Snakebite, Grace, notably. Look, I used to love a Snakey B, as we used to call it. Yeah, Snakebite. I was talking to Adam Kay on my podcast about this the other day, the ultimate goth drink. Yeah, look, I'm from a background where, you know, I was drinking from an early age early age i got to i'm in my late 40s now and i decided to make some lifestyle changes because i'd had a think and i didn't want to die of gout that's a great line make that put that on a t-shirt stop drinking don't die of gout just that wasn't what i was expecting at all

just a plea such a cliche you know what did she die of she died very slowly of gout yeah but you're right i mean it's not a good look and you don't want to have to spend one foot up on a poof of an evening in order to get rid of actually crystals of lactic i know someone who's got gout you're on medication for the rest of your life, aren't you, with gout, Grace? Johnny says, I'm not a fan of funerals in general, but I do love a funeral buffet, like a quiche Lorraine, a potato salad, and those chicken satay sticks.

You could even chuck a vegetable spring roll on that, he says, and I'd be completely happy. That's a nice comment. I'm never sure, though, because the vol-au-vin is just not the snack you want to have in your mouth when you're trying to convey the deepest of emotions about the passing of somebody. It's a feathery if it's somebody who's had a really, really long life and it's a very old person, that's OK. But I would still reach for a sausage on a stick in that occasion. Always, actually. Do you have some ready-to-rumble quotes up your sleeve

when you're writing your restaurant reviews? You said this about a restaurant in London, BB. It's an Indian restaurant, isn't it? I've never been there myself. I'd happily bathe in the peanut sauce, splashing it about my armpits and behind my ears before dressing without showering. I write my restaurant columns right at the last minute at about five o'clock in the morning. about five o'clock in the morning. I wake up at five.

I pour myself a pint of gold blend. I open up a blank word column and stare at the abyss rocking for a while, wishing I'd began two days early. And it's just the madness that comes out. Like I don't have anything up my sleeve. And I always say that to be a restaurant critic, it isn't about being knowing so much about food but more being able to just sit down and describe a white room that

serves pasta at least 12 times a year while still retaining your job and then not giving it to somebody else because that's the job and it's hard i mean it's you do it brilliantly but as you describe it's not easy um here's a confession from a listener who says i used to visit holland regularly for work we were always accommodated in a particular hotel with a good breakfast buffet why do people do this one of my colleagues took great delight in depositing raw eggs in the baskets full of boiled ones he just liked to watch when somebody broke one thinking it was cooked. What a weird way to get your kicks. That's very strange, isn't it?

That's very childish. I'm not sure about that. I can't condone that. I can't. I can't. He's breaking the trust of the buffet, isn't he? What is your strangest buffet combination out of all of those international buffets that

you've sampled? Some two things that you've put on your plate that you never thought it was humanly possible to see on the same piece of crockery? I think it was at the Caesar's Palace and Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, the Bacchanal, where it costs about $130 to get in there. And they have about 200 types of pudding. They have desserts, sorry, desserts. They have all these tiny little desserts. They're absolutely amazing. But they also have, they call it the steamship, which is this enormous Wagyu beef. So I think somebody in the end served me Wagyu beef and sticky toffee pudding.

Are you still battling to give up Twitter or have you decided to, having written a rather successful book about giving up Twitter, have you decided to abandon giving it up and you're sticking with it? I feel like if Elon Musk ran that site into the sea tomorrow, he would be doing me a favour. I'm not saying that he would be doing the world a favor. I'm sure a lot of people get a lot of joy out of it. And it does have its uses. But I don't think I'll ever get Twitter fully out of my life. I mean, I don't know. I don't know if you feel the same. It's like, I open up the door to the room, and I scan through it, and I look at it all. And I immediately start to feel anxious and elated and titillated in equal doses. And then I think I'm not going to look at that anymore. And I might

go through a couple more weeks, but then I'm back again. And that has been going on since 2008. Wow. And would you not be attracted by something that did everything that Twitter did, but just could guarantee that the, you know, the bad faith stuff wasn't on there? but just could guarantee that the bad faith stuff wasn't on there. No, it's never going to be like that, though, is it? I mean, I've said that if I switch on Twitter at some point in the next couple of weeks and Twitter's gone, I am not bringing any more social media into my life. This is going to be a whole new me.

You heard it here first. I'm not going to be sitting up at three o'clock in the morning being cross at a person in Milwaukee for not having the same opinion as me yeah I know what you mean voiceover describes what's happening on your iPhone screen voiceover on settings so you can navigate it just by listening. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. Welcome to the best of Jane and Fee, where we're mulling over some of our favourite conversations from the last couple of months.

Paul Faye makes movies and TV shows that defy stereotypes. If you love Bridesmaids, you'll know how brilliantly it takes down the wedding conceit and celebrates the place of female friendship in the whole Death to Us Part thing. He likes a complex female character. He's the director of Spy and the female lead reboot of Ghostbusters. He's also directed huge chunks of Mad Men, Freaks and Geeks, The Office, Arrested Development. He's a proper legend, Jane.

Well, I like any man who likes The Office, Arrested Development. He's a proper legend, Jane. Well, I like any man who likes complex female characters. Very much so. He's also behind Powderkeg, which is a digital content company championing new voices with a commitment to LGBTQ plus creatives and filmmakers of colour. And Paul is here to talk about booze. Because when the pandemic struck, he started mixing cocktails, popped the mini movies up on the

socials and before you could say can i have that over ice he became a mix ecologist sensation and everybody's favorite drunk funcle it's just such a beautiful term a drunk funcle paul you're very welcome to our studio thank you isn't that weird that both jane and i are kind of lisping in anticipation of getting a drink well you should always be gasping for a lovely drink that's my that's my feeling that's me yes are you oh i always am yes uh did you get very very drunk during the pandemic well it definitely happened uh you know i wanted to do something for people you know starting right at the beginning of lockdown because remember it was terrifying because we had no idea how it was being transmitted and i just knew i wanted to help and i wanted to raise money for first responders and medical

professionals and all that and so i thought well i can i'll start to make cocktails learn how to make cocktails i knew how to make a martini and a negroni but i have all these cocktail books i thought well i'll do this on camera and we'll have fun and try to give somebody everybody something to watch at five o'clock you know los angeles time where i was at the time uh every day for 100 days in a row and we did it and it was i think it was nice for people i think they had something to kind of look forward to and how big did it all get i mean it got it got pretty big it didn't go like crazy like stanley tucci or anything my friend stanley tucci he is your friend he is my friend yes and he's he's gone through the roof and much more monetized

his cocktail skills. But no, it was really nice. We raised a lot of money, and so many people would write me and just kind of thank me for just giving them something to take their mind off of how scary it was at that time. Is America's attitude to alcohol very different to the traditional British approach? Because I don't associate you with drinking heavily.

No, well, we are a puritanical country, and you do see it. But you see it more in, depends where you are. Like, Los Angeles is very, basically kind of alcohol adverse. Like, if you go out to lunch, like a business lunch,

and dare order a glass of wine or something, suddenly eyebrows go up, and you hear from the town, oh, so-and-so has a drinking problem. No, I'm just having a nice glass of wine. Yeah, especially for gin because I'm a gin fanatic and gin is not very popular in the U.S., but it's obviously hugely popular here. Yeah, you feel it changing. I think Uber has changed a lot in the States as far as drinking goes because you couldn't go out and get home.

But now it's much easier to go out and get home. So I do think people are opening up more. But it's not the boozy culture that I love the UK for. And it was London where you found booze to be a bit more intriguing, wasn't it, when you were a younger man? Yeah. Which I find strange because i think you must be talking about when would it be in the 1980s well i first started coming here in the 90s i was here a couple times earlier than that but the 90s when my wife and i met in 1990 and we always came here

because the london that you describe as a kind of glamorous place to drink certainly more glamorous than you know the places that you would have been able to drink back in America. You know, I always think of London as not great, actually, for glamour. Back in the 90s, it was pubs, it was loud bars. Where were you going? I found a few. I mean, you can go into, like, the Savoy and the Cledges. Oh, I swear you were going wrong, Fee.

Yeah, exactly. Not that I could afford it back then. No, for me, it was more the idea that drinking wasn't looked upon as being so taboo here. You know, in America, when you go to a bar, it's a closed bunker with no windows. And so you're kind of, there's going on? Did they evacuate a building? It's like, oh no, it's a pub and it's closing time, you know, and people are off work and people are just out having a drink and it's, there's windows and there's children in the pub and, you know, and it's this nice kind of social scene. And I thought that was, that was really magical for me. Yeah. You've brought your cocktail equipment into the studio. Would you like to start mixing something? Yes. I'm going to make you what I consider to be the best martini in the world. Lovely. Because I do it. I think we've got a little bit of music just to help. Oh, isn't it?

Lovely. This is very, wow, this is very Esquivel. But I tell you, could you be the classic bartender and we'll just chat amicably while you mix the drink? Hey, welcome ladies. I'm glad you could make it to my place. Well, we're delighted to be here. What star sign are you? I'm a Virgo.

What star sign are you, Joan? Cancer Virgo. What star sign are you, Joan? Cancer. Okay. I'm a Pisces. Well, you don't count. We're not interested. It's me and Paul. That's right.

Exactly. Come on. You're still nasty. Why did you want to specifically make films to tackle a female stereotype? Was it a kind of Damascene conversion one day, or did you just notice this hinterland that Hollywood was ignoring? Well, I was mostly friends with women and girls

growing up and loved them and their senses of humor. Mind if I stir while we do this? Paul, I really don't mind. Thank you. It's got to be very cold. And, you know, so they were funny and smart and everything and then I would watch

movies and you would just see these female characters either being very one-dimensional, and in comedy especially, they're either the shrewish girlfriend or the mean wife or the mean mother. And then I had friends, you know, who were famous kind of female comedians, and you'd see them in a movie, and they weren't allowed to be funny. They were just being mean or terrible. And it made me very upset. And I always wanted to tell women's stories anyway. I just feel very much closer to those stories. And so just kind of started to do it. But it was hard. I couldn't do it in the beginning.

It wasn't until really until Bridesmaids took off that it allowed me to be able to get them made. Yeah, and we're very grateful. The fuss around the female Ghostbusters. Oh. That was another one of yoursusters oh that was that was another one of yours but that was incredible it was exhausting it was really and it was so silly and a lot of it i will say a lot of it came from the uk did it yeah yeah it was kind of amazing and

well i i get it it was you know it's a sacred cow that movie i didn't realize what a sacred cow was because i was in college when he came out but But a lot of young boys grew up with it. And I guess I kind of stepped into something that they just didn't want me to do. But what's nice is this whole new generation of younger people really love the movie. And I have a lot of parents come up and say, oh, it's my son and daughter's favorite movie. When you've been a director for as long as you have

and a really successful one, do you find it changes your eye just in how you view the world? Does it become more uncomfortable to be in a world where things aren't going entirely your way all the time? You'd think I'd be a control freak. But no, if anything, I am addicted to the world around me and observing it and trying to find out how to portray things more realistically. And also, what are people interested in? Because that's the hardest thing we have in this business,

is coming up with ideas that people care about. You know, because we can come up with ideas we like all day long, but you really have to run it through a litmus test of, does anyone want to see that? And what I have to do is say, okay, if I was in a movie theater and saw a trailer for this movie, and I didn't know myself, I would say, oh, would I have to see that or not? And that cuts out a lot of movies, if you really think about it. Paul Feig is our guest this afternoon, just mixing us a martini.

I think it's time to pour these martinis, too. Oh, Paul, go for it. Here they go. There was so much drinking in Mad Men, wasn't there? Do you ever worry a little bit about that kind of image? You know, drink pulls people down in real life, if we can be realistic. I don't know. That is true. That's something, you know, being the cocktail guy with my book and everything,

you do kind of go like, I don't want to lure people into some kind of vice. But at the same time, you know, adult living and, you know, having fun as a grown-up is about, you know, grown-up vices, if you will. But you have to be able to handle them, you know, responsibly. But, yeah, I mean, Mad Men, I actually only did a few episodes of it. So I feel much less. He's not responsible. It's not my fault.

Exactly. Nothing to do with you. Speaking of drinks, there we go. Now, what do you think of these glasses? Because somebody went up to the 17th floor and basically nicked them, I think. What would you describe them as? These are a little more, I would dare say, champagne

glasses. Classic Marie Antoinette. Now, normally that glass would be frozen, so it's not quite cold enough. I'm sorry we weren't able to do that. That's okay. I don't want you to judge me fully on this. I thought better of the people who run News UK. I thought they'd have had...

Well, I'm sorry. I know. It's very upsetting. What's in this pool and what makes it so classic and so special? It's a gin. It's my own gin, by the way. Arting Stahl's Brilliant London Dry Gin, which I make. Good grief.

It is available now. Do you like it? Yeah, absolutely. Excellent. Whether I can continue working, I don't know. That's my goal, is to take you down. And I make a very dry martini, so I just literally like a drop of vermouth, but then stir it until it's very, very cold.

And then a lemon twist, which you just express the lemon oil on top of the surface. Oh, my word, Paul. Yeah, and then off you go. Yes. In all seriousness, how many of these could you get through on a sort of standard evening? I mean, if the evening's sort of, if I'm drawing it out over the evening, I could do three or four. But that's over the course of the evening. If you just down them in one sitting.

Yeah, I mean, I should point out that Fee and I are, we're both about five foot one. And I just put it to you that we might struggle with more than one of these. Okay. Actually, I poured you a small one there. I've got enough here I could actually drink right out of the mixing glass. Even we have some sort of standard. Thank you. Some decorum, please.

Okay. Can we talk sort of semi-seriously about the state of it? It's a big question for you, Paul, but you are an American. Yes. What's happening to America? Well, I'm very heartened by the midterms, I will say. Yeah, because we really thought it was going to go off the rails

with all these election deniers and all that. A lot of us here don't get the election denial thing. We don't get it either, honestly. I will explain it to you in one word. Sore loser. Two words.

It's basically, Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist. And I was like, oh, how is he going to handle when he loses? And you go, oh, no, I know how he's going to handle when he loses. He's going to say he didn't lose. And that's what it was. And so everybody else just jumped on it. I don't know if anybody else believes it. I mean, it was proven to be one of the most honest elections ever in our country.

And yet one guy who can't deal with it just opened this up. And they, you know, the GOP saw it as just any way to just stay in power. So they just all kind of jumped on it. But fortunately, you know, the majority of Americans rejected it. And that was really heartening to me. And that was really heartening to me. Why isn't there a greater push within the younger demographic in America to be represented by somebody their own age? Well, I mean, there is.

The problem is just, you know, still the majority of the electorate is still older voters. And, you know, I mean, honestly, the young vote really saved us in the midterms. They came out for this in a way that polling didn't show because polling doesn't tend to go through cell phones. You know, they go through traditional phones and all that. So that's, you know, older people have that. But no, they definitely want it.

It's just, it's an uphill battle to find the person who's going to really set everybody on fire at the same time. But we've got some great people. I'm a big fan of Gretchen. Oh God, out of michigan not whitmer gretchen whitmer i nearly said it yes there you go and i'm from michigan so i'm

gonna be drunk i didn't even have any yet i'm going right to this mixing glass i'll tell you that and actually the whole female empowerment thing has been yours been your domain you've made it your domain. But there are still Kamala Harris, again, for reasons that many of us here don't fully get because we're not entirely up to speed with American politics. But why has she been such a flop and why aren't people talking about her as a potential successor? I don't know. I'm a big Kamala fan, I have to say. And I supported her in the election. And I supported her in the election.

But, I mean, I think, you know, Joe Biden has a way he wants to do things. And he doesn't want to have, I think, somebody, you know, his vice president sort of, you know, coming in and taking too much of the spotlight, I guess. I don't quite understand it. But, you know, I'm a Biden fan. So I know that's taboo to say. But I think he's doing a really good job. If you look at what he's doing, what he's getting accomplished, it's pretty good. Do you want to see him run again? I mean, he just turned 80, so I don't want to be ageist on anybody.

Well, you can be, because let's just be honest about it. It's too old. It's up there. It's up there. It's up there. It is. It is up there. Yeah, until I'm 80. Then I'll be like, hey, he's young. Leave him alone. Master of understatement. Like, hey, he's young, leave him alone. Master of understatement.

As a filmmaker and as a creative, how do you get the message across to an increasingly polarized audience? So we talked, I mentioned Powderkeg, your digital content initiative. You know, how are you ever going to get those first person experiences witnessed by people who need to maybe see a little bit more from a different kind of a place?

Well, it depends who's telling the story. I'm very enamored with Jordan Peele. I think he's very, very smart in the fact that he is able to tell these black stories through the horror genre, and people go to see it because you just see that. It doesn't matter who you are, what color you are. You go like, that looks like a cool movie. I want to go see that. And that's what it is.

It's just, it's a meritocracy now. It's up to us as filmmakers. We can't just put stuff on Goldberg. Everyone's going to go see it. We have to find undeniable ideas and do them in a way that make people want to go. So it's harder for us to figure that out, but that's what we should be doing. I think one of the absolutely blissful things about Bridesmaids is it was a movie that you could go and see with your male friends or your

husband or your partner and they would watch it and find the funny bits too, you know, in a way that I think you know, perhaps the title didn't suggest they were going to enjoy it. Yeah, there was a lot of, you know, they were rejecting it but a lot of guys got dragged to it, you know, and basically I think it was

like, you know, okay, I'll go with her to this and then she has to go see whatever superhero movie or you know war movie i want to see yeah exactly but then they saw it and they really liked it and they realized it was okay you know and that's why i think a lot of my movies have done pretty well like the heat and spy you know it's a it's a buddy cop movie it's a spy movie i i try not to i want to make movies that everybody can enjoy and i want want to make movies that women are in that they don't go, oh, that's a chick flick or whatever, which I despise the term chick flick. I think it's just a way for guys to write off a movie starring women. Now, you've been listening to Off Air.

Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler, and the podcast executive producer is Ben Mitchell. You can listen to us on the free Times Radio app or download every episode from wherever else you get your podcasts. And don't forget, if you like what you've heard, then you can listen live Monday to Thursday, 3 till 5 on Times Radio. Thank you.