Off Air... with Jane and Fi - I was a binge smoker... - with Stig Abell

Episode Date: April 13, 2023

It's the last day of Jane’s absence but the wonderful Jane Mulkerrins, associate editor of The Times Magazine, has filled the Jane-shaped hole in everyone's hearts.Plus Times Radio’s very own Stig Abell stops in for a chat about his new novel ‘Death Under a Little Sky’. They chat work, sex scenes and having no friends.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Producer: Eve SalusburyTimes Radio Producer: Kate Lee Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

VoiceOver describes what's happening on your iPhone screen. VoiceOver on. Settings. So you can navigate it just by listening. Books. Contacts. Calendar. Double tap to open. Breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. Did you smoke? Yeah.

How much? Oh, God. At university, quite a lot. I had a special little step that I used to sit on outside my department smoking fags and drinking coffee I mean, I wasn't a chain smoker, I never smoked first thing in the morning but probably for my 20s and my early 30s yeah, I mean, on a night out I could get through 20

but then I could also not smoke for four days Oh my goodness, okay I was never properly a full-timer but I was a binge smoker. Okay. I think I was worse than you. Were you smoking even in the bath and asleep and things like that?

No, never. Gosh, I mean you really feel for people actually. Don't you think now we understand more about addiction those people who were waking up at three o'clock in the morning needing a fag you think that was actually something different we kind of laughed about it then but that's actually a horrible addiction isn't it I did used to smoke in the morning I did at my smoking height and it is just one of those things that you look back on as a non-smoker and it just makes me, I mean, almost gag just thinking about it. It's so

disgusting. But here's a question and the reason for asking about smoking, because we were talking about vaping on the programme this week because of the new government initiative, particularly to get pregnant women to not smoke by vaping. If you were a young'un now, do you think that you would go to the vape instead of the cigarette or view them both in the same kind of way it's funny isn't it because you do see very young kids vaping and i just think gosh that's extraordinary um i don't know if i was wow i was probably smoking when i was 13 you know well i was so you would have been vaping i probably would have been vaping. I would have been doing

whatever the cool kids were doing. Probably vaping. You know, while drinking cider in an NCP car park. Yeah. And I suppose that's why my heart sinks a little bit because I'm not entirely sure that vaping is the magic

let's just get people off smoking thing that some people believe it to be. I think it's just a thing, isn't it now? Well, I think it's actually worse for you because you are sucking even more chemicals at a higher temperature into your lungs and some of them are flavoured, which is even worse, I think. I'm not saying that smoking cigarettes is not harmful,

but I think we might have created something worse in vaping. Yeah, I agree. Right, the step that you were sitting on at your college, you've done this before, you're very self-deprecating, aren't you? You're a Cambridge graduate, that would have been the Department of? Social and Political Sciences. At Cambridge University. I love that about you. Right, so there are lots and lots of emails. And I'd just just like to say if you've emailed the podcast this week and we haven't got around to mentioning your emails I apologise for that I have read every single one of them

I'd just like to say a very good afternoon to Cathy and to Fiona and we will try and get back to you next week it's just been a little bit of a bus rail replacement week I fancy and I'm the one that comes along at the end It's just been a little bit of a bus rail replacement week. Thanks, V. And I'm the one that comes along at the end, which I don't know what that makes me, the back end of a bus?

No, you are the very cheery, I think you can take this, you're the cheery, maybe even air-conditioned coach that comes along at the end of the week and hoves you into the right kind of, well, the right county in order for you to continue your onward journey how would that be that was a great save you know well done right can I pass some of these on to you I hadn't read through very many of them so I'm trying to sight read them oh here's a lovely one from Fi hello to you both I am someone who loves to be by myself. I've done all the things you mentioned, like going to the theatre, eating out, day trips away, all by myself. And I wasn't aware that it's difficult for others to do that. As I get older, 56 today, I feel not wanting to compromise myself

so much. I have a few close friends and I'm close to my immediate family. I do enjoy their company. However, being on my own has never been daunting for me. And I wonder why. I've lots of varied interests that keep me occupied when alone. I do like myself. I'm glad I'm made that way or else I would have missed out on so much. Love the podcast. Listen to every single one from now and then. Well, that's dedication for you. And thank you for that. And we were talking about this because Jenny Eclair said that the shows that she and Judith Holder do for Older and Wider, their podcast, they deliberately have them as matinees to encourage people who might want to come along by themselves to feel less,

I mean, she wouldn't say embarrassed and neither would I. Self-conscious. Self-conscious about being, you know, out and about with the theory that it's, you know, more fun to take a trip out during the day than it might be to go in the evening. But I know that some of our podcast listeners were upset when we referred to it as being something of a taboo still to go out on your own.

I think for some people it may still feel difficult, though. Yeah. Well, I just want to say, fee, email a fee. What an inspiring note. I love that she loves doing all of those things on her own and has never worried about it or sort of imagined that there's anything unusual in it. I have to say, I love travelling alone too. I think because I did it as my job for a decade,

maybe that sort of made it a bit easier for me because I was used to being in hotels on my own eating in restaurants on my own because I was traveling for work on my own so it never then made it difficult for me to do those things socially either I love going to cinema on my own because I don't have to watch what anybody else wants to watch could choose can choose the best seat. And also, I'm with you on that. Also, you don't have to kind of take in somebody else's reaction to everything going on. You can just

weep and holler if you want to or actually just watch the film without someone kind of nudging you into a chortle at a suitable moment. I think the one thing I would struggle to do is maybe take myself out for a drink on my own. At my local, for example, I think that I might find that a little bit odd. But if I was in a new place, I would have

absolutely no qualms about going and sitting at a bar and ordering a drink, I think. Oh, that's interesting. So you'd be fine if you were abroad or traveling away from home but somewhere in the local what because you think somebody you know might recognize you or you just slightly lose your bravery slightly yeah slightly and I also think well I can probably have a drink at home you know rather than go to that place alone um or you just think I'll wait until someone can come with me and then it'll be more fun um I'm saying this by the way as a single person I'm single I'm not in a relationship um and I don't feel my singleness particularly painfully um very often so um I sort of feel a little bit like email a fee about doing

things on my own. Yeah. I do think there are things that are more fun to do with other people. But, sorry, that sounds really cryptic and a little bit rude now. Do you know what? It didn't until you paused. And then we were all thinking what you were thinking. I'm sorry. I've made it weird now and it's my first time as well.

No, don't be daft. So I really recognise lots of things that you've said there. I think that I've had the same feeling of not really being bothered about being on my own, but that has definitely, definitely come through work, where just as quite a young woman, I would always be going out on stories by myself. So it didn't seem odd to be out and about in a kind of, you know, the entertainment world or on holiday on my own. But I did also realise that I never felt lonely on my own when I was much younger. But I really did actually when I was older. And I tried to go on holiday by myself when I found myself single in my late 40s

and I found it excruciating. I mean, I think I was just really, really bored of myself by then, Jane. I think I found myself more interesting in my 20s. By 47, I'd realised that I'd really had a conversation with myself enough. That was really enough. Somebody else needed to come along and say something more interesting. So I think it changes throughout life. But maybe people have a different experience and they've found it to be the other way. And you know what you can do. It's janeandfeeattimes.radio.

Can I just say, Pamela, I've read all your email. Thank you very much indeed for the first bit. The second bit, I was deeply disappointed, says Pam, by your scathing dismissal today of the flute, putting it on at best, a par with whistling in pop songs. Since you are a fellow woodwind exponent, I would have expected solidarity.

As a section of the orchestra, we scrape in just above brass and percussion, unfairly and undeservedly, way, way behind strings and piano in status and attention. We should stick together and not bad mouth each other's instruments. But since you've started it, who in their right mind would choose the honking oboe over the trilling flute? Pam, gloves off, love.

Grade five flute over here. Can I just say there's something more shrill than a flute? And that's me on a piccolo. Do you know what? I like you very much, J.Mill Currans, but I don't ever, ever, ever want to hear you on a piccolo. Is that OK? Can we do that as a deal? That's very much a deal.

I don't ever want to hear me on a piccolo either. Good. Our big guest was quite a special one today, wasn't it? We interviewed a colleague and we were both a little bit nervous, weren't we? Because you don't want to sound too gushing because then people are going to think you're only saying all of that because Stig Abel is a colleague of yours and you don't want to be too critical or overly critical uh because you well neither of us wanted to be you know we've we've read his book and we really liked it and we like the man so it was a tricky navigation I think we did all right. I think we pulled it off. I hope so.

I hope so. So in case people are thinking, what? What are you talking about? Times Radio Breakfast is co-presented by Stig Abel and he has just written his first crime novel, which is called... Death Under a Little Sky.

And it features the male protagonist, Jake. Jake Jackson, yes. Who we both like very much. He has a love interest called... Olivia. Yep, you're brilliant. Am I passing the test? Definitely read the book.

Good, no, I knew that you had. And Stig came in to tell us all about it and we started by asking if it was a bit weird being on the other side of the interview. It is weird, but I'm trying to cope. You're making me flex as well, which was, weird that was my fault sorry i was just asking you to you know repeat that pose from your book jacket yeah very professional this afternoon the great thing was always but yeah of course i'll do anything really that's because that's that chair you know this

game of musical chairs of them today, you do what we ask you. I'm totally in your hands. You ask me or do anything to me you want to. Well, on that note, shall we do some questions? So, congratulations on your debut novel, Stig Evel. Thank you very much. Out today.

Out today. Looking forward to celebrating later. Yes. I wish I was, but that's a different argument for another day you can just flex if anything goes perfect just flex that's good advice actually um so you're a lifelong detective novel aficionado this is where this has all come from as i understand yes so what is it about detective novels as a genre that that you and so many other people love so much?

Including Fee Glover over there, likes a bit of a detective novel. It's hard to work out. And there's probably all sorts of psychological reasons for it. I do think we live in a very messy, unstructured world where you can never be certain of anything at all. And there is something very pleasingly stable and solid about detective fiction, because you often get series, I love a series, this book's the first in what I hope will be a series, it's certainly going to be the first of four. It presents a problem and it presents a resolution. It gives you something in that sense.

So if you are feeling, as I think we all have as various parts of our life, unmoored, I definitely felt in my 20s, for example, I went definitely through a period where I was struggling and I felt unmoored. And detective fiction was something I clung to, you know, sort of like a desperate swimmer that it was a, I could open it up, I could rest my mind, I get a beginning and middle of an end. And there was cleverness, there were these tactile moments, you often get good writing in them. And therefore, there was something sort of reassuring about them.

And I think from an early age, when there were just genre novels in my house growing up to all throughout my 20s and 30s they've just it's always been a very dependable thing and it's better than that I don't want to make it sound sort of boring and cozy is often a word that's used now to describe crime fiction but there's just something actually very reliable about it when it's done when it's done well. Did you always know that when you sat down to write your first novel, it would be a detective novel? I didn't really never know I was going to do a novel properly. I mean, the fiction I've written was,

when I was courting, if I can use that old-fashioned phrase, my wife, I used to send her erotic short stories featuring two people who looked very similar to the two of us. That was my first foray into fiction in my early 20s. And this book actually was written during lockdown, but when there's lots of sort of ideas of isolation and in the air, which you can see in the book, but also I was just writing it really again for my wife that she used to read it in the bath every evening. so I'd write 2,000 words in the daytime after having done Times Radio and then she'd read it in the bath and then I would do it the next day so I wrote the whole thing really a lot of it for sort of pleasure

and for joy and for her and then at the end of it I said to my agent because I was supposed to be writing non-fiction I've written this this book. Honestly, it's done. It's a sunk cost. I've written it and I've written it for pleasure and do what you like with it. And if everyone just tells me to wind my neck in, then that's fine. But it was never, I've always loved it so much.

I never really sort of dared to think, oh, I could be part of this. And actually the real pleasure in this, Jane, is actually when you're just adding your name to a long list of really great people who've done it before. And that's a lovely feeling because whatever else happens, you can't take away from me that I've written this book and it's part of this really accommodating genre.

And I'm just another little link in that chain. And I think that's a lovely thing. I just think it's really beautiful that you wrote it for your wife and that she read it in the bath every night. She did, she she did what if she didn't like what she'd read that day i don't really well she's she was quite good at bits where she said well are you sure about that but i i don't know she's been she's very supportive my wife she's very generous woman so if she'd have said you know what i hate this i'd like to think i could have shook it off but I'm not entirely convinced that I could have done

and would you ever publish the earlier erotic work? no the really troubling thing is I don't know where it is because it was sent on computers that I don't have anymore I don't really know where those computers are on email addresses I was in my 20s

oh Stig so if anyone ever comes across you know erotic on email addresses that I don't really... You know what I mean? I was in my 20s. Oh, Stig. Yeah. So if anyone ever comes across, you know, erotic... I can't remember what they were called, sadly. Anyway, erotic short fiction, you can't rule out that it's mine. OK, hand it back in immediately. I was quite interested that you haven't joined the more macabre style of writing,

which has, let's face it, made very, very successful pieces for other authors, hasn't it? You do your kind of messiness slightly out of the reader's eye. Yeah, and actually some of that's just personal taste. I mean, I think some people can do it really well and I think that that sort of violent crime fiction is definitely a thing. It's often more American historically. There's this weird thing with crime fiction that when it was invented,

really by Sherlock Holmes' creator, in Britain, it goes to the classical age of Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, female, very female, very intelligent, very thoughtful fiction. And in America, Raymond Chandler sort of says he wants to take it out of the Venetian vase and put into the back streets and it becomes hard-boiled fiction. And in America, Raymond Chandler sort of says he wants to take it out of the Venetian vase and put into the back streets and it becomes hard-boiled fiction. So there was this sort of weird split from across the Atlantic.

And I do like violent police procedurals, I do, but not as much as I like, I suppose. I like incidental details. I think I like little textual details. I like little bits where bits of romance, you know, some people think there should never be love interest in a detective novel,

bearing in mind the circumstances that I was writing in, as we've discussed, I wanted to have romance in it as well. So I think that all pointed to a certain tone that wasn't, let's hack people to pieces and set the clock running, which I'm not sure I would have been able to write very well. And while I wouldn't take away from people who can do that,

because you get these thrillers that are brilliant that's never really I think been my approach to this sort of thing On the romance note and now you have outed yourself as a former writer of erotic fiction did you channel any of that old erotic fiction into these sex scenes? Because I can imagine sex scenes are probably quite hard to write especially for a debut novelist. Take it from a man I mean I think that I've read an awful lot of books I mean there

aren't sex scenes in the book they're discrete I feel that what happens I get them right yeah I get them up to a point where there's a little bit of nudity you know what's about to happen and then the veil is discreetly drawn and I remember reading a lot of John Updike when I was when I was growing up and John Updike, American author, famously fastidious detail of every part of human experience and then he goes into the sex and sometimes it's so butter-clenchingly awkward that you think, why are you doing this?

And, you know, the Bad Sex Award only ever written by men and sex is a very difficult thing to convey because at one level it is very personal, another, it's very otherworldly. So what you often get when you read bad sex scenes, I don't know if you guys find this, but it's that weird, repetitive, speeding up, repeating of rude words. So you get a rhythm going, rhythm going, rhythm going, and you get to where you need to go to in the prose. And maybe in someone's head, that's good. to in the prose and maybe in someone's head that's good and you can sort of see why people might approach it but the failure rate of that sort of thing i think is fairly high i'd be interested if you think whether female novelists should be as cautious as male novelists about it

because i think if you're a man writing it if you want to go very in-depth sexy it's very very hard to to do well i wonder if a female novice will feel the same thing, actually. I don't know the answer to that. God, that's a very good question. It's a great question. And I'm just trying to think, actually, just within the crime genre, and I probably read as much by female writers as male writers.

So do I, I think. Yeah, I can't really think of any sex scenes at all in any of the female writers who I read. They avoid it like the plague. Yeah, and I think rightly so, because we all know what sex is. We kind of, and I don't think you should be, I mean, being frightened of subject matter is dangerous. I do concede that point.

But with this one, I felt that I had a real clear vision of the two of them together. And I feel I could take them to the bedroom door and then just close it. And I don't think you lose very much. I mean, I think people shouldn't feel frightened about it, but equally, who wants it? Who's winning from an in-depth...

And I don't think you do need it in a crime novel, actually. I'm not sure that's why you're going to a crime novel. I mean, unless you just want your sex everywhere. Can I ask you about the point of view of the writer, though? Do you worry that we're getting to a point just across fiction where it is uh difficult to write outside of the first person experience especially if you are a white privileged writer you shouldn't be trying to be in the minds of people whose lives you cannot understand yeah i think you always should be it's about good faith i mean i think an awful lot of

these debates wherever you find them actually and we all live in the culture war we all know how bad faith some of those debates can be i think if you approach things with clean hands and good faith you should be able to try stuff and i also think it's wrong when it's a weird criticism that exists now of people which is if you write a horrible character you're somehow not allowed to do even that anymore because some of the great creations in literature are monsters and just because you write a monster doesn't make you a monster it doesn't make the reader a monster i mean one of the whole points of reading the reason why it's one of the great expressions of human

experience is that it's a moment where you can experience the world through someone else's eyes and you know you don't get that with films because you're looking at someone else's vision. In a play, you're looking at someone else's vision. With a book, when you read I, it's both you and the person, well, the novelist and the character. It's this sort of weird mingling of perspectives, which is the thing that makes it so great and healthy and makes people better because they do it. And that shouldn't mean, actually, you should be frightened of all sorts of things. So I think what you shouldn't do is try and dominate or domineer and say, well, I've got my experience,

and I'll write across everybody. But I think you can ask people, read other books, think about what a perspective might be. I mean, Livia, who's the central female character in this, is mixed race. My wife is mixed race, which maybe helps a little bit, but I could talk to her about that. But even if she hadn't have been,

I would have liked to have think that you just try and do things properly. I remember I interviewed... This is a horrible name job, but I'm going to do it anyway. Steady yourself, everybody. Here it comes. Are you ready? Idris Elba. Oh, good one. I know. God, he was good looking. Astonishing. I've got a picture of me standing next to him and i look like the man taking out his bins we've already had nani schwarzenegger fantastic first person experience

um but he was doing a film which was um um set in jamaica and he's not from jamaica idris alba and he i remember interviewing said well hang a second that you know this is not your experience now you're a person of color and this these are all people of color but there's not from Jamaica, Idris Elba. And I remember interviewing him and saying, well, hang on a second, this is not your experience. You're a person of colour and these are all people of colour, but there's not one homogenous experience. And he was very much of the argument, which I've totally bought ever since, which is it's about intention and faith. And if you go into things and you read books

and you want to expand your experience, that should be welcomed rather than sanctioned, I think. that should be welcomed rather than sanctioned, I think. There's 10 to 11. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. This is Fee Glover and Jane Mulkerins, and we have with us Stig Abel, our lovely colleague and debut author. And we were in the middle of talking about your characters.

And sex, I noticed. And sex. Came up pretty quickly. I wish I could say I was surprised, Joan. You're a guest on this show, but I kind of had a feeling you'd be as bad as the other two. I can't blame it on Joan. Yeah. I wanted to ask about your central character,

your protagonist, Jake Jackson. He is a bit of a crime novel nerd himself and actually uses other crime novels and novelists in the sort of solving of his mystery. How much Stig Abel is there in Jake Jackson? Well, it's a really difficult question. It's a very, it's exactly correct question because what you don't want to say,

well, it's just me. I've got no imagination. I've just dumped myself in the middle of nowhere. And it's not entirely true that. There are certain things, I suppose. He's a bit bit he's sort of tall a bit scruffy that definitely has an element of me in it um there's part of me i i it's very hard to determine whenever you're writing these things particularly i imagine people who've done

it a lot have a more thought through answer to that i think there's enough of me that i felt i could inhabit it to write the book but there are plenty of moments you know his relationship with his first wife which is really important to him actually and why he leaves the city and goes off to Little Sky which is the name of the of the place he inherits and that's something that I've spoken to people about but isn't really to do with me so there's enough that that I can I can feel a kinship but I promise you I've not just taken myself and dropped me in the middle of the English countryside

I think he's a hugely likeable male character actually and as a female reader and it doesn't always boil down to gender but as a female reader you kind of feel quite safe in his company is that a very deliberate thing to do? I think you should always root for people in particularly in genre fiction i think that that one of the points of reading it is that

you sort of jump aboard and it gets you you know there's quite a linear story you want to have a mystery solved i really feel you want to spend time with these people and i think like i mean you can have very tortured heroes which do exist and they can still be likable but i wouldn't want to create a sort of horrendous monster who you're then expected to to root for and do you know what stig i think the tortured male detective i think we've just we have done that now don't you think yeah and you know i didn't want to make him a big drinker and there's a bit actually where he drinks water and it makes himself feel better rather than drinks it. Because there's a cliche, isn't there, of the man who'll cut corners to get the job done, the big boozer who's sort of cracking up.

And he's none of those things. I mean, he's quite young. He's sort of in his 30s. He's leaving the city because he's been given this amazing gift. And I wrote this during COVID, as I say, and there's no COVID in the book. I don't want to have COVID in the books at all.

But this idea of what would happen if you could just stop where you're living and go for a fresh start and it's happening people are doing as they're trying the great resignation there's a lot of that sense of either what what you have to do even with work do you have to work five days a week four days a week in the office not in the office a lot of the sort of verities about what your life should be I think are up for grabs and that's why i found interesting that he's he's got a chance to completely start again and what would we all do if we if we were given that chance and he takes the opportunity to have a huge digital detox which i was so envious of that he just lets his phone run out he hasn't got you know he hasn't got any means of communication he hasn't got a laptop or

an ipad or three mobiles like i've got i just thought oh i could i could do a jake and actually i think that's that's one thing that definitely was the thing i wanted to do a because i think crime novels you struggle with a with a mobile phone because you know where were they oh they were just over there because we can tell from we can tell from their phone yeah but i also that this is a this is the fantasy the fantasy bit because there are places in the country where we have no internet access, we can't get phone access. So it's not completely implausible. But who would not want that opportunity? And then he ends up communicating with this woman

he meets by hanging a bit of cloth in a tree. And that to me is really romantic, but also a kind of sign of you're leaving technology behind and definitely part of me. I was working this out because i'm 43 i grew up my entire childhood before mobile technology and my entire adulthood has been with mobile technology and my kids are obviously not like that at all so the idea of the both benefits and the pernicious presence of mobile technology i think i think about an awful lot and you've got two other novels to come i I think you've already finished your third one, haven't you? Yeah, I've got four to do.

Four total, so three more. And I've written the third. I've written the second one as well. And the second one's quite well advanced. The third one is finished in first draft. I'm not sure this speaks well. Lots of other authors are like, what are you doing? You know, spread this out.

My problem is I just really love doing it. And if HarperCollins said to me tomorrow we're stopping at four i feel fairly confident i'm going to write five for my wife in the bath i do think i i do i do think i'm carrying on with this stig abel presenter of times radio's breakfast show a father of multiple children how do you have time to write multiple novels at the same time? Shall I tell you what I do is, most people can't afford to write all day unless you're J.K. Rowling or Sadie Smith or whatever. So actually, you just need to pick your time. So I write on the train home for an hour.

I write for an hour in the day and I write every day. And I just say to myself, this is what I want to do. This is for joy as well as for everything else. And it's only two hours a day. And so I couldn't write for eight hours a day because I don't have that. And it's only two hours a day. And so I couldn't write for eight hours a day because I don't have that. But if you do two hours a day, six or seven days a week, you know, you can write 10,000 words in a week.

It's 80,000 words in a book. It's not impossible. But is the timing quite frustrating though? Because loads of writers say that they have to tip out their brain as soon as they wake up in the morning. That's where all the kind of fresh stuff is. But you give that generously to the Times listenership.

Well, I love doing that. What I do, though, I have an hour in a dark and calm theme. So basically, when I get up at three, I get in the back of a car and it's dark. I don't feel great. I put my hood up. I hope the person doesn't speak to me. Please don't speak to me for 45 minutes in the car

at three o' truck in the morning and I sort of think about plot things and then I sometimes scrawl a couple of notes to myself when I get to the office and then I put it away and launch full bodied into Times Radio breakfast and that's quite a nice 45 minutes piece to think in the morning, who gets that? Very, very few people

especially if you've got three kids Well my wife always said to me when I was commuting for an office job, you lucky so-and-so, you lucky commuting so-and-so. You can put music on, you can read a book. Or write one. Or write one. What have you got to complain about?

We've only got a couple of minutes left, and you'll be grateful for that when I ask you this question. Why don't you have any friends? He hasn't got time. Time. Maybe this is a positive, that I get all my social activity from people I meet at work.

You know, I get to hang out with you guys. I get to hang out with Asma in the morning. I love the people who work on Times Radio. I mean, when we set up Times Radio, we tried to have a no, swear word I won't say on Times Radio, policy. We haven't entirely stuck to it, I've got to be honest. But 95%

of people who work at Times Radio are really nice. And I find, like today, I've spent quite a lot of time in the office just chatting. And maybe I get my chatting at work and I have my wife who's my best friend. And maybe, who needs more than that? In case people are thinking god what

a terribly rude question of feet to have asked it's because you've quite openly said you made podcasts about it haven't you i think it's interesting i think it's a male person i think it's a male i think there's an interesting question about i mean my dad went to work came home to did family stuff it's quite a male thing i think when you middle years where you might not have that much time historically and that'll change as gender equality comes I'm sure but that it's quite a male thing to not have too many friends I think possibly he says try to not feel too weird no don't feel weird I mean you always seem you always seem quite nice to me that's something to put on your gravestone isn't it quite nice oh I'm sorry brackets colleague we've. We've done so well. Stig Abel talking about how his wife

is his closest friend and he doesn't need much else. So I've heard Stig say that before, just about not really needing very many friends. And I've always just found it a bit hard to believe. I mean, let's face it, you and I've probably met people maybe some men who we've totally understood why they don't have very many mates I've dated some I think have you but it just seems to be strange I don't think I could get through life without my friends it would actually it would be unthinkable unthinkable would you be the same oh completely my friends are my rock definitely um particularly I lived abroad for 10 years and your friends really it sounds like a horrible nauseating cliche but your friends do

become your family because you have to rely on them for everything. I broke my shoulder during Covid quite badly and had quite a lot of surgery my friends had to get me dressed and cut up my food for me and open doors because I had no purchase on my left hand side. Yeah. And I just I mean, I wouldn't have got through any of that decade without them. And I think I think as women, generally, I think your friendships are possibly the most important relationship you have. And do you think that we've just come to that kind of position where maybe men therefore feel that they don't need as many friends that somehow friendship is a female thing and and maybe that's not been a great path to go down for them I think because women are excellent at being friends generally yeah I think a lot of

men have their wives as friends and perhaps their wives fulfill lots of roles for them that women fulfill for each other does that make sense it does makes perfect sense yeah i mean i agree with you about close female friendships in particular and i would say also that my close female friends know all of my secrets yeah in a way that nobody else ever would. And that's quite a... I can't think where I would have put all of that stuff if it hadn't been onto them. No, a diary.

That would be dangerous because you'd leave it somewhere. That would be like Stig's erotic fiction that he's left all over computers. Do you know what? There are people across the land now who work in computer shops who are just looking to check if Stig handed something in a couple of years ago. It would be like Joe Biden's laptop. Joe Biden. What a guy. Right. We've been there today, haven't we?

We have. Thank you very much indeed for your company, Jane Mulkerins. I very much hope that you can come back on the podcast. I know that Jane would absolutely love you to be her co-presenter the next time I go away on holiday, so consider that a booking. Thank you very much. It is janeandfee at times.radio. Anything you'd like to email off-air about. And the Garvey will return, hopefully, bestowing gifts upon us on Monday.

We'll look forward to that, Eve, won't we? Yes. Okay. Have a lovely weekend, everybody. Well done for getting to the end of another episode of Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. And don't forget, there is even more of us every afternoon on Times Radio.

It's Monday to Thursday, three till five. You can pop us on when you're pottering around the house or heading out in the car on the school run or running a bank. Thank you for joining us and we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon. Don't be so silly. Running a bank? I know ladies don't do that. A lady listener. I know, sorry. VoiceOver describes what's happening on your iPhonehone screen voiceover on settings so you can navigate it just by listening books contacts calendar double tap to open breakfast with from 10 to 11 and get on with your day accessibility there's more to iphone