Off Air... with Jane and Fi - I don't run the organisation...yet

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

With Fi off on her Christmas holidays Jane is flying solo...with a little help from her friends.Fellow Jane and associate editor of The Times Magazine, Jane Mulkerrins, is in the hot seat to discuss some of her favourite stories of the year - and the lengths she will go to in order to get a story...including naked walks in the the British countryside.Also, former supermodel Paulina Porizkova discusses her new book "No Filter', finding social media in her 50's and being left out of her late husbands will.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Radio Producer: Rosie CutlerPodcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

hello it's a little sadness in my voice which i hope you can detect it's just jane here this week because uh fee's gone on holiday, which is selfish of her. But on the other hand, she deserves a break as much as anyone else who has to spend a lot of time with me. So it's Jane today, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and that's it, Thursday. And then after that is Christmas holidays for everybody, including you. And you can give yourself a break from us until we return on the 2nd of January so we'll be well rested it will be 2023 and let's hope for all our sakes that things look a little different um anyway we didn't win the world cup Wales didn't England didn't Argentina did I watched it yesterday it was a great game and Alison Rudd who's the Times sports writer was a really welcome

guest on the live show today which I also um got to do with Jane Mulkerrins, who, if you have heard the Times Radio live show, you'll have heard Jane on Thursday, and she'll tell us a little bit about what's inside the Saturday Times magazine. And she showed a little bit of broadcasting promise, did Jane? So it was decided that she would get the golden ticket to co-host the first hour of the live show with me today. And I really enjoyed working with her. So I don't think that's the last you've heard of Jane Mulkerrin. She's fabulous. Tomorrow, Katie Prescott, who's a tech correspondent, will be with me, which I know will be really interesting. On Wednesday, we've got Lucy Fisher, who many of you will already know. She's the Times Radio's chief political commentator.

There is nothing that woman doesn't know about the modern political scene and on Thursday I'll be spending a bit of time with Tom Whipple who is the Times science editor so he'll have loads of important stuff to say because that is a world I've got to be honest with you I'm interested in but don't know anywhere near enough about. So we thought we'd make the most of Jane Malkerrin's expertise and ask her, if she didn't mind, just to pick out some of her favourite stories of the year, her favourite articles in the Times Saturday magazine. You had a go at naturism, didn't you? Yes. And when I say a go, I mean... A good go.

You took your clothes off. I did. So this was a lesson to me in never suggesting anything to my editor that I wasn't 100% into, because I said we should do something about the rising number of naturists in the UK, and she said, off you go. So I was reading about, yeah,

the fact that 1.3 million people and apparently now regularly take their clothes off does seem quite a wild overestimate to me but anyway but apparently in lockdown lots of people did get into naturism um partly because i think they had nothing else to do um but i decided to spend a month going naked at many available opportunities. I went naked rambling in the South Downs. I did quite a lot of preparation to see who I would have gone naked rambling with, but I didn't realise it would be me and 20 men. Okay.

So that was my first foray into naturism, was a 12-mile hike naked with 20 blokes. And genuinely, how was that? It was actually lovely. It was a lovely day. There was a light breeze. It wasn't during the heatwave, was it? It was actually lovely. It was a lovely day. There was a light breeze. It wasn't during the heatwave, was it? It was just before the heatwave. I did some of it during the heatwave. I did some naked swimming and camping in the heatwave. But they were lovely. They were absolutely lovely. They couldn't have been more welcoming. They couldn't have made me feel more comfortable. I did keep asking them why there were no other women there.

And what was the answer? They didn't seem to be able to give me a straight answer. They said some of the walks women do come to. They did sort of, you know, we'd sort of talked around the fact that men are a bit more comfortable taking their clothes off generally because of lots of historical reasons. But they also said things like, well, don't try to understand women. And I thought, that's probably why no women come along to the talks. Fair enough. But I did also go naked swimming. I went naked camping. I did some naked yoga.

I went to a naked country club. So, yeah, I got fully involved. I would say I'm not in any danger of becoming a full-time naturist. But it was very liberating, especially the walk, actually. And did you, a serious question, did you feel free from judgment? Once the clothes came off, you were at ease with your nudity and you felt fine about it? Well, I think that when everybody else is naked, it's much easier.

It's a leveller. It is a leveller. Well, that was the other thing that one of the men, the men the lovely men in the walk said it is actually a real leveler because once you're naked you can't tell someone's wealth you can't tell their status you don't know what job they do it's it is a sort of um a very inclusive um hobby i suppose um i think the idea of it being a hobby in itself i found a bit strange i sort of think there are activities that are maybe heightened by being naked like swimming especially out you know in the outdoors but naked camping i probably wouldn't do it again that article is still available to read

online uh let's just do one more which i because this is much more serious and this is a very thoughtful interview uh with maurice sachi now just tell everybody who maurice sachi is so maurice sachi is uh well known as being one of the great advertisers uh of the 20th century he was um he did the advertising for the conservative party he had a company with his brother charles sachi um but he was also married in a great love story to the novelist Josephine Hart, who died, it was 14 months from diagnosis to her dying of cancer. And this wonderful interview by Alice Thompson, he really just opens up about his grief and how he just hasn't got over it. I mean, he still lives in this. It's a really poetic interview and it's so worth reading.

I mean, I had enormous feedback from everyone who read this piece because it's almost like an F. Scott Fitzgerald story. Well, all of us at some point in our life are going to experience grief, overwhelming grief in lots of cases, unfortunately.

But very few of us are able to express it. There's something about his ability to express it is just incredible. Well, I mean, let's not forget this is a man with such great command of language who invented Labour's not working as a campaign slogan for the Tories and which, you know, was a forerunner to take back control. He knows what he's doing when it comes to language.

And he'd actually written a novel, a short novel, a novella really, about sort of imagining meeting Josephine again at the gates of heaven. really about sort of imagining meeting josephine again at the gates of heaven um it's just it's an eccentric and beautiful kind of picture of of one man really trying to deal with losing the love of his life and and sort of how he has gone on in spite of it i think it doesn't hurt that he has lunch every day in the crypt of this incredible house with several martinis brought in by a housekeeper that's probably one way of dealing with it. It might be the afternoon easier, I guess. But actually, using alcohol, I mean, it is a depressant, isn't it?

It is. It's not going to, when he sort of gets to it in the evening. Do you think he gets anxiety later on? Well, I wouldn't be at all surprised. But it's an extraordinary interview. And Alice Thompson, I should say, won a press award last week for her interviews. And this is just one example of the phenomenal. She's also interviewed this year, Tony Blair.

She did, she's done all the Deborah. I'm sorry, I've lost. That's a terrible name. Deborah James. Deborah James. Thank you, Deborah James. She was very close to Deborah James and did her last interviews, which were also well worth reading if you didn't at the time. But Alice is great at getting incredibly sensitive interviews out of people who've been through a lot.

It's incredibly skilful and a beautiful read. That is Jane Markerens, who is associate editor of The Times Saturday magazine. And I thought it was so interesting that she picked out the Maurice Sarchie article because that was a really, really moving bit of writing about mourning and about grief. And actually, there'll be a bit more about that when we get to our interview with Paulina Porizkova, because she was also in an unusual position. When her husband died, they were in the process of getting divorced and it turned out he'd written her out of his will. So anyway, she had to grieve in a slightly different way. She was grieving for someone who'd done her a bad turn

right at the last minute. But we'll get on to her in a moment. Also worth saying that Jane Mulkerins and I did talk on the live show about Jeremy Clarkson. And about, I mean, I don't think it's unreasonable to say his absolutely hideous remarks about Meghan Markle in his column In the Sun over the weekend. I don't know about you, I have yet to meet anyone who thought what he said was in any way acceptable. It certainly wasn't funny.

And for those of us who have never seen Game of Thrones, it was completely meaningless. And today Clarkson issued, well, it wasn't an apology. It was just a statement along the lines of, oh dear, what have I done now? I'll try to be more careful in the future. But I don't think, well, will that have done the job or has it just bought him a bit of time? The next couple of days will tell us exactly what his fate is. But i don't actually run the organization yet okay let's get let's get on let's get on to our big interview of the day which jane malkerans helped me with this afternoon it was with paulina poroskova um she had been a very famous model a really famous model somebody whose face graced many a campaign many a magazine magazine cover. And she has now written a

book of essays called No Filter. And I've got to say, I was underwhelmed when I was told I was going to have to read a book of essays by a former model, but they are really, really well written. And she had an incredible childhood, grew up initially in the Czech Republic. Her parents escaped communism and the Czech Republic and went to live in Sweden. She was brought up by her grandmother, then she got out and went to live in Sweden, then her father walked out on her mother. Her mother and her father were, I think it's fair to say, slightly lacklustre parents. And there's an incredible bit in the book where she writes about how she was left to care for her three-year-old brother for quite some time when she was only nine.

And there wasn't an adult in sight for quite a number of days. She really does underplay that experience. And she takes us through her life and reassesses aspects of it and talks in fantastic detail about what it's like. She's now 57 to be ageing as someone who traded. And she's very honest about that, who absolutely traded on her beauty. So here is Paulina Parascova. Good afternoon to you. It's good morning to me back here in the States.

Well, that's your fault for not being in the United Kingdom. You want to come to London, live a proper life. Yes, I'd love to, and have a cup of tea. Yes, exactly. Well, we're having one now, so that's fantastic. You are going to be interviewed this afternoon by two women, both called Jane. So if you just say Jane a lot, that'll be absolutely fine. You've got nothing to worry about. Great, I can manage. I want you to tell us, first of all, if you don't mind, about your use of Instagram and how and why you became so well known to a

younger audience relatively recently. Well, you know what, if I had an answer for that, I could probably monetize it. But, you know, it was all just sort of, I feel like a fortuitous accident. And it seems like my life is comprised out of fortuitous and less fortuitous accident, honestly. I took to Instagram when my husband died because I was devastated and extremely lonely. You know, COVID was raging. So the world had shut down and I had nowhere to go. I had nobody to hold my hand. I felt so utterly, utterly alone. And I guess that's why I decided to reach out into the ether and see if there was anybody else that could hear me.

And it turns out that there was a lot of people suffering at the same time. And we all heard each other and people came to me and they helped me out. And then, you know, then they told me I helped them out as well by being vulnerable and showing them that not everybody has a perfect, enchanted life. But from the outside, your life had looked exactly that, hadn't it? Actually, it wasn't true. It was actually rather tough. But that wasn't what the general public believed about you and certainly about your husband, Rick. about your husband, Rick? Yeah, no, you know, it's the, I think in a way, I think me writing my book of essays was in a way a reaction to this too, is the assumptions that we make, not based on anything else, but our own desires and wishes when we look at somebody else. And

it can be somebody famous, obviously, celebrities have a lot of assumptions projected onto them. But it can just be the person in the store or in a taxi you know that they might be having a bad day but you know nothing about it so you just think oh that person's not very nice or whoa that person is extremely cheery and it's what lies beneath that is so interesting to me that every person has a story that you might not expect. And like me. Paulina, it's the other Jane here. Hello. Hello, Jane. Hi. So you also have used Instagram, not just to show that your life is less polished and perfect

than perhaps people might imagine, but also to show an unvarnished face of a woman at 57 um you've used instagram a lot i mean i i dug into your instagram over the weekend might i just say you are absolutely beautiful and we have you on the screen here in front of us you are absolutely stunning and i think it's very interesting that that you still struggle with the idea of presenting yourself in this unvarnished way that you have committed to, because you don't always feel confident. Is that right? No, I really do not feel confident at all. I don't feel super confident about my outside. I am, however, very confident about the inside. And this is what I'm sort of trying. This is my message is, or I'm trying to relay that as you gain your power on the inside, you need to convey that to the

outside in some way, shape or form. And I think that confidence is one of the sexiest things that, you know, on anybody, it's much better than actual, like, you know, mathematical symmetry. And so the confidence, obviously, is built from the inside. And I'm still trying to translate that to the outside because, as you know, and I have you on my screen, too, and you are also extremely beautiful. I love your hair. Come to London immediately, Paulina. Sure, I'd love to um but while we have gained this power at at our age we are simultaneously being told by society that we are now value less that we are not worthy anymore because we no longer

have the bouncy reflective surfaces of youth and And I don't agree, because I look at women like you, and I think, well, she's beautiful. And why I can't embrace myself the same way, I'm not sure, but I'm trying to get there. You're really honest, Paulina, in the book of essays, I'm really struck by how honest you're prepared to be. And you talk about the responsibility of beauty. And I just want you to talk to us about you talk about the responsibility of beauty and it's I just want you to talk to us about how hard it is to age when you were and you still are lovely I wish as Jane has already but when beauty was everything you had you were truly beautiful you would walk into a room and you could own it in an instant and now now you are an older woman. You're not an old woman.

You're an older woman. And is aging a tough thing to go through for you? It is ego crushing, but it is just ego. It's not confidence because I'm so much wiser and better as a woman. So trying to balance those two. So look, I made my living from the way I looked so my yeah like it was all about the way I looked um and I think because of that it's um when you start not being

seen quite as much because you're seen as I guess less beautiful I mean even in the way that you phrased it was like when you were beautiful yes yes I was conscious of that yeah yeah bitterly regretted it of course but carry on but isn't that funny yeah well that is that is I understand this is how we all speak and I'm trying to change that narrative that I was more beautiful than than I am now when fact, I'm far better balanced and far more beautiful on the inside. And so, and I think that translates to the outside as well. Like, I love the, I love the, the signposts of life that are printed on our faces. I think they're beautiful. You know, can we maybe switch classes and all decide to see this beautiful as well, just a different kind of beauty.

You know, it's fall as opposed to summer. Do you remember the very first time that somebody pointed to your beauty, made something of it? Well, yeah, it was very marked difference in my life because I spent, if you read my book of essays, you know, as a child I was bullied in school and I was known as the communist kid. So you better just explain that you'd grown up in the Czech Republic, hadn't you?

And then you'd gone to live in Sweden. Yeah, that's right. So and I was I was in Sweden. I was known as the political refugee kid. So that doesn't make people think of you as beautiful necessarily. Certainly not in school where I was like the tall, gawky kid when, you know, the popular girls were all short and busty and blonde. And then I went from that. I was so-called discovered by John Casablanca. And he sent me to Paris when I just when I turned 15 for the summer to try out modeling as a summer job. to Paris when I just when I turned 15 for the summer to try out modeling as a summer job. And so I went straight from this is the girl that cannot get a date, even if she had a gun,

to being in Paris. And the following day, suddenly I was beautiful. And so it was it was pretty clear to me that the girl that I saw in the mirror was exactly the same girl and that the only thing that had changed was my location therefore the way I looked didn't really have anything to do with me it was with the perception of other people. So Paulina Pariskova is our guest supermodel and author of a fantastic book of essays rather an insightful book of essays called No Filter. Paulina would you mind just talking talking us through your marriage to Rick Okasek, who is a famous rock star, lead singer of The Cars, and you were only 19 when you met. And it strikes me reading the essays that you've completely reassessed your relationship with him

in lots of ways. Is that fair? That's fair. And I think that happened mostly because of what happened after he died, which was that he disowned me in his will. And that was something to me that was utterly, utterly shocking and surprising because we were getting a divorce. We were separated for two years before his death, but we still lived together in the same house. And I thought we were best friends. So that is what made me reassess everything that I knew about him and thought about him. And then, you know, about myself, what, myself. What was our marriage really about? It seems that I was naive, obviously. I mean, yes, I met him when I was 19 and I felt madly and crazily in love with him. And he provided for many, many years, the kind of love that made me feel safe. And I think it's, I think love does blind you, doesn't it? You,

you might not be super objective about the person that, that you, that you're in love with. No, I mean, that's what I loved about your writing about your relationship, because you did enjoy the, he offered you a tremendous degree of protection, whilst also reading it through 21st century lenses I see control everywhere as well he he told you who your friends could be he told you what to wear did you not question it at all at the time I did question it I did question it and then I thought but you know he's he's older and he's wiser he understands what relationships are all about. And I don't. So I'm you know, he was teaching me how to have a relationship. And so I was you know, I just I went with it because I believed that was the right way to go.

He had it all figured out. You know, he was 41. I was 19. I thought that was very telling that you say in your book, Paulina, that you feel as if your model of relationships was basically arrested at the age of 19 when you met Rick. Have you had different sorts of relationships since? I separated. And this is where I found out that I had, in fact, fallen in love again, like a 19-year-old. And I was probably trying to make the same, recreate the same kind of a relationship, which was not very good for me. And the guy walked away from me. So that didn't work too well. Well, we have plenty of offers for you coming in on text. We're just looking at our social media.

You'll be very popular in London, so you do need to get over here. Get to the UK as quickly as possible. I do love you British people, so yes, why not? Yeah, you write brilliantly about the sort of emotional ambivalence around mourning somebody because you did mourn, and I'm sure you continue to mourn, Rick. But he was also someone who'd done you an awful lot of emotional damage not least by leaving you out of his will

yeah it that was that that you know what it's still to this day it's kind of uh it's hard to reconcile to in in many ways but oh you know it's three years now. And sometimes like just the other day, I was just walking around and, and having a wonderful time. And then I got smacked by this huge wave of grief coming out of nowhere and, and not really particularly identifiable as anything is just like a crushing sadness. And so that happens, that still happens. and I have no way of telling when and how it will hit me but when I was writing the book what what helped what really helped me was not the essays about how terrible I felt and how much I was grieving and how hard it all was but the the essay that I wrote about meeting him and falling in love because that reminded me of how much happiness I've had in my life and how much love

I had and for how many years and that I was really quite lucky yeah and so that you know the gratitude that comes with remembering that is is what's kind of carrying me forward well I'm really glad it is because it's very clear that you did have, however challenging it might have been, you had a special relationship with him and you are entitled to mourn him after all. Thank you so much for talking to us, Paulina. Really interesting.

Jane and Jane, thank you so much. And thank you so much for reading my book. That is the writer and supermodel Paulina Boryskova. Quite a lot to think about there, actually. In fact, this is one of the times when I do miss Fi because we could really have sunk our gnashers into that interview and talked more about it now in the podcast. But isn't it interesting that it's only now as she looks back on it at the age of 57 that she thinks that getting married to a rock star at the age of 19 possibly wasn't the best thing she could have done. In fact,

I don't think she married him at 19. It was a couple of years after that that they got married, not least because it turned out that Rick was actually married when he seduced her when she was 19. And she's just having to just revisit everything about their relationship whilst also really missing somebody. So it's an extraordinary set of circumstances, relatively uncommon, actually, I suppose, I hope, but definitely one worth reading about. So No Filter is the name of her book of essays. To your emails, and we love getting them, please do keep them coming to janeandfee at times.radio. It can be about anything. I'd be very interested, personally, just because I'm very nosy, in your Christmas plans. I want to know what you're doing. I want to know where you're going.

I want to know who you're doing it with. And we'll keep it anonymous. You can also tell us about some of the things you're going to have to be grinding your teeth about or possibly keeping your mouth shut about. I suspect there'll be a little bit of that in my Christmas domestic situation. Not for the first time. But look, I'm much blessed in many ways, so I'm not complaining all that much. Helen says, I'm happy to report the ongoing transfer of my loyalty to Off Air from the previous podcast that mustn't be mentioned. Your conversation about snake sexual equipment is unexpectedly sparking some strong memories for me. I was taken back to being at university and coming out whilst part of the evangelical

church. Now I had some really hurtful things, mainly along the lines of it not being natural, not part of God's design, etc. And what made me feel massively better was when my dad, who'd studied zoology, matter-of-factly pointed out that a percentage of most animal species are gay. Not sure if the snake's pleasure points are quite the same, but given that some people are still sceptical about the reality or importance of women's pleasure, maybe it is similarly significant to show it in the natural world. Thank you for all the reassuring sarcasm and hope you both have a lovely Christmas. And the same to you, Helen. Best of luck to you over Christmas. I hope it goes well for you

and give our best to your dad as well. dear Jane and Fi I caught up quickly with your podcast once I resigned from decades of public service and as mentioned previously you have wonderfully filled the missing gap of occasional office chat putting the world to rights aspects of both your lives and your many loyal listeners mirror my own and they're like a warm blanket of whatever is normal for us all these days here's my lovely and she sent us a photograph i'm just looking at it now here is my lovely lengthy hot water bottle which has been my great defroster in these cold weeks in bed and even on my lap reaching my tucked up feet and hands a litre of warm water from one litre eco kettle does the trick. I recently

returned from 11 days away volunteering to a house at four degrees inside. Not being able to fit in the six degree fridge my long hot water bottle came into its own as the house slowly warms up on a budget. Keep up the banter and the wonderfully honest and natural questioning and updates very best wishes from Sharon um Sharon thank you for that and I'm a bit concerned about your house being at four degrees inside I really do hope things have warmed up your hot water bottle is just legendary and I think you've positioned your reading glasses on top of the hot water bottle as well in the photo so thank you very much for that woman after my own heart um what's weird today of course is that the weather has suddenly got incredibly warm and that in itself is quite troubling um i should say that tomorrow's guest on the big interview is james runcie now i was thinking about him today not

least because i've just read his rather beautiful book tell me good things on love death and marriage but because i was in church earlier on and james Runcie is the son of an Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, fact fans. And I was in church today because I was at Southwark Cathedral and I had to read a lesson at the News UK carol service. And I should be used to it by now, but I was actually a nervous wreck. I also made the mistake of mistiming a coffee and also had an extraordinarily full bladder. But there is a saying in show business that you can use the full bladder and I like to think in my reading from the Gospel according to St Luke I did exactly that. But it's worth saying that I've never been to Southwark Cathedral before. It's only a little meander away from the office I'm in now. It's about five minutes walk and there's a very sobering bit

of information about the cathedral in the carol service programme. And it just pointed out that there'd been a church on that site since 606. And all I say about that is, it does put Liz Truss in perspective. Now, you've been listening to Off Air with me, Jane Garvey. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler

and the podcast executive producer is Ben Mitchell, but he's obviously working from home because I haven't clapped eyes on him for weeks. You can listen to us on the free Times Radio app or download every episode from wherever else you get your podcasts. And don't forget, if you like what you've heard, then you can listen live Monday to Thursday, 3 till 5, on Times Radio. And I hope you can join me on Off Air later.

Thanks for listening.