Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Embracing the corned beef leg look (with Christina Lamb)

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

Jamal's cosplaying continues and today she's bringing Parisian chic... Jane and Fi also chat fake tanning, neglected inflatables and emojis. Plus, Christina Lamb, Sunday Times chief foreign correspondent and bestselling author, discusses the Imperial War Museum exhibition ‘Unsilenced: Sexual Violence in Conflict’. You can check out The Squiz here: https://thesquiz.com.au If you want to come and see us at Fringe by the Sea, you can buy tickets here: www.fringebythesea.com/fi-jane-and-judy-murray/And if you fancy sending us a postcard, the address is:Jane and FiTimes Radio, News UK1 London Bridge StreetLondonSE1 9GFIf you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] next book club pick has been announced! We’ll be reading Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession.Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We've had the Wimbledon visor on Monday. We've had the Brigitte Macron cosplay on Tuesday. What will Wednesday bring? Who can say? Well, I can't wait. Not me at this point. Just trying to think what's clean. Coming just wearing both your Gollanders.

I'm Will Callagher. Join me and Alex Lowe for The Red Lions, a special three-part series on the history of the British and Irish Lions from 1950 to this year's Tour of Australia. With first-hand accounts from the players themselves, it tracks the rancour and revival of rugby's greatest touring team, the Red Lions. Memories, music, match reports and more available wherever you download the Ruck Rugby podcast from The Times. This episode of Off Air is brought to you by Washington DC. The city? Yep, the one

and only Washington DC is the city for sightseeing, museum going and even outdoor adventures. It has got a variety of nightlife, dining, art and theatre with over a hundred free things to do. Why not take advantage of the city's green spaces like biking through America's oldest national park, Rock Creek Park. Or you could see a show in a living presidential memorial. Or try out your sea legs and go kayaking around the wharf. The list goes on and on. There's only one place you can do all of these things. There's only one DC. And this month in a special episode of the podcast we're chatting to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Lonnie G Bunch, who looks after 17

museums in the city. Sounds like it's time to plan your DC getaway. Book your trip to DC by visiting dialaflight.com forward slash WDC. I was going to text you last night but there was no way that I could have commented on the extraordinary demise of the Dimitrov-Sinner match without using an exclamation mark so I didn't. I love that, that you were pre-editing yourself. Yeah I just couldn't do it without. Unfortunately I wasn't home in time to watch that match last night.

I had to go and see somebody. I really would rather have been at home watching the tennis. Well I feel this needs a supplementary question but maybe not with the microphones on. Off Off Air. Off Off Air. Right well that's the podcast everyone really wants. I don't know sometimes my off off air views into off air and then I sometimes worry I've said too much. I think the off off air is the subscription service personally available to just a very cool fan for people. It's like Time Radio OnlyFans site, but audio only fans. Yeah, right.

Are they too with the visor? You've got the visor on, you're dressed as... I'm God-saying Brigitte Macron. Brigitte Macron in a very nice kind of... Well, I do, it is quite First Lady, isn't it? You describe your outfit It's a knitted dress with brass buttons It's it's pale blue

And I bought it in the big Zara in Majorca and I love it very much Eve did point out it's probably gonna be a bit too warm for it by tomorrow And I did have that thought which is why I wore it today. It's good to get it out of the way today It's very fetching. Thank you very much. I think that colour blue is a very difficult colour to pull off, but you manage it because you are blonde at the moment. At the moment, yeah, exactly.

Because I temporary blondes, if you are with a cornflower. If you wear it as a brunette, it can, I don't know, it can take you, it can add about four decades, do you know what I mean? But it looks really good on you. Thanks very much. I've also got a little smattering of a tan and freckles right now from not wearing SPF when I go running. Sorry mum. No, you really should, shouldn't you? I know, but I go in the morning.

Do you fake turn? Yeah, on my legs. Yeah, because for some reason they've stopped tanning don't know they used to go brown no longer. Yeah that's a weird thing. It's really weird. The rest of me at my back as you have seen that's off of her but you've seen my back and it's brown. Can I just say kids I haven't seen Jane McGovern's back. You've commented on it when I've had it. Have I seen your back? You said gosh your back's very, very brown. Yeah. I don't know how, I don't know why. We're the witnesses to this.

You say, oh, OK. It was after Panama. It was after Panama. Right, oh, thank God. I don't know what we were doing, but. Where else have I been? What else have I been saying, Eve? But my back goes really brown, my legs don't go brown anymore.

So we need a doctor on this, because it is a really, really weird thing that in your youth if you do tan you can do it really evenly. So I've got loads of pictures from these dreadful holidays we just had when we were 17, 18 years old. One of which I think eight of us went to stay in a villa in Tenerife that was built for, I think maybe even just two people. And we all just slept on armchairs. And you know the first week it's really good fun, second week not really good fun, third week people were just weeping openly. It was far too long. But we all tanned evenly. And then there's something does happen, I think in

your late 30s and your 40s, whereby you will never tan evenly again. There must be something to do with distribution of melanin or something, mustn't it? She said making it up completely. But yeah, it's weird. I used to have the brownest legs ever until not that long ago, but no longer. So I do a combination of moisturiser with a bit of moisturising fake tan that I put in sort of a couple of times a week because if I just do moisturising fake tan then it gets a little bit orange around the ankles.

Yeah, no, no. Get a bit of ankle tide marks. I never understand how people do really commit to the fake tan for the whole year and do manage to pull it off because it's just so time consuming. I think Ryland's probably two days a week doing his tanning mitt. Vogue Williams, Thorough, but also has a company to do fake tanning. And her fake tanning is very good. Yeah, one of our fashion desks, Anna Skelly used to do it every Friday, committedly. I just used to do it drunkenly when I was younger, when I remembered. And then wake up and think, God, what's happened here? Well, I do hope eventually that the fake tan thing just passes all together and we just embrace, in my case, not in your

case, Jane, but in my case, the corned beef look because it's been a long time coming. But I'm sure an awful lot of people have also got the Scottish heritage. Oh no, honey bunch. So especially if I go swimming in cold water and come out on a beach, corned beef. And people will understand what I mean. Like great big white and purple kind of blotches. Honestly you could chop it up and put it in a tin and sell it with one of those very complicated keys. They've got a stocked in those.

Do they still do them with the funny word key? Yes they do. It's been years since I've opened a tin of corned beef. Well, I had a couple of tins of corned beef in my prepping tray and then I ran out of dog and cat food so I had to resort to it. And honest to God, I'm amazed that people haven't lost all of their fingers because I think the modern chef, cook, kitchen person, can opener has no idea how those keys work and I very nearly slice the top of my finger off doing it too.

So you opened them? I did, yeah. To feed the animals? Yes, they made very adequate animal food. Oh I see, it was in your prepping tray and then you ran out of dog and cat food. Not in like an underground bunker. No. Just in an everyday situation.

Well no, so I have got a tray of tins in the whole cupboard. In your bunker, ready for the apocalypse. Yes, yep. Totally normal. Yeah, well I mean it is, as regular listeners to this podcast will know, eventually we all become preppers because it's the influence of Garvey can mean that you can't get away from prepping. No absolutely. Threads is at the back of all of our minds. It is. Now we've got a fantastic selection of emails, very cheery ones too. We've got a guest who I really really hope today everybody is going to be able to listen to but it is going to be a bit of a hard listen. It's Christina Lamb and she's talking about a new exhibition. Well it's been running since May actually, it's on at the Imperial War Museum and it's called Unsilent Sexual Violence in Conflict. And I saw her out of school actually the other week and we were having a chat just about editorial policy and what you can and can't talk about on air and stuff like that and she said that she was finding it incredibly difficult to get coverage for this exhibition and she's

been key to setting it up because of course nobody wants to talk about rape and sexual assault being used as weapons of war in modern conflict it's such a difficult thing to discuss but we've just got to we just got to get over it and we've got to do it. And if this podcast can't do it and set some wheels in motion, then we're not really fulfilling our remit. So I know that it might be a difficult 10 minute listen also, but we'd just be really grateful if you could stick with it. We're not going to talk about anything in personal or graphic detail, but the shame that so many women feel is really exacerbated by being ostracized by society so we know this don't we? Absolutely and Christina

Lam, I mean I could listen to it all day, what an incredible extraordinary reporter and woman full of wisdom and insight. Yeah she's amazing. So we're going to do gear changes aplenty. We're going to... Yep. This one comes in from Louise who says, I'm sitting by the pool after a swim in the California sunshine, thinking about how difficult it will be for you at your holiday let without enough sun lounges. And thank you, Louise. Thank you.

Can I suggest you make up the numbers by taking inflatables? They can be used in or off the pool and might help to alleviate some of the squabbling, or go out and buy a few floating lounges and leave them behind a space as tight or baggage allowance is an issue. There must be thousands of left behind inflatables across the continent. One of the things we miss most about living in the Bay Area is our holidays in France. And on the continent, we used to drive all over the place, mainly camping and budget hotels and Louise says, I found the playlist and used it as my swimming music today. Thank you to Jane M for the suggestion.

Now Rosie, our executive producer, is unwell today so she won't be able to make up the numbers on the ever-growing Spotify playlist until tomorrow, kids. So it means that at the moment you don't have an awful lot of tunes to... I'm speaking slowly now because I'm trying to get the playlist up and I can't actually multitask anymore. Just stop there for a second. There aren't very many tunes to choose from at the moment, but the ones that we've got in there are fantastic. Can I just say that I think ours might be the only playlist where By Your Side by Sade knocks up against stumbling in by Chris Norman and Suzy Quattro. We've got range.

So it's really brilliant so far. It's only about seven songs, but we will add more as they come in. Everyone a banger. Yeah, I'm glad that you've downloaded it and listened to it. Band words, so yesterday we were talking about an obituary in the Times which had mentioned that this former editor hated the words battle and yeah things that referred to fight, fight, overcoming illness. This comes in from Michelle, dear Fee Jemelle, I love a band word. I was editor of a wedding magazine and my top one was hubby.

It's just so yuck, says Michelle. Another band word. Sorry for the exclamation, Marc Jemelle, that just works on so many levels. I also, on that note, hate fiancé. But I also weirdly hate partner. What's she left with? Well, boyfriend. Girlfriend. So when I worked as a baby baby journalist at the Sunday Times about 10,000 years ago, it was a rule that we didn't use the word partner.

They're your boyfriend until you marry them. So there you go. I think that's just sort of stuck with me. I also just think partner, I don't know, it's just not very... It's not very sensual. It's not very sexy. No it just sounds like a business transaction. Well there we go. On the subject of banned words still, dear Faye and real replacement Jane, on the subject of words we want to ban can I please put in a vote and I am all for this Samantha for

ritual. I have no real objection to it per se, but I'm just exhausted by seeing it all over my social media for something that used to just be thought of as a habit. Elevate your tooth brushing ritual! Transform your coffee ritual. Mate, I'm throwing a capsule in the Nespresso machine before a 9am meeting. I'm not summoning my long deceased ancestors, says Samantha. I'm totally with you on that Samantha. On that note, Pampa. I hate the word Pampa. It just makes me really sick. It's a bath. It's not like, you know, an all-inclusive month in a spa in Nepal, is it? It's just, I think basically most of the woo words just make me feel a little bit queasy. Manifest and optimise and things like

that. Holding space. Oh, but also yesterday I mentioned to you that a former, very important person at the time, had a very long list of people. And I went away and I tried to remember some more of them. All the Delevingues. All the Delevingues. How many Delevingues are there?

Loads of them. Really? Yeah, like rich people do. Naomi Campbell. Wow. Basically most of the models. Also weirdly some loveys, some A-list loveys like Emma Thompson. Inexplicably. I know. Gosh, Emma Thompson. There were so many people on this list. It was very funny.

And so did they have to have done something or they were just banned from afar? I'm not entirely sure. Okay. I'm not entirely sure. It would just be that I would suggest almost certainly. Okay, well we can be very annoying. Exactly, we're very annoying with our glamorous ways and how nice we look on the cover of magazines. Yeah, it would just be I would sort of pitch people and it was only when I would we would be pitching people that I'd be told no, not that one, no, I would sort of pitch people and it was only when I would be pitching people that I'd be told, no, not that one, no, I don't like that one.

And then you just sort of stop pitching that person, you just sort of start self-editing in the way that now our listeners are self-editing about exclamation marks and well done all of you. I will win this battle eventually, just one podcast at a time. No, I welcome them. I think they're very nice. It took me a long time to get to emojis and a couple of friends of mine who were early emoji adopters, I just thought they were bonkers.

It just seems so childish. But then it was my mum who's 84 who turned me around because she discovered texting and she discovered GIFs and emojis and her texting is just so fantastic. They're beautifully crafted, there's all kinds of stuff going down, she obviously really really enjoys using them and I just thought this is lovely to receive. Yeah, they have really grown in me. At first I just thought if you can't express yourself in the medium of words then don't bother to me. And then I think probably I just had a really good run of just some quite fun filthy ones that people employed I thought this is quite a laugh, isn't it? Gifts I'm not sure about

Thanks to you listeners a friend of mine who isn't even a listener Has taken to calling me Jamal and has a particular gift that I now get sent to all of the time It's just really annoying But yeah emojis have definitely grown on me But I think the thing about emojis is they can soften what you've just said. So I think that's why I sort of have a bit of a struggle with them because I don't necessarily want to say something and then to sort of moderate it with a winky face. You know, if I'm going to say something sarcastic, it's like, just deal, I'm being sarcastic. I'm not going to be like, that was sarcastic by the way. I find them immensely useful now in sign-offs to people who I have had a

changing relationship with because you know the XX just doesn't work on many many levels in many many situations and actually emojis just provide this fantastic display of much more anodyne affection or distance or whatever it is that you want to do. And I'm just a big fan of just the very, very simple smiley face. Thank you very much. Goodbye. I like an inappropriate X-X though as well. I know, but you are. You are Jamal inappropriate. Let's face it. Explainer news sources. Could you find, because I didn't manage to print out the one that was suggesting the squiz.

Oh yeah, I've got that. Yeah. Brilliant. Fliss sends this. Kia Ora, Jane and Fee from Auckland in, I can't say it, Eoteoria. What would you say to that? That one there, that word there. Do you know? Aotearoa, I'd say, because it's A-O. Aotearoa?

New Zealand. We've probably all butchered that now. Apologies, Fliss. Long time listener, first time emailer here. I'd recommend a YouTube channel called TLDR for great explainers of the news of the day. I took a look at that, Fliss, and yes, I agree, that is fantastic. The squiz I have subscribed to because that is really, really really really ticking all my boxes. Would you be able to read the email from whence that came?

I would be able to but do you also know what TLDR stands for? No. It comes from journalism in fact. It's what editors would scribble on the bottom of a piece. Too long didn't read. Oh brilliant. Okay. Well TLDF is another one, too long didn't finish. Yeah so basically cut it right back, which is a great name for a news website that is crunching the info. Anyway Catherine writes in, good afternoon eligible for the jingle and wanted to point

your listener to crying her lack of background knowledge of current news events to a fabulous Australian news website The Squiz. It drops daily but often has these background news letters called short cuts like the one attached that explain things so simply says Catherine. site, The Squiz. It drops daily but often has these background newsletters called Shortcuts like the one attached that explain things so simply says Catherine. I love it and I'm sorely tempted to use an exclamation mark here but I don't want to upset anyone. You see it's working already guys, well done. So yes Catherine has sent a little link to William. But I had a look this morning and it's just really superb and it was set up primarily for, but not exclusively for,

busy women who want to just get on board and be fact-filled when they talk about the politics of the day. It's obviously got a skew to Australia, but I had read a really interesting piece about the difficulties with your stadium at the moment. But also just a fantastic explainer on for instance the Iran-Israel conflict going right back to the beginning, everything that we were talking about yesterday. So I would commend that to you. And I don't think you even have to use my Wollongong VPN to get there. I seem to be quite happy to accept me coming from the UK. We've had a couple of emails about the interview that you did at the end of last week with Jack Mosley.

Yes. There's a lot of response to this comment that Jack Mosley made about weight loss drugs and HRT. Can you just recap what he said about weight loss drugs and HRT? It's really interesting. It originally came from a listener who just had a very simple query because we seem to know that weight loss drugs can interfere with the contraceptive pill but we don't seem to know very much about whether or not it would be conflicting with HRT and Jack said that in his doctor's opinion it probably is a conflicting drug if you're taking your HRT orally because obviously you know the weight loss drugs are changing your

gut and your guts behavior but he thought that if you were slapping on a patch my expression not his then you'd probably be okay. Oh that's interesting okay so we've had a couple of emails in talking about this because Kelly writes in from New Zealand saying in reference to that slapping on a plait you're probably alright. It's very common in New Zealand she says to take progesterone orally if one is using HRT estrogen patches. As you will be aware one needs to take progesterone if taking estrogen to protect changes in the uterus, e.g. to protect the lining of the uterus from becoming too thick. So the use of progesterone

while taking estrogen protects against the risk of endometrial cancer. So Kelly says taking weight loss drugs like the ones discussed on the show can interfere with the absorption of progesterone if one is taking it in oral form. I appreciate that Dr. Mase did state that not many people are taking HRT orally anymore, perhaps that's true for the UK, but I thought you might want to reiterate this point particularly for perimenopausal and menopausal women who are on HRT patches and taking progesterone orally. I'm not a doctor but I'm a perimenopausal woman who's read a fair bit about this topic including information published by Dr Stacey Sims says Kelly, if you have not had her on a show she'd be an excellent interviewee. And Sarah says along with similar lines about if people, if you might need to point out that people use a gel patch spray

for their oestrogen but put jester and capsule, you need to take advice from your doctor as it may not be effective and might lead to an unhealthy thickening of lining of the womb. Interesting stuff. I mean we just don't know do we? That's the thing. It's all happening so quickly and they are becoming so widely used that all of these sort of counter indications we just don't know about yet. It's not been tested. And that's why Jack Mosley's book is really good because it does try to take you through all of the contraindications and where we are at the moment but I suppose just from a civilian's perspective Jane I just really want to know whether or not the clinical trials that were done on all of the weight loss drugs were clinical trials about weight

loss because actually if people are ending up taking them for all kinds of different things and there are suggestions that they can be helpful for addictive disorders, for mental disorders, I read the are suggestions that they can be helpful for addictive disorders, for mental disorders. I read the other day that they can be really helpful for migraines. So have they done clinical trials on people who've got all of those other reasons for taking them? Because wouldn't the outcomes be slightly different if you had a different reason for taking the drug? I don't understand enough about clinical trials to know exactly what a drug has been through before it comes to market, do you?

No, no, but it seems to me that they've become so... the proliferation and the sort of use of them has been so fast and it seems very new that we're being told that they can be used for all these things. It would be surprising to me if lengthy and in-depth clinical trials have been tested, had been used for all of these things. Yeah, I mean it would certainly, with regard to whether or not it interferes with your HRT, what a nightmarish thing to try and work out. How are you assessing whether or not it has? That's the thing, isn't it?

It's hard to extrapolate one thing from another. Yeah, I don't know. I guess you'd have to have long-term trials with huge control groups. The thing that amazed me as well is just the projection of how many people are going to be on these drugs in years to come. So West treating our health secretary made the very kind of proud boast actually, he was looking at it in a very positive way, that in 10 years time these drugs could have lowered taxes because so many people would have taken them, that it

would have changed the weight, and I'm using that word in both senses, on society because of the cost of treating people with obesity, with diabetes, all of those kind of things. And you just think, wow, this is being woven into the fabric of our lives. Is that now Labour policy the only way they're going to lower tax? So quickly. By getting everyone on weight loss drugs. But also it's these funny things like, funny things like there are accountants in airline companies working out how much less fuel they're going to be. Yes, it's fascinating isn't it?

I mean it's just absolutely bizarre. We are not at the end of that journey yet, that is for sure. I want to bring in this fantastic email from Sarah, it might be Sarah, so I'll also say I want to bring in this fantastic email from Sarah. It might be Sarah so I'll also say I want to bring in this fantastic email from Sarah. Dear Jane and Fee, I tend to listen to you in the car or whilst walking and I'm often so amused I must be smirking or smiling the whole time. I've thought many times that I could write but with my midlife brain I find that I never get to it. We completely forgive you for that. You say some very nice things about the podcast, you do say I've sometimes been surprised by what your guests say or how you keep polite. Dare I say David Dimbleby's comments at the end of his interview. I just subscribed to his history

podcast and was so put off by his comments about a sculpture of a convicted paedophile, his Trump rambling and his bumptious way in general that I've not listened to his podcast. Now do you know what, I just I don't want to dwell too much just on one single interview, but actually David Dimbleby's comments really, really surprised me at the end of his interview. It was not the direction that I thought it was going to go in and I too haven't listened to any more Sara of his history podcast. Just want to put that out there. It's because Eric Gill's statue is still up outside the BBC and this is a man who we now know abused his family members and we were just having a discussion about whether or not the art should live on and I just will never ever be persuaded that it should. Let's continue with your email.

A millennial emailer's attitude on inheritance perplexed me a bit today. I was a bit befuddled as to why she should presume to be getting inheritance without factoring the fact that her parents may well go into old people's homes. Sometimes I think people imagine that money comes down from the sky for this care. Heads up the money mostly comes from current taxpayers. It is an ageing population. It's exactly this generation who say that the care is not their responsibility, but wouldn't mind getting the cash entitled to it, apparently. My mother inherited the sale of a family farm,

but she also cared for that brother and sister until they died, as well as bringing up her two very young children 11 months apart, along with milking her cow etc etc. And she genuinely did something for that money. It is of course absolutely wonderful to inherit but the remaining money after the death is exactly that, the remaining money. Obviously if there's a way to pass on assets before they need to go into a home that's great, but this also may have tax implications. I appreciate it's not easy to accumulate assets and wealth, but there's also a very live now attitude these days that's not necessarily compatible

with saving. Writing this I'm feeling a tension within me on the differences between gen X and millennial attitudes. Maybe this is the same with each generation. Well Sarah, Sarah, I really agree with you there too actually. I think this whole notion that there is, you're entitled to keep wealth in your family, it's nice if you do, but if we have an ageing population do we not all just have to recalibrate our attitude towards who it is, who can genuinely bear the brunt of that cost. And, you know, of course it's going to be very painful if you're expecting something to come your way that then doesn't come your way, but it's just a truth. I mean, there just isn't a country in the world

who's not grappling with this, and things do have to change, don't they? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. But I think it has been a presumption for a very long time that once you hit a certain age you know you will come into a little bit of a windfall and that you know perhaps your latter half of your life will be a little bit more comfortable for that. It's just not going to be that way. And it's so painful to actually just have to pull yourself up short and go, oh, okay, that might not happen. Do you expect you're a little bit younger than me?

And do you expect to get a state pension? Are you factoring that in much further down the line? Not really. If I may ask, how old are you now? 47. 47, okay. Didn't call for me to get nearly 48. Well, you look gorgeous.

My legs not turning anymore. But I think 47 is an interesting age, isn't it? Because I think actually isn't 47 the time where you do start thinking, right, okay, what's going to happen? Yeah, I mean, I've got a private pension. I had many, many years in which I didn't pay into a private pension because I lived abroad and earned very little and it kind of sporadic. So yeah I definitely don't feel like I've got an awful lot banked but I also don't expect to stop working particularly young. You know my parents both retired at 60,

that's just not going to be something I expect to do at all. And I don't really want to. I really like this and if they'll let me carry on doing this until I'm even more unacceptable. You know I'd be quite happy to carry on. Maybe I don't want to commute five days a week but I just I think it's a different, I mean it's also a different kind of job isn't it? My parents were both teachers. They were quite right to retire at 60 but I just think we look at retirement very differently so while I don't expect necessarily a state pension I also just don't expect to retire in the same way. Yeah and and that doesn't pain you though? Not particularly because I really like what I do, I would like the balance to be different, you know, with longer holidays and shorter terms as it were, but no, it doesn't pay

me particularly, no. Yeah, I think our whole attitude to retirement is just massively, massively changing, isn't it? That idea that you might have 20 years, you know, with sailing around the world with the balcony cabin, the image that is sold to us of I think previous retirees experience. It just seems so alien. I've just never, never kind of managed to buy into it myself because actually there's just been such a massive change in expectations and just houses and the kids will always need something and I just it's just completely completely different actually to a previous generation. One of my best friends dad's a shout out Chris Craven retired at 45 which is amazing sold the family dripping factory and retired at 45.

Hang on, the family dripping factory? Oh yeah in Leeds yeah. Okay. Sold the family dripping factory. Was that a solid business by the time you sold it Well, no exactly but yeah It was some yeah, he was had it 45 minutes had a very lovely, you know 30 years 30 years what's he done?

Lots of golf. Okay, is he good now? He's a good skier, yeah. No, I mean, it's just a very different proposition, isn't it? He kept busy. Chris Craven's a very busy person. But yeah, I think the idea of that, to be honest with me, the idea of just the cabin in the cruise ship for 20 years just filled me with dread. I think for me, obviously as you know, I love to travel and I love an adventure but it's sort of, it's the light and the shade isn't it? I like it because I also like to feel quite involved in society. I like to feel like I've got a purpose and I think without a sense of purpose. I'm not sure my sense of purpose could just be booking the next cruise. I'm not sure I'd get enough sense of purpose out of that. We'll see. Hopefully I will be well enough to be able to make those decisions

when that time comes. Yes. I watched five minutes of the Netflix poop cruise the other night and I mean if ever you feel that you need to wean yourself off the dream of taking a cruise I would highly recommend just the five minutes of that. It's terrifying. Is it like the real life triangle of sadness? Yeah well no it's this huge massive massive ship. It was only on a four day cruise in the Mexico bit that we have to call something different now. And there was an engine fire that cut out the electricity and all of the toilets and the showers were connected to the electricity. So they all just had to stop pooing in bags and all, I mean it just looked so, so horrendous.

On a 15 story cruise ship. Yes, and also a real kind of drinking, you know, and let's have seven margaritas with you know a couple of tacos. It was that type of cruise and I'm not dissing the Mexican food but it can pass through you quite quickly and I think many people wish that they'd had just maybe a slice of white bread with some corned beef. Can I just say before people feel that they have to email in obviously when Jane and I are talking about you know balconies on cruises and all of that kind of stuff we recognize that is the top end of the retirement

dream that has been sold to us and for many people, you know, all they want for their retirement is just not to have to go to a job that they may be completely fed up with, but not to be in debt because they don't still have that work. So I completely, completely get that. I was just about to read out an email, but obviously I was distracted by Emmanuel Macron meeting the King, Queen and Windsor up there on Sky News because yeah, look at Brigitte, how could she not be my icon? Look at her in her lovely white dress.

She looks amazing. It's a little sort of like a coat dress isn't it? It's going to be warm in that but not as warm as Kate. Has Macron grown? He looks a bit bigger and maybe he's got some new lifts. Yeah. Apparently Camilla and Brigitte get on very, very well and are looking forward to having a great time together. Shared interest in literacy, of course.

I would imagine probably shared interest in gin also. Oh my word, okay. Certainly we know one of them, like I say. Brilliant email from Les, which I'd just like to quickly read out. It's the most wry email. You win the award for the most wry email of the day, Les. You ask for information on what's happening in councils that reform are running. That's the case in Leicestershire,

although they don't have an overall majority, they were short by one. Les says so far they've had one council meeting which lasted for six minutes. Obviously they wanted to deal with the most difficult problems they were facing and so the six minutes were spent deciding to ban flags from County Hall, except the Union flag. They've promised to meet staff who are upset and have already reassured them that they can fly flags at home. If they can deal with that efficiently with the number one concern that we all had, then it bodes well for their future and they're solving much simpler problems like social care. Let's say they also have taken an firm anti-ageist approach to selecting the cabinet.

The deputy leader and cabinet leader on adult social care is 22 and the lead on children's services is 18. Oh my word. 18? I think isn't that the council where someone resigned and the lead on children's services got bumped up from somewhere else. Right. Anyway, Les, thank you very much. Great insight into reforms Leicestershire Council. Well, we do need to keep a very close eye on this, don't we, because that's really,

really going to affect some people if it turns out that the 18-year-old and the 22-year-old might not have the experience to make the decisions. Maybe, yeah, maybe not quite the experience or the heft. Yeah. Well we've seen what's happened with Doge, haven't we, the fallout from Doge, and there is quite a big suggestion, you know, as yet it's impossible to prove a direct link but, you know, the number of people who've been let go from some of the disaster committees and the meteorological surveys, you know, there is a suggestion that that can't have been helpful in what's happened in Texas. So we'll wait and see. Jane is always lovely to have your company on the podcast. Jane

Mulcairons is with us every day this week and so far we've had the Wimbledon visor on Monday, we've had the Brigitte Macron cosplay on Tuesday what will Wednesday bring? Who can say? Well I can't wait. Not me at this point, just trying to think what's clean. Will we be texting later? Just wearing both your colanders please. One's bigger than the other. I mean it's the same for most of us. Will we be texting later during Alcaraz and Noree? Well we will but you're just going to have to allow me some use of punctuation if I need to. Fine fine just for the just for the period of tennis. Okay okay because you all allowed it during sporting events okay. Thank you I would

feel that I just wasn't conveying my true self if I wasn't allowed to. Look at your self-expression. Look at your stampish on yourself expression. Yeah, okay, we can do that. It. With high fashion emporiums, incredible dining experiences and traditional suits and markets, what's not to love about Dubai? Enjoy traditional architecture, modern art or relax at the spa. Discover your dream holiday at visitdubai.com. Dubai, what's not to love? Just to warn you, we are going to talk about sexual violence next. There's no graphic detail in this interview, but if you've got little ears listening to the radio or it's a subject

too difficult for you, then come back in ten minutes' time. Otherwise, do stay listening. If you can, we can all metaphorically hold hands together. There's an exhibition on at the Imperial War Museum in London that's been seven years in the planning, not least because this is such a tricky subject to cover. The exhibition is called Unsilent, Sexual Violence in Conflict. Now we can talk about so many other aspects of war and weapons of war. Our knowledge of drones and tanks and nuclear and ballistic missiles has probably grown with the increased conflict in the world over the last two decades. But realistically, has our conversation about the devastating use of sexual violence, particularly

against women, grown alongside that? Nope, probably not. And this exhibition really wants to help change that. Christina Lam is the chief foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times and has done some really valuable work in this area. Her most recent book is Our Bodies, Their Battlefields, War Through the Lives of Women, and she has also been involved in this exhibition. We spoke earlier and she told me a bit more about what you might find if you visit it. So really the main room I would say of the exhibition is a room which has what actually happens in sexual violence and conflict and there are several different examples. One

of them is the so-called Comfort Women, where tens of thousands of women across Southeast Asia were taken during the Second World War and kept forcibly basically as prostitutes for the Japanese army, something that Japan has to this day not properly apologized for, and in fact, there are denialists in Japan who say this day not properly apologized for and in fact there are denialists in Japan who say this never happened. And then there's examples too much more recently of the Yazidis

who were taken in 2014 by Islamic state fighters and forced to be sex slaves for them. So that also is shocking. This is also from the Second World War cases of women in Germany. Terrific acts of sexual violence against them by Russian soldiers during the liberation of Berlin. This was something that happened on a very wide scale. We're talking about millions, maybe two million women that this happened to. And yet nobody was brought to justice for this. And Christina, you've dedicated so much of your working life to really shining a light on these stories, but you are rare in the journalistic world to be doing that. And I wonder how you feel about the, I mean, it's a comparative silence really, around this weapon of war, as opposed to a very free and open conversation about other weapons of war. Why don't we?

Why aren't we able to talk about this more? Yeah, it's very frustrating, isn't it? Because this isn't something just happening in far away places on a small scale. When I wrote a book about it, our bodies at the battlefield at every single conflict going on in the world at the moment, I found it happening, and often on a very big scale. And yeah, as you say, you know, was really until recently not reported very much. I think things have changed a bit with Ukraine, and that is one of the other examples in the exhibition. There has for the first time been quite wide-scale reporting. Maybe things have changed a bit, but it is very frustrating. I mean, the reason that I started really talking about this a lot and writing a book about it was because one of the young Yazidi women I interviewed

a 16-year-old, most awful story, and she messaged me after I'd written about what was happening to them, and she messaged saying, I told my story, what difference did it make? And I couldn't answer that question. I had kind of thought my job as a journalist was just to tell people about it and then somebody else would do something. But when I looked into this, I discovered that absolutely nobody was being brought to justice, to accountability. And that's the next room in the exhibition, is the exception, not the rule. It is really difficult to get justice because women all know that rape is the hardest crime to get justice for. Often the victim is made to feel they've done something wrong instead of the perpetrator. But in conflict zones, it's even harder to get justice. So nobody had been brought to justice for what happened to the Yuzidis, even though there were thousands of them taken. Nobody was brought to justice for what happened to the Rohingya women, where again,

tens of thousands of women in Burma were taken by a Burmese military or Buddhist militia. He also had the example, 2014, people might remember the Chibokos in Nigeria who were taken from their school in the middle of the night by Boko Haram fighters and just disappeared. When I started looking at that, I found that that was just the tip of the iceberg that tens of thousands of girls and women had been taken across Nigeria and this happened to and again nobody was brought to justice. So there's a huge problem and so we need to make people much more aware, which is why this exhibition is so important. I was happy to help advise on the exhibition.

Lots of people listening to this cannot fail to be moved by everything that you talk about, but perhaps are left feeling a little bit powerless and thinking, well I could go along and see that exhibition, I can read Christina Lam's pieces, I can buy Christina Lam's books, but how does that actually help these women? There does seem to be a feeling of powerlessness around the whole subject. How do we change that? Well, I think, you know, first of all, we do have some power and awareness is the first step. So shining a light on this, going to see the exhibition, reading about it, talking to other people about it, being aware that this is happening so much. Maybe contacting your local MP about what the government is doing about

this because the British government was the one government some years ago which really took a stand on this. We were the first place anywhere to have a special office in the Foreign Office for preventing sexual violence in confluence, which was something that William Hague set up. It still exists, but it's very small now. And so I think that we need to really put our money where our mouth is and not just say that we're standing up for this, but actually do something about it.

Every country in the United Nations voted for a resolution more than 20 years ago called Resolution 1325, which said we must do something to reduce sexual violence in conflict. And we must also increase representation of women in peacekeeping forces and in courts and in peacemaking deals, all of which are linked to the fact that sexual violence doesn't get prosecuted because it seems very clear that the men in general who sit around the table trying to end conflicts don't see this as an important issue. I've literally had some of these men say to me where it's not as important as the killing and the torture, well if you're one of these women that this has happened to, I can assure them that it is as important

and many of the women I interviewed said to me they would rather have died than gone through what they did. Yeah and of course Christina it is a truth isn't it that children are born of this sexual violence and so the idea that this isn't important that this won't affect generations to come is it's really heartbreaking that people can't recognize that actually and I wonder what is the evidence that sexual violence is condoned or deliberately meted out by army commanders or leaders because surely that will play a part in

any attempt to then prosecute people for these crimes? There is evidence in some cases, not all cases. I mean the United Nations Secretary General has a special representative on sexual violence in conflict who does a report every year and they list armies and non-state actors who they designate as having used sexual violence as a weapon. They only list the ones which they have actual information and evidence for. I can't remember what it was in most recent report, but it's more than 50. So these are just ones. So it's far more than that. And some of the cases like Islamic State with the Yazidis, they issued pamphlets about it, how to treat your sex slave, it was a policy. it, how to treat your sex slave. It was a policy. And the fact is that sadly, if you want to humiliate your enemy and terrorise them, drive them out of a place, acts of sexual violence is a very effective way of doing it because it does terrorise people, makes people think that they can't protect their women and leads to people often fleeing places. But we should also remember this happens to

men too. It mostly is against women, but there are cases against men. And in the war in Ukraine some of the Ukrainian men who've been captured by Russians have reported terrific acts of sexual violence against them. Christina Lamb, and if you do want to go along to that exhibition, it's at the Imperial War Museum and it runs until the 2nd of November. I do think the work that Christina does is just extraordinary and she just remains so positive in her attitude towards the world and I really don't know how on a personal level you manage to do that when you're hearing so many personal stories. So just all credit to her and mostly I think I'd like to say thank you for listening to that because for all of the reasons that

Jamele Kerens and I discussed at the beginning of the podcast, you know, completely get it that especially in these times of really volatile news, it's difficult to take on board lots of things. We return tomorrow. we will post up a picture of whatever it is that J.Mill Kerens is wearing. It's like going to a dressing up box isn't it, every morning. And yeah, we'll reconvene at the end of another Off Air with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live, every day, Monday to Thursday, 2-4pm on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale and if you listen to this you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online on DAB

or on the free Times Radio app. Off Air is produced by Eve Salisbury and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler. This episode of Off Air is brought to you by Washington DC. The city? Yep, the one and only. Washington DC is the city for sightseeing, museum going and even outdoor adventures. It has got a variety of nightlife, dining, art and theatre with over 100 free things to do. Why not take advantage of the city's green spaces like biking through America's oldest national park,

Rock Creek Park. Or you could see a show in a living presidential memorial. Or try out your sea legs and go kayaking around the wharf. The list goes on and on. There's only one place you can do all of these things. There's only one DC. And this month in a special episode of the podcast, we're chatting to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,

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