Off Air... with Jane and Fi - I draw the line at the Sugababes

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

Ding! Ding! Gloves up gentlemen.As extracts from 'Spare' hit the papers Stig Abell joins Jane and Fi to talk sibling rivalry and picks through the accusations Prince Harry has levelled at his brother, Prince William, and the revelations about his own personal life.Also, lawyer turned bestselling author Nadine Matheson discusses her new police procedural 'The Binding Room' - the sequel to 'The Jigsaw Man' in the DI Henley seriesIf 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.

so it was very much breaking news throughout the program today wasn't it jane but but the heavy heavy what do they call them? Oxford commas around those. Yeah, I still don't know quite what an Oxford comma is. I might have got it wrong. Inverted comma? Is there a verted comma? Oh, look, I don't know. Look, all we really want to talk about is Prince Harry's book.

Well, I say that, of course, but you've been boldly stating for quite some time now that you're not that interested. Well, I won't read it. I'm not going to buy it. Well, I'll give you a lend of my copy. I've already said that. But as we found out today, there's actually no need for anyone to buy a copy of The Blooming Thing because you're just going to be...

Did you have a Nerf gun in your house when you girls were younger? Yes, we did have one of those. Okay, I feel already like I'm at the eight-year-old's party where everyone's got a Nerf gun and they're just firing these foam bullets of Harry's personal life at me. It's too much, isn't it? Or is it too much? Or is it, I suppose, you know, he was paid a lot of money to write this book. So he must have known that by agreeing to a mighty, mighty fee for his memoir,

he was going to have to deliver. Yeah. And I guess he probably has, but at what personal cost, I don't know. And I should say, I really want to just say that at least one person texted the programme today and just said, what about Prince Andrew? And I do think sometimes we are in real danger of forgetting about him. And I just think let's every now and again just say Prince Andrew every time somebody has a go at Harry.

Yeah, I'm with you on that. And thank you to have pointed that out. You can't bring stuff like what Harry is talking about back. You know, you can't reel it back in. It may feel incredibly good in the moment to get it all out there. I'm quite a fan of that, you know, getting it all out there. But he can't reel it back in and he's got kids now. And I just don't know whether... I don't know whether I'd want my kids, Jane, to read quite so many personal details. I'm not sure I'm ever going to tell my kids how I lost my virginity.

Can you imagine having that conversation? No. Gather round. Gather round, girls. It's high time you... Of course not. No, but that's what i mean it just seems really um i'm actually feeling a bit upset to know so much already on a thursday afternoon four days before official publication day but i mean lots of celebrities um spill their beans and tell their

truth in their biographies don't they and their autobiographies and i'm always amazed like you by the level of detail some people are routinely prepared to give up. But there is something different about a member of the royal family. And I probably sound ridiculously pompous saying that. There are people listening outside the UK who just think, oh, just celebrities. It's just a blur. It's just a ginger blur, what you're going on about. But here, there is, and certainly when the Queen was the late queen was alive um there was genuine reverence for her and i think it's actually very telling of course that all this has happened after she's died um and i don't know i we did have a conversation didn't we with stig

and we'll hear a little bit of that now at which point i just began to get rather pompous and serious so unlike me and ask just what this family is for when they're just giving us a lot of opportunity to hear a lot of tawdry detail we probably don't need to know, as you say. And also, many of us are just re-examining our own family lives and thinking, well, at least we're not as bad as them. But they're supposed to be this very important, dignified and unifying force yeah i also just

more and more i just think there's a different way that they could have done all of this so they could have said the things that are you know burning away inside them but they could have accompanied with it and now i'm going to sound really pompous they could have accompanied it with something that would be helpful to everybody else. So there is a conversation, obviously, about army veterans and how they feel when they've left the theatre of war about the people they've killed. And Harry has talked about killing 25 Taliban fighters and how he didn't see them as people. He saw them as chess pieces on a board.

And that's a relevant conversation to have. But there isn't any of that going on. You know, I mean, maybe that follows in the, you know, fantastically inclusive, helpful 27 part Netflix documentary series Freebinder available with part one self-help magazine thing that they're going to bring out. But at the moment, it's not that. So it's just a bit too much. It's the end of a very long week for us jane can you hear it's the end of a very long and it's only it's only the 5th of january um i know as well we had um we had various funny texts today from from listeners who are you know in some cases just fell up to the back teeth with it and other people having claimed to

have spotted editions of Harry's book out in the wild, only to then realise they didn't quite actually see the book. But it is on sale in Spain. Anyway, it's all very peculiar and discombobulating. Shall we get the thoughts of a man? Yes, that's what we need. Bring in a man. We needed something.

And not just any old man, but a top man. Stig Abel joined us on the programme today to do our hero and villain slot. Now, he is Times Radio's breakfast jock. He is. Except he's exactly the opposite of a breakfast jock. When I started in local radio, the breakfast jocks were always, I mean,

larger than life. A terrifying phrase, which I've always associated with utter idiots. I don't think Stig Abel has got his name in large italics down the side of his car. I suspect he, I don't think he has a spoiler either, but he is. I'd love it if he did. It'd be great if he had a personalised car. I'd love it. I would love it. Let's check up on them. Anyway, he is Times Radio's breakfast co-host alongside the esteemed Asma Mir. But Stig took part in our very successful heroes and villains slot this afternoon.

And what he actually brought to the party was some deeper thoughts on the subject of sibling rivalry and princes. Well, as we now know them slightly, unfortunately, Willie and Harold. I'm going to tell you who my hero and villain is and allow people to make up their minds and it is of course harold and willie the two together because people in my experience tend to be either team harold or team willie and therefore in each of their minds they would regard one as the hero one as the villain and this leak today i don't know what you've made of it we sort of came into it this morning um it is a very striking story I mean the very basic I mean I think that you know you can feel sympathy probably for everyone in this

you might say these are quite damaged people for lots of very good reasons the fact that Prince Harry wore a necklace that got damaged in a scrap with his brother I think might tip him slightly towards villain territory. I have this view that men should never wear necklaces in any circumstances. Yeah, that's definitely the point to take from the whole story. Is that what you've taken from it? No, it is. Is that just me?

No, it is. It does also strike me, this is the worst fight since Colin Firth and Hugh Grant in Bridget Jones' Diary. These sort of two 35-year-old men sort of slapping at each other in the kitchen, tearing each other's jewellery, damaging the dog bowl. Harry didn't want to tell Meghan, so he told his therapist. There is definitely an element of farce in all of this,

which I absolutely lustily enjoy, but I am told that we have to take this seriously as well. So on a serious point, I do think the world is dividing itself into teams and people probably will say you just heard it from from one of your listeners they're saying a lot of people who got in touch with us today I think were probably team William would regard Harry as a villain but the counter argument is that you can understand why Harry has gone through an awful lot in his life uh might have a bit of antipathy towards the establishment as well.

So I think that the world is splitting these people into heroes and villains. And I know my family, for example, my daughter, my eldest and my wife watched the Wretched documentary, all six episodes of it, and they came out hugely key. I watched it too. And I take issue with your use of the adjective wretched. Why was it wretched? You haven't seen it, have you? No, my argument, I suppose, is that, and I think it clearly isn't wretched. Like I said, my wife and my daughter thoroughly enjoyed it. I think there is a paradox at the heart of Harry's complaints here,

which is that he is complaining about an intrusion into his own privacy at the same time as monetising his own privacy. And I think that's difficult. He will say, understandably, if I don't talk, the space will be filled by lots of other people. And I think that's an argument you can take as far as you want it to. But there is something slightly sort of annoyingly plaintive about it, I think, on all sides. But some people regard William as this sort of slightly unappealing, glistening figure who wants to paint himself as this great family man and it's quite a good thing that Harry is showing a certain amount of sort of roughness beneath it. My other

theory which I don't think you're going to agree with is also that why do siblings have to get on after they reach adulthood? My eldest and my middle child 13 and 11 they don't like each other and I said well wait till you're 18 and then you never need to see each other again. Go out and enjoy your lives. You never have to cling to each other anymore. We have to pretend that there's this great fantasy royal family that exists in our minds. I mean, who cares about that anyway? That William and Harry will get together

in a giant man hug at some point beneath Prince Charles's benevolent gaze. And I'm not sure that's how families need to work. If these siblings don't need to get on with each other and if they don't get on, then they can just go off their own separate ways. What do you think William should do now, Stig? Should he respond in any way

or just maintain this silence? I was talking to Roy and Nika about this at the Sunday Times Royal Cross and I don't know what he can do about it because he could get one of his posh mates to give him an interview in the same way Harry's doing with Tom Bradby. And but there's so much stuff circulating that any journalist who interviews him, for example, would have to ask him lots of questions he wouldn't want to answer. You would imagine. And if he starts denying, do you remember that doorstep of him where it was one of those very rare examples of a doorstep that works?

Someone said to him, well what is your family racist then he went we are not a racist family the cardinal sin of someone in the public eye don't repeat the question back to someone it just gives them a line and of course he did that so i don't know what i don't know if you agree i don't know what he can do because if he denies one thing he'll have to start talking about other things but at the minute it does feel that harry is gonna have and is having a series of free hits at him and i'm not sure there's an easy way of him responding to that well i mean surely some people at some point are going to start asking the bigger question which is what are this family for if they're for anything it's for unifying the nation it's about dignity and this is undignified and shows a complete lack of unity at the heart

of the family i mean is am i just taking it all a bit too seriously perhaps well no i agree with that but that ship may well have sailed some time ago this question of dignity in the royal family actually if you did a list of all the scandals attached to the royal family including their dad dignity would be a very very long way away as an as a as a concept i think and also we're told we're supposed to be sad about this but i'm not sad i mean it's i suppose it is objectively sad if a family doesn't get on but this family doesn't necessarily mean anything greatly to me in any direction and i kind of agree with you there well maybe it's good for maybe it's good for cultural identity maybe it's good for tourism income. But it is a massive anachronism by anyone's standards, isn't it?

I mean, the whole concept of it is broadly ludicrous when you try and analyse it intellectually. It's there because it's there and lots of people really value it. Lots of people really valued their gran. And that's the other thing that seems to be striking about this, is that once the Queen has died, it feels that all bets are off. I wonder whether this could have happened when there was this great restrained straining figure who everyone

really respected and now her dad is their dad isn't really that person so we are going to get a lot of undignified stuff and i suspect you'll get loads of messages saying i wish harry would shut up and then you'll get some saying well hang on a second harry's been badly treated by the family badly treated by the media. Why doesn't he have a chance to stick the boot in himself? He was the one flung to the floor with his broken necklace. Now this is it's payback time. Yeah. Don't forget the dog bowl as well. I like the detail of the dog bowl. However you look at it, it's a great story. I was going to say the dog bowl are great detail.

Yeah. I mean, it's those kind of details that unfortunately may well stick down the ages. You know, we might forget. You know when you learn all your history at school and to be honest, I think you do forget all the dates of the Wars of the Roses and all of that kind of stuff. But you remember the strangest details. I mean, mostly about Henry VIII's sex life.

If you asked anybody, you know, to talk about the royal families of old, I think the one thing that they can name is all those poor unfortunate women who suffered at his hand. Stig, it's lovely to talk to you. Sorry, sorry, I don't want to interrupt. You had something else to say? Just to say, funnily enough, I'm just reading a great book about Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser. It's about the wives of Henry VIII and the details of how he basically sent Holbein, the painter all around courts of Europe, to take drawings of women. And then he came back and sort of picked them

based on the drawings. And then when Anne of Cleves showed up, she didn't look quite like the drawing and he got in a huff about it. It does sound like you've made that up, but actually it's true. So this has been a ridiculous institution for hundreds of years.

Okay, we'll leave it at that. It was lovely to talk to you. Thank you very much indeed. Looking forward to Stig's commentary on the coronation. Coming up, today's big interview is with the crime author Nadine Matheson. She'll talk about her new book, The Binding Room. We're talking to the crime writer and former lawyer Nadine Matheson. She has written a new book called The Binding Room

and her previous book was also a big success. It was called The Jigsaw Man. And she's got two more books planned, all featuring the central character D.I. Angelica Henley, who is the head of the Serial Crime Unit. I've got that right, I think, Nadine. It is Serial Crime. You've got that right. 100%.

Is that a fictional unit? It is completely fictional. I've had readers obviously come back to me and ask me if it's a real unit. But no, it's a completely fictional unit. It was based. I based it in a police station, Greenwich Police Station, which closed down a few years ago. But it's a unit that I came up with all on my own. Oh, well, look, I don't want to patronise. I was about to say, well done. Oh, well, look, I don't want to patronise, I was about to say well done, but I've read a couple of interviews with you in which you talk about being serially patronised and underestimated throughout your working life, both as a writer and as a lawyer. Tell us more about that. I think in the early days, being a lawyer, going to the magistrate's court, I think it was more a case that people never actually thought I was the solicitor representing the client.

They always thought I was always maybe client's relative or a girlfriend, or maybe I was working for probation. They never actually thought that I was the solicitor. So obviously, you know, later on, the more I became involved in my legal career and the more I advanced, then obviously that kind of died away. But then in addition to being a writer, I think I've just found that people never assume that I'm going to write the things that I write.

I think just based on my personality and how I come across, they don't think that I'm going to be writing such a deep. What do you think people are expecting you to write? I thought initially they thought I'd immediately write a legal thriller because of my background um as a lawyer but the Binding Room is a police procedural and that I've been I qualified as solicitor back in 2006 so it's nearly 17 well 17 years I've been qualified for and I've always defended I've never prosecuted so for me you know writing a police procedural it was a way to actually I suppose work an investigation from the ground up and to build a case whereas as a defence solicitor I'm always I suppose looking for holes in the case in the prosecution. Do you know I could hear the lawyer in you sometimes

though there was one particular bit that I really loved reading you wrote Henley wasn't surprised behold in the case in the prosecution do you know i could hear the lawyer in you sometimes though there was one particular bit that i really loved reading uh you wrote henley wasn't surprised it wasn't the first time she had seen a victim of sexual assault almost apologize for their abuser's behavior yeah being so disempowered could lead to undeserved thoughts of self-blame and as i was reading that i thought that is a woman who has seen exactly that actually meted out you know from a client's perspective or whatever it was is it very satisfying to be able to write these truths in fiction now? No most definitely because I think there's a lot of misconceptions about how the criminal justice centre and centre service works and also the

impact that it has on victims and you know family members and defendants also who are involved in the criminal justice system so you know by writing the binding room and also the jigsaw man i think it's my opportunity to you know open the truth and show how, you know, realism of being involved in a criminal justice system. And also, most importantly, the impact. Because a lot of victims, you know, I've seen, you know, they will blame themselves. You know, they'll try and find, like, an excuse. But really, you know, there's no excuse.

You know, this has happened to them. And they have to be open and accepting of that. I wonder whether, sure, you've been a lawyer, so you've clearly been in many courtrooms over the years. I watched a case at the Old Bailey, must be about 10 years ago now, Nadine, and I was really, really struck by how it was essentially like two completely separate worlds colliding. The legal profession on the one hand, and it was a man in the dock on the other. And in any other form of so-called real life, they would never have been in the same room. They were speaking English, but not the same version of what we know to be English. It was such an extraordinary

contrast that I felt very uncomfortable about the whole thing. Did all that occur to you when you were doing it full time, your lawyering work? I found that, I mean, I've been asked a lot about how, you know, working on these cases, how it impacts me. And I think with a lot of lawyers, whether you're prosecuting or defending, you have to be able to compartmentalise yourself. so you can't because it's a lot of human emotion I mean there's so much going on in the courtroom there's so much going on with defendants and with victims that you know for a normal person you know an everyday person a lay person walking into a courtroom when you hear all this you know out in the open it can be like discombobulating

it can make you feel uncomfortable so I think for you know any anyone working in the legal profession you have to be able to compartmentalize yourself but in that in that arena in that courtroom as you said you know these are two areas of life that you know these two people never ever engage you know defendants lawyers police officers and for defense lawyers I think the task for us is always that, you know, we have a job to do and this remaining focus on that job, on representing your client. And does it mean that you have to try to put yourself in their shoes

and appreciate that they have their own story and their own explanation? They're not just, quotes, own explanation. They're not just, quotes, bad people. They're just people really, aren't they? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I also teach criminal law and advocacy to trainee solicitors and I always tell them that. I mean, one of the things I've always found fascinating about criminal law and what I try and put across in my books is that you can have 20 people all charged with the same offence, but everyone's got their own story story everyone's got their own socio-economic circumstances you know every case is so individual you know the reasons why they're in the court are not going to be the same as person A in comparison to person B

so that is one thing that it constantly sticks with me so in a sense you have to not necessarily put yourself in their shoes but you have to be aware of everything that's going along in their lives and not just think of them as cliches or stereotypes. But if you do that, you're not representing them fairly. How did you come to writing? I know that you won a competition, didn't you? You'd seen, was it something advertised on Twitter? Yes. Well yes well i mean how fantastic that that platform has some meaning uh at some stage but obviously you know you you've now got two extremely successful careers uh but but a writer has always been a writer i always think did did did you feel that you had to go into the law and that writing would always bubble up later no I think I mean it's just a right I think right as always writers so I've written like short

stories from when I was a young age I've loved books from when I was a young age I always had my head in a book but I think I've said before growing up I never knew that being a writer sounds not a thing to say I never knew that right being a writer can actually be a career because you're not taught that as an option when you're in school so for me my option was what I wanted to do was to be a lawyer so my going through school college um six from college university my focus was on becoming a lawyer but I always still kept that love of books and I was always still writing but I think there came a point um I think around 2015 I think it's when I entered the competition and I was I started writing more but it was just something inside me and I wanted to tell a story and the competition came up on

Twitter um I was off sick from work I was recovering from an operation and it asked for 5,000 words of a crime story and I sent off 5,000 words of a crime story and I won this competition. So I think what it did is it gave me the confidence. Yeah, you've made that sound so easy. So easy and I suspect it isn't, Nadine, because your sense of discipline is pretty impressive. I mean, the fact that you've already written

at least two of the four books you've got in mind, and I suspect there are a few more plots whirring around in your head at the moment. Yeah. I mean, do you dream about plots? I mean, is there anything, any tips you can give the rest of us who would love one day to write a book? I don't think I dream about plots, but you do find you'll come up with ideas

in the most stranger of circumstances. Like, you know, I'm just washing up and I'm putting cutlery away and a plot would come to me. But I think I find a lot of my ideas, just looking at the world around me and the world that I work in. As I said, with the binding room, that came because I was in the courtroom and I was, and there was a court case going on next door to me with the jigsaw man I mean that involves a serial killer and I

never ever represented a serial killer and I've always said I think that was kind of like my bucket list of cases I would like to have worked on but you know inspiration comes from all from all around so I just think you know look at look at look at newspapers look at the news look around you and that will always spark off an idea and just work from there now I know that the jigsaw man has been optioned by television that can cover a multitude of sins that sentence but do you have anyone in mind to play D.I. Henley I do I have Naomi Harris in mind to play D.I. Henley so she's always been the first person who's come to my head. But I would love to see it on the TV screen.

Well, I mean, I know these things can take forever, but how close might it be to actually getting on the telly? I know the treatment's been written, so I think it's currently being pitched to stations, so we'll see. It could be anything from six months to a decade away. No, we don't want to know. Not a decade. The days when...

Hopefully not a decade. The days when you kill somebody in your fiction. Is that a good day? Is that a weird day? Do you go off and have a cup of tea afterwards? How do you treat that? I treat it as any other day. I mean, there are moments...

It's funny though, there are moments when I had planned to kill off a character from the minute I sat down and any other day. I mean, there are moments, it's funny though, there are moments when I had planned to kill off a character from the minute I sat down and started the book. But then I get halfway through the book and I kind of grow to like them. So I can get a bit sympathetic towards them and I keep them on. Oh, let them live.

I'll let them live. But there are days, the ones who are definitely going to die. It's just another Tuesday. Oh, Nadine, and you seem such a nice person. I don't know. I'm a lovely person. Yeah, no, I think I believe you. So with a series of books like this,

it's always quite hard, I imagine, for the writer to retain the interest of people who love the character first time round, but also welcome new joiners. You've got to bear in mind what people already know and what people need to know to enjoy the book. That must be hard. It is hard because what you don't want to do, you don't want to just keep rehashing the same old plot.

And you don't want to be repeating yourself. So I think that was always the trick with Writing the Binding Room. We didn't just want to repeat chunks from The Jigsaw Man for the new readers, because obviously that's gonna upset and annoy the old readers who are following along on the journey so I think for Henley I'm always discovering new things about her when I'm writing her so when I wrote the third book I discovered more about her so she's still fresh and exciting to me and also the other characters in the book so that allows me to keep her story, I think, unique and also authentic.

And then also just working on finding a really good case for her to work on. Because if you've got a good case that the readers are invested in, then they'll follow you through to the next book. Nadine Matheson there and her book, The Binding Room, is out now if you've got the stomach for it.

That opening bit actually is quite frightening. Yeah, it is frightening. But I think you said it's the sort of glorious bit in the book. Yeah. So don't let that put you off if you pick it up in a bookshop. Because if you enjoy a police procedural,

then you'll get a lot of satisfaction. I was going to say joy. Satisfaction out of this book. You want to be worried if you're getting joy. And I really hope Nadine gets her wish and gets Naomi Harris to play D.I. Henley. Because I could see that working. I don't understand why some books get picked up for television and others don't.

And they have so-called optioned her first book, The Jigsaw Man. But, you know, it can just take forever for that to actually happen. Yes. And there's something interesting about options as well, because a lot of books get optioned. about options as well because a lot of books get optioned and all it does is put them in the vault of a television production company for a long time yeah and it's so nobody else can get hold of them in case that best-selling author goes on to stratospheric heights so sometimes it's not actually as good as it might sound for the author it kind of tucks them away away in a dark room. So I hope this one doesn't, because apart from anything else, Deptford is a very interesting part of South London.

I would like to see that on the TV. Yes, I actually thought Nadine made a very powerful case for there being more stuff written by people who still live in the area that they're writing about. So they actually are living and breathing. And I think it's fair to say that Deptford is a more uncelebrated part of London, isn't it? It is, but also, and I think she kind of references this throughout the book, it's different immigrant communities, lots of deprivation, actually,

battered up against really extraordinary wealth in places like Blackheath. So fantastic scenery, you know, for a TV kind of background. Well, look out for the books. The Jigsaw Man and The Binding Room are available now. Now, we've got some good guests next week. Crikey, we really have. One of my TV favourites, Michaela Strachan. Hunk, Ross Kemp.

That's just his job. Do you think that's what it says on his passport? If it doesn't, it should. Is he talking about his shipwrecks? I think he might be. Because he's been very clever, Ross Kemp, with his career. He's attached himself to some interesting projects. So he's done gangs lot. He's been very clever, Ross Kemp, with his career. He's attached himself to some interesting projects. So he's done gangs. He went into

prisons. Yep. That's partly because he can stand, you know, with his arms folded like that, with all his upper arms on view. And you wouldn't mess with him. You wouldn't be able to get past him. Well, of course, he knows a little bit about sibling rivalry, doesn't he? We can ask him about that.

Whether he and Steve McFad are as close as they once were. Yeah, but I think he is talking about his latest dives, isn't he? Why do you like Michaela Strachan so much? We could ask her about the two-legged fox. We could. I think Michaela Strachan is one of the underestimatedly brilliant live television presenters because I'm not a massive, if I'm really honest with you

and this is going to lose me so many admirers I struggle a bit with some of those wildlife documentaries but I love Chris and Michaela out in some woods in their padded anoraks just assessing what went on the night before and watching all the films

I think they have great banter between the two of them I think there's a slight edge as well in their relationship, which I really like. And neither appear in any way auto-cue dependent. I just think they're really knowledgeable and interesting. Excellent. Yeah, apart from that, I don't rate her. Yep, good answer.

Cathy has sent us... No, well, I asked because I've actually heard you say all of that before and I wanted to hear you say it again because I agree. No, but sometimes you've got to prod, haven't you? Because I am in the very, very lucky and fortunate position of hearing a lot from you. But not everybody has heard it too. I'm still in recovery from reading that headline.

She used me like a stallion. I'm not sure I'm ever going to be fully well again. Right, carry on Fi I know that was the one that got me I was also eating a donut at the time so you can imagine it was a very very difficult half hour of the show that this one comes from Kathy

who says on the subject of maths I really felt compelled to get in touch although it was a while ago now I seem to remember doing relatively okay in my maths exams although it was not my natural bent and I really needed to study hard in preparation for them. My thoughts about maths as a subject though are that it's very easy to dread failure and the reason is this. 36 times 192, for example, is only ever going to

have one answer, so anything else is just wrong. Whereas explaining the relationship between George and Lenny from Of Mice and Men is always going to produce a myriad of answers from students and it would be difficult to prove that any of them are wrong. I think that it's fundamentally the reason why so many people are terrified of maths. Also, in my experience, maths teachers are boring old farts. I've got a bit of a thing for Romesh Ranganathan and would no doubt have paid attention if he'd been teaching me back in the day. Keep on doing what you're doing. Very best regards.

And you're absolutely right, Cathy. It is exactly that. And I think when you're in class, you know, back in the day where you had to put your hand up and give the answer or you were picked on to give the answer, maths made you scared

because you were either right or wrong. And you're very exposed in those moments, aren't you? And it's funny, they don't really crop up much in adult life in quite the same way, do they? You don't get picked on in meetings, do you? Well, I think in some companies you do. Perhaps you do. And I think Fiona Bruce can give some of the audience

at Question Time a right old straight eye. It's on so late. I'd love to chip in with my own experience of that, but I'm afraid they'll need to move it a little earlier for me to be able to fully participate in a full-blooded discussion about question time. This is from Victoria. She's in bed with COVID. An extra Christmas present from my husband, she says. Oh, for heaven's sake, Victoria, get rid of him. What a nuisance. You mentioned your confusion about Point pointless yesterday. Zero is the best score. You see, the premise of the show is to get the answer right, but choose the question

you think fewest people will have answered correctly. It's such a good idea that, isn't it? Why didn't either of us think of this and make a fortune? I don't know. Well, because we would have thought of it and then we would have made ourselves unthink it because it would seem so stupid to us. Anyway, Victoria goes on. All my knowledge of the periodic table comes from watching Pointless. I spent a couple of years at a high school in Canada and it wasn't there. Their education system works in semesters. So we did biology for a semester, then didn't do it again that year and just moved on to chemistry and then physics for the last semester. This was back in the 70s. I came back to the UK for the final year of O levels and I'd missed a huge chunk of the syllabus including the periodic table so thank you pointless. By the way I did

scrape seven O levels but left after the lower sixth as I still felt I was missing great chunks of education and was dropping behind. I got an open university degree in my 30s in humanities with history of art, hoping to do my master's once I retire in a couple of years. I think most of my knowledge has been learnt since I left school. I'll stop pointlessly rambling now, but Newfoundland is pronounced Newfoundland. Just thought I'd add that to the mix. Brilliant. Thank you. That's a first syllable first theory, isn't it? It is, it is, absolutely. So I always think, I just have huge admiration for people

who do an Open University degree because it's so hard to propel yourself and keep yourself going, isn't it, when you're doing that kind of work at home without the timetable of going into lectures and all of that stuff around you people around you i think broadly speaking i just think i realize now that education was wasted on me as a young person and i think it's actually university education which i was you know very fortunate to get is to a degree wasted on the to a degree no

pun intended wasted on the young yeah i mean I looked at my younger daughter's options. She's doing history and politics. And every single one of them looked interesting. I thought, oh, I would love to attend some of these lectures. There are some cracking courses available now. Really, really good ones. And, you know, I did English, just English. And the course I did went from Anglo-Saxon to John Updike

in three years, sort of chronologically. Yeah. I think that could have been, it could have been done differently. Yeah. If you could go back now. Oh, I would go back now. What would you do? I'd have picked, I didn't, I was, because the women, the young women who picked the feminist courses were terrifying.

They had Doc Martens and they'd been to Greenham Common and they were just more confident and more worldly than me. And I just didn't dare. I just couldn't compete with them. So I didn't do any of the female writers. I just ploughed through the most conservative possible options because I just wanted to pass and frankly get out. And I really bitterly regret that now. I'd love to go back and do all the female writers

and really properly probe them yes what about you do you have any regrets uh so I definitely wouldn't study the subject that I did at university which was classical history and philosophy yes um because I'd done I kind of done that at a day level actually it felt like an extension of my levels um I mean I'm glad I did that at the time but I've I'm absolutely fascinated fascinated by some of the courses you can do around modern culture. So I saw it may actually just have been somebody's PhD, but it was about the influence of the modern American sitcom on real domestic relationships. And I thought something like that would be fantastic. So something like I Love Lucy?

Yes. No, no, even more modern. So things like Frasier, Seinfeld, Modern Family, Blackish, all of those things, how they seep into the consciousness and might actually be changing people's relationships. It's not a course, that's just watching telly. No, but I love that kind of, there's something

over there. But that's how it would be in a newspaper. It was. Not at the Times, but more tabloidy. It's actually, you know, it's that blend of fact and fiction. These days you can do a degree in Little Mix. It's disgusting. It's wonderful. But I draw the line at the Sugar Babes. OK. Well, it was also the day we both tasted a low calorie donut. It was a low calorie donut because someone had cut a hole in it. Are you not familiar with the concept of ring doughnuts? No, I just thought that Krispy Kreme... Oh, God, that's put me back to Prince Harry.

I can't do this anymore. ...had changed their recipe, taken out some of the sugar, taken out some of the bad things and provided you with a low-calorie alternative. But basically, I mean, you could just... Anyone could do that. I could go into a shop tomorrow with my little round hacksaw and take out the middle of a Hovis loaf and I'd have a low-calorie piece of toast.

There you go, you've just invented something. Well done. Get out there and make a fortune. Last night I was, I was watching telly, it's so unlikely, and I just looked at the tree and just thought, what the hell is a tree doing in my front room? And I just thought, right, that's it. And I just went, it was all gone within 10 minutes.

I'd gone down to the cellar, got my big decorations bag, shoved everything back in there. Every single year, I think, I'll just put the fairy lights in nicely so I don't have a problem. Wrap up all the balls. Did I? No. Thump.

No. Anyway, the tree was out in the corner of the road. Like every area, our street has an informal Christmas tree dumping zone. And in my case i had to go out my slippers and drag and i had my pie jam bottoms on as well drag it across the street what you went out with a christmas tree topless i say jane gosh neighborhood watch did give me a call this morning actually i don't know would they could these events be connected? Anyway, back to stallions. Have a lovely couple of days.

More of this tosh coming your way on Monday. You have been listening to Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Ben Mitchell. Now, you can listen to us on the free Times Radio app or you can download every episode from wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget that if you like what you heard and thought, hey, I want to listen to this, but live,

then you can, Monday to Thursday, 3 till 5, on Times Radio. Embrace the live radio jeopardy. Thank you for listening, and hope you can join us off air very soon. Goodbye.