Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Exotic and Mundane (with Lady Hale)

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

Jane M keeps Jane Garvey's seat warm this week, but she only just made it in by the skin of her teeth. Fi also had a slightly treacherous journey in. Once they're both settled, they chat tuna-mushroom-soup casserole, driving on both sides, and nookie. Plus, Lady Hale, former President of the Supreme Court, discusses her new book 'With the Law on Our Side'. We've announced our next book club pick! 'Just Kids' is by Patti Smith. You can listen to the playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3qIjhtS9sprg864IXC96he?si=uOzz4UYZRc2nFOP8FV_1jg&pi=BGoacntaS_uki.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] us on Instagram! @janeandfi.Podcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I quite like driving on the other side. Because I lived in America for so long, and I drove a lot. I quite like, you know, changing sides. Do you? Yeah. Have we gone into euphemism territory? Oh, God. I'm Adam Vaughn, Environment Editor at the Times.

And in Planet Hope, we meet the people tackling our biggest environmental and scientific challenges. From saving penguins in Patagonia to helping people of paralysis to move again. These are stories of science, courage and hope. Follow Planet Hope wherever you get your podcasts. Planet Hope is brought to you by The Times in paid partnership with Rolex and its perpetual Planet Initiative. This episode of Offair is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month where people, charities and organisations globally come together to put children's and young people's cancers in the spotlight, the progress made, but also why we still have so much

further to go. Now, around 4,100 children and young people are diagnosed with cancer every year in the UK. That is 11 new cases every day. Thanks to research, children's cancer survival has more than doubled since the 1970s in the UK. But while survival has improved, cancer is still the leading cause of death by disease in children and young people over the age of one. Cancer Research UK is actually the biggest charitable funder into children's and young people's cancers in the UK. They also partner with other charities, funders and people affected by children's and young people's cancers to make the biggest impact they can. They are backing some of the brightest minds in science across the country and internationally to make discoveries that will transform outcomes for children and young people. Thanks in part to their work, in the last 50 years, around 34,500 children and young people have survived into adulthood in the UK.

To find out more, you can visit cruk.org slash children and young people, or you could visit your local cancer research UK shop this September. My beautiful My beautiful son is leaving for university on Friday So there's just quite a lot It's quite funny actually doing all of the packing And casting your mind back to what you needed And by that I don't mean the usual stuff Of definitely have a mattress protector

Because you don't know how many people have been there before and all that type of stuff but just actually things that you might that you really wish maybe that you know somebody had packed in and we've talked about this before on the podcast because some really lovely parents have done little kind of boxes of stuff that contain everything from you know incredibly helpful vitamin tablets condoms emergency phone numbers you know small letters and that type of stuff but it does mean that my head is is somewhere in between the laundry department of a well-known department store

John Lewis everybody and world events which carry on a pace yeah yeah and trying to get around London this weekend there was a huge protest and a smaller counter protest and it was really frightening

it was really frightening and one of my other kids was coming back from a school trip and she's at a school that has a large Asian population and actually, you know, parents and teachers didn't want those kids going home alone from the station and you just think, wow, wow, what a country we're living in at the moment.

The footage I saw was, yeah, very unpleasant. Yeah, it is. Does it affect your daily head? Yeah. Because I think as journalists sometimes there's that weird thing where actually it can put a barrier because you are talking about it for work, it can put a slight barrier between you

and actually the reality of it. Yeah. I mean, I think it occupies two different spaces in my head. It occupies the works sense in which I think about what we're doing about this, how are we covering it, you know, what will I be doing about it? And then it occupies a personal space, which is different. Yeah. I think a lot of things do at the moment, actually.

A lot of things do in the world. Especially last week, actually. Are you good at compartmentalising? No, I'm absolutely terrible after that. How are you? Does it all leak a bit? Yeah. I had three or four different anxiety dreams on Saturday night.

Oh gosh Can you share any of them with the group? I can only remember half of them and I don't want to be Jane Garvey so, you know Even though I am playing the role of Jane Garvey this week

I'm not going to talk about my dreams Can I tell you about my bumpy landing though? You can but in all seriousness I think that we should get a dream interpreter on because people are sending us their dreams and some of them are so fantastic and it is we don't have to So Steve Wright used to have a dream interpreter

And it was just comical Slightly tongue in cheek yes it was and I always got the feeling that Steve Wright didn't hugely enjoy doing that actually I think he felt it was just a little bit too far down the kind of woo-woo road

for him but I think we could get an interoperatorial all dreams are either anxiety or some kind of Freudian thing aren't there's like several there's only a couple of categories if you tell most people if you tell an expert about it

almost everything is an anxiety dream like I've got about 14 different ones But I think that's obviously because I don't present as an anxious person in real life so everyone's quite surprised but I've got loads of different anxiety dreams. So it's all being stored up in your frontal lobe and going boof, just for night time.

Boof at night. But it was just quite annoying to have anxiety dreams and I was in my lovely cousin's house outside Dublin having spent most of the day with her and a baby and so obviously I was having quite a nice time during the day and then it's like br-r-d-night anyway.

But can I just tell you about I landed into City Airport at 25 past 10 this morning and I was at my desk by 11 o'clock which is why I love flying into City Airport because I quite... So basically I like to maximise weekends. I don't generally go back to Brighton on a Sunday night if I've been somewhere

because it's just that extra bit. Like if you come into London from the north or flying in, then you have to go down to the end of the country and then come back again on Monday morning. So I tend to just stay and then get a really early flight back on a Monday, which works really well mostly, except it was very, very windy this morning, both in Ireland and here. So my flight left a little bit late, but I texted Eve and I said,

you know, I thought we should be fine, should be fine. And then we came into land, and it was really windy coming to land at City Airport, which, for anyone who doesn't know London City Airport, it's got a very short runway and a narrow runway surrounded by water. and now we were on a little Embraea jet so being buffeted quite hard around by the wind and we came into land and it was, you know, for all credit to those pilots

that they were put in a shift in landing that plane this morning and we were coming into land quite fast being buffeted and we were about 10 metres above the runway when he took off again because we didn't make it the first time he thought, nope, not that landing. So then we went round again

and tried a second time. And did it last? Yeah, second time was all right. But we were low enough that I could text people and say, oh, just going in for a second landing. It's horrible, isn't it? I actually, my brother's a pilot, so I've got great faith in pilots

because I know my brother's very sensible. And landings are the one thing they work quite hard on. They practice, you know, they try hard to get those right. I'm glad about that, too. I don't worry too much when I'm on a plane. Interestingly, I'd never been, I'd never worried about flying, and I'd never had a flying dream, a bad flying dream. I've got a really night.

I'm not going to go on about my nice flying. Anyway, but I've never had a nightmare about flying until my brother became a pilot. And then I had a sequence of horrific nightmares about planes. But I don't have them anymore. Thank God he's been a pilot for like 20 years, so it'd be tiring otherwise. It's a funny thing, isn't it, that sudden fear of flying?

Yeah, and it's not a conscious. I don't have it when I'm on a plane or whatever, but I'd worry about him. I think part of the problem is I don't understand how they stay up. No, me neither. But we shouldn't plant that in people's minds, especially a lot of people who are listening to this as a sleep age. Hot or, cold, upy downy.

Yep. No, it is terrifying. It's like pressure cookers. How do they work? Yeah. I found, because we flew a lot as kids because my dad lived abroad, so we were in the back of a plane, you know, from the age of four doing these really, really long flights, and it just seemed entirely normal

that a great big, you know, Tinkan took off and stayed in the air for kind of 24 hours just occasionally touching down in Tehran. Whenever we did touch down in Tehran, we had to keep the blinds down on the plane during refueling so nobody could take a picture. Wow. Yeah, which was quite strange

because, I mean, back in those days, if you took a picture, it was shit anyway. So you couldn't take a picture of Tehran? Because it was heavily militarised. Right, wow. So it was very odd. I mean, the whole journey, was odd because you'd fly a tiny distance, you know, to Paris or Amsterdam to refuel and pick

up passengers. And the plane often started out, I mean, this was like 1974, very old children, very old. But the plane would start off quite empty in London and it would just go round the world. It was more like a buff, yeah. Because you'd only have one flight, you know, all the way to Hong Kong a week or every two weeks. So we'd do something in Amsterdam. And then there'd be another stopover probably in Cyprus. or somewhere around there, or in Tehran, or in Baghdad, and then you go on to India, and then you quite often do Singapore, and then you get to Hong Kong.

So it was 24 hours, you know, by the time you got there. And my mum, who definitely wasn't a natural flyer, used to have to do that trip, you know, with two really small kids. And I think, bless her, she probably tried to stay awake all the way through to make sure that we're okay. It was so bizarre, you know, times have changed. But good for her. She just put her foot down in the 1980s and said,

that's it. And she's taken our holidays on the east coast of Scotland, ever since. Good for you, mum. Good for you. The very first time I went on a plane, I hadn't been on a plane until I was 13. We flew to Australia, my first flight. Whoa.

I know. I think of only stopping in Singapore. That's hard call. Yeah, I know. I'm all in, you know me. Yeah. I hate flying now. Do you really?

I can't stand it. I think I've just, because of all of that, I've just done my M-Rs. And I'm, I'm with, with mum. If I never had to leave country again, I'd be absolutely fine. And it is true actually that there are so many beautiful parts of this country that you don't explore. I could easily spend the rest of my life holiday in the UK. Oh God, no. I get, I get itchy feet if I'm on this island for more than a month without getting that. I know, but you're very exotic and I'm

not. I've never felt less exotic in my life than I do at the moment. Welcome to Exotic and mundane. Your podcast combo for the week. I like the same. I like the same. I like the fact that you think of me as exotic. No, you are, Jane. Own it. Yeah, it's in the way that I do have a reputation on this, only on this podcast

for someone who goes out every night. In fact, I met one of our lovely listeners in the toilets on the 11th floor the other day and she said, and I was discussing with a young colleague as I was washing my hands the fact that I wasn't going out that night. And this lovely listener said, but you go out every night, don't you?

I had to let her down. Yeah, not every night. Of the occasional Wednesday off. But also, you know, you should do... I am going out every night this week. Yeah, do whatever you want, whatever you want. Yeah. The definitive recipe for tuna and soup cassero.

Welcome back, everybody. Hearing that debate about the tin tuna and sup continues, here's the definitive recipe talked to me by the mother of a lovely chap I dated many moons ago when I was a student. So two themes we're pursuing at the moment, Jane Royal Cairns. What happens the first time you meet the potential in-laws? Oh my goodness, this is a rich vein, everybody. well done and also I think this might mark the end of tuna and mushroom soup day

Eve is saying welcome back Eve by the way if you come back to think oh what happened it is a little bit it was in her store cupboard as a standby and he made it often to actually quite tasty if a little high on salt so here we go everybody this is incoming from Anita take one or two cans of tuna in brine or oil don't think it matters drain and put into an oven-proof dish. Add one can of condensed Campbell's soup. Note, it must be condensed. The lovely mum used chicken, as it has a similar texture to tuna, mix into the tuna, no need to add any other liquid. Put plain potato crisps on top, sprinkle with cheese, ideally cheddar, or something that melts nicely, put in the oven for 20 minutes or so at 180 degrees. Serve with plain rice and

forward slash or a green salad. If I didn't know that your son was such a good cook, I'd say that was a kind of typical student, you know, first term at university dish, but he won't be making that, will he? No, absolutely not. He literally would run screaming, wouldn't he? Claire would just like to counteract that recipe with the addition of cooked pasta. Tagliatelli goes in before you put it in the oven.

So definitive, questionable. Yeah, there's also somebody's very kindly sent him one which is an awful lot more complicated, and it's got kind of flour and butter, and you have to put the crisps in butter at first. Oh, yes. but butter into flour, add crush crisps. This is from Lou in Ryegate,

flake tuna blend with soup and peas. I mean, I don't think, I think there is no definitive. Well, I'm just going for Anita's simple one. Yeah. And I might try and make it. I think actually that is the perfect dinner to make the night after you've dropped a beloved child off at university

because that's all the comforts and none of the hassle. And that would be great. And I'll plonk myself down and watch an idea. TVX drama and everything That is a new one with Andrew Lincoln in Oh I tried that last night chain It's called cold water And are you going to pour cold water on it

Oh my word So somebody described it as Moribund And that's absolutely bang on the money It's so depressing So if you were going to do a bingo card Of really gloomy, nasty, sinister television done with no ray of light

poking in at all. It is unrelenting. So you've got somebody kind of on the verge of a breakdown and they've got a bit of PTSD and you don't really know what the PTSD is. And in the first episode you've got someone who gets up at one o'clock in the morning to go running. Never a good idea, kids. Never a good idea. And ends up in a forest killing somebody. I mean, it's just, it's too much, Jane. It's too much. I didn't enjoy it at all. I've settled myself in front of the girlfriend. Oh, I was about to say, have you tried the girlfriend?

I have. Brilliant. So the girlfriend is trash Oh yeah With a capital T and it's loving it It's so good It's got a bonnet on hasn't it Oh it's trash with a cap on Yeah

It gets really silly by the end It's absolutely brilliant Robin Wright goes absolutely bonkers Loved it Yeah she can carry bonkers Oh she really can't beautifully Oh yeah And Olivia Cook also quite bonkers in it

Now what else does Olivia Cook be in Everything Oh sorry Yeah Lots and lots of things That's me told Yeah She's in lots of

films, which were sort of tweenie sort of dramas. House of Dragon. Oh, House of Dragon as well, yeah, which I never really watched. But, yeah, you'll enjoy The Girlfriend. Good. I interviewed a couple times, but I can't remember what four. There was a computer game that was made into a film. Anyway, I won't remember.

Right, and I was going to say I would. Just on the subject of bad reviews, I could just direct everyone in the world to Kevin Marles' column today about Boris Becker's book. Is it a good column or is it a good book? The former. It's a good column.

But that's great. It saves us reading the book. I had to ruin my own brief holiday by reading Boris Becker's book to see if we wanted to buy it. And having had, you know, quite a lot of time with Boris Becker earlier this year. A prison diary.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I could rent a better one myself. Yeah. Anyway, it's a great column. So we'll read the column instead of the book. You can do that if you've got a digital subscription to the Times.com.

Dear Finn, Jane, long-time listener, not first-time emailer, mainly geography-related, says all the best Liz. I was listening to Thursday's episode and chuckled at the mention of bad starts to in-law relationships. When I first took my university boyfriend home, he was asked to go into the garage where we kept our freezer with a request to get the peas out for dinner. What my parents had failed to mention was that they had two freezers, one being full of dead, day-old male chicks. These are not required by the egg industry, and these then become a key food source for captive birds of prey, of which my parents then had a Bengalis eagle owl and a Harris hawk, as you do, Liz. After getting over the shock, later in the day my boyfriend was sitting downstairs by a window, watching a cute family of baby rats, enjoying the bird seed by a bird table.

unbeknownst to him my dad was at an upstairs window with an air rifle and started picking them off to ensure their departure he then came downstairs and shot the deceased again at point of rage whilst horrified it gave him an accurate picture of my family and let him make an informed decision whether to remain part of it we've now been together for 20 years so he clearly wasn't put off too much

oh my god Liz I mean that's just quite something isn't it well done it must definitely definitely have been love and I think we just need a little bit more detail about the Bengalis eagle owl and the Harris Hawk what just what kind of... Benkleseel sounds beautiful

and Harris Hawks are amazing so yes a little bit more detail on the bird sanctuary that was running at your household and we send our very best to your husband because he really must have seen something in you to be able to see past all of that wow yeah

this comes in from Lottie weighing in on the driving discussion, dear Jane and Fee, weighing in and what I think is the answer to why we drive on the left. I've always been told it was to do with when we used to travel the country on horseback. Since most people are right-handed, asterix, perhaps a debate for another day, she says, they would store their sword on the left so it would be ready to attack any oncoming enemies or highwaymen. I guess you pull it out from your left onto your right, don't you? A quick Google suggests that driving on the right became customary in the US. because their road system would design later at the time of the wagon.

Here the driver would sit on the left so they could control the horse with their right. So it made more sense for the traffic to pass the driver's left. I wonder if it is that. Well, I almost don't want anybody to write it and say that's not the answer. No, it's a lovely answer. And it's something more kind of commercial to do with the expediency of building a car with a carriage on the left or whatever because they're just brilliant.

It's a lovely answer. Yeah, I love that. Incidentally, says Lottie, I passed my driving test at 70. but managed a spectacular six failed tests over the course of that year. One every two months, Lottie. That's true's fortitude. Like Jane's daughter, I think the failures have made me a more confident and considered driver.

Certainly more humble, I imagine. Although it did make me a running joke for several years after. Well, well done, Lottie, at sticking with it. I'm quite cocky about my dexterity in driving on both sides. I quite like driving on the other side. Because I lived in America for so long

and I drove a lot. I quite like, you know, changing sides. Do you? Yeah. Yeah, I've realised rightly in Europe and in America. Have we got into euphemism territory? Oh, God. Are we just, what's happening?

No, for once. Not a euphemism. Okay, well, look, well done you, because I just can't manage it at all. And I actually just have to now ask people, if we go on holiday, you know, if we're planning a holiday, I have to make sure that I'm going with another adult or child. is always me who does it, which is fine.

I actually don't mind it. What annoys me is it means I can't drink at lunch. I'll say anything. Anyway. That can be a hazard. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not that kind of a driver. No.

So can we just say a huge thank you to everybody, actually, who's done tuna and mushrooms and things? Julie G., who is joining us from Morpeth in Northumberland. Thank you for your recommendations too. And you do say enough about the tube strike. If you lived where we do, you would be used to crap in frequent public transport and we'd have to pay more for it to

a bus with a frequency of more than once an hour would be nice, just saying. And yeah, absolutely right, actually, Julie, because despite the tube strike, you know, we all managed to get somewhere and get around London last week and now we're supposedly back to normal as well. So I'd take your point.

I cycled during the tube strike a couple of times last week, loved it. So I've cycled this morning as well. No, didn't like it at all. No. Because with reference to the terrible wind in London, You cycle through the city, which I have to get here. The height of the buildings is just absurd.

And, you know, it's... Well, sometimes I do wonder about all of that development. I mean, it's made a couple of people extremely wealthy, hasn't it? But it's rather ruined it for everybody else. But trying to cycle, I just had to get off my bike and just walk because I just felt that I was going to be picked up with some kind of a vortex and just flung across the road like a ragdoll. Well, it's outside the front of our build.

here outside Times Towers. It's the biggest wind tunnel in London, I think. Terrible. You come out of the tube and you suddenly just, I actually, almost sideways today. Yeah. Yeah, they've not put a lot of thought into what happens. And when it's really windy in here, you know, you can hear it through the sort of signs of the windows. It's like being inside a kettle. Oh, that hasn't happened. Oh, have you not? Are you not been here on a really windy? Oh, you wait. It's such a treat. So I do feel sorry for the security guards outside our building. They have to stand outside

You do think sometimes you actually need to be tethered Yeah, absolutely And you wouldn't wear a flippy skirt Would you? Oh my word now Oh no, not a flippy skirt I have literally shown my pants on that wall A couple of times

That's not meeting But back to cycling One of the things I do miss about living in London Is I do miss cycling to work I really enjoyed cycling to work When I lived in London It's a bit far from Brighton Yes but you could always

You could keep a bike couldn't you Here and then you could cycle around London Yeah, maybe not. It seems a bit, it seems a bit profligate to have one just here. There's those ones you can rent. Yeah, use those ones. That's very, that's very, good point.

Yeah, I do use those ones. Anna is very grateful for the recommendation of Fisk, which is, it's not had a great big fanfare series three. So if you have never come across it before, I'll go obviously in it at series one, although you don't have to have seen the other series to be laughing along with it, but it's up there on the flicks at the moment.

we do have a complete plethora of good TV coming our way, don't we? It's good TV time. We've got the return of the morning show. Yep, return of slow horses. Yep, it's all there. The return of blue lights. Oh, I never watched it. Oh, my gosh, I get off the lights.

Yeah. I also noticed that there's another theme coming through strongly, which is tampons. Oh, yes. There's a lot of tampon emails. It's funny, isn't it? People seem to very much fall into two camps. of the applicators and the non-applicators and sort of, you know, confused by the applicators.

I was just thought everybody used applicator tampons. How did you think that the other company stayed in business? Yeah, I don't know. I was always mystified. But I have now, I had to buy a box of German non-applicator tampons in May when I was in Germany from the corner shop. It was quite large box, I'm still going. So I understand now non-applicated tampons from foreign countries

are possibly just more economical. Are they very different? No. Are you inserting on the left? Right, bring up the humour. Dear Jane and Fie, following on from tampons reminded me at age 13

and just begun periods when my mother brought me those horrid, bulky, sanitary towels with loops on, which existed in 1963. Not only that, there was a sanitary belt to attach them with.

You're nodding. Belt, really? Yeah, so that's what they were. Oh, my God. So you'd have this. this kind of, I mean it wasn't a belt, you know, with a buckle and stuff, it was basically a large kind of ribbon

that you'd tie around your waist and the sanitary pads would be huge and they would have loops on them, so you loop them, you know, either side. They didn't stick into your neckers. They just sort of hooked onto a belt so they're hooked to you. Yes, it was more of a kind of nappy approach.

Vivian says at that time I'd bought a pair of what were rather trendy at the time, black ski pants, which were quite snug fitting and had stirrups under the foot. I was going to visit a friend and I did not want to wear the bulky sanitary towel because I felt sure it would be noticed. Sounds like it, Vivian. So I went to my mother's drawer without her knowing

and took one of her tampox with a tampox with an applicator that Jane was flummoxed by. As I confidently walked to my friend's house, feeling very adult, I became aware the applicator was working its way down inside my ski pants. It was finally at my ankle. I was feeling extremely self-conscious and uncomfortable and very gingerly and I hoped discreetly

removed it from my ankle, hoping no one would be aware of what might have been. It took me a while, as Vivian, before I ever tried again. I just, these loop ones, they're new to me. They must have, they must have gone by the time. Oh, they would totally have gone. Yeah. I think they were kind of tail-ending their way through period products when I was young.

So that would have been the mid-1980s. They were almost out the door. They were so cumbersome and horrible. Oh, they sound horrendous. Yeah. A great big sign. I mean, it's been a very, very long time since I'd use energy towels. I think the whole thing is just, feels quite old-fashioned to me.

She's making a face. I am making a face. Yeah, only after a surgical procedure have I had to use them. And I felt, yeah. It's just a weird thing to me. It feels very... It feels exposing, isn't it? Yeah, very exposing.

Yeah, like just... If you've got used to using tampons, it's very... From the age of 13, you know, yeah. Do you think in the next generations, though, periods will still be a thing? Because, and I would so love to hear from qualified clinical doctors with facts. at their fingertips, it's quite often said that the only reason why, you know, our periods haven't been kind of erased by pharmaceutical companies is because it's in the interest of another massive set of companies for the world of sanitary products to continue. So if you were going

to take the pill, if there was going to be something developed that can regulate your periods, And we know that the reason why women were told that they should only take the original pill for three weeks and still have a bleed was because the church objected to the fact that periods were going to be taken away. So have we got to a point in medicine where we know that not having to have periods would be okay?

Well, I think it is okay apart from, then you get to the point where you might want to think about getting pregnant. And it can obviously take a very long time for your fertility to return to any sort of normal. when you come off the pill. I took a pill for a long time that meant I didn't have a period and that was great.

And then I've taken other ones where you do have a bleed and, you know, yeah. And in a way, it's sort of a bit reassuring having it because you sort of know that something, even though it's a fake period in lots of ways because you're not bleeding in any normal way, are you? So actually what you're finding reassuring, it shouldn't be reassuring because actually

it's completely artificial. I don't know. I mean, can you remember what the advice was that you were given when you started taking the pill that you took continuously so you didn't have periods. Were you told not to take it for too long? And if so, why?

Yeah. I don't think I was actually. I don't think I was told not to take it for a really long time. I think we were all just kind of encouraged to just get on it. But I had to come off one of them because it said my blood pressure quite high. So I couldn't stay on that one. Do you know what? We're just not given an awful lot of information.

Well, we're not, and I'd really like to hear from clinicians about this because, you know, there are so many pressures on us, aren't there, as women, which we don't fully understand whether or not that's come from the pharmaceutical industry, that's come from religion, that's come from politics, that's come from, you know, literally the company's making sanitary pads and tampons. So it would be great to know the real facts about periods. and especially when you're very young and it's really invasive for you

whether or not you could be prescribed the pill and it's funny that we still call it the pill because there are so many women who are taking that pill not for contraceptive reasons at all it's often prescribed for other reasons I took it for acne for a very long time

but also I mean we don't know you are not told basic information which I've always wondered If you take the pill for a really long time and you're not having a normal bleed, do you're not ovulating, do your eggs stay? Do you have them for longer? Does that mean that your period of potentially ovulating is extended? I mean, I know that probably sounds like a stupid question, but it's not a stupid question at all. If you take the pill continuously for five years and don't have a normal bleed, does that mean you don't ovulate for five years? Do you have an extended fertility period?

And what does it do if you've got a condition like endometriosis? Right. so you're not flushing everything out anyway okay these are all very good questions and we will get somebody on board to answer them one comes in from Lorraine and Loisdorf that's Lorraine with two hours welcome back Lorraine with two hours good morning Fia and Jamal and team happy holiday Jane

the tale of a roadkill dinner prompted you to ask for more stories of meeting the parents for the first time mine isn't food related but I found it quite extraordinary and would love to know if any other listeners have experienced something similar. The first time I met my now husband's parents, I had barely said hello when my mother-in-law announced that she'd done my astrological chart and consulted

the spirits. Come in, you're a Pisces. And then she could assure me her son was exactly what I was looking for. She told me I wanted somebody stable and reliable and responsible that I was looking for security and that her son was all of those things. She then presented

me with an envelope containing a laminated astrological chart and offered to do a full tarot card reading. for me. I was gobsmacked and my husband was mortified. He'd mentioned that she was into tarot and astrology, but it turns out she used to be a touring medium too. Now, I'm quite firmly a woman of science and think all of this is complete hooey, but was far too polite to say. I mean, who isn't looking for somebody reliable and responsible by the time they're in their 30s, as I was then, in brackets, well, quite possibly Jamal. Close brackets. My husband said,

When she had asked him for my date of birth, he'd assumed she was just wondering what star signer was, and he didn't expect her to start consulting the spirits about what sort of woman was trying to ensnare her son. Unfortunately, my lack of interest or belief in her special access to the spirit world has always created a distance between us. She talked very fondly about a previous girlfriend of his who was apparently very into astrology

every time we visited until my husband had to tell her privately to put a sock in it. We've never had a close relationship happily. She was right about her son, 20 years later, he is still the right man for me. I've typed and deleted these four exclamation marks in writing this, and I'm bereft without

them, but I do appreciate Jamal on the podcast, so I'm happy to oblige. Thank you very much for your consideration. Well, Lorraine, what a fantastically lovely story, and thank you for being so open about it as well. And those kind of things, they are quite hard, aren't they? Because you've just

got to be, as the person arriving in the family. You've got to be welcoming an open yourself haven't you but if you've got those massive divides like you're kooky and i don't believe any of this stuff yeah you've got to somehow get over that and i love that fact as well i mean you're absolutely right who it would be so bizarre if you didn't want or want to describe your son as stable and reliable and responsible and therefore quite a catch he's an absolute nightmare yeah what do you take take him off my hands

Here we go. Fickless as hell. Yeah. Who, which was the astronomer, astrologer, who famously Kelvin McKenzie sacked with that letter saying, as he will have foreseen. I don't know. Is it Russell Grant?

I don't know. Some astrologer for the sun. I always really loved him. Yeah. Is he still with us? I think he is. I think he is. I think he is.

He just always seen... He'll be on breakfast television on some day somewhere. Yeah, he seemed to be... He was capable of making those of us who don't truly believe in all. of that kind of Hokeham laugh at the same time. Yeah, it looked like he didn't take it that seriously. He is still with us. Yeah, very good.

Coming in from Tina, who says, dear Jen and Fee, when I first met my Australian now husband's family at Christmas, I'm German, says Tina, and we visited them for the first time in Australia that year. We sat around full to bursting and exhausted after Christmas lunch when I pointed to the bedroom door and said to my husband, I think it's time for Nookie. My mother-in-law abruptly got up and ran back to the kitchen. Uncomfortable silence descended upon the living room

My husband just sort of disappeared into the couch It was only later that night that I learned that Nookie in fact does not mean nap At all as I previously thought We can laugh about it now but I still cringe thinking about it Yes Yeah That's a very open and German of you Tina So in what cultures and languages does Nocky mean now?

I don't know Okay but not English No definitely not Yeah Serious question to throw out to the audience and to you in the demise of Peter Mandelson. There'd be an awful lot of things said over the weekend and he has gone.

He's been recalled from his position as the UK ambassador to Washington. But there's been a lot of conversation about what his talents were that meant the bar was kind of changed, wasn't it, to enable him to take up that position? And somebody said that he had singular talents. And I genuinely, what is the singular talent

that you need as an ambassador. And are we, in saying that about him, saying that he would have been able to kind of meet Trump on his own level or just been so ingratiating and, you know, being able to kind of do all of the appeasement stuff? I think there was a recognition that whoever was going to be, or is going to be now, obviously because I have to have a new one, is going to be our ambassador to Washington.

is not necessarily the same kind of qualities in this administration that you would need as an ambassador to any other administration, either to America or other places. You know, it's not your highly experienced foreign office official who maybe has done, you know, a deputy ambassador in Cairo or, you know, spent some time at the UK mission to the UN. You know, it's not necessarily that. It's something in which, yes, there's an awful lot of forning involved,

an awful lot of negotiating, but maybe not the normal sort of negotiating where you've, you know, held peace talk with Arabs. It's not the same thing. Does it basically just mean that they wanted to send a creep? It's just making a face. It just annoyed me when I heard it

because I think there are lots of people who are incredibly talented and Karen Pierce's name comes back a lot because she was the previous ambassador to Washington. And when she was in New York. She seems to have pleased so many people and being so capable at her job. I just think sometimes there's, you know, the singular talents.

I just, it annoys me doing that. She dealt very well with Trump and with Boris Johnson. You know, she was good at dating with shaky people and came from a much more traditional, you know, diplomatic background. So it's not that you can't do it. It was very interesting the people who were considered for the ambassadorship. Bear Grills. No. Are you serious?

Yep. I asked him that when I interviewed him last. He was considered as an ambassador for this country to Washington. The man who's baptized... Russell Brand. Yeah. Okay. What's his singular talent in a diplomatic mission? I don't know. I mean...

He's very good at dealing with... I don't know. People in the wild. I don't know. Okay. This is fascinating. Yes, I mean, they went, their list was pretty left field and quite Catholic with the small sea, you know. It will be really interesting to see where they go with this, whether they go somewhere more traditional and think,

okay, that didn't work. I think we should all apply. I think there are some women out there who've run PTAs and safe playing fields and negotiated their way through life. Kimmerich just wouldn't stand for a minute, that nonsense in Mar-a-Lago. They would be bang on the money. JD, back in your seat.

But genuinely, they would know how to treat a man like that who treats women in a certain way. I think there are some incredibly singular talents available to the middle-aged woman that might be used in a very, very helpful way to forward the course of this great, great country. I'm going to say... I'm going to pass on your application if anyone would like to.

Yep, if you wouldn't mind. Hello from a ghostwriter is a really, really brilliant email and I'm going to save it for tomorrow we've been talking about this so much and Claire Balding and Jane and I and us it annoys people and I get that wrong

we all talked about the strange thing that now happens to authors who have genuinely written their own book where they have to find a way during an interview of saying I have genuinely written my own book in a way that nobody from any other profession has to come in and say

I am genuinely a barrister, I am genuinely a politician, I am genuinely a teacher, it is just bizarre. So we were talking about ghost writing too and Leslie, thank you for getting in touch. We would love to talk to you more, actually. You've made some really, very, very good points. So I'm throwing that out there as a tease.

We will continue the conversation about that during the week. Jamal is here and can I just, before we go to the guest, put in another plea as well, I'd like to have a proper serious discussion about why there are so many fruit flies around this year, many, many more than usual, or is it just my filthy hat? Now, at the start of Baroness Hale's book,

she says this, we may be lucky enough, not ever to be accused or to be the victim of a criminal offence, but if we are caught up in the criminal justice system, we want the matter dealt with as quickly and as fairly as it can be by conscientious police, prosecutors and courts.

We may very well be involved in road, accidents, whether serious or not, we may very well have disputes with our employers, our landlords or our mortgage providers, and all we want is to be treated equally. This means that we should all care about the law and the justice system. Well, Lady Hale is here now and her book is called with the law on our side, how the law works for everyone and how we can make it work better. Lady Hale, you're very welcome on the programme. It's a book that really makes you think about how little we actually know about the legal system until we find ourselves in it at a point in our lives where understanding the whole legal system may be just beyond us. Our ignorance is

quite something, isn't it? Well, it's not for me to accuse anybody of being ignorant. That would be very presumptuous of me. I don't mean ignorant stupid. I mean the fact that we, at no point in our education do we really learn about the court system. Unless we know someone who's been through it or know a lawyer, there's no point in our other lives where we really learn about it. This is absolutely true. People do tend to think they know a bit about the criminal justice system because crime fiction is so popular. They're all the television shows and films and so on. But that's a comparatively small part of the justice system because an awful lot of the justice system is about civil claims between people and businesses, enterprises or family claims

or things like benefit claims, immigration, employment claims. That's what most of the justice system is about. And it's not only that it's a good idea for people to be aware of the justice system, but also the fact that the law governs everything and that people don't have to go to a court or a tribunal, usually, to get things sorted out because they get sorted out automatically. I mean, people pay their debts. They might not pay their debts if there wasn't a law that said you must pay your debts.

Insurance companies pay up on injury claims. They might not do that if there wasn't a law that said that you've got to do that. So the law underpins a huge amount of everyday life that affects everybody. I think you're so right to point out that we think we know about a legal system because we watch TV and we watch movies and we read books. But in a sense, that's always focusing on the kind of super sexy elements of the criminal justice system And actually what your book does right from the start is talk about the far more kind of entry-level places that we might find ourselves, like tribunals. You talk about there being kind of four main courts in the land.

So could you give us an idiot's guide to those? Well, yes, there are four main justice systems. There's the tribunal system which deals mainly with disputes between citizens and the state, you know, about benefits or about tax or about immigration, migration, all sorts of stuff. But it does also deal with some disputes between residential landlords and tenants and some disputes between employers and workers. So that's the tribunal system. Then there's the civil justice system that deals with claims between, as I said, either between businesses, enterprises or between people and enterprises. It collects debts.

It deals with claims in relation to housing, evicts people. It deals with road traffic accidents, accidents at work. It deals with mega commercial disputes worth millions of pounds. So it goes from things worth hundreds of pounds to things worth millions of pounds. So it's a very big business. and it underpins the whole of the commercial life of the country if we didn't have it

we wouldn't have a commercial life to speak of and then there's the criminal justice system which of course is all about deciding whether people have committed crimes and if they have committed crimes imposing the correct punishment for that and then there's the family justice system which is about disputes between mothers and fathers

husbands and wives or sometimes the authorities and families where the allegation is that a child has been abused or neglected, the state may need to protect the child. So there are those four systems. Just as an example of one of those parts of the system, we have some news this afternoon from court. Constance Martin and Mark Gordon have been sentenced for gross negligence manslaughter over the death of their baby, Victoria, in 2023. They've both been handed 14-year prison sentences and Gordon will serve four years on extended licence

following his time in prison. It's such a sad case for anybody who has anything to do with the family and it must be a very difficult case to have been heard in court. Do you have many of those cases that really stay with you forever, Lady Hale, that you know when you're witnessing, you know, the very very... very kind of dark places that some people end up in, you know that actually you're never going to quite forget that yourself. Yes, you don't forget them, but as a judge in a family court, which is what I was when I was a trial judge, you are dealing mainly with cases of

serious allegations of child abuse. So why has this baby got head injuries, rib fractures, spiral fractures to the limbs and so on. Has this child been sexually abused? And if so, by whom? Those are the two main categories, but there are plenty of others. And the level of maltreatment of which some people were capable was truly shocking. But also, the shocking thing is that you have to take the child away from the family and taking a child away from and the family really ought to be the last resort because the alternatives that can be provided are often less than ideal. So it was always a difficult case. I was very moved by some of the cases that you write about in the book. And what's fascinating is for the book, you went on a tour

of our court system, but in a completely different place to the one that you'd been in before. So you went to sit in court as just an anonymous observer. Well, I wasn't anonymous to the judges concerned. You were recognised. Well, in the high court, I didn't. In every court apart from the high court, I warned them in advance. So they knew I was going to be there because it would have been really weird for me to turn up in, shall we say, the benefits tribunal and just sit at the back. But you're playing no part in proceedings.

Absolutely no part. And it was a random day. each time I turned up, it wasn't a specially selected day with loads of interesting cases. I wanted to see a completely random day what goes on in these places day in, day out. And did it change your perspective? No. No, I've always had a huge respect for the work that is done day in, day out, in the courts and tribunals up and down the country. I was a member of something that no longer exists called the Council on Tribunals.

which was set up to advise government on the procedures for tribunals, but also to as a sort of quasi-inspectorate. We did go and visit tribunals. So I visited loads of tribunals, so I knew what they were about, and I admired what they did. And of course, as a family judge, even if you're in the High Court dealing with really serious cases, you're only doing the same job that the magistrates are doing in the family court,

which is staffed by magistrates and the circumstances. judges and district judges. It's all the same job. There may be more noughts at the end of the story, but it's the same job. It's still human lives as well, isn't it? Very human, yes. If you were to give a health check on our current judicial system, what would the outcome be, doctor? Well, it would be that it has been starved. It's been starved of resources at all points, and this has led to serious delays, not only in the criminal court, also in the family courts and to some extent in civil courts and tribunals as well, though it's not as possibly as a parent there. Not enough courts. Now the closure of court

buildings, so what used to be local justice, the village I grew up in in North Yorkshire used to have a magistrate's court. Then that was closed and everybody had to go down the road to the local market town. That was fine because there were regular buses and it's where everybody went anyway. And then that was closed. So we had to go to the county town. and they had to introduce a bus service to the county town because it didn't exist in the olden days. And now they've closed that one. So, you know, what used to be local justice where relatively minor local crime could be dealt with quickly and easily, and family disputes could be dealt with quickly and easily, has now become a long-distance thing,

which cannot be anything like as quick or as easy. So that's one example. Of course, they've withdrawn public funding for legal services for people who can't afford lawyers. So in cases between husbands and wives, there is no public funding available. Often means there's an imbalance because one of them is rich enough to pay for lawyers and the other one isn't. it means that many more cases go to court because what lawyers in family cases generally do is to sort things out

they work out a deal which is good enough for each of the parties and they broker that and that's what they do but of course the parties can't do that for themselves I mean can you imagine trying to work if you're really in dispute about what should happen to the house or what should happen to the children with an ex-partner, you wouldn't know what the law was,

you wouldn't know what the court was going to be interested in, you wouldn't know what the best deal you could expect if you went to court was, so it's very difficult to negotiate, and it enables one person to bully another. I'm not saying which way around that would be, but bullying is easily brought into that situation, and everybody's emotions are so fraught anyway.

So many more cases go to court than otherwise would go to court, because they wouldn't have to. and that of course leads to delays and frustration and everything and presumably the situation will get worse because there isn't a huge amount of money available for public services in this country and also the pressure that goes to tribunals because of increased contests over welfare benefits surely will be quite something won't it well i don't know exactly the figures as to whether things have gone up. One knows that certain categories of case in the courts have gone up,

but I don't want to pontificate about figures that I don't know anything about. But it used to be the motto of the government departments, whether it was the Department for Work and Pensions or Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, that they wanted to either extract or to pay the right amount of money. Not a penny more, not a penny less. You'll pay exactly the right amount of tax and we will pay you exactly the right amount of benefit. One gets the impression that more mistakes are now being made, probably in both of those two departments, which means that more people are either having to accept less or pay more or go to a tribunal. Yes. And I know that we've got a lot of questions from listeners,

and Royal with her Royal hat on has got some very specific questions for you as well. Just one, actually, which I've been absolutely burning to us since I find out you were our fantastic guest. I want to ask you about prerogation, if I may, Lady Hale, setting the scene in September 2019, Boris Johnson proroged Parliament over Brexit. Well, technically, her majesty prorogued.

Well, come on to that. Boris Johnson asked her late majesty, the Queen, if she would, obviously, pro-rug parliament. That in itself shouldn't normally be a big deal, but it was the way in which he was doing it. It was the timing. It was the length of the period he wanted to prorogue parliament before

in order to stop any objections coming in. And the man in which we saw Jacob Rees-Mogg creeping up to bowel moral to get her late majesty's agreement to that, of course, as a constitutional monarch, she had to act on the advice of her government. Now, you later ruled alongside 11 other Supreme Court justices, that it was unlawful to have done that.

And I know from conversations with people that members of the royal family were very, very, very cross about prerogation. They felt that the queen, when Prince William particularly felt the queen had been put in a very difficult position, an impossible position, because she had to do what she had to do.

You ruled it was unlawful, along with your colleagues, and you later said of that ruling, it was a source of not pride, but satisfaction. And I wanted to ask you, A, why the satisfaction, was it good to get one over on Boris Johnson and put him in his place? And B, how shocking did you find it as a judge in your position that the Prime Minister of the day felt he could bypass the laws of this country?

Well, what was satisfying was that we had been able to resolve a difference of a difference of opinion between the High Court in England and Wales and the Court of Session in Scotland, who had reached opposite conclusions about this. England had said, this is too political, it's not for us, we can't judge it. Scotland had said, it's a matter of constitutional law, of course we can judge it, and by the way, it's not lawful, and by the way, it's of no effect, which was the really interesting thing that they said. So it was satisfying that we had been able to convene the court in the middle of the vacation very quickly, get the case on, get it heard, get it decided in a remarkably short amount of time, it wouldn't have been worth out hearing it, obviously,

if you've waited the whole of the five weeks of the prerogation because it would have made no difference. So that was what was satisfying about it. It is never satisfying to have to tell anyone in authority that what they have done is unlawful. Isn't it? No, of course not. We don't want to do that and especially actually not in that particularly fraught situation and if you remember just how

excited everybody was I don't mean excited in a nice we're looking forward to a wonderful treat sort of thing it was a very very emotional atmosphere the whole way through the Brexit process and that

exacerbated the feelings around the place but for a government to decide that it can shut up Parliament, basically, for five out of the eight weeks before we would automatically leave the European Union without a deal and without any of the legislation necessary to smooth the passage, unless, of course, the deadline was extended, which it was. and so it was a totally unprecedented exercise of the power in question.

Of course, nobody had tried to do anything like that for ages. And so there would be differing views about whether it was possible to do it and whether it was indeed something that the courts could investigate. The English court didn't say anything about whether it was, lawful or not, they said it's just not for us, whereas the Scottish court, of course, dealt with all of the issues. And you only have to take a step back and think. Parliament's got a crucial role to play here. It may be making itself difficult. In fact, it was making itself difficult, but it has a crucial role to play. And to shut it up really was beyond what the powers,

what we call the royal prerogative, could possibly allow, at least without some explanation as to why. And we weren't given any explanation as to why. That's fascinating. One of the themes in your book is about miscarriages of justice. And many people believe that we are witnessing one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in the case of Lucy Letby. I'm not going to ask you to comment specifically on that. But might it already be showing us that there is a flaw in the jury system when we're asking people to take on board masses of very, very expert information, disseminate that, acquire knowledge, and then deliver verdicts?

Well, I'm not sure that that is necessarily a flaw in the jury system. I only dealt with jury trials while I was a part-time judge. Once I was a full-time judge, I didn't. So my experience is limited, and now a long time ago. But all the criminal judges, I mean not judges who are criminals, but judges who try criminal cases. We'll get on to them. Yes. That I know are great believers in the jury.

They, on the whole, think juries reach sensible verdicts in accordance with the evidence in front of them. and they don't want to be having to make the same decision themselves. So they're big fans of it, and obviously they're more likely to know than I am. But the real difficulty is our adversarial system. So juries and judges, for that matter, if it's in a judge trial, can only make up their minds on the material that's put in front of them. and if for whatever reason the defence decides not to put any expert evidence before the court nothing the court can do about that the court can't say I want you to put in expert evidence

in family cases we can do that but in criminal cases you can't you're stuck with the material you've been given by the prosecution material you've been given by the defence so you can't blame the jury for that because they made up their minds on the basis of the evidence they've been given. Right. It might be a fault in the system. I so wish we had longer, Lady Hale, I've literally got about two A4 sides of questions here and I'm only going to be able to squeeze another couple in. We talked to Harriet Harmon on the programme last week who was drawing our attention through her commissioned report into sexism and misogynistic behaviour right at the top of the legal profession. You've been right at the top yourself. You're the first woman to serve.

of as president of the Supreme Court. And I think the question so many of us want answered is what you think having those men who've definitely got away with a lot of stuff, what having them in court judging other people's lives might have meant to women who've appeared in those courts? What do you think? Well, I have to say, firstly, that I don't think that I encountered that sort of behaviour. it might have been to my benefit that when I started out at the bar

I was already married and I was married to another barrister. Did you see it around you though? Not much, but a bit. Not the sorts of things that Harriet Harmon's report is saying still go on, which does shock me a great deal,

it does. And yes, if people behave in that sort of way, they shouldn't be sitting in just. judgment on other people because it shows a complete lack of understanding and empathy for people who aren't like them. One of the most important things about a judge is being able to try and put yourself in the shoes of somebody who isn't like you. Absolutely. And we need to feel confident where we ever to be a victim in a peer in court that whoever it was who was

sitting in judgment would be able to understand our experience as well as the experience of a defence I do think things have got a lot better since I was a baby barrister. The judges did do some quite remarkable things when I was starting out. And now, you know, there are codes of conduct, there are disciplinary processes, there are ways of calling this behaviour out. A brief answer, and this is terrible to ask you to be brief on this, it's such an important question. What's happening with our freedom of speech?

Do you think that we need to change what the definition is between offence and a criminal offence? Well, I don't understand this non-crime speech. I find that quite extraordinary. Either things are criminal or they're not criminal. There are obviously difficult dividing lines. You know, what is and is not stirring up hatred? What is hatred and what is strong enough to stir up hatred? Staring up violence, that is relatively easy to define that, and that should be unawful. Staring up hatred is a much more difficult thing. And so that's where we've got ourselves into a bit of a tiswas. Yeah. I'm going to have to say goodbye. I love that, a bit of a tiswas. Just a touch,

Lady Hale, just a touch. We're going to have to end there. I'm effectively cutting off your freedom of speech and I apologise for having to do that. It's a really informative book. It's a hard recommend from me with the law on our side, how the law works for everyone and how we can make it work better. Many thanks for coming in, Lady Hale. Thank you for having me. Miss Hale, Lady Hale, I think it's a fantastic read because it is just the truth, isn't it, Jane? That you don't imagine that you're going to become embroiled in the courts until you do become embroiled in the courts.

And most of us just have no idea about the inner workings of that and what might be wrong with our court system, our judicial system, until we're so far in it, so preoccupied, obviously, with something else and wouldn't have the time or the power to be able to change it either. So I think that is a fantastic book, plugging a gap in our knowledge market. Yes. Anything else to add, darling? Yeah, I find, I was with several lawyers this weekend.

I have a few of them in my family. And I do just think if you have an understanding of the legal system and how it works and have spent some time in courts, in the legal system, you're just at such an advantage. because you're just understanding the way things work, which are mysterious and quite scary to the rest of us. And I think, you know, just understanding how to advocate for yourself, you know, is a huge advantage.

And I think most of us just get a little bit terrified. So, yes, a book that would give you a tiny bit of confidence in how to go about that instead of, if you're in my case, just not opening letters are terrifying. Really? Oh, yeah. Have you got a big pile of them? No, I've mostly dealt with them now, but, you know, it is a, yeah, my official document blindness is almost crippling sometimes. Okay. I've often thought it was a very, it would be a very valuable service to offer people to just be the person who comes around and makes you open a pile of letters.

It's definitely, there's a certain type of person who you need to be with you when you're doing that. Lovely stuff, it's Jane and Fee at Times.com Radio. If you'd like to be in touch with us, so much to talk about. We'd love to carry on hearing. about your first impressions created by and received by the in-laws. Fruitflies is my particular bugbear. And if you'd like to apply for the job of UK ambassador to Washington, just send us a short CV, we'll pass it on. I'd really like to hear how you think you would deal with current administration

and global issues in no more than four paragraphs. I thank you, so speaks an editor. Congratulations. You've staggered somehow to 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 it live, every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4 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. Offair is produced by Eve Salisbury and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler.