Off Air... with Jane and Fi - I don't believe in jet-lag (with Sir David Omand)

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

Jane has just about recovered from jet-lag after her trip to Glasgow a month ago. So much so that she considered a trip to B&Q this bank holiday Monday. She's joined by another Jane, Jane Mulkerrins, to talk about poetry, pinafores and penises. Professor Sir David Omand is today's big interview, he talks about his book 'How to Survive a Crisis'. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Assistant Producer: Kate Lee Times Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well, we'll muddle through as time is of the essence. I don't know what that means, but it sounds important. Right. I'm just going to turn myself up. Oh, yes. Hello. That's better. Right. Welcome to Off Air. It's not Monday, everybody. It's Tuesday. I've been so confused all day. Jane Garvey here alongside Jane Mulkerins, who is here because the other lady, what is her name? I'm thinking with a G. I think she went on a mini break, so hopefully we'll get some details tomorrow. You, Jane, have just come back from a work trip. Yes. But you're quite brusque. I mean, you said to me earlier, and I'm quoting here,

I don't believe in jet lag. Yeah, I don't believe in it. Why don't you? I think it's all in the mind. Can I just say, I flew back from Glasgow a couple of weeks ago, and I felt absolutely fine when I got to Heathrow. So you're right, it's nonsense, isn't it? No, exactly. I just think people make a bit too much of a fuss about jet lag.

I mean, I know people who sort of fly back from New York to LA or vice versa. There's only a three-hour time difference and they go on about being jet lagged. I just think have one long sleep and then just get on with it. I mean, no one ever died of being a bit tired. Did anyone ever die of being a bit tired and did anyone ever die of jet lag please do email if you know of any deaths that have been put in logged as jet lag but i just i i used to fly a lot when i lived in the us and and i think there is you do build up a bit of a tolerance to those sort of feelings and i don't i have occasionally experienced it i

once flew from ind to Los Angeles. Gosh, you're such an exotic person. You're much more interesting than Fi. Oh, no, she'll be back tomorrow with Tales of Glasgow, presumably, or wherever she went. But I'm aware that the feeling is quite uncomfortable when it feels a bit like being on a boat in the afternoon. But I just think, have an espresso, get on with it.

Yeah, so sorry for anyone who's been very ill from jet lag, for my insensitivity. But I just think you can just mind over matter. Yeah, but there'll be listeners who are members of Jet Lag Anonymous who are still attending meetings because of that flight they got from LA back to London. But they can't make the meeting because they're just a bit too tired. Their eyes are all red.

They need a little nap, a lie down. So thank you to everybody who has taken the time to email over the course of the last couple of days. I think that was the final bank holiday until the one, the really boring one in August. Do you remember that one? Do you know which one I'm talking about? I really enjoy all of your bank holiday podcasts. No, no, I don't mean the podcasts. I mean, it's the bank holidays. I love the podcasts.

I thought you were calling your own podcast boring. No. I was taking self-deprecation a bit too far. I really wouldn't go that far ever. No, I've always thought, I think as a kid I used to find bank holidays spectacularly annoying, but that was because the weather was always shit and also it was always quite dark. You know, the Easter bank holidays, Good Friday was always spectacularly annoying. But that was because the weather was always shit. And also it was always quite dark.

You know, the Easter bank holidays, Good Friday, was always deathly dull. She couldn't go out and it definitely always rained. And there was just Jesus on the telly. My friend calls them blank horror days, which I think is appropriate. Yes, I think that's great. I'm going to adopt that.

You can have that one. Blank horror days. Yeah, fantastic. I mean, I got as far yesterday as contemplating going to adopt that. You can have that one. Blank horror days. Yeah. Yeah, fantastic. I mean, I got as far yesterday as contemplating going to B&Q. I didn't actually go. And that's bad. I mean, going is one thing, but just thinking about it and then ruling it out on the grounds of possible tiredness is perhaps... You were maybe just still getting over Glasgow.

Yeah, I should be. April the 21st, I went to Glasgow. But it does take some getting over,. Yeah, April the 21st I went to Glasgow but it does take some getting over actually. No, it's lovely. I love Glasgow. We asked a couple of days ago, this is involving Fi, who once, she used to go to Hong Kong quite a bit. In fact, she spent time as a child in Hong Kong and we were talking about scaffolding and Lindy says, I'm listening from New Zealand. I've just been to see my daughter who is teaching in Hong Kong and her building, you are right, is covered in bamboo scaffolding. And Lindy has enclosed a photograph.

Thank you very much. We did not know that. Thank you for informing us that, in fact, bamboo scaffolding is still very much a thing. Now, have you got the email that's a poem, Jane, or shall I read it? I do have it. Yes. Do you mind reading it? I do have it. Yes. Do you mind reading it? I know it's actually addressed to Fee and I, but you won't mind, will you?

It's from Matthew. Thank you, Matthew. And you know that I have read poems on the podcast before. You have. And I got a lot of quite nice feedback from it too. Well, you didn't get a lot of nice feedback. One email. Yeah. So let's just, in the interest of transparency,

we're trying to set standards here in journalism. So you didn't get a lot of positive feedback. Yeah. So let's just, in the interest of transparency, we're trying to set standards here in journalism. So you didn't get a lot of positive feedback. Okay. You got one email. I stand corrected, but thank you for that email. And thank you, Matthew, for this. On you go. Fee and Jane, host of Times Radio fame.

Their show sparks curiosity, setting minds aflame. Listeners, obsessed with topics quite bold, from passionate embraces to secrets untold. Jane dreams of a career in the Ministry of Defence, a world of strategy, power, and suspense. In her imagination, she stands tall and strong.

Bit harsh, that one. Protecting the nation against apocalypse all along. Correspondents write in from lands far and wide, with stories and news filling the airways with pride. A tapestry of voices, a global connection, V and Jane embracing the world's reflection. But Jane, she fears an impending fate, the apocalypse looming a terrifying wait.

Yet tempting fate is something she mustn't dare, for destiny plays tricks as life loves to share in a future unforeseen in a bunker she'll find jane's eyes will meet with a figure one of a kind in west london's shelter no other than boris johnson staring back at her an unexpected conjunction now let's just find out the rock where is the rhyme with conjunction? Boris Johnson. It's a stretch. It is a bit. I admire his creativity. Last line.

So Fee and Jane continue their radio reign, bringing laughter, knowledge and stories arcane. Through sex-obsessed callers and dreams that take flight, they keep the airwaves alive, shining so bright. Oh, lovely. Thank you very much indeed, Matthew. I'm going to pass that on to Fee. I'll put that in my pass that on to

Fi pile, because she's an admirer of poetry and I know that she will enjoy that very much. But please never put into my darkest thoughts the idea that I'll be sharing some sort of apocalypse scenario with Mr B. Johnson, because I really do think, I mean, obviously it would be the end of the world, but I was about to say

that would be just, that would be the living end. And it would be. End of the world. I was about to say, that would be just, that would be the living end. And it would be. End of the world on many levels. Yeah, indeed, on every conceivable level. It's janeandfeartimes.radio if you've got anything to contribute, she said, hedging her bets. What have you got there, Jane? I've got an email from a contributor in New Zealand. I think we're OK to read out her name.

It's from Pamela. She talks about three things. One of them is about Parkinson's. She said the talk about Parkinson's was really interesting and I'm sure helpful to sufferers and carers. Could you do something similar for macular degeneration? It's horribly common in our age group and deeply, deeply depressing. OK, well, we can hope that, Pamela. Thank you. And then on a lighter note, she finishes her email by saying, and finally, is it a thing for older ladies to start noticing young men again? Just visual appreciation, you understand.

Anyone else? Pam, thank you. Well, I'm going to say in answer to your perfectly reasonable question, I think as you get older, you notice, in my case, I notice babies, and she's right, younger men. I think you just do, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And I've had a not... I mean, you just can't help it. It's the natural world, Pamela, what can I say?

I was about to say I've had some interactions with, not with younger men, but actually, in my case, with small children who do pick me out, particularly on crowded tube trains, and I end up sharing eye contact, and then they'll do a wave when they leave the tube, which I really like. That seems completely harmless.

Obviously, I'd be more excited, if I'm honest, if a younger man paid me a bit of attention on a crowded tube. Hasn't happened so much lately. I was going to say, I have a thing with younger men on public transport. Oh, there you go. Yeah. I've been on dates. I've been asked out on the tube what actually well not the tube the metro in new york different um yeah well let's just backtrack uh so how did that tell me exactly how that unfolded i will because can i just say i've

used public transport i've only been to new york a couple of times and i thought that public transport system was woeful compared to lond Oh, it was awful. There was absolutely no infrastructure. Smelly. And I have to say, since COVID, it's even worse. Right. It's dire. However... Nevertheless, romance bloomed. Fortune favours the bold.

Clearly. I, yeah, I was getting a late train home one night about 1am, wearing a red woolen cape, which is in my sort of winter wardrobe and a very handsome young man got on looked me up and down and said where are you going the woods oh good line such a good line sat down next to me three stops in you've got my number two days later we went out on a date and uh do we know the first name can you presumably you did find out what that was it's lost in the midst of time oh. Oh, I bet it isn't. I even...

I mean, he was a much younger man and wearing white jeans, but I was willing to look past them. Right. No, I can't... Anyway. White jeans are back, though, aren't they? Yeah.

I'm not sure I could ever go there, partly because I'm just so messy that it would be an accident waiting. I mean, you can always take them off. That's the thing. Right. I don't think, I think we'll book Jane again. Kate. I'm out of my depth here.

I can't cope. Earlier on the programme, we did do the Times Radio live show together, Jane and Jane. And I asked quite innocently, actually, if you'd seen the image of Harland, the Manchester City player, in his Y-fronts in the Manchester City dressing room. And you literally went slightly pink and couldn't speak for about three minutes after the perfectly benign inquiry.

Quite extraordinary. So you had seen it? I've seen it. Yeah. Yeah, a couple of times. And apparently that image has done wonders for the sale of Y-fronts. His were Calvin Klein, though, I noticed. Yeah, I mean, not everyone is going to look like Erling Haaland in them.

Tell you what, this is a retro reference, but somebody who looks better in their equivalent of Y-fronts than Erling Haaland is the late James Hunt. Have you ever seen that image? Oh, yes. Say that again, that yes in that way. Oh, yeah. I really do think you could get work in a sort of specialist area.

Jane Mulkerrins is my co-host today on Off Air. I hope people aren't upset. Jane's a little fruitier than our normal contributor, Fiona. Susanna Glover. Right. This is a query answered. And thank you to everybody who's contributed to this because it's something I genuinely didn't know.

It's another contributor from Sydney. Everybody's welcome, of course, but we have a lot of listeners in Australia. And I can't tell you how exciting I find that whole concept. This is from Donna. Bluetooth. You asked where Bluetooth came from. Why is Bluetooth called Bluetooth? Well, Bluetooth was a very early medieval king of Denmark.

It was used as the working name for the technology when it was being developed because this king connected different places in Denmark together under his rule, in the same way that this technology connects things together. When they found they couldn't register or maybe copyright any of their preferred names, they just fell back on Bluetooth and just used that. Also, the symbol for Bluetooth, the double triangle, is made up of the rune symbols for the original Bluetooth's name. Donna, thank you. I did not know that. And I remember when Bluetooth first appeared and it was suddenly available in my car,

but I didn't know what it was. I genuinely didn't know. And now it's everywhere, isn't it? I can't always get... I dare not ask you what you use it for. No, that's airdropping that I use these things for. Carry on, Jane. Can I talk about this email?

Is it smart? No, I can make it smart if you want me to. No, if it isn't good, get on with it. This is a message, an email from a listener. You were talking about eyebrow tattooing yes yes so this is from a listener who says uh they didn't say whether they are male or female uh now in their late 70s we take anybody by the way yeah exactly now i've been having eyebrows tattooed for 30 years um being of a fair skin variety my eye area always looked percy pig like the listener

says um so imagine my delight swimming on holidays the first time without losing those self-drawn uneven brows. But, the listener does say, make sure you find an expert therapist. I mean, I do imagine the horror of having a bad tattoo on your face. That's difficult to come back from. It really is difficult. And I think that is probably an area where you need a very specific, strategic amount of skill, don't you?

Yeah, I wouldn't go for the cheapest option. Absolutely not. You know when you get a quote from a builder, the temptation's always to go for the middle one. Well, is it the middle one? Maybe top end this time. In this case. In your own face, go spend all the money that you can afford.

It's your phys-og. Take care and go for the highest, highest possible price without bankrupting yourself, obviously. This is from Gillian. Hi, Jane and Fi and Jane. Greetings from France. I listen to you every day on my morning walk. As regards Maryland.

Now, did you see that? Not yet, but you're watching it, so I will. Well, I have finished it. As regards Maryland, it was not filmed in the Isle of Man or Northern Ireland, as Jane incorrectly said. It was actually filmed in Houth. Houth, is that right? Which is on the outskirts of Dublin.

Is that correct? Yes, Houth. Is that how you pronounce it? The island which can be seen from this house is called Ireland's Eye. Oh. I love the interview with Joe Nesbo, says Julian. Thank you very much, Julian.

Yes, Joe kept his hat on throughout the course of that conversation, which for Thea and I has long been a bit of a warning sign. That's all I'll say. I don't approve of men who wear their hats inside the house. And this is a house. I mean, it's a house of radio. No, I don't approve of men who wear their caps backwards. No, that goes without saying.

It's very, very common over the backwards. No, that goes without saying. It's very, very common over the pond. I remembered that when I was there last week. Are they still doing it? Oh, they're still doing it. All ages. Oh, for God's sake. Oh, I know. I will never understand that.

That and baseball, I will never understand. However many times you visit the United States. Actually, Maryland was, I thought the first episode was really good. And if I'm honest, by the end, it wasn't quite what I'd hoped for. But, sorry, that's not good. Afterglow is a show I've just started. Have you seen that? No.

That's BBC4, it's on iPlayer. It's either Danish or Norwegian. And it starts at the 40th birthday party of a woman who's just discovered that she's got cervical cancer. I mean, it doesn't sound like the greatest set up ever, but I thought it was really interesting. And I thought it was just something about a subtitled show that just makes you feel cleverer just watching it. But I have a difficulty because are you actually watching or are you just reading the subtitles? Because I love Borgen. I don't know if you watch all of Borgin, but I'm a huge fan of Borgin.

But I found that I would end up watching the subtitles instead of watching the performance. But then it's better to have the subtitles than terrible dubbing, isn't it? Oh, no, absolutely. Because you could get a dubbed version of Borgin, I think, couldn't you? And they didn't sound like themselves at all.

No, it was hopeless. So, I mean, I'm not saying don't watch Maryland. I'm just saying... Watch Afterglow first. I thought it might be better than it turned out to be anyway sorry carry on um can i just read this message from a listener in toronto canada um did i hear you mention aprons and how few people wear one nowadays in the kitchen and gardening i wouldn't be caught without one uh the listener says my kids have strict instructions to pop one in with me before i head off to the hereafter so that's nice oh you don't want any jewels in there nothing no furs nothing fancy just a pinny to pop on for the afterlife do you know um this is a very nerdy

anecdote but somebody that i got to know when i was on in local radio um he was my i was doing a fun run for charity. And my then employer was so concerned that I might peg out during the course of the fun run because I'm not the fittest, that I had a trainer. And I went to the gym once a week to train with this lovely old guy called Stan. Very sadly, he died a couple of years later and was buried in the BBC local radio local radio station boxer shorts which i was rather touched by actually have you got yours ready for when the time comes well i don't wear boxer shorts but um although having said that underwear having said that is there anything more comfortable than a boxer short for a lady of an evening on a cotton boxer short. Very comfortable.

Right. I won't be, I don't think I'll be buried. If I were to be buried, would I be buried in local radio themed clothing? Probably not. Although I do have a BBC hero from Worcester Pinney. I bet you do. I don't think we're going to be allowed to get buried by the time we get there, are we?

I think we're all... There's not going to be any space. There's not going to be no space in any way. Honestly, it's one of those things I'm baffled about is why people care about their funeral. Because I hate to break it to anybody. You're not going to be there, so it doesn't actually matter a toss.

What happens? Now, I know you didn't watch Succession, but obviously one of the themes is that, and this is an episode three spoiler, so everyone has seen it now, but Logan does die. What, the old guy? The old guy. And he's bought a mausoleum for himself, cut price,

off a dot-com billionaire who used to make cat food. So he's got this sort of incredibly fancy, ritzy mausoleum. And I think one of the best lines of the show, Shiv, his daughter, says, who is in a bidding war with Liberace and Stalin. So you can get the idea. OK, so I have got the idea that it's a very clever script. It's a very clever script.

But if one more person tells me that, I'll do time. I just, I can't. Good luck to you if you've managed to battle your way through every single episode of Succession. Stop cluttering up my social life by banging on about it. There was a snarky text actually today saying, why does Jane hate it so much when she's never seen it? I think it's just the fact that it just eats up a lot of my personal time. Reading about it.

Yeah, reading about it, hearing about it. Yeah, but are you one of those people who resist things because yes other people are doing them yes so i do that with books as well when everyone is reading the new hot book i refuse to read it just out of general defiance and awkwardness yeah and then when i do read it i read it on my kindle so that no one can see right so they you have succumbed but you don't want anyone to know exactly yeah okay so obviously i'll be watching succession sooner rather than later this is from georgina she says i think you asked for feedback well i love all your episodes and my favorites are the ones with no guests um okay georgina here's the guest for today uh which is going to mean perhaps that you stop listening but i urge you to give a little bit of time to

this guest because he is possibly not typical of the guests we have on our fair but honestly he was so interesting wasn wasn't he? Professor Sir David Omond. Now, he is somebody who's written... It is a serious book. I suppose some people might think, well, I'm never going to read it in a million years. And perhaps you won't read it, but you should certainly hear him talk because he's a guy who has really been there

when stuff was going down, to put it mildly. He's a former director of GCHQ. He's worked at NATO, and he was Britain's first security and intelligence coordinator, a role which was created, in fact, after 9-11. And Sir David has written a book called How to Survive a Crisis, which you really do need to read if you want to know how to stop a crisis, a common or garden crisis, becoming a total disaster. So Jane asked him how he defines a crisis, a common or garden crisis, becoming a total disaster. So Jane asked him how he defines a crisis. I think we've all, in one way or another, experienced what I call crisis. It could be in our

personal lives, it could have been at work. Bad things are happening and they're happening with a frequency and an intensity that means that the normal ways we have of coping with disturbance don't work. It's what I call the rubber levers test. You pull on the lever and nothing happens. It doesn't seem to be connected to the outside world. Quite often the crisis period doesn't actually last that long because then you finally find out what on earth has happened and what's behind it.

And then you can start to put into place the normal emergency management. So we have emergencies all the time. You know, there are fires and the fire service deals with them. There's bad weather, trees get blown down, local authorities clear up. So we're always having emergencies. But they don't all have to become crises if we've actually got the basic capability

to deal with disturbances and we've invested in resilience. If we haven't, then when you get into this difficult crisis period and you've actually for a little while lost control, you slide downwards into, frankly, disaster. Or the intensity of whatever's happened is just too big to cope with. recently was an example where no system of crisis management could actually deal with something on that scale. But if you have taken some basic precautions and invested, then most of the bad things that happen, you can actually manage your way out of it. I don't really like talking about crisis management,

although there are lots of courses at management schools, because I think crises manage you for that period. So just to put that in real world terms, you've obviously got a very wide spanning career in lots of different roles. What are some of the crises that you would call crises that you worked with and dealt with in the course of your career? The whole series of terrorism attempts and sometimes successful attempts after 9-11. That's one series of crises. But there the crisis period was quite short. The police service knew and the security service knew how to respond. At a political level, however, at a national level, it can be very difficult. 50 years ago was my first direct experience of a government crisis.

I was the junior private secretary to Peter Carrington, who was defence secretary. And it was the three-day week because there'd been a fourfold increase in energy costs. Inflation was running at high double digits. Remind you of anything? And the government was running out of room, of road. the government was running out of room, of road. And at night in Whitehall, you know, we were working by candlelight on the days when the electricity was turned off.

Sounds very romantic. Well, not really, because what we were looking at were the daily reports of how much coal was left in the coal stocks to fuel the power stations and you could see how long the government had and then some bright spark decided to go and have a look at the coal stocks and discover the bottom layer was waterlogged and couldn't be burned so suddenly that doom feeling, which is that the government can't survive. And it didn't. No. And we ended up in 1974 with a minority Labour government. But isn't it interesting?

I'm just thinking about Turkey and Erdogan winning the election, even after the nightmare of the earthquake, which a lot of people at the time were saying would finish him. It's interesting, isn't it, that the government you described there in Britain did collapse inevitably as a result of that. What's the difference? My hypothesis would be because there wasn't confidence that the government could actually manage the situation. But people put their faith in it. I don't get it.

In Turkey, I think President Erdogan was the strong man. And when things are very, very uncertain and there's a lot to be done, probably people instinctively go to the person who's got a track record. He might not like everything he did, but got a track record of getting a grip and doing stuff. But I suppose what I'm getting at is, I think it's universally acknowledged that the Turkish authorities didn't handle the aftermath of the earthquake particularly well

and should have foreseen it and the buildings were poorly constructed. This is public opinion, isn't it? Yeah, I guess so. And, you know, when in doubt, hold fast to nurse. Was that Harold Macmillan's statement? Can you talk about politicians you admire? I mean, Jane and I were talking earlier,

and the only one you actually praise a couple of times is William Whitelaw. And very recently, you don't seem to have a lot of time for any leading politicians. Would that be fair? Or were some better than others? Oh, some are better than others. But the point I was making in referring

to Willie Whitelaw, and others that I worked for, such as Peter Carrington and Francis Pym, was they were a wartime generation. They had been bloodied in war. They'd proven themselves. All three of those ended up being awarded the military cross for bravery. And they had nothing to prove, either to themselves or to anyone else. Whereas a modern generation, younger generation, I think they're always looking over their shoulder. And this is where you, without wishing to try and psychoanalyse politicians, you have to wonder whether the self-confidence that they exhibit

is actually on the surface, but underneath, they're still desperately trying to prove themselves. You do also, though, on that note, you also talk about Ukraine and leadership and Zelensky. And I think there's a brilliant line where you talk about Ukraine and leadership and Zelensky and you I think there's a brilliant line where you talk about realizing when you when Russia invaded what he had to provide first was an authentic narrative of resistance inspiring his people by his example of remaining in Kiev and giving Ukrainians a historic account of their nation to which they could rally which I think is

really interesting because that's sort of you're saying that he was, he's an actor, he was playing a role, but it worked in that case. And he had the good sense, if you like, the innate statesmanship to realise that's the first thing that the leader must produce is that narrative. Otherwise, it's collapse. France in 1940 didn't have that narrative. Britain had because Churchill, famously using his rhetoric, produced his blood, sweat and tears speech. But both Zelensky and Churchill didn't make the boosterism mistake. They didn't just rely on talking up the situation.

Well, let's move on to Boris Johnson. They actually did the hard work. I mean, in Churchill's case, getting Beaverbrook in to really shake up aircraft production. In Zelensky's case, you know, meticulous, meticulous detail in getting his armed forces the equipment they need to survive. I mentioned Boris Johnson because obviously he crops up during the course of the book because obviously COVID was the last serious crisis to face this country,

which has been a very fortunate country, hasn't it really? Let's face it, in almost certainly in the last period of time, we've been incredibly safe and secure in Britain, which perhaps has made us somewhat complacent. And I wonder, I mean, you say that Boris Johnson didn't attend the initial Cobra meetings tackling what was then coronavirus heading our way, or so we assumed. And you call that a major failure of leadership. What do you think should have happened? I think he should have been advised. Maybe he was, I don't know, I don't have access to the inner records, to demonstrate that he was in charge and to exhibit leadership, even if it meant, you know, cancelling things that it long had in the diary and delegating other matters to say, no, this is an important, clearly, potential pandemic,

even if it, like SARS or MERS, doesn't end up as a disaster. Nonetheless, I have to show that we're all in it, you know, the full focus on what needs to be done. And that message filters out through the central civil service, it filters out to local government, it filters out to the National Health Service. It's an important message that in a potential crisis, now, as it turned out, the wonderful work on vaccines that was done has

saved us from what otherwise we'd still be in the midst of the pandemic now, if it wasn't for that. So I don't want to sound as if I'm just criticising everything that happened over COVID. A lot of very, very good work was done. But it just irked me that at the very time when the leader should step forward, it appears. He was unsure of what to do and didn't really feel he had to do it. Well, he had to. That's his job. So what do you think about the WhatsApp messages, the idea that these WhatsApp messages should be shared of the ones

sent by Boris Johnson to, we're told, 40 colleagues, including the current Prime Minister and the former Prime Minister, Liz Truss. Should they be shared with the COVID inquiry? Yes, I'm very clear about that. I think one of the things the inquiry has to establish is what else was going on in those early months when COVID started to appear. Because governments aren't just dealing with one thing. So what were those other things? How much attention was being given by ministers to those rather than to COVID? Were there indeed disagreements between officials and ministers and doctors and scientists?

If we're going to get to the bottom of what happened and how the pandemic was managed, these are questions which I think Lady Hallett is perfectly entitled to ask. Of course, maybe it would be best if a lot of that was not made public, the detail of those messages, if they're not directly relevant. But indirectly, they are relevant to the inquiry itself, to give a sense, probably a rather vivid sense, of how ministers and senior officials were actually working together or not. We're talking to David Omer, former director of GCHQ and author of How to Survive

a Crisis. Now, Jane, you were just saying that from your own journalistic experience, a heck of a lot of business is done on WhatsApp. Yeah, absolutely. It's actually terrifying. I mean, I know that we all do use WhatsApp in a, you know, as a matter of course, these days, but I know a lot of people in government and in other high level jobs. And it horrifies me how casual it seems that the very important business is conducted over WhatsApp. Now, I'm assuming that when you were working in government, that sort of thing, I mean, we didn't have WhatsApp, but that sort of casual communication was probably very much frowned on. That's right. I mean, I find it almost unthinkable that serious matters affecting the health and welfare of the public are being almost decided, and in some cases perhaps even decided, in these short, snappy, zippy kind of messages. What should be happening is that ministers should be getting considered advice, scientific advice if it's necessary or medical advice. They should have that pulled together by their senior officials, have an opportunity to explore it in very, very private circumstances

so they can question the advice and officials can push back and say, you know, you shouldn't have said that, Minister, or there's a real problem over here that nobody seems to have spotted. Can we talk about it? You can't do that in the full glare of the media. It's got to be done privately. But if you have what I would regard as extremely shallow exchanges that don't really bite on the difficulties of the issue, you're going to get bad decisions. What about pandemic

planning? I mean, you talk a lot about being prepared in this book and the importance of preparation, which is not the glamour side of things, is it? It's endless hours of dogged research and then procurement, presumably. I mean, there is literally no showbiz element to this at all, but it's so important. And when COVID came calling, we just didn't have the equipment, did we? It would appear we didn't, no. There are a number of reasons for that. One is the long period of austerity. If you remember after the great financial crash, budgets were cut, local authority budgets were cut,

the health service was put under pressure, whilst at the same time having to expand its range of services, introduce new treatments and so on. So the health service was under a lot of pressure. And there wasn't the cash around to invest in something that might not happen because there were so many things that were happening. That's where the money had to go.

And this is the problem you always get into with government, that unless you have some very determined people at the top, all the money will go to fixing the small leaks that are in the bottom of the boat, rather than saying, actually, the engine in the boat doesn't work. And if we run into rough seas, we're going to fander. You do also talk about places where it's being done better where there is more of a sort of um an arc of thought about what could happen and um now jane garvey's obsessed with the threat of nuclear war i'm obsessed with sweden so we both very much

enjoyed the part of your book where you talk about the swedish civil contingencies agency which has distributed all of these leaflets in 2018 to households asking, if crisis or war comes, what would you do if your everyday life was turned upside down? And you've actually reproduced, I think, some of the list, the Swedish list for us. Well, first of all, why don't we have one in the UK? And second of all, what's on your list for the listeners? Well, let me first acknowledge the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, MSP, who were kind enough to say, yes, you can actually show the British public what we have already shown the Swedish public. They have always felt

that defence in its widest sense is an an all-of-nation business, civil as well as military. And, of course, they have lived for many years fearing Russia. And probably, in terms of public opinion, they were more confident. Now, when I was security intelligence coordinator after 9-11, we did persuade the British government to let us send a booklet to every household in the country. It was quite short, much shorter than the Swedish one.

Did we? Because I don't remember that. Well, it's surprising how many people do. And when there was a follow-up survey, we discovered that an awful lot of households had pinned this little booklet with the essential telephone numbers to ring in an emergency beside the telephone. Right. In the days, of course, when houses had fixed landlines.

I may say it took quite a lot of persuasion to get ministers to allow us to do that because there was an underlying fear we might spook the public. You know, it would look like panicky somehow, because the terrorism threat was very public and very evident. We had the same, I remember, in persuading ministers to allow us to run a full-scale live exercise of a terrorist attack on the underground,

which we did by taking over Bank Station at a weekend. But once ministers had sort of said, well, you really need to, or we'd said, we really need to test those procedures, the sensible decision was made. In that case, you'd better make it very public and we'll have, I think it was Sky TV, actually filming. So there could be no discussion at all about the possibility of this being done in secret.

It was utterly open, right. Or being done, you know, to frighten the public so you get some new legislation through Parliament. When there were terrible terrorist attacks on the underground, did people benefit from that incident? Oh, hugely. They did, yeah. There were things uncovered, which everyone knew about,

but it became rather dramatically uncovered, which took much longer to fix. So, for example, mobile phones didn't work underground. The three emergency services didn't all have the same radio equipment. That's been fixed. And so over the years, a lot of the obvious vulnerabilities have been put right. But thank goodness we did conduct that exercise, which also involved the hospitals mobilizing to take emergency,

you know, the casualties and so on. That's the sort of area that I think we do very well. It is regularly practiced and rehearsed. But the Ariana Grande concert attack showed that even so, we can be tested. And the inquest found, I'm afraid, that some of the emergency service response wasn't as good as it should have been. So you also talk in the book about the sort of, we have managed to reduce numbers of terrorist attacks on things like hostage situations in the air. But obviously, those threats have been replaced by other sorts of threats now.

And you talk about one of the biggest threats being cyber attacks, and not just to large firms that might have a great infrastructure, but also all companies and small companies too. In a nutshell, if you're a business owner, how can you prevent, or how can you try to prevent or do your very best to prevent cyber attacks? First step is anticipation. So think about what actually would happen if suddenly all the screens went black. You can't get access to your customers' data or your suppliers' data. You've been subject to a ransomware attack.

And up pops a screen saying, in Bitcoin, please pay so many thousand pounds. This will be chilling the blood all over the nation, this. But anyway, carry on, David. But it happens every day. And this is not the great Chinese state or the Russian state. A lot of this is straightforward criminality. Some has some state assistance too,

but the point I'm making is that you have to visualise. What's it going to be like? What am I going to do? Who's going to be in charge? What happens if I'm away on holiday and this happens? And you kind of work through in your mind. And then you probably say to the small team, if it's a small or medium-sized enterprise, can we exercise this?

And let's work out which one of us is going to go on the radio. And be upfront about it. Explain. And then you can start thinking, well, if we did get into it, which company would we turn to to try and get technical support? Because if you're a small or medium-sized company, you're not going to have that in-house. You'll have to buy it in.

So would it be a good idea to have a dormant contract with such a company that in an emergency you can say, right, here we are? This is not rocket science. This is very, very basic contingency planning. But unless you've kind of lived it in your mind, you're going to get caught out when it does happen. I think that's your book in a nutshell, really, and your advice, isn't it? We should say it's not all negative or critical. You are very, very clear that the London Olympics were a triumph

and because they were properly planned, nothing went wrong. And it was a period of, I think, incredible happiness, actually, for all those of us who remember it. So it's not all negative by any stretch. Oh, it certainly isn't. I don't want to be portrayed as just seeing the dark side. But the lesson, of course, of the 2012 Olympics is how much effort by a great many people in different organisations had to go in.

Professor Sir David Omond talking there about his book, How to Survive a Crisis. And I think, Jane, we both got the sense that this was a man who had just, you know, he'd been listened to, but he was like a lot of people who are properly senior. He wasn't throwing his weight around, was he? No, he was very measured in his answers on every topic. But you could tell there was so much knowledge and experience behind every one of them.

Yeah, and when you meet, and I am going to generalize possibly and just say it tends to be men who think of themselves as important they're not usually that important whereas then you meet someone like him who's had use as you say years of experience properly wise and but utterly understated and that's how you can tell they're the real thing. Anyway, I really enjoyed talking to Sir David Omond. And if you're interested in the book, it's called How to Survive a Crisis. Right. This is an email titled knobs and knockers. And I think it comes from a really interesting perspective. We'll keep it anonymous. But the listener says, I enjoyed your bank holiday email special, and it kept me entertained. The joy of listening to you is that I always feel part of the conversation and can often be heard to be chipping along with you as well as sharing the laughs.

I'm a trans man, so I know that my experience is a unique one, having grown up and having gone through puberty in a woman's body, but living the last 20 plus years in a man's. So I thought I had something to share on the subject of men fiddling with their tackle and you might not like it. Right, Jane, over to you. So our listener says, firstly, I think that women are just as prone to adjusting their bras and boobs in public as men are at relocating themselves down there. I'll grant you that women often do this more subtly and discreetly than the hand down the trouser front approach of a good shuffle but i do think it's just as common but maybe less affronting um secondly our listener says there's a huge difference between the two sets of genitalia and you can't appreciate it until you experience it which i do think is an interesting perspective that not many of us will

have no absolutely not where i disagree i don't actually think you do see women adjusting their boobs in public. Or maybe it's that I don't notice. Do you think that could be it? Yeah. I think maybe fiddling with your bra strap. I think that goes on a lot because they are annoying. But I would never adjust my boobs in public. No.

But I do think that the hand down the trouser, as discussed, it's extraordinary how many men you just see openly doing it. Walking down the street. Walking down the street with their head up. Good old readjust. Yeah. Anyway, as we both said, this listener is coming at this from a really fascinating perspective. So I just want to read a bit more. After several stages of lower surgery, I completed my physical transition with a phalloplasty in 2010 and have since been living with a perfectly functional penis. Now due to the biological limitations of erectile tissue and the

need for implants it is slightly larger in a flaccid state than a lot of a lot of men but still in the realms of normal so I can't imagine that my experience is that much different to that of cis males. Depending on the choice of underwear, your day can be punctuated regularly with the need for an adjustment or two, as these little fellas are a lot more mobile than I ever remember boobs being. Why is that? Well, because I don't know, and nor do you. I'm looking at you for... You can't possibly know. Okay. And if you don't attend to them, the consequences can be very uncomfortable and pretty painful.

For myself, there's also the added embarrassment factor of certain physical activities initiating the embedded pump for my erectile implants. The first time riding a bicycle was a particularly eye opening experience and needed a deft and swift correction. and needed a deft and swift correction. The fact that there is a difference and that men have a genuine need for more regular delving and alteration of their adjustables doesn't mean that there should be more attention applied to the proper etiquette of doing so. I think you're quite right that most men are far less inhibited about doing so, and the majority of women are more reticent.

about doing so and the majority of women are more reticent i also just want to say that um to the listener who's had a phalloplasty and i've read pieces about that surgery and it's it's quite an extraordinary surgery so just fair play to you uh listener for going through with that because it's a grueling and difficult surgery to have and I know the recovery is it's not easy and it's a huge commitment so I just want to say as well as thank you for this interesting email just yeah well done on your on your bravery and fortitude in going through to live your identity yeah because it must have been as you say Jane quite I was going to have to say the word journey I'm, because I can't I can't think of any other word that actually fits the bill here. But to that listener, thank you very much. And we welcome all input about just about any subject under the sun.

So if something that we've been discussing has tickled your fancy, you know what to do. Jane and Fee at Times.Radio. Jane, thank you very much. Times, I think you've let yourself down, you've let the school down, but I've enjoyed your company. Thanks. I hope to be allowed to return and lower the tone significantly sometime soon. Well, we'll see about that. you did it elite listener status for you for getting through another half hour or so of our whimsical ramblings otherwise known as the hugely successful podcast off air with jane garvey and

we missed the modesty class our times Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler, the podcast executive producer. It's a man. It's Henry Tribe. Yeah, he's an executive. Now, if you want even more and let's face it, who wouldn't, then stick Times Radio on at 3 o'clock Monday until Thursday every week and you can hear our take on the big news

stories of the day, as well as a genuinely interesting mix of brilliant and entertaining guests on all sorts of subjects. Thank you for bearing with us and we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon.