Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Everyone’s grandma should be their number one fan

Episode Date: January 24, 2023

Jane and Fi discuss the homelessness crisis and systemic failure as well as why your Grandma should always be your best cheerleader with journalist Daniel Lavelle.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Producer: Eve SalusburyTimes Radio Producer: Rosie CutlerPodcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Excellent. I've done some very, very fine Tuesday afternoon paper shuffling there. Everything's in a neat pile now. And very good afternoon, good evening and good morning to everybody who's decided to join us on Off Air with Jane and Fi. If you use us as a sleep aid device, we don't mind at all. And I hope you get a very good night's kit and we'll see you in the morning. What are you having for your tea? Oh, goodness,

I always like to think this through on the way home, actually. So you've got a bit early there. So you've got enough in, have you? So you can just decide on the way back? Yes. I'm a slightly anal pre-shopper. So I like to do a big shop, possibly of the online variety, either on a Saturday morning or a Sunday evening.

I go or it comes. And I try and have a stocked fridge and then choose what to cook. So I think, do you really want to know? Well, everybody approaches this slightly differently. So I am interested. Well, I think we'll probably have some salmon with a bit of teriyaki or soy sauce

thrown over it, baked in the oven in tin foil. Oh yeah, I like that. Yeah. I like that a bit. And that might be on a bed, as they like to say,

of little, I've got some tiny baby potatoes. They're ever so sweet. How long will they take to cook though? They won't, well. You're going to roast them or boil them? Yeah, they're absolutely tiny. Put them in with the take to cook though? They won't, well... You're going to roast them or boil them?

Yeah, they're absolutely tiny. Put them in with the salmon? So if the salmon's in foil, it won't burn and they'll be all right. And that will be smothered in some olive oil. And I might chuck something, I don't know, some leeks in halfway through. Beds, smothered. I don't know why Nigella bothers. You do the lot.

Yeah, the beds of things always makes me laugh. Because it's not on the bed of anything. There's no bed there. No memory foam being served with the salmon. Resting on a bed. Yeah, I know, but it makes it sound more appealing. Will you be having chickpeas three ways? You may laugh, but it's not funny.

I mean, I said on the programme today, and I genuinely mean this, I've been using the book that we talked about on the programme a couple of weeks ago. Dr. Rupi. Dr. Rupi's cookbook. and it's very good because I've got a vegan and a vegetarian the student is still at home or rather she went back to do some exams now she's back again before she goes again honestly when people go to university don't fall for this moistening eyes business you'll never clap eyes on them again far from it in my experience well if they're doing a humanities

or slightly social science degree I think if they're experience Well, if they're doing a humanities or slightly social science degree I think if they're doing I think if they're doing other degrees Actually, they're quite odd She's overloaded No, she's still doing some waitressing Because she needs to earn a few quid before she goes back The menu, tonight's menu

Well, I don't know, it'll have to be beans on toast Because, of course, one will want flora Oh, gosh Do you actually bother to buy butter isn't it because i love butter oh okay in fact my last supper would just be a crust of a freshly the little brown granary loaf with about half a pound of butter is that the high gi one yes yeah low gi low gi sorry you got that all wrong do you really have high grain low gi that's the one you're aiming for it's very very nice price has gone up recently along with almost

everything else in our lives but it will remain my top loaf excellent yeah for my last dinner and i'm not joking on this one at all uh i would have uh very very flabby white bread, absolutely pasted with butter. You never hear that phrase on MasterChef. And it would have corned beef and salad cream on it. Can you taste that already? Tangy, tangy, tangy, mushy. Salad cream, yeah, I haven't had salad cream in years.

I saw sandwich spread the other day. Oh, no, that's like vomit. Is it? Oh, that's got the consistency of vomit. A bit of a novelty. No. No, I think you're probably right. Well, I think that's like vomit. Is it? Oh, that's got the consistency of vomit. A bit of a novelty. No. No, I think you're probably right. Well, I think people did like it. I'm not sure I was really one of them.

We had, in some ways, rather a depressing programme in the sense that we had a sort of theme of hideous violence against women because Zara Alina's awful murder is back in the news in the light of the criticism of the probation service. I'm always a bit... You've got to bear in mind, the probation service didn't murder the poor, poor woman.

And it's always... You know when terrible things happen to young children and people say, I didn't social services intervene? And you think, well, yeah, but they didn't actually abuse or neglect the child. That was more often than not their parents, horrifically. So...

But nevertheless, it's a dreadful case and clearly things did go wrong in the probation service. But there was that and then there was also Emily Atack talking about the amount of abuse she gets. Sometimes you just feel as though we really are pushing that boulder up the hill and it's rolling right back down again. Yes, and increasingly, Janeane i do just want to hear

more from men because you and i can talk about this and i think we are safe in the knowledge that women listening will be as horrified as us and want things to change as much as we'd like them to and decent men want the change as well. But the voice that you don't hear are the men who are unwilling to change or don't want to be part of all of those voices. They don't even think there's a problem. No, and sometimes it comes back a little bit, doesn't it? In the comments section,

which was under the Times article about Emily Atack, which I think was pretty aggressive and we'll get the odd texts and stuff when we're talking about things like that on the programme. And there's a tone of just hatred and anger in it that just doesn't inform anyone. It's continuing the same kind of problem. But I'd like to hear more from the men who might be able to have a word with the aggressive blokes, might help us to better understand what it is that we could all be saying or doing. Because we've just been talking as women to other women for so long and there hasn't been a change.

Nice men are listening. But I think something else needs to happen. Nice men never did it in the first place. They're not our problem. but I think something else needs to happen. Nice men never did it in the first place. They're not our problem, are they? No, they're not our problem but I think they're closer to what the problem is with no blame attached to them

than we could ever hope to be. But they have a better chance of getting that section of the population to actually listen, I think. We're very far removed from that section of the population now. When they hear us talking about women's rights they switch off or they get angry,

neither of which are helping the situation. And it is disturbing because the comments under the Times article, for example, I mean, to be absolutely clear about this, if you are reading an article in the Times or on the Times online, the website or on the times online the website or on the times app you are by definition not somebody who is ill-informed or yeah you're articulate you are curious somebody who's been curious enough to to look at it and to be on that particular form of media so it's just some of the they are so depressing so i'd like those people to just be a bit more communicative

and not just condemn a young woman for expressing her view. You know, some of what Emily is on about is asking people to explain their behaviour, which I think is perfectly fair. And as we talked about with Jane Mulkerins, it's just an acid rain of misogyny now. And so you might not feel, you know, these great big kind of events affect you, but actually they do because they contribute to other people

just being part in a smaller way and trip, trip, trip, trip, trip. Well, Jane Mulkerran's interview with Emily Atack, you can view it with a digital subscription to The Times Online or you can read it in the print edition of the Saturday Times magazine, which is the edition that's out this week. And this is all because Emily Atack has made a documentary for the BBC, which will be on telly on BBC Two and then on the iPlayer next Tuesday. So it's the 31st of January and it's called Emily Atack Asking For It.

We need to say a very big thank you to Anne Anula. Oh yeah, we do. Yeah, we do. Why do we need to do that, Garth? Because Anne Anula took us out for a very, very, and we're not going to say where we went, but to a very, very expensive lunch in West

London. Sophie went right off her. You had no idea where you were, had you? I was so discombobulated, Jane. She was intoxicated. I brought my passport. Discombobulated, intoxicated, and blown away by the sheer glamour of West London on a Friday, January lunchtime.

We had a lovely lunch with Anne and her sister Nuala, and Anne had come to have lunch with us via a charity auction. It's quite a complicated story but it was raising money for breast cancer now. That's the name of the charity isn't it? It is and she thought she was bidding to have lunch with us but she was outbid by a man called Sean who then went up to her at the end of the evening with the prize in an envelope and said I was bidding so you could have it anyway. Yeah, just kidding. I can't think of anything worse than lunch with those two. So he gave

it to Anne, who did want it. So that was the happy result. We had a really fabulous couple of hours and it was great to be in their company. So thank you very much to Anne and Nuala for that. And they happened to be from the same part of Liverpool as me, but Fee was very tolerant. Well, we did talk about lots of other Liverpool as me. But Fi was very tolerant.

Well, we did talk about lots of other things as well. And actually, so Anne, I thought, was one of the most magnificent women that I've met in a very long time. And she said something so interesting, Jane, about gauging other people. She said, I only want to work with people who I like. I only want to work with people who I trust. I only want to work with people who I trust and like. And those aren't the same things.

And I thought, oh, OK, I'm going to have to pop that in the bank, give it a rattle around, have a think about it on the West Way as I trip back to East London. And so Off Air is now ending. This is the final podcast. But I'd always put those two things so close together that they were almost one and the same thing. But she's right.

You can like someone without trusting them. I don't know whether you can trust someone without liking them. Ah, I don't think you can. No. And Nuala, I would just like to say, she used to be a nurse in congenital gynaecology where she was dealing with women who have difficult parts of their bodies or whatever.

And she would be absolutely the person who you would want to, maybe Nuala would be the first person that you ever said, I think something's different in my body to other women. And she would be amazing. What an absolutely lovely woman. So it was lovely to meet you both. And thank you for your generosity. Thank you very much for your generosity.

Brilliant cause. And there cannot be a nicer way to raise money for charity than going for a lovely lunch and having a fantastic conversation. So thank you to Anne and to Nuala for making that possible. So our guest today in our big interview, which if you haven't heard the live Times radio show is always at about 25 to four in the afternoon, was with a young man, and he is young actually, called Daniel Lavelle. Now he is a journalist, although I think it's fair to say that he isn't the sort of person who would routinely become a journalist in this country. He grew up in children's homes, he left the care system when he was 19,

and he has written a book called Down and Out about homelessness and about Britain's housing crisis. And he has been homeless himself. He joined us then to talk about all this and we began because we wanted to do the interview really in two parts. The second part about housing and homelessness and the first part on his own extraordinary early life. So we asked Daniel how he had ended up on the streets. Well it's fairly complicated. I would argue that my journey to the streets began when I was six. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was that age, and the psychiatrist who diagnosed me said he'd never seen a case like it.

When I was supposed to be arranging pictures into a logical sequence, I was scaling his bookshelves like Spider-Man, so I don't think he had to strain his diagnostic skills too much to reach that. But because of that, I had a disruptive education. I went into special education, which I was expelled from at 14, so I was so naughty that the School for Naughty Kids expelled me. And then things broke down at home.

I ended up in the care system, and then later on in life I had dependency issues. So all of these things are correlated with destitution, especially things like early years trauma, which I went through as well. We spent time in a refuge when I was young. Obviously family separation with the care system and later dependency. And one of the reasons I wrote this book is for a long

time i used to wear all that on my own shoulders i used to take responsibility for it all but as you talked about the empty doorway um as we were telling the life stories of these people i began to see myself in them because almost every uh profile we did had early years trauma, family separation, drug and alcohol dependency, stints in the care system. So yeah, I just decided I would interrogate my own life. And that's the conclusion I came to, that basically I was sat on this path from a very young age. Right. I mean, your own diagnosis diagnosis of ADHD you've already mentioned. I'm interested in that because it's been very much in the news the last couple of weeks with a number of very prominent people

telling us that they have also been diagnosed with ADHD. And in some cases they describe it almost as a kind of superpower. How would you describe your diagnosis and the impact it had on you? Yeah, I've heard that as well. I mean, you do have the ability to hyper-focus on things, so I think that's what they're talking about, whereas, like, most people might be able to concentrate on something for a couple of hours.

If you've got ADHD, you can do it for longer. But I don't see it as a superpower, no. It completely disrupted my early education it's because it was seen as naughty boy syndrome back in the day just a medicalized term for bad behavior so it wasn't well understood um and obviously if you're trying to keep any kid in the confines of a classroom it's a challenge but if you've got ADHD every fiber in your body wants to jump around the room. So that's what I did, yeah. Now, your experience is in many ways a very, very sad one.

And what really struck me reading about it, Daniel, was just how much you were on the move. You were never in any one setting for very long. But there were some good periods. You went to at least one good school. I think it was called The Grange in Herefordshire, where they did a lot of their teaching outside and it really seemed to suit you.

Yeah, it was great. The Grange Health School, I think it was shut down because it failed some inspection tests. But I think they recognised that kids with conditions like ADHD or dyslexia, dyspraxia or autism are maybe not suited to sitting in a classroom staring at a whiteboard or a blackboard and learn better through activity. And also, I felt like they were there to understand you there

and encourage you. So if you did have a tizzy they'd let just let you wander off and i saw a similar thing in dorset recently at um future roots it's called they run a care farm for kids like me and they're the same if someone's having a um throwing a from beer they just let them run off into the fields they've got loads of acres and then they come back and it's all forgotten about but after grange House I went to what essentially was a reformatory a barstool and there you were there to be corrected there rather than understood so yeah. If we had longer we could go through every step of your journey

but I was really interested in what you had to say about the children's home that you spent time in, because some of the treatment meted out there, well, we would now see it, frankly, as very cruel. What was it like there? Not great. The kids' home wasn't great. And also the children's home attached to my school wasn't great. They'd offer a meter out restraints on you um so I find it difficult to talk about I still it still messes me up but um get you on three chairs plonk you in the middle stretch your arms out and then push your head into your lap and they

called that the b-52 because you resembled a plane so their first reaction to things like that was to restrain you either prone on the floor and and at the kids home it was similar so the minor infractions would result in me getting arrested i think i went through a cup across the wall and um they restrained me as i was walking out of the room and then um got me arrested and i see this play out a lot like um a lot of kids in care are criminalized for things that would earn most people a docking pocket money or or something like that and a lot of the girls i grew up with um were allowed to be exploited by older men picking them up um so the rochdale abuse scandal

didn't surprise me much because i saw it with my own eyes unfold so just a lot of neglect in the care system that's what i experienced a lot of a lot of staff who weren't really suited to the job at all they were you know minimum wage they weren't trained very well daniel can you take us to the moment of you leaving care though because i thought you had such interesting things to say about that for all of the horrors in your early years in the different settings you were in you make the point that you were at least surrounded by other people and then you come to this moment when you leave the care system and you say they can teach budgeting

cooking and cleaning but nothing prepares you for loneliness can you explain a bit more about how that feels well yes I think most people when they leave home they might have their you know parents or of course family members to lean on in times of hardship when you're in care you're that when you once you reach a certain age you're just left on your own to fend for yourself so like yeah like you're right you go from the situation where you're sleeping next to kids your own age you've been through similar experiences and then that's all just taken away and you're you're expected with minimal input from social services or at least that was the case at the time i believe it's got even worse now to just look after yourself so yeah like you said teach you budgeting and all that sort of stuff. But it doesn't really teach you how to manage a household or live like an adult.

I mean, I was 17 and I was left on my own. No education. Because of all the displacement I'd suffered as a youngster, like moving around all the time. I had no social network, no support network. So it just, you know, it just fell apart as soon as I ran out of money or whatever you know and do you think that that is one of the key moments now with the benefit of of your experience and being further down the line that actually your life could have taken a very different course a better course if there had been something more around you? I do, yeah. I think I should have remained in supported accommodation

until I was ready, until I felt I was ready to move on. Because it's not like I wasn't curious, and a lot of the kids I grew up with were smart. It's just that we struggled with the education system and had difficult family backgrounds. But I got myself educated later in life, so I was capable. But in fact, I think, Daniel, from when you were very young,

I think your grandma used to tell you stories, didn't she? And you had a love of words. In fact, you used to love just using long words, regardless of whether you understood what they meant. I mean, I went through a phase of doing that myself. I'm still doing it, actually. I still do that now. Yeah, well, we're both in that category.

So you were clearly a bright spark, but it was just difficult to harness your intellect at that point. Yeah, because I just couldn't concentrate to save my life. And it's not learning, it's school I hated. I just couldn't stand it. I didn't understand why we all have to sit in this room and you know so I just I know I was a little I can't swear on the radio but I was a little monster right so um I was I had challenging behavior let's not get it wrong um but yeah I

thought I thought I was I thought it was fairly clever um yeah and I think it would have been you know if the system was to support you for longer. Instead of just this arbitrary age, you reach the age 18 or 21 and that's it. Because people develop differently, you know. I wasn't an adult at 18, even if you said so by law, I was off my head still. VoiceOver describes what's happening on your iPhonehone 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 Daniel, I wonder if you could just tell us then how you did end up on the streets. You mentioned your dependency issues. How old were you when you ended up having absolutely nowhere to live? Simple as that. Right, well, I was 26 and i was just about to graduate from university having studied history and um during this whole time i was living in a in my own flat on my own and it got really bad during the summer months when you weren't occupied with coursework um i just i just began to live a hermetic lifestyle i would i'd drink myself to

oblivion and then obviously my mental health deteriorated as a result it got so bad that i was paranoid about burglars coming in during the night so i'd check all my cupboards even though they would have to be a contortionist to sneak in and fit in them i was there just i'm even filming myself do it so i would look at in bed at night look at the video i filmed just to reassure myself yeah so i was really going downhill and i was racking up lots of arrays because i wasn't working to supplement my income wasn't managing my budgets properly and then one day i just left i wasn't kicked out i wasn't even threatened with a victim but i just saw the writing on the wall the thousand pounds of arrears um so i i just i just i just left and i can't explain why it's a completely

irrational decision i think that's the point with mental illness it's you don't act rationally yeah so i i just left and grabbed a tent from my i think it was my parents house and i just stayed on the banks of a canal on a nearby campsite until i found um a mayor's which is a charity that provides bed and board in exchange for 40 hours work for homeless or socially excluded people yeah yeah this was a name i must admit that was completely new to me. But I gather it's a very well-established charity project, isn't it? I mean, you're not, you can see it has positives, but you're not overly enthusiastic about the organisation.

Would that be fair? Yeah, that's right. I think it does help people. I think people are a lot better off within the mayor's as well than they are on the street. And in some cases, our emergency hostel system or supported accommodation. The beef I've got with the mayors is that they require residents to work 40 hours per week to live there.

They only receive £35 allowance, even though the housing benefit pays for their rent at a higher rate. But the key is that they don't have employment rights that a normal employee would, regardless of how long they've worked there. So if you've worked there for 20 years, which some of them have, they can be evicted from the charity without any recourse. And I know MA is out here to defend themselves. No, we should also say of course that they clearly do provide a safe space for some very very

vulnerable people to stay absolutely yeah absolutely of course they do it's just um that's that's my b for them is that it's open to exploitation the fact that they don't have rights and and they can be evicted on the on a whim. You make a very good point in the book, Daniel. You say that if charities are genuinely committed to ending homelessness, then their ultimate aim must be to cease to exist, yet they celebrate expansion in a way that would make venture capitalists feel uneasy. Can we tap into your lived experience and your expertise about what you think might work better for an increasing

homeless population in this country? Well, I think we have the answer already for the sharp end of this crisis. That's people rough sleeping and living in emergency accommodation. It's a policy called Housing First. Now, this policy has been pioneering countries like Finland, and it's virtually eliminated rough sleeping. How it differs to how we do business in this country at the moment is that it gives homeless person a house with no preconditions, and then after their house, that's when their support needs are addressed. At the moment, we have something called a staircase system,

which requires someone to become housing ready. So that's engaging with mental health services if they've got those problems dependency uh the job center things like that so you've got to jump for all these hoots and meet these preconditions um but but housing first does that differently and it's it's found wherever it's trialed it's it has something like an 80 success rate i think the pilot in manchester has been successful um so i think that's the solution for the sharp end but when we're talking about the 250 odd thousand people um who are so-called hidden homeless couch surfing living in temporary accommodation i think the solution there is building social housing and reinvesting in local services.

I know some people might dismiss that as a socialist argument, but I just think that's what's going to take. The private rented sector is not appropriate. It's not designed to cater to people at the bottom end of the rental market. Well, I mean, we... So I think that is... Yeah, sorry to interrupt, Daniel. We have discussed private renting on the programme

over the last couple of months because it's clearly an intolerable situation for lots of people across the country now, but particularly in the bigger cities and certainly in London. simple and frankly workable when you talk about it, is who would want to live next to a big building given over to Housing First? Or who else would want to live in a Housing First block of flats, for example? You know what I'm getting at? Because people will think, well, these people, they're likely to be behaving in a slightly erratic fashion. I understand that, but I don't think it would,

I don't think any rational public service would put them all together in one place i think it'd just be you'd be housed like anyone else people wouldn't know what problems you had so so that's the point um so yeah i can see what you're saying but yeah just put them in a normal house it depends if you've got if they're not capable of looking after themselves that's when you have people in supported accommodation um and we have those they just need better funding and um you know better training for staff and the staff needs to be paid better as well people in the care sector are grotesquely underpaid you know yes yeah because i mean you

mentioned actually in the book in the kids home that you were living in, often the cleaner, who was a very caring woman and actually rather good at all aspects of her own job and indeed other people's, would often step in to do shifts as a carer in the home. Yeah, and that shouldn't have happened. I mean, it just so happened that she was great, but it could have been a lot different. It could have been a lot different. Yeah, I do think we need to take this job of caring for people seriously and paying people who do it, you know, a proper wage because it's difficult work, you know, it's really difficult. I understand why they called the police on me in a way because they weren't equipped to deal with little monsters like me. What's really clear, Daniel, is that journalism needs

more people like you with your lived experience. You are not the typical journalist. No, I don't think I am. But The Guardian's been really good to me. I just want to put that out there. Kath Beiner and Keira Cochrane and Simon Attenstone, they're all great.

I think it's a credit to them for giving me a chance in that. Well, I know you're going to keep writing, which is great. Thank you very much for talking to us. Go on, Fi. Oh, I just wanted to say, Daniel, that I thought the letter that your grandmother wrote on your behalf was one of the most poignant things that I have ever read. And I would commend buying your book just for that.

I mean, it brought tears to my eyes. She says, to send you to an emotional and behavioural difficulty school is on a par to denying glasses but offering a hearing aid to a poorly sighted child. It's not acceptable in a civilised society to be punished for having a disability and Daniel is being denied rights

which should not even be brought into question. And I cheered for her and for her thoughtfulness. And that analogy as well, I thought was absolutely brilliant. That was the journalist Daniel Lavelle. And if you're interested to read the memoir, it's called Down and Out. And it's out now. And it's a really fascinating insight into how you end up in the care system, how you fall through the cracks and also some of the incredible characters that Daniel has met along

life's highway and he is now a journalist, that's how he earns his living as a writer and it is true isn't it that journalism on the whole is peopled by, I think particularly in Britain, by people with rather good, what you might call good middle-class credentials and often not a lot of lived experience of things like homelessness. Yeah. So I commend Daniel's book to everybody

who's interested in the subject. And even if you think you're not, it's very well written. I loved his grandma's letter. I know that we've ended with that bit in the interview. But actually, I thought that's a beautiful trait that's running through that family, the careful use of words. And, you know, there was something about that analogy that his grandmother used

where I thought that absolutely nails who your grandson is. What was also interesting about that from a, I suppose I'm going to say from a class perspective, is that his grandmother was a teacher. She was a highly intelligent woman. And yet all that did happen to Daniel. So the sorts of people that, I mean, I'm going to see them on my way home tonight. And you all make an assumption. And we do make assumptions.

Yep, and it might not be the case at all. I don't think it takes very much for the chain to fall off the bike of life. No, it really doesn't, as Daniel makes very clear in that book. So it's called Down and Out and it's available now. So we've got lots of lovely emails and thank you very much indeed for them. This one comes from Bethan who says, I share your alarm at the lack of female crash test dummies and I was very glad to hear the subject raised on the podcast.

Podcast, if you're Jane. I can thoroughly recommend Caroline Criado-Perez's excellent book, Invisible Women, which contains many similar examples of how women's data is simply not collected everywhere, from town planning to heart disease. And I think that Caroline would make a fascinating guest on the programme. Loving the not-so-new show, it's great to hear your opinions free from a certain place

of sometimes onerous requirements. Finger on chin looks into middle distance, what do you mean? And Bethan finishes by saying that Jane drives a Mini and Fiat Skoda can be of no practical use to me but I was delighted to learn it nonetheless.

Perhaps you'd be more interested in my new battery which which nobody took a blimey to notice of when I tried to bring up the subject yesterday. Well I think no I think it's just because you had your battery charged up and off you went so there wasn't an awful lot of television jeopardy involved in the story. I needed a new battery it wasn't as simple as that if only and today the boiler's up. Anyway, nobody cares. Although I will tonight actually experience a genuine cold night in the house. It's still quite cold and we can't put the heater on.

Do you want me to come over and give you a cuddle? No. Chris said... Oh, actually, while we're on the same subject, we want to say... Now, hang on. How do I pronounce? I'm going to get this wrong. Please don't call me Beta, says a woman whose name looks as though it certainly is Beta.

It's pronounced Beharta. Beharta, that's right. Because Beharta is from, where is she from? No, I think it's Beharta because there's a TH that she's put in the phonetic spelling. OK, thank you very much for the email. spelling. Okay, thank you very much for the email. And you draw our attention to the fact that one of the UK's most prominent science journalists is Angela Saini. And she's written about women in science in her 2017 book Inferior. She describes how women were ignored, ridiculed and pushed aside as scientists, and how the male bias has influenced how studies were designed, and even what was studied. And Angela Saini is an absolutely brilliant writer and great author,

and I'm delighted to say that she is going to be on our programme. We've booked her for March, so we'll return to that territory. That's amazing. That's like planning, isn't it, Jane? It's like there are people in charge of this. How do you pronounce Behartha's name? Behartha. Jane, there's no such thing as cold weather, just inadequate clothing. Omni heat is your friend, trust me.

Well, I'm wearing one of those heat tech vests. Are you? And how's that going for you? I'm all right, actually. I'm at rather good temperature. Don't want to complain. I just have. Chris says, yesterday's contribution from Anita Rani struck a chord with me. Anita came on to discuss how hard she finds it to relax. Now, I have to say, that's not a problem I have. But Anita was very interesting on the subject of how she's quite busy

and finds it difficult to just turn away from life's concerns and completely chill out on holiday. And this struck a chord with our listener, Chris, who says, I have always preferred an active holiday and wasn't sure how to cope with a relaxed week in the Maldives, a much longed-for holiday by my husband, but I amazed myself by totally enjoying the inactivity. My more recent observation is that three years into retirement,

I no longer have that drive to go on holiday, which I had throughout my working life. I put this down to not having the contrast between a stressful work stroke family life and the need to have a break. Or perhaps it's a hangover of lockdown, which happens to have coincided with this period of my life. I wonder if other listeners of a similar age have also had this experience and can they reassure me that my holiday mojo will come back? That's interesting, isn't it? Thank you, Chris. I suppose Chris is just asking, are holidays as good when you haven't got the contrast with work?

That's quite an interesting question. I'd be very interested to hear lots of people's thoughts about that and I suspect, I don't know, That's quite an interesting question. I'd be very interested to hear lots of people's thoughts about that, and I suspect... I don't know, do you genuinely, genuinely enjoy... You only tend to go away for a week at a time, don't you? I'm not a massive, as you know, adventurous type. And two weeks. Ten days I think would be my ideal.

But a week is kind of magical because you haven't quite had enough and it's time to go home I have to say I'm fearful of the retirement that might offer me the opportunity to ever take a two-week holiday I'm not terribly good after a week away from home and I already understand exactly what Chris means yeah I do know that you know what Chris is getting you know the holiday is the kind of high note, but it does need the low note in order to succeed. Can I ask a question? With your menagerie at home now, it's hard to see how you'll be going

away. It's incredibly difficult. So I'm going away at half term and the preparations for all of the animals have been extreme. So it's Brian, Barbara, Cool Cat and Nancy. And Nancy. They all have different requirements as well, Jane. Oh, for God's sake.

Do you know what I need, love? I need a wife. That's swell. I need a wife who stays at home. If I had a wife, I wouldn't be sitting here now thinking I'd better get a white tin loaf on the way home so we can have beans on toast. Well, exactly. If I had a wife, the salmon would already be in the tin foil, but it's not Jane it's not. Actually that is a really good point

because male jocks the DJs you know with the sponsored cars they all go home and it's all laid on isn't it the little ladies wandering around in a pinny put a bit of lippy on to welcome you home. Yes and in very nice examples I do know people for whom this has been true. They will go home and their partner, wife, partner, husband, whatever it is, will have listened to the show and will have had thoughtful things to say about it. No, imagine.

I know, just imagine. Actually, that reminds me of a great story. A friend of mine, when her mum was staying with us, she'd just had a baby and her mum had come along to help and the hubby had gone back to work. And it got to about I don't know, five o'clock, half five and her mum said to my mate, are you not going to get changed? He'll be home soon.

And she said, what? I mean, she was breastfeeding and the funny thing is, do you know where he worked? Where? Condé Nast Traveller. Oh, gosh. I mean, it's not exactly a coal mine, is it?

I think he'd be all right to get his own dinner. Anyway, here we are. Do you know what? My kids tend to get home while we're still on the radio, and one of them did say to me the other day, it's really weird. You come into the house and your voice is on the radio. I said, I'm really sorry about that.

And they just said, it doesn't matter. We just switch it off. Which is what you'll be doing very soon. Good evening. Good night. You have been listening to Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler

and the podcast executive producer is Ben Mitchell. Now, you can listen to us on the free Times Radio app or you can download every episode from wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget that if you liked what you heard and thought, hey, I want to listen to this, but live, then you can, Monday to Thursday, 3 till 5 on Times Radio. Embrace the live radio jeopardy. Thank you for listening and hope you can join us off air very soon.

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