Off Air... with Jane and Fi - I'll probably be arguing with somebody...

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

If you're hoping to hide in the laundry room away from all the stress of Christmas, you won't fit - Jane and Fi are already in there. To tide you over until the new year, they bring you some of their highlights from the last year at Times Radio HQ: Monty Don, Adjoa Andoh, Stephen Mangan and Jilly Cooper!If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] us on Instagram! @janeandfiAssistant Producer: Kate LeeTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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it's christmas merry christmas everybody now um we must be honest it's not christmas at the moment is it no we're doing don't we need to do these things yeah oh okay i think there's something in the space-time continuum that's just gone a bit wrong. Sorry. I thought these were for the show, so they needed to be crisp and cut and dried. These are podcast. Rambling welcome to the podcast episodes.

Okay, right. We can go from the top. You're very welcome to leave all of this in. I don't mind. It's all on me. Right. It's still Christmas, except it's not Christmas because we're recording this before Christmas

because you know how this stuff works. That's how we do things. Yes. But feel fresh with us. Don't feel stale already. Oh, totally fresh. And as you listen to this, it's very possible that certainly I will be having a Christmas

and I'll probably be arguing with somebody or just sitting in a corner being resentful about somebody else's attitude towards me. So let's hope your Christmas is as cheery as mine. Well, I'd genuinely like to just say happy Christmas and try and make the best of it and find a little, find a little bauble of hope and optimism somewhere. And if that involves sitting in a cupboard on your own for a while, if nobody notices, where's the harm in that? i don't think you can do it for the whole of christmas day no but i i defy anybody not to have either spent a little bit longer than they usually do in the bathroom of a morning or in the loo of an evening and And sometimes in previous Christmases, I have found that the laundry room is a place of sanctuary

whilst I pretend to look for an extra napkin. And 45 minutes later, I come back out feeling so much better about the world. So if you're in the laundry room listening to this, I'm with you in spirit. Or you've just gone out to get something. Batteries, batteries. I'll go.

Yes. Sudden dash. Have we run out of cat food i'll go yeah yeah or even if you've secreted something so you other people might think you have run out of something in fact you haven't but you've got the excuse to go out and get it so i know i've asked you this before and you don't have the answer to it but maybe our lovely listeners do why isn't there the same fandango about the celebrations that other religions have? Because I never hear anybody say that Diwali is just completely catastrophically affected

by in-laws, by difficulties and whatever. Is it, but do we make, and obviously, you know, celebrations in all faiths, but is there something about Christmas where we've just started to kind of milk it for the wrong reasons? Do we make too big a deal of it? I am absolutely certain that resentment, stress, strain, arguments and domestic tussles of one sort or another happen in every faith and every ethnicity. But do you think that it's been tarnished a bit by it? Because I think Christmas is tarnished a bit by the moaning.

It's been tarnished a bit by it, because I think Christmas is tarnished a bit by the moaning. I think it's almost as though women perhaps have found their voice and started to complain about the amount they're expected to do. I think that might be what it is. I'm not saying that women in other cultures don't have a voice, but maybe we've made more noise. So far, that's all I'd say about it. I don't know. I mean, if you're going to cram a small space

full of people related to each other, it's not going to be easy, is it? And that basically is the tale of most people's settings for all sorts of celebrations, not just Christmas. And also, maybe it's because we're not, I mean, on the whole, most of us in Britain, and we celebrate Christmas, we're not actually, we don't have faith. I mean, I'm not afraid to say I'm not actually celebrating anything in particular.

Are you not? I always go to church at Christmas, Jane. I always do. I think I go for the carols. And again, maybe it's got an element of the laundry room about it. I don't mind singing carols. I like the turning of the year. Anyway, look, happy Christmas wherever you are.

And we have brought along a couple of bits and pieces, our favourite interviews from last year on offer, and we're going to give you the highlight reel, the sizzle reel. Yeah, well, it's the equivalent of eating the leftovers on the 28th, I'm going to say. That's what it's like. It's not as good as Boxing Day food, but it's a few days after. Well, yeah, OK. So just add a little bit of fresh gravy to this episode and you'll be fine.

Do we have a Christmas quiz? Is it your Christmas quiz, Kate? OK. Kate loves a quiz. Right, off we go. Are you ready? Yeah. You can do this one to the nearest number.

Oh, thanks. Full of joy, isn't she? How many mince pies are eaten in the UK every year? Brilliant question. Oh, now this was, I heard this on air the other day, and we did try and work it out at home. I think it's about, it worked out about 15 mince pies per person, which is an awful lot.

So is that about it? So you want the total? I can't do that. Total across the UK? 420 So is that about it? So you want the total? I can't do that. Total across the UK? 420 million. How about you? Well, I'm trying to... Are we 62 million as a population now?

62 times 15. I don't know, Kate. You thrill us with the answer, love. 800 million. 800 million mince pies. How many of those are half eaten? How do you say happy Christmas in Spanish? Oh, dear.

Feliz Navidad. Yes. Can we not do another thing that I might know? Have you ever watched The Grinch? No. Okay. Fee? Don't need to watch it. I am it. What is the name of The Grinch's dog? Oh, I don't know. i've never watched the grinch

sorry fido max very close you might know this one in what year was the queen's speech first televised uh 1956 54 57 so jane wins that one we don't have to have a quiz that only Jane gets the answer to, you know, Kate. How many ghosts show up in a Christmas carol? Three. Five. Five in the Muppets version, four in the original. Oh, halfway between us. Okay. That's it. Well done.

Oh, okay. Is there a jingle for that? That's put everybody in the Christmas spirit, hasn't it just? Now, sit back, kids. Here's our first highlight interview. We may give you some clues here. Soil types, smocks, leafy piles of compost. Plunge your hands into our trug of bucolic joy.

Nope. Monty Dunn is our guest this afternoon. His new book, Out in Time for Christmas, is called simply The Gardening Book. It's Monty going back to basics and explaining how to make a garden. It explains how to plant a vegetable garden or design a space for entertaining, and it allows you to get to know your annuals from your perennials. So guess what we talked to him about? Gardening. Well done. Gardening. The problem with gardening is gardening

in so much that you're expected to know about how to do it. And there's an awful lot of pretending to know about how to do things whereas not quite being sure what's going on. And there is a club that you feel that you join. You jump through certain hoops and you go up and you're allowed into another inner sanctum of gardening and so on and so forth. And part of that is quite enjoyable

because you share things with people, but part of it is very inhibiting and intimidating. Yeah, I agree. And what I wanted to do was write a book fundamentally for my children's generation. They're in their 30s, and they're completely conversant with style and they travel and they eat well and they can dress themselves and tie their shoelaces and all all the things that

that clever people can do but they just don't know about gardening that doesn't mean so they don't want it or like it they just don't know about it and is part of their reluctance and i mean that's extraordinary, isn't it, because obviously you have such a beautiful garden and gardening must have been in their lives, but is some of their reluctance because it doesn't just go like that? You know, you have to be patient, don't you, to garden well? It's a bit like learning a really tricky instrument.

You just have to do it badly in order to do it a little bit better and have patience and just accept that it's going to go wrong that's that's the first rule of all gardening is it all goes wrong all the time until it doesn't a bit and then you build on that and you build on that and you build on that and the musical analogy extends because I always feel that until you have to stop thinking how to do it, you can't really do it. And so if you're playing an instrument, if you're remembering where to put your fingers or what the time should be, you're not really playing the piece of music because you're not focusing on it. So when you're growing something, if you can just focus on the plant

or what you want from it or how you feel about it, all those things, then it'll work. Whereas if you're like it do I do this in April or in May or where do I take the cutting is it above or below the node what's a node you know and that sort of thing then that's going to inhibit the result can you learn to garden across the four seasons of one year or no okay how how long do you think it takes? What you can do is, what you can do, and what I hope the book explains is, you can both make something that looks beautiful in your eyes

and you can have a really good time and you can open doors in the space of one year. And, you know, I've been gardening for over 50 years and I've got loads to learn. And I will have if I do it for another 50 years, God forbid. So that's not the point. There's nothing... Learning isn't...

Getting anywhere isn't the point. And that's another problem with gardening. Somehow you go to Chelsea or whatever and you see a fantastic garden or you watch Gardener's World and we've made it look as good as we can and it's taken three of us three weeks to prep it up for this one shot life isn't like that tell it you know television is television it's not real life and i think that

what i hope the book will give confidence to people is saying yeah it's going to be a bit messy and yes it'll be muddy and the children will break the important thing and the dog will do what it shouldn't do and so on and so forth. But in amongst that is delight and is beauty. When do you think you got the proper gardening bug? Because I know that you started to kind of put your hands in the soil

as a very young child, but you didn't kind of catch it. Well, I was made to garden, along with my brothers. We had a big garden, home counties. My parents had a gardener who then hurt his back and so therefore couldn't do it. And in a sort of, with hindsight, very honourable sort of way, they kept, I think they kept paying him,

but he never came to work. He was basically permanently sick and he was a nice man. And so the obvious answer is we did it. You know, you've got children. Once we could lift a trowel or mow a lawn, that's what we did. And we had to garden in order that we could go and play. So I gardened in order that I could stop gardening. That was the goal.

Do something in order that you could finish doing it. God, that could have put you off for life. Yeah, it could. It could. And it god that could have put you off for life yeah it could and it might have done but when i was 17 um i came home from school one day and it's important to put into context that's at me at 17 was a very disaffected youth you know i'd been expelled from two schools i had basically it was not a good time you know and one romanticizes that but the truth is it's an unhappy time and I went out into the garden and it was spring and I remember very clearly preparing the ground in the vegetable garden and by then I knew how to do it I didn't want to do it but I knew how to do it and

sowing some carrots and just for no reason at all, I mean, totally out of the blue, feeling blissfully happy, just overwhelmed with joy, a kind of mystical experience. That sounds almost spiritual. Yeah, it was. And it wasn't almost, it absolutely was. And with hindsight, and I've studied spiritualism a great deal, mysticism and Zen and things, it was the absence of desire

because I had everything there was to have in that moment. It was complete, total contentment with what there was. Which was, you know, I hadn't looked for that. That wasn't what I wanted. It was not looked for in any way. I hadn't looked for that. That wasn't what I wanted. It was not looked for in any way. And gradually, I came to realise that my own sense of self and happiness

was bound up in the soil and bound up in gardens. But, I mean, it took me ages to translate that into a life. I mean, I mean ages, years, years and years. Because with my background, which was very home counties, middle class, middle England, you did not become a gardener. You know, you didn't go to private school and university in order to go and work in the parks department. Yeah.

And that's pure snobbery. I mean, you know, there's no reason why you shouldn't, but it was just pure snobbery. Where do you think gardening is now in that kind of prism of snobbery? Well, it's changed, and that's fantastic. I think there are many more opportunities for young people now in gardening. Not nearly enough, but there are more. It's sort of socially much more accepted.

I mean, what's interesting, if you go to Italy or Spain or France, it's not at all. It's treated like being a road sweeper or whatever. Gardening is a very low-class job, whereas I don't think it is in this country. And I think the other big change, which has happened since my teens and 20s, is whereas I felt like a sort of slightly subversive, underground movement, ho-ho,

and luckily Sarah, who I met when I was 23, she and I shared the same love of gardens. I mean, she wasn't a gardener then, but she loved gardens and she loved plants. I had a companion. I had someone to share it with. But I didn't know anyone else. No one at all who did it. Whereas now I think people do.

There's a network. And, you know, schools engage with it more. And I think that the RHS is much better at encouraging young people of all backgrounds and diversity. That has got a lot better. Do you think Instagram has played a part in democratising the beauty of gardens and gardening? I mean, you're big on Insta, as I'm sure you know. Yeah, I think it's a very good point. Yeah, I think it is. I mean um I think what is a very good point yeah I think it is I mean I think what's interesting about Instagram is that you know I will get messages or meet people who say they follow me on Instagram from Brazil or from Taiwan or you know piece bits of the world where you

didn't know gardening was a thing and I have I sort of have traveled a lot and I do know where it is and isn't so you did your series didn, didn't you, around the world in 80 Gardens. Was there any other country or climate that you thought, gosh, I could really garden the rest of my life in this one? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I have over the last six years been very involved in the garden in Greece, which a friend sort of out of the blue inherited a house for the garden.

And I said, what am I going to do? And also, I should do something extraordinary because this has come out of the blue and I should celebrate it. So I've helped her make a garden and sort of been there many, many times. And that's been a joy. I think I would really like to garden somewhere where it was less wet and less cold and less muddy, so I could easily adapt to gardening in the south of France or in Italy or somewhere like that. I don't think there's any other nation that has a fraction of the sort of gardening culture that we have.

Someone like Japan has a very highly developed gardening culture, but it's much more sort of itemised and selectivised and the rules are much tighter, whereas ours is a much more general, all-embracing gardening culture. So why is that? Well, it's interesting. I mean, my immediate response is that it's because we industrialised before anyone else.

And the switch from country to town, or city as it was, came much earlier, basically in the 18th and early 19th centuries. So by about 1830, 1840, you had large cities with big populations, most of which had come not from abroad, but from the country. And they came with a rural agrarian background, but they had no outlet for it. So that at the first opportunity, they embraced it, whether it be the rise of allotments or the growing middle class that had villas with gardens. And there was a huge growth in gardening in the 1820s, 30s and 40s,

in a way there wasn't anywhere else in the world. And that stuck. That's come through. Monty Don. He's the Don, isn't he? He's the absolute Don of gardening. Do you think he's got a brother called Ding? I don't. I think it would also be... I'm just trying to be festive, Jane.

What if his name was the other way around? Don Monty. He'd still be quite successful. Don Monty. Don Monty. Well, maybe there's an Italian equivalent. He'd be a peach magnet. Anyway, never mind. Jilly Cooper.

She's got the CBE. Neither Fee nor I has entirely given up hope. But so far, I mean, I think we'd have heard if there was anything in the new year, wouldn't we? The post is dreadful, though, Jane. It is. I mean, I hardly get a delivery. Anyway, Jilly Cooper, CBE, has delighted millions of readers with her lovely, lovely, funny and slightly saucy novels

set in a place called Rotshire, which is entirely in her own imagination. It's in the English countryside. It's bucolic idyll, this place. Lots of alluring men abound. Women can be a little bit, well, they can be floozy, some of them. They can be stable lasses with names like Louiezy. And sex is very much on the agenda, an uppermost in just about everybody's thoughts, including the postman, because he's too busy thinking about it

to deliver any bloody letters, including those telling Fee and I the good news. Anyway, in the past, her characters have thrilled us. Sorry, I'm eating a satsuma. And that was very unpleasant. In the past, her characters have thrilled us with tales set in the worlds of show jumping and hugely sexily regional television as well. But this time round, she's talking about football and her latest book is called Tackle. But we didn't bother talking about that. We talked to her about sex. Yes, if you amuse a man in bed, I remember writing that, I was very proud of that line,

if you amuse a man in bed, he's not likely to worry about the mountain of dust underneath. Well, that's very true. You'll be consumed with something else. But our world has changed so much in terms of sex, hasn't it? And do you feel comfortable still writing about sex? Well, no, I'm 86 now. Yes. with something else. But our world has changed so much in terms of sex, hasn't it? And do you feel comfortable still writing about sex? Well, no, I'm 86 now.

Yes. But, you know, you could still be thinking about it a lot. You could have followed the social, sexual morals. Well, no, I mean, I've written so many books. I mean, there's a limited amount of ways to do it, isn't there? So it's a bit more difficult to think of completely new ways to describe it. And so I'm not sure that people are having... People aren't so romantic now. I don't know.

Evidently, people... When people get married, I mean, most people, when they get married, think, or lots of people do, this is forever, but they don't know. They think, oh, it might last three years or so, which is really sad. The sex in Tackle, and there is some,

is, I mean, it's just fun, utterly consensual. There's no suggestion that anybody's being coerced. But out there in the real world, there's a lot of, well, frankly, from my perspective as a woman of nearly 60, I know, thank you, Julie, that's why I said it. Don't look it. No, exactly. Thank you. Keep it coming. It feels to me like a much more dangerous world than it used to be.

And the sex that is so easily accessible to our young people on their phones, violent porn. Does it worry you? Yes, it does. I think children watch porn. They can watch porn on television at any age, can't they? Which I think is really, really awful. Sad. What would you do about it? Take away their telephones, I suppose.

And that's the difficulty, isn't it? Because we all would love... Oblongitis. Everybody, all you see in London, coming up to London, I live in the country where everybody spends their time, they walk along the road looking at their telephones. Somebody said the other day, footballers aren't very good socially anymore because they're so used to looking at their telephones when they go to parties, they can't think what to say to people. Somebody wrote that the other day. Well, that doesn't entirely surprise me and I'm sure it doesn't just apply to footballers, it applies to almost anybody under the age of 35. Do you feel a responsibility about the way you write sex? Because you wouldn't

want to give people the wrong impression about it. And as I say, the sex in here is just a fun thing. I think it's a lovely thing. It encourages people to have lovely sex. Obviously, you are, you've said yourself, you're 86. Is it... I tell you something, the most interesting thing, there's a very nice woman I know, she's 89 now, and she's just gone on social media, online, and she's met a man, and she's having the most wonderful,

if you want me to perhaps say the most wonderful sex life of her life. She's absolutely having the most wonderful... At 89? At 89. She had the most boring husband, and she says he was terrible, but she's now got a lovely new man at 89. She's a hope for everybody, isn't there yes um her poor husband though i mean he's obviously he's not around no no he was very bossy oh was he okay that's very bossy no it wasn't nice he was bossy and very up himself and not sorry for stop that's good that's him done for anyway

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 from 10 to 11 and get on with your day accessibility there's more to iPhone. You're listening to Off Air with Jane and Fi. We are talking to Jilly Cooper. Now, we mentioned to her that the current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak... I have no idea whether he'll still be Prime Minister when this is available. Good point. Let me do two alternative versions. We mentioned to her that the Prime Minister,

number 375 this year, Rishi Sunak, is one of her biggest fans. Isn't that lovely? It was so sweet when he said he was. He named riders and rivals and polo and all of them. Isn't that lovely? Well, it is good. I think it's wonderful.

I mean, I suppose in a way, do you think some people in a rather snobbish way might have wanted him to mention, I hesitate to say this, but perhaps a less successful author than you, but somebody who's regarded as a bit more literary? Yes. I mean, I'm saying years and years and years ago

that writers like me long and long for a kind word in The Guardian and people who get a kind word in The Guardian long and long for my sales. And I suppose there is... I don't know, really. I mean, I try to be literary. I wrote a book called British in Love. I mean, a collection of poems once, and I've been a bit literary sometimes. And Rupert now is my hero. He quotes Shakespeare now because he got a GCSE

because he met somebody to do it years ago, and he got a GCSE in English literature. Now he quotes Shakespeare too. He was a Tory MP, Rupert Campbell-Black, wasn't he? Yes, he was. And he's the kind of Tory MP who probably would be turfed out of Parliament these days. No, I mean, in the old days they were all at it.

I used to live in a flat in Westminster and the MPs were always ringing up and saying, just come back from the house, darling. Just come back from the house. Come and have a drink. I've had a pasting over the milk bill. Come and have a drink. And they were all randy as anything in those days too. Did you have any liaisons with these gentlemen? No. I'm a good girl.

You've said of the upper classes, you've noted that they just adore their sex. And I wonder, presumably moving amongst some of them, as you probably do in Gloucestershire, whether you can put more so than in Dalston. No, but can you put your finger on why? Is it just because there isn't an imperative to be thinking about all of the other things that might stop you from having sex? Like working. Working and stuff like that.

What do you think it is? It intrigues me. I think the upper class men automatically assume that everybody wants to go to bed with them because they are a randy lot in my experience. And do people want to go to bed with them? Are they charismatic? The glamorous ones ones i'm sure they do okay some of them are quite unattractive though aren't they i'm always struck by that whenever you go behind the velvet rope at a national trust property some of the portraits are truly horrible jilly aren't they sorry i don't you ain't gone off on a tangent there um i mean just as fee treasures her copy of How to Stay Married, I'm a big fan of your book about the

class system. It was called Class, wasn't it? It was. And there were some very funny characters in that. Harry Stocrat. Harry Stocrat. Jen Teal. Yes, Jen Teal. She was at the lower middle, yes. Yes, at the lower middle, that's right.

And then who else? The Nouveau... Nouveau Richards. The Nouveau Richards, that's right. And then who else? The Nouveau... Nouveau Richards. The Nouveau Richards, that's right. And then the upwards, which were sort of upper middle. That's right. I think they were some length or upward that they were. God, it's a complicated world, the British glass system. Do you think it's changed in any way? I was told it was coming back.

Somebody told me the other day it was coming back. I haven't seen any signs of it in Gloucestershire, but evidently it is coming back. What signs might you see in Gloucestershire? I don't know. I occasionally go there. Where do you go when you go to Gloucestershire? Oh, no, I'd rather not talk about that, Julie.

It's lovely Gloucestershire. No, it is lovely. I used to work in local radio in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Oh, isn't it beautiful? I was very lucky there, very lucky. But it is interesting, the class system. Now, you, I think think used to identify as upper middle no i i'm middle but like i'm sort of i say sort of upper middle darling you're up upper

middle or you're no no no no no middle upper middle i think i don't know i think i think i'm sort of a bit upper middle i don't know what do you think you are v middle just absolutely straightforward i think i'm lower middle middle how do we define it though it's very difficult i mean because the old days it used to be when people went to public schools rather than state schools but now that's all gone now yeah so where do the footballers fit into footballs on the whole mostly mostly the most of them were state school. But football, I think, mostly started off working class and then erupted, become absolutely amazing and soared into the heavens.

So through writing the book, did you watch an awful lot of matches that were happening around you? Did you watch some of the all-time classics? Had you always watched football? No, I hadn't. But when I went on a local paper when I was 16, when I left school, I went to Brentford. And I used to be sent to cover the police

and talk to the farm and talk to everybody and also watch football. Oh, Brentford, how could you? That was one of my headlines. And so I did watch it then. Did you watch more football when you were actually writing the book? Oh, yes, I did. I went to Forest Green for my lovely local team.

And then I went to Reading and then Lord Howard took me to Liverpool, which is lovely. I went to lots of exciting matches. I mean, football's lovely. Yeah, I think you met Stephen Gerrard, didn't you? Yes, he was sweet. Terribly nice, yes. Lovely. Did anybody underwhelm you from the world of football? I don't think so. No, well, that's good. I'm glad they lived up to expectations. They were lovely, but I just think it's a very, very exciting game.

I always watch Soccer Saturday. Do you? I sometimes watch that, Julie. I'll now watch it knowing that you're also watching it. That's rather nice. It's good, though, isn't it? It is. It's a very good show. I don't know if you saw the state opening of Parliament. Did you see it yesterday?

No, no, I didn't. No. But how do you think the King is doing? I think it's a hell of a job to follow his mother, who's so sweet and gorgeous. I think he's doing fine, and Camilla's doing brilliantly too. I think he's doing fine. I just think it's a very, very difficult job to have to go abroad to all these places

which say, oh, we want to be the... We don't want to be part of England anymore. It's sad for him. he how should he play it because you're right it is quite a tricky one that i think he's just got to go and be nice to everybody and sort of he's very good at plants i know he does things in the country and he's good at making the countryside better isn't he have you sent um the Queen a copy of Tackle? Mm. Have you heard back? No, not yet. Well, she has got a few other things to do,

but I'm pretty sure, I mean, I imagine she'll learn quite a lot from this book. I think she knows it all anyway. Does she? Right. Well, she might well do. That was Jenny Cooper. We really enjoyed meeting her.

She was charm-personified, wasn't she? She was lovely, actually. And I think she's 86, 87, isn't she? But she's still full of... She's one of life's positive people. That was the impression I got. Yeah. And she radiated a lot of joy.

And I imagine she's the sort of person, unlike me, who thoroughly enjoys this time of year. And she's probably having a lovely time with people who properly adore her. Now let's hear from the actor, writer and director, Ajoa Ando. We talked to her ahead of the opening of her adaptation of Shakespeare's Richard III, which she directed and starred in. So why have you chosen this? When I was a kid, I was given two, I was given a book by my auntie

Lois, my mum's younger sister, called The King's Grey Mare by Rosemary Hawley Jarman. The King's Grey Mare is Elizabeth Woodville. Elizabeth Woodville marries Edward IV. She is Richard III's sister-in-law and she hated Richard. There's a companion book that I found in the school library called We Speak No Treason, which is from the first act of the play Richard III. And that book is the same story as The King's Grey Mare, but all from the perspective of people who love Richard.

So King's Grey Mare, they love Elizabeth. We Speak No Treason, they love Richard. And somewhere in the middle is probably the truth, or their truth. Most people who hadn't read that book, and I looked it up this morning, it's still around, it still absolutely enchants a chunk of people who can't get enough of it. But it was all new to me. I knew nothing about it.

I just think of him as an evil so-and-so who killed those poor boys in the town. That's the PR that worked successfully. So when I first read Shakespeare's play, I was outraged because I'd grown very fond of Richard. I felt, I think because I grew grown very fond of Richard. I felt, I think because I grew up in the Cotswolds, Cotswolds in the 60s and early 70s, me, my dad and my brother were the only people of colour for a bajillion miles. So for me, I really identified with Richard. And when I read the play, I was a dweeby kid. I'm reading Shakespeare, I haven't

started secondary school yet. I'm getting that vibe from you actually. Yeah, dwe I was a dweeby kid. I'm reading Shakespeare. I haven't started secondary school yet. I'm getting that vibe from you, actually. Yeah, dweeb. Major dweeb. I'm thinking we could have been friends. Yes. Thanks. Thanks, Fi.

You know, very bad at sport. Very enthusiastic, but very bad. So, swotty, silly voices. That was sort of my forte. Can we just name the village where you grew up? Because I looked that up, too. It's quite obscure wick war wick war near wooden under edge and chipping sobriety so that's and our other alumni from the village is a woman called katherine johnson who wrote

mama mia wow there you go bad something in the water there. There certainly is. There certainly is. And we're still pals. We survived our childhoods. So Richard III for me was a character I identified with on the tip of, why are they being mean to him? It's not his fault how he looks. Why can't people just see if he's a

nice person or not? That was absolutely my take. And I, you know, here I am several several several decades on and um i think that childish sense of what's fair and not fair um sticks with us at some level so i've always loved this play because when i first read it i was outraged that shakespeare made him out to be such a meanie um and such a bad person but i also reasoned well uh shakespeare's writing for elizabeth the first he's a freelancer you've got to stay in with your paymaster Elizabeth the first is the granddaughter of

the man that deposed Richard the third of course the rep is going to be that he was a baddie in hooray for my granddad so so I love this play because although Shakespeare does do the badness in it who does he have speaking to the audience? Richard. Richard has lines about, why doesn't anybody love me? Why doesn't my mother love me? I'm not lovable. Maybe I am lovable.

And there's something about a person's sense of themself being sort of swamped and distorted by the judgment of the society around them that can then be internalized so you start to hate yourself and that i i really um resonated with and so i wanted to posit the question what happens when somebody who's been punched down upon for long enough decides to punch up um and that's sort of where the play lies for me. You are the only person of colour in the cast, the only person we'll see on stage. Yeah.

And that, you believe, is a genuine reflection of the Cotswold world in which you grew up. It was the fact that it was us. It was the three of us. And, you know, loads of things about my childhood were absolutely brilliant. I wouldn't have missed a second of being able to walk for miles through fields or have adventures. And, you know, loads of things about my childhood were absolutely brilliant. I wouldn't have missed a second of being able to walk for miles through fields or have adventures or get stuck up a tree and have to get myself, you know, all of that.

I can milk cows by hand if called upon to do so. But it also, I did have to sort of navigate from the age of four. Why am I being punched in the head every day? I better learn to fight back. Why am I not allowed in? Oh, she's a lovely girl, but we can't have that kind of girl in here. What would the neighbours say? All of that sort of...

So you wouldn't get invited for tea? Exactly. I mean, you would get to some houses, but then there were other houses where you'd have to get out before they'd gotten from work, all that sort of stuff. And what do you think would be the experience of that young girl growing up in the Cotswolds now? How much would genuinely

have changed? Well, some things will have changed. I mean, you know, think back, think back to the 60s and 70s telly. It might be Mind Your Language or Love Thy Neighbour or those would be the times where you'd see a person of colour on or it might be Charlie Williams being hilarious, you know, or it might be Jim Davidson with his chalky white jokes and all that sort of stuff. So we don't have that in the same way. Now, what you know, that we're more media savvy, and everybody's on their phones, the world is is wider than it was then. But at some levels, I mean, we've just had the girl who was beaten up in the playground, haven't we, the black girl that's been up in the playground and by some of her white classmates and nobody intervened. So, you know, it continues in a variety of forms. And

so I still think it has, it still has a resonance. People will be asking, why haven't they asked her about Bridgerton? So we're going to do it now. Go on then. It's, I had not been aware of the books i must admit so i came to the to the show had you heard because you're a booker prize a booker prize judge i'm a judge this year yeah so books are your thing yes very much so you're a great narrator of books on you as well so what had you read any of the bridgeton stuff i hadn't even heard of them i mean it was a it was a brand new thing for me um the i mean, the framework of the books certainly is there to frame the structure of the series. But then, you know, it's got the Shonda what if

by just plonking Queen Charlotte in the middle of it and saying, OK, so if we're going to run with the idea of Queen Charlotte having some African heritage in her, which is documented, then let's expand that romantic Regency world and have a look at what if that's true, what about the other people of colour that may have been in the mix at the time,

of which there were many, and see what we do with that. So, yeah, I came to, I suppose I came to the show, because you never see a whole script, you just get your sides. So I came to the show really through Lady Danbury, and the sides I got to look at for her, I just read them and went, yep, I can do something with her. And there's an energy and a dynamism about her.

And I, you know, I think of, you know, my Nana giving birth during an air raid in the basement of the Salvation Army Hospital in Liverpool. And my aunt in Ghana in 1969, getting on a plane with empty suitcases and going to New York and Paris and Milan and London because she loved fashion and she wanted to open a shop in Accra I just think of all these fabulous dynamic women who you know may not have easy lives but they make the best of them and they're still

fabulous and they laugh with their friends and they commiserate with their I just wanted to celebrate those women and I sort of feel like Lady Danbury was a good space to do that with. And the makeup, the fuss around it, the wigs, the amount of time you have to spend, this is graft, isn't it? I mean, how does it differ to Shakespeare, to playing Richard III? Well, for me, if the character is interesting and good i'm happy and i don't care what the medium is it can be an audio book or it can be radio it can be a film whatever or theater um the the difference in the uh in the prep is the stone cold cold horror and fear just before curtain up when you go in and you have to go to the end and if you get yourself in a mess you know we can't go again um it's uh it you know dig yourself out of that hole my friend um the lady

danbury you know the phone the alarm clock goes off at half past three in the morning and you're thinking oh god no i beg you and then you fall into the car and then you sit in a makeup chair for three hours and um you come out as lady danbury so and then you put a wig on and then you sit in a makeup chair for three hours, and you come out as Lady Danbury. And then you put a wig on, and then you can't lie, then you put a corset on, rather, and then you can't lie down, and you can't bend down, and you better have a five, ten-minute warning if you need a pee, because it's a mission, all that sort of stuff.

Do you know what, you're absolutely describing Jane's day. Pretty much. Tiny, tiny final question from me, and I'm sure Jane has something that she'd like to ask you too. You said something so clever about the over-40s woman as a consumer of the arts. Yes. They download and stream the most podcasts and radio, but the people who are paying the most attention

are receiving the least attention. Yes. Which is such a canny way of putting it. What would you like to hear and see more of? Us. Us. Women of our age. Women with our delights and our experiences

and our continuing appetite for life. I mean, I expect to have a good three decades yet to go. Working. Working as well. Oh, please, God, no. Please let me stop at some point. Adjoa Ando, our guest there, and I believe that she was superb in Bridgerton.

I never watched it, Jane, did you? I saw a bit of it. And she was good. She had just the right amount of class and style and she was slightly austere, but also she could break into a smile when the mood took her. I can't do another period drama. That's my problem at the moment.

Did you ever get to that stage? You see, what did I watch the other day? It was on a quiet Sunday. Oh, Pride and Prejudice. And I did, I'm afraid it's just always a winner. It was the Keira Knightley version. Keira Knightley and who was playing Darcy? I think it was Matthew McFadden.

Would that be right? Possibly. Yeah, I think it was Matthew McFadden. Would that be right? Possibly. Yeah, I think it was him. He's not quite brooding enough for me. Anyway, we've slightly gone off track there. But, don't worry. Is it Matthew McFadden? How do you pronounce his name?

McFadden. Let's just say a bloke called Matthew. Yes, okay. I think that'll do. For a final treat, we are going to bring you actor, comedian and author Stephen Mangan. Now, he does lots of things, actually, and he does them all very well, doesn't he, Jane? He is another very likeable human being.

Really, really likeable. Also, gorgeous voice. And I think, I mean, it's always difficult with actors, isn't it? Because he might just be so good at acting that he can be self-deprecating and human and humble just as an act. God, I'd never thought of that. He's just written a children's book which was illustrated by his sister and that's what he was in to talk about. So we asked him what it's like working so closely with a sibling.

I mean, this all started because my sister said, let's write books together. I thought she meant picture books with one line of prose on each page. I thought I'd knock it out in an afternoon. But it turns out she wanted me to write a 50,000 word novel. So I did. I do everything she tells me to do. Is she older than you?

She's younger than me. She's a year younger than me. And you are one of three siblings. So does your third sibling feel a bit left out of this literary illustrative? I hope not. What's it? I hope not.

She's not in this area at all. She trains people to deal with the media, actually, corporate people to do sort of interviews and stuff. So I hope not. So she's very busy and earning a lot of money. She's actually got a proper job, sitting around like the two of us, drawing and writing about farting. Yeah. And when you were kids, I know that you had, you know,

just a horrendous thing, actually. You lost both your parents when you were quite young, particularly your mum. And I had read that subsequently you and your siblings have bought a house all together to make something good out of something really bad, which is actually a really heartening thing to know that a family can do. Yeah, because often people fall out after, you know, people die.

Things can get very messy. We were always very close. My parents were from big Irish families and were always very close my parents were from big irish families and were always very close my dad worked with his brothers and sisters all his life um my mum's brothers worked together so yeah it just seemed natural to us to spend the money that dad left in his will on buying somewhere we could all go and be together because you've suddenly lost that place to go where you would hang out you know the a parent's house is a kind of focal point so yeah it was a great decision I'm glad we did it yeah and you did take a year out after university you went to Cambridge University and your mum was very unwell so you took a year out

afterwards to care for her how were your contemporaries and friends during that time? Did they recognise what you were going through? And could you keep them around you? I could. I think it's hard, though, because I think most a lot of people find it hard to know what to say or do. When someone's going through something like that, even when they're in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. I mean, it's a difficult one, isn't it? And none of them had really had that experience. And there's something about caring for someone who's clearly terminally ill, especially someone so young, my mum was only 45,

that is really difficult to know what to do about, but they were great, and we're still all very close friends now. Can I ask, did you know that you could be a carer at that time because you were very young and it's a tough it is a tough job but you're grateful to be able to do something because you feel so hopeless in the face of illness like that so actually to have something practical you can do every day i mean my my two sisters were anita was in sp in Spain and Lisa was at university and they found it very difficult because obviously

there comes a point where you say you should come home now but up until then you don't want you know it's almost more distressing for mum if everyone drops everything and puts their life on hold so yeah and you're making it up as you go along

but I'm grateful from my point of view that I had a chance to look after both my parents. They both had illnesses. They were diagnosed six months of illness and then they died. I'm grateful I had the chance to look after them and to know that they were going because I think the knock on the door, a heart attack or a car accident, that must be very know very violent on

emotionally to deal with yeah to have something like that losing your mum you know just as you're actually going on to the stage as an adult yourself is an incredibly difficult thing to deal with how much of that trauma do you think uh was part of your decision to become an actor did it have anything to do with it at all completely it was completely the catalyst for me to to try and do what i'd always wanted to do but was too i suppose scared or just you know dad was a builder we weren't surrounded by arty types by actors we just didn't know any i mean i might as well have wanted to become the pope or an astronaut or something it was just not in our sphere and all you ever hear about actors is none of them work none of them earn any money it's all horrendous and you you know you're forever

living hand to mouth so I did my law degree mum got ill died and I thought well you know her mum had died at 47 of cancer mum died at 45 so you start to think well if that's the pattern of our family I've got 20, 25 years left. I'm trying to be an actor, so I did, and I'm glad I did. Yeah, it's turned out all right for you. It's turned out so far, up till now. Yes, well, I mean, let's not say that now. You know, Jade and I don't want to have anything to do.

They do tend to end their careers. If this was the moment. Looking back. Stephen Mangan, here's a nifty little trick to cover where there was an ad break in the original recording of this interview. We're back to tell you what we asked him in part two. And that question was, what was it like when he found out he was going to play Postman Pat?

I mean, shock and surprise. Yeah. Postman Pat? I mean, the answer is yes before they finish the question on that one. Of course, yeah. But it's an interesting plot for a children's film because it's about corporate takeovers and a singing

competition and I thought I was going to be singing Pat. When I got there the first thing they said to me was, good news, we've got Ronan Keating to do the singing voice. My face must have dropped. And they said, oh, didn't anyone tell you you weren't singing? I said, no, that's okay. They said, well, you can still sing it if you want. I said, you've got Ronan Keating, you don't want? I said, no, that's OK. They said, well, you can still sing it if you want.

I said, you've got Ronan Keating, you don't want me. What was Postman Pat's seminal work in that film? Oh, God, I can't remember. It's a long ago now. Somebody will know. Don't worry about it. I didn't, yeah. And what voice did you employ? Well, I mean, I tried to do the same voice as Pat has. I mean, it's sort of a Cumbrian-esque kind of thing.

Late district-based. Yeah, it is. But they're very weird, those things, because you go into a room on your own and you do the entire film on your own. So you don't meet any of the other actors. You don't act with the other actors. And that's really tricky,

because the whole point of acting is listening to what other people say to you and responding. So you didn't meet Mrs Goggins? I didn't meet Mrs Goggins. Oh, dear. I didn't meet Mrs Goggins, yeah. What was the emotional nuance that you felt you brought to the role?

I think a sort of, you know, post-Manion, is that a word? Sensitivity, sort of envelope-savvy Joie de vivre. I don't know what I brought to the role, frankly. The song, by the way, was called With You. There you go. Thank you. Very moving. Very moving. And so would you not do that type of work again?

I mean... Postal work. You know, yeah. very moving and so would you not do that type of work again i i mean postal work you know yeah i i mean i do i do often fall into conversations with postman about it uh they'll stop me in the street and that's what they want to talk about which is nice that the only sort of people i meet apart from yourselves do want to talk about postman pat oh we we've got many many more hours in us but it's always struck me as slightly odd um you know the the film animation business now revolves around getting really really big names and do the voices yeah but as you know as the viewer you don't see them that connection seems a little bizarre well also if you're a five-year-old which is what it's aimed at do you care

no of course you don't even mangan from green wing in it or whatever you know you just. No. So, yeah, I think it's more to get the parents involved, I think, but the amount of money they spend. The film business is in a really weird state at the moment and I don't like it. I'm going to say it on air. What don't you like? I don't like that those smaller films that are more intimate and perhaps more out there are just not being made

because the whole film model has just gone down the tubes. So now it's endless superheroes and I just don't care about superheroes. And that's nothing to do with the fact I've not been asked to do one. No, I was going to say, I was just about to ask. It's got everything to do with that. No, it hasn't. It's got nothing to do with that. You know, when we were laughing about not ending your career on this show,

can I just say, tread carefully, because you don't want to do the superheroes, you don't want to do the animation, you don't want to do the animation. Please stay and work. No, the animation will work, but you know, you're right. It's odd. Tell us a little bit about Episodes, which was just the most fantastic series. I thought it was knowing,

it was clever. Was it actually filmed in situ all the way through? Take us through it. No, it was filmed, the first series was filmed in Wimb the way through take us through it no it was filmed the first series is filmed in wimbledon and surrey uh and there's bits of us driving up to our la mansion sorry bits of us uh sitting in a car at two in the morning in a convertible with t-shirts on minus four in march um yeah so it's just it was just cheaper half the price to film over here so we filmed over here the way these things work.

Matt LeBlanc stayed in a hotel in Kensington and we went to Wimbledon every day. But it was a treat. I mean, beautifully written show. Really beautifully written. For people who might not have seen it, I mean, you know, I envy them because they have the series, well, a couple of series ahead of them, don't they? Five, yeah, five series. What was the concept? The concept was a British couple, husband and wife writing, writing tv writing team played by tamsin greg and myself

uh have a huge hit over here about an english boarding school starring richard griffiths as the headmaster it gets bought up as these things do by an american network who decide it's not going to be about an english boarding school anymore it's going to be about an american hockey team and it's now going to be called pucks and the lead character is not going to be about an English boarding school anymore it's going to be about an American hockey team and it's now going to be called Pucks and the lead character is not going to be Richard Griffiths who has to audition for his own part and it's incredibly embarrassing it's now going to be played by TV's Matt LeBlanc who's playing himself

and it was just a treat some brilliant performances from people like Daisy Haggard and Tam so yeah we had a ball we had a ball we we end eventually going up to LA for all the sort of we do 10 days each series out in LA but it's written by David Crane and his partner Geoffrey I played sort of the David Crane character who thinks the glass is half full and Geoffrey thinks the glass is an idiot and he's played by

Tamsin I'm a little heartbroken that it wasn't in LA. Yeah I mean the exterior scenes eventually were but a lot of CGI'd palm trees into the Surrey countryside for series one. Stephen Mangan and he did tell us something so exciting and gossipy on the way out of the studio Jane didn't he that he had had a phone call and he was off to have a lunch with somebody who worked at a different network who was in the process of trying to find quite an important person to replace another person of a male variety who had recently left.

I leave you with that thought. Well, it's quite a story because it doesn't seem to have come to pass, does it? Well, you never know, but if it does, Jane, we'll be able to say we told you first. I'm not sure we will, because we haven't really told them anything. No, that's true. Anyway, still enjoying Christmas? Good.

You can't stay at the house any longer. You're going to have to go back. But if you need another excuse, we are doing another podcast, so don't give up on us. We're bringing the shutters down on another episode of the internationally acclaimed podcast Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. But don't forget that you can get another two hours of us every Monday to Thursday afternoon here on Times Radio. We start at 3 p.m. and you can listen for free on your smart speaker. Just shout Play Times Radio at it.

Just shout PlayTimesRadio at it. You can also get us on DAB Radio in the car or on the Times Radio app whilst you're out and about being extremely busy. And you can follow all our tosh behind the mic and elsewhere on our Instagram account. Just go onto Insta and search for Jane and Fee and give us a follow. So in other words, we're everywhere, aren't we, Jane?

We're everywhere. Thank you for joining us. And we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon. Settings. So you can navigate it just by listening. Books. Contacts. Calendar.

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