Off Air... with Jane and Fi - I'm not driving home for Christmas

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

In the last podcast of the year for Fi before she follows Santa on a merry jaunt in the sky for her Christmas hols - they celebrate by talking all things snakes.Jennie Bond reviews the second instalment of the Harry and Meghan Netflix documentary - and novelist Barbara Kingsolver discusses her new book "Demon Copperhead"If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Radio Producer: Rosie CutlerPodcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

every single person who's come into the studio today jane or every single junction or feature has had a special christ Christmas tingle jingle to accompany it. Have you noticed that? Yes. It's designed to get you in the mood, isn't it? It is. It's almost working. Why aren't there any pieces of tinsel around our microphones? Have you got a special tingle jingle for Off Air with

Jane and Fi? No, you haven't? Not yet. No, not yet. He just went red. No intention of getting one. I'm on the spot there. Anyway, you're not here next week. I know. What's going to happen to the podcast?

I don't know. I just somehow... The last thing I want is attention. Or a microphone with no interruptions. So I've just no idea, Fi. So I tell you what. If I flick through the Off Air with Jane and Fee podcast rack and I see that the podcasts are coming in at one hour, 25 minutes.

I think I'm going to stay on holiday for longer. Me talking about what colour will I paint my hall? I'm still agonising over it, by the way. Oh, have I not told that anecdote from Hereford and Worcester, 1979? Oh, you lucky listeners. Anyway, I hope you have a very nice time next week. You've got lots of fantastic stand-in presenters, presenters' friends, haven't you?

Yes, I have. Starting on Monday with Jane Mulkerins, who is very, we really like talking to her every Thursday on our Times Radio show about, she's the assistant editor, I need to get this right, of the Times Saturday magazine. That's right, isn't it? Yeah, I think she's a radio natural. She's got a lovely voice and she does good things.

She won't encourage it too much, but it'd be lovely to have her there for a part of Monday's programme. And who else have you got next week? And then I've got Katie Prescott, who is the tech correspondent, who's excellent, and we've also got Lucy Fisher, who is Times Radio's leading political commentator. And then on Thursday, I'm rounding off my pre-Christmas week with Tom Whipple

who is the Times Science editor so I think that's going to be very interesting perhaps he can help me with my issues about the cloud he might he might be able to explain I've got a few things at home I could perhaps invite him to sort out poor Tom lots of questions I mean it was did you the last thing I heard last night was um I was listening to the radio and a mutual friend of ours was doing an item about the fact that they finally found the snake's clitoris. Oh, yes. And he's a lovely man, the guy who was doing the interview. You both know him.

But I just thought, it's a funny old world, isn't it? I'm lying about it. It was very cold last night. I had my Union Jack hot water bottle on my toes. And I was listening to really quite, I'm going to say, quite an earnest interview about the fact that finally they've been able to track down the clitoris of a snake. It's been evasive for a long time.

Elusive for a long time. Have people been looking for it for a long time? Or has suddenly someone's just thought, I wonder if they do have them? I think actually I did drift off to sleep sort of halfway through it, but I'm not entirely sure I can answer that. But I think what we can say with some certainty is that the female of the species

has always been just less studied and less investigated. It's so odd, isn't it, when you think about it? But is that true? Well, I think it is. Do we genuinely know more about a lion's penis than we do about a lioness's vagina? I think the answer to that would be yes. Are you sure?

Well, I can't be 100% certain, but the contributor, and this is where I did lose myself to unconsciousness, was talking about how there had been research into ducks and although something is now known about the duck penis, almost nothing was known about the duck vagina. So she was making exactly your point that we suddenly make all kinds of pronouncements about peni and don't ever...

No, I'm not doubting that at all. And obviously that is exactly... I should think you're not. Exactly what has happened in human medicine and physiology over the last couple of centuries. And at last it's being rectified. But I just put it to you as a woman of nearly 60 years on the planet and I'm nearly 55 years on the planet, years on the planet, that I've never felt that the females of the species have been let down by a lack of

knowledge about their clitoris before. It's not been an area that I've thought, gosh, I'm going to add that to my list of things to worry and complain about. I think we'll just throw that one open to the audience. I'm just not sure that it's an area I care that much about. How much are we going to change? Are you saying you don't care about whether snakes get pleasure out of sexual congress?

That's exactly, exactly what I'm saying. Snakes can't speak for themselves, but I want to support the female snake and say that I've got their back. Do you know, I narrated a documentary once, and it's always dangerous, isn't it, when there's this kind of lifted information about the sex lives of the bonobos. Oh, yes, I remember you doing that. And there was quite a lot.

I was quite jealous. Well, actually, it was a serious documentary because it was about whether or not there was true homosexuality in the animal kingdom. I think some whippets, there are a lot of lesbian whippets. So you can tell that I've only learned... Have you just thrown that in or is that actually a supposed... That's what I learned from the documentary.

So whippets are more likely to be lesbians than, say, King Charles Spaniels? Yes, that's exactly it. And the bonobos have had lesbian communities for years. And, you know, there is something to be learned from that. The point being that actually in places in the world where homosexuality is still viewed as being wrong, you can point to the animal kingdom and say, no, it's not.

It's an absolute thing. So I can see how that enhances our understanding. A snake having a clitoris. I'm just putting it out there, Jane. I'm not sure. It's Christmas party night here at Times Towers. And actually, I've never felt more like having a drink than I do right now.

You brought it up. I know. I did. Sometimes in these conversations, I feel like I did at my French oral exam when I've actually only got 25 words that I know in French. And I've got to rearrange them to make 15 words. You're so right there.

They were barmy. I mean, I'm so old, I did O levels. And in both French and German in the exams, you had, bizarrely, you had to learn by sort of rote the answers to 100 questions. And you would be asked six of them or something, and you'd just regurgitate these answers. There's no way to learn a language, was it? And did it leave

you as, you know, like a kind of falling souffle, literally as soon as you left the room, it's just like, yeah, that's gone. Well, I remember one of the questions in German, there is one I remember, because one of the questions in my German was, why is Berlin not the capital of West Germany? In fact, the capital of West Germany was Bonn, wasn't it? Anyway, so the answer was,

Weilldeutschland ins... No, Weilldeutschland ins Vitaile Geteitest. Something like that. So I can still remember some of that answer. All I can remember is Oue Le Douan, which has just never, ever, ever come in handy because there is always a great big sign. If you're ever in an airport,

saying where the customs is. Oh, the customs, yeah. You never have to ask anybody where the douan is. Anyway, coming soon to an oral near you. Does a snake have a clitoris? Yes. Just one tiny question and then we really will stop with the snake clitoris.

No, just like somebody out there to tell me whether or not the snake having a clitoris means that the lady snake is having a greater time. Well, that's what I was getting at all these years. I mean, did the male snake, I mean, this is the problem, did the male snake know that

she had a clitoris? It doesn't actually matter whether we know, as you acknowledged earlier. Yes, and can he find it? Right. OK. Also, I just want to say, my blood pressure shot through the roof when I saw this today. Boris Johnson has been paid more than £1 million...

Oh, no, don't. It's before Christmas. Boris Johnson has been paid more than one million pounds for speaking engagements since he left right okay do i've thought of a much better gag right so right yes great how many times can we say right and then crack on with the program It's nothing to do with Mr Johnson. Right. So. Right. Yes, great. How many times can we say right and then crack on with the programme?

Let's do some emails after. We've done a series of fabulous interviews that we played out earlier today on our programme. Would you like to introduce Royal Commentator par excellence, Jenny Bond? So, obviously, we wanted, and it's really interesting this, because a lot of people are not interested. And then some people want to tell you just how much they're not interested at great length in Harry and Meghan. That's kind of what John Peanuts stance was, wasn't it, when we talked to him. And he's every right to have that view, of course. But we did want to talk about it.

I watched episode four of the second volume of Harry and Meghan's show. And the truth is, I am as confused as ever about whose side I'm on, who's done what to whom. Have we actually got all the so-called dirt yet? Does any additional dirt actually exist? Who's bullied who and why? And what will Harry say in his book? It's as jumbly a mess as it ever was.

But Jenny Bond was the BBC's court correspondent for many, many years. She appeared as a guest on our programme this afternoon. And there are some pretty difficult moments in episodes five and six of this second volume, in which Harry at one point basically accuses the newspapers of bringing on Meghan's miscarriage, which is a really, I mean, it's a very upsetting thing to have a miscarriage. I'm extremely sorry that she did have one. And it's quite an allegation to make, isn't it? So there's some pretty upsetting stuff.

He also talks about how frightened he was when Prince William shouted at him at that Sandringham summit, which was all about how, the terms on which they would leave the royal family. And there's a lot, I believe, in those three episodes about the sense of collusion that some parts of the royal household might have with some parts of the media, which has seemed to Harry and Meghan to sometimes really exclude them. Yes, but then you have to ask yourselves,

what's the point of a royal family that doesn't have a public profile? It actually desperately needs to have one or else. And then, of course, Harry and Meghan have made a six part documentary series and he's writing a book, which doesn't exactly suggest that they're not averse to a bit of publicity themselves. So it's just such a... It's a soup. That's what it is. It's a royal soup, no mistake. Anyway, Jenny Bond was our guest, and Fia asked her, actually, what she thinks the legacy of the Harry and Meghan documentary will be.

What will be remembered from these programmes in, say, five years' time? I think we'll remember the central allegation made by Harry that he and his wife were bullied out of the royal family by William. I think that was a very important accusation, not necessarily stood up with evidence. And that's what's short in all six hours of quite generalised accusations and allegations. There's not a lot of concrete evidence. And I'm sorry about that, because I think we needed that. Why might William have wanted to do that,

if indeed he did? Well, William is known to have quite a short temper, as Charles has. And I do not think that he would bully his younger brother, but he did clearly lose his temper. We have Harry saying it was terrifying to be shouted and screamed at by my brother. We have Harry saying it was terrifying to be shouted and screamed at by my brother. I have no reason to doubt that that happened. But he would have no motive in bullying his brother out of the royal family. The royal family had recognised early on that Meghan would have been a great attribute to the royal family, just what a modern monarchy needed.

But by that stage, the Sandringham summit, it just was shot to pieces. Do you think that they have some very valid complaints to make about the British media and that feeling certainly for Meghan that she just couldn't live the life, any kind of life that she wanted to live because it was so claustrophobic and she was so surrounded by them, should say us really i do have sympathy um i think she should have been prepared for the goldfish bowl i also think that it's rather disingenuous of them to to repeatedly use shots of paparazzi or photographers um in who were which were taken in america you know when she arrived for her baby shower. Some of the pictures we know are actually false, nothing to do with Harry and Meghan.

But I do have sympathy. What I question is why she was so, so unprepared. Apparently, they feel that they should have been given more guidance, although the palace say that she was handed a dossier, that the Queen's former assistant private secretary was persuaded not to retire and to look after them. One of the Queen's really right hand women. But in all of that, why did they need a flunky? Why did they need a courtier to tell Meghan how to act and what life would be like? But goodness sake, she was marrying a member of the royal family.

Didn't he know? Couldn't he warn her? But isn't her case slightly different, Jenny? That she just had more coming at her than any young woman had ever had before? I don't think she did. I think Diana had a great deal more coming at her. You know the word. Yeah, but she didn't live in a world of social media though and she wasn't online yeah yeah yeah

online trolling social media absolutely I mean that's a ghastly world we all know that we all get trolled and it's it's it's despicable I completely get that but as regards the uh intrusion of photographers I think Diana had it a lot worse. But yes, I have sympathy for her. It was a tough gig. It always is. Being a member of the Royal Family isn't easy, but she should have been more prepared. Right. I've only watched episode four of the latest volume, Jenny, but I was really struck by the stuff over which Harry and Meghan couldn't have any control. The fact that the newspapers were preferring to put Meghan on the front page and not Kate and or William. I mean, that's indisputable. And it appears to have caused

problems, i.e. jealousy. I mean, that isn't their fault, is it? It's simply that Meghan's a beautiful woman. It made for an incredible image and the papers loved her. But do you think anybody could have stopped the damage that that clearly did to family relations? Well, that's gone on through the generations. You know, Diana was the new star. She got all the headlines. Fergie was the new star. She got them.

This is what we, the media, do with our royal family. Yeah, and it's sometimes very cruel and sometimes, frankly, vicious, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. We're sometimes, you know, we're not a very nice profession. I completely concede that. But I also would say that an awful lot of the headlines they used to stand up their suggestions were from American tabloids, the National Enquirer, the Daily Beast, New Idea from Australia. I was taking a note of all the headlines from elsewhere.

I'm not disputing that we didn't have headlines over here. Certainly, they've really got it in for the Daily Mail. And the Mail seems to have been the catalyst. Very, very sadly, Harry alleges, not only for the exit from the royal family, but very sadly, Harry alleges that the Daily Mail, Very sadly, Harry alleges that the Daily Mail, what they did to Meghan, his words, were created the situation and the stress where she had a miscarriage. Yeah, which is just so sad, so sad. But when Meghan has made claims before that I think in any other situation would elicit a lot of genuine sympathy from any viewer or listener. There seems to be so much other noise going on around them

that that bit gets missed. So when she says that she's been the victim of racism, that doesn't get heard. When she said she was really struggling after the birth of her babies, you know, appearing in public, that doesn't get heard. When she says she has a miscarriage, that doesn't get heard. So do you think it's just a bit unfair or do you think after the settling of a bit of time,

we might feel more kind of warm towards her when we're out of this storm? But not heard by whom? I don't hear very many people showing any sympathy for Meghan. I hear an awful lot of people saying yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda. I think, to be fair, a lot of young people do have sympathy for Meghan. Perhaps. Or perhaps they're simply not the voice that we will ever hear. It's the voice of outrage that you want to get on air at the moment,

that people want to post up on social media. It's just quite imbalanced, don't you feel? Well, I think we did hear a lot about their complaints about racism. I mean, Harry issued a statement about it really, really early on before they were engaged even. He put that in the public arena and there was a lot of press about it. As regards her miscarriage, she chose quite understandably to keep that private for a certain amount of time and then wrote a very very moving article about it so we heard all about her her miscarriage and i i agree actually with jane that i think younger people i think this

documentary is swinging opinion in um megan's favor with with younger people um and that's fine i mean i've got sympathy with her I think she was going to be brilliant in the Royal Family. I'm really, really sorry it didn't work out. I'm really pleased that they are so blissfully happy. There's montage after montage of them skipping across the town and being happy. And that's lovely, I think. They have found each other, haven't they, Jenny? They have definitely found each other. And I honestly mean it when I say I hope they continue to be that happy forever. There was the suggestion in the trailer, I mean trailers are there to entice us and that the trailer for this volume two certainly did suggest that we might be about to hear something that would rock our royal worlds.

It still hasn't quite happened has it Jenny and I suppose you wonder whether that might be in the book or, I'm being very careful here or maybe not. Well, as I say, I think the most startling allegation is the one of bullying. And also, Harry says towards the end that, well, actually, after the Duke's funeral, we always we all wondered, you know, did they seem to be walking together? Did they chat? Did they discuss it all? Well, he said it was hard, but they did discuss it. But he now does not expect any apology or any accountability. Genuine, that's the word, genuine apology or genuine accountability. So maybe that's actually what he wants.

He wants his brother and his father to stand up in public and say, I'm sorry, Harry. Royal expert, Jenny Bond. And I think for the moment, Jane, that's probably where we'll leave it. You're very keen to leave it, aren't you? I just, yeah, I am actually. And also because I know that the book's coming out, Harry's book, Spare, is coming out in January.

And I've just got to save a know a little bit of uh of kind of power for that I feel I'm on about two percent with a flashing red light at the moment if that's okay on the topic is it okay to say though that we probably a lot of royal correspondents they have lots of knowledge and sometimes and I'm not speaking necessarily about Jenny but they are often a sort of person they're a type of person from a particular part of our society. And they have a vested interest in keeping the show on the road, don't they? I think you're very much allowed to say that. And what it means is that you are only hearing a certain kind of tone of response.

And it's a really interesting point because i don't think that's impartial i think there's a whole and this is what we talked about in the interview there's a whole other voice about this which isn't being heard sometimes because people can't be bothered to get involved in the conversation but that's actually maybe because they're a bit worried about the heating bills or something like that something like that or you know just saying they like quite nice people, but they've gone a bit awry at the moment. You know, you don't post that on Twitter. You don't put that on TikTok. That doesn't make you any money as a commentator.

But you could be hearing a very different take on it, couldn't you? Oh, you really could. Maybe we should make an effort to get exactly that take. and maybe we should make an effort to get exactly that take. Welcome back and let's have a little bit of self-congratulation. It's always good. I mean, we're so worth it. So, oh my God, you're worth it.

Well, that vision I painted of myself earlier, resting in bed in my pyjamas with my Union Jack hot water bottle on my toes. It's pathetic, isn't it? But strangely arresting at the same time. Yes, we are so worth it. What's happened? We've got over a million downloads on this podcast and we're incredibly grateful. And we've got to just move into that area where we say things like that,

you know, with a kind of 110% of positivity chain, because that's what happens in the podcast world. It's what happens in the commercial world. It is. Yeah. So we've got to say thank you very much indeed for downloading. Thank you very much if you've rated and reviewed. Thank you very much if you've subscribed. Tell me when to stop. Thank you very much if you've recommended us to your friends. Please, please tell me I can stop. Yeah, I think I've heard enough now. Because it's not really what we are still warming up in the old patting ourselves on the back. But anyway, thank you, because Jane and I were nervous about leaving our previous home and we've had such a lovely welcome here. We're having a really good time and we're absolutely delighted that you've come to Jane and Fee at Times Dot Radio.

If you want to email us and thank you to those people who have. We'll have an interview with the brilliant American novelist Barbara Kingsolver in a moment, but now email corner. Dear Jane and Fee, says Leslie, while the app uploads the remainder of all of the catch-up listening of your podcast, please ponder this. A rescue cat is a bit like any adoption. You can't be sure you'll get it right.

May I suggest the extremely west coast weird but also wonderful jackson galaxy videos about cat human interaction our rescue cat is unlike any other we've known and during a trying time in her life galaxy's videos really helped me to understand how to look after her best when i grew up up, cats were fed awful, put out all night and left to look after themselves. I've been much, much softer than that with our cats, but even so, cat care, like dentistry and communication technology, has advanced hugely. I love those two comparisons.

You'll feel silly watching the videos, but the man loves cats and knows his stuff. Keep up the excellent work, please. Well, I'm going to give those a go. Why not? Jackson Galaxy videos. Yeah, OK. Do you know what?

I did wonder, actually, after Steve Wright had left Radio 2. I mean, he's still there for his Sunday love songs and some big specials. But he's left the big show. Oh, yeah. I wondered whether maybe he was going to turn his homemade DIY dentistry into something a bit more professional. Because he's well known in the building for doing his own dentistry, wasn't he? What was the smell that used to waft around his studio? TCP.

That's right. Oh, yes, lovely. I really liked Steve Wright. Yeah, I think he was great. I still think he's great. Naomi, oh, she's with me on the old hot water bottles. I wonder if either of you have had the delight of a long hot water bottle over the cold snap. What do you mean by long? I don't know. Or a cosy John Lewis trying to make it more classy than it ever can be, refusing to be taken to my Essex roots.

Wansi, says Naomi. Both have made turning 45 a delight. Gosh, I mean, is there such a thing as a kind of like a one metre long hot water bottle? It does make perfect sense, actually, doesn't it, to have a long hot water bottle? Because the smaller one, and I do love my hot water bottle, it does seem peculiar that you would have

just that relatively small space when you could actually lie the whole thing. Anyway, it's good for the old bones in the night. It's lovely. But I find just with the one I've got one of those wheat things which you don't like but they're a great problem in the microwave but you do have to move them around

don't you? They start off on my feet but by the time I wake up in the morning I'm always clutching it. Liz from London because this is very serious because this is about Joanna Lumley. I'm just going to watch Pointless now. It's on in the studio next door. Joanna Lumley. I'm just going to watch Pointless now. It's on in the studio next door. Joanna Lumley made those comments, which we referred to on the podcast yesterday.

And it does happen relatively frequently that a more senior woman will say, I don't know what young women are fussing about. In my day, we loved wolf whistles. It was all just part of the game. Blah, blah, blah, toughen up. Well, it's your gorgeous phrase, I think one of your best, that there was no golden age of groping. No, and I stick to that. Well, it's your gorgeous phrase, I think one of your best, that there was no golden age of groping. No, and I stick to that.

Yeah, it's a good line. There's never been a golden age of groping. My mum's a similar age to Joanna, says Liz, and told me recently that her generation of women never talked about the menopause because they didn't want to give men any more reason to put them down. Perhaps women of that generation didn't feel able to show any vulnerability because it would be seen as a weakness that men could then ridic put them down. Perhaps women of that generation didn't feel able to show any vulnerability because it would be seen as a weakness that men could then ridicule them for.

Fortunately, my lovely mum is delighted by the progress younger women are making in becoming more equal. Not all boomers, hashtag not all boomers, as you would say. On a different note, a couple of weeks ago, Fee mentioned how important it was that Spike Milligan was open about his mental health. And that's so very true. I had a breakdown in the 90s and I was diagnosed with bipolar. I was 18 and I was desperately looking for other people who'd had this diagnosis to give me hope of a normal life. I could only find two, Spike and an American psychologist called Kay Redfield Jameson. You can't be who you can't see. And thank goodness people are so much more open these days about their mental health.

Thank you for that thoughtful email, Liz, and a very happy Christmas to you and to your mum as well. I hope you're both having a lovely time. But she's right, isn't she? There really were some quite dark ages about mental health and certainly about talking about mental health. Totally. And do you know what, Jane? Some of the stories that now we seem more able to tell about what went on for people who were suffering from severe mental illness, particularly in bedlam, as it used to be called. I mean, in our grandparents' lifetime, bedlam was still a thing.

was still a thing. You know, for all of the times that you feel slightly kind of weighed down with the amount of discussion about mental health at the moment, it's always worth remembering just how far we've come in a good way, isn't it? Yeah. In a relatively short space of time, actually, in human history. Where we go next, who knows? Barbara Kingsolver will probably be able to tell us. She is an extraordinarily bright mind

and her writing has powered her to the top of the bestseller lists for quite a few of her books. The Lacuna won the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Poisonwood Bible is also another one of her very well-known books. And she was talking to us today about Demon Copperhead,

which is her latest novel. And it's all about the opioid addiction, which has taken hold in rural parts of America in particular, and in her rural community, which is in the Appalachian Mountains. We started by asking her about the comparison to be made with Demon Copperhead and David Copperfield, because the book pays homage to the Charles Dickens novel. I'm a Dickens fan, but not overly much. I mean, I'll be honest, David Copperfield was not my favourite Dickens novel. I don't think it's many people's favourite.

It was his favourite, though, because it was his story. He wrote from, you know, a place of anger about his childhood, about the devastations of institutional poverty was 12 or 13 and read A Christmas Carol. And I thought it was great. I thought it was funny and full of remarkable, memorable characters and had a great plot. And that's what I would say about every Dickens novel I've read since. So, you know, he's up there. He's one of my teachers, along with Steinbeck and Virginia Woolf and, Woolf and all these other books behind me that you could see if the video were on. So I didn't begin this novel from a position of let me write a tribute to Charles Dickens. with the really, really difficult question of how can I write about what's happening to my community because of the opioid epidemic, but going way, way back farther than that,

because of institutional poverty here, because of what's been done to this region for more than a century. And now with this latest assault, we have a generation of orphans coming up. And so I was pondering, how do I have a generation of orphans coming up. And so I was pondering, how do I tell a story about orphans? And then, you know, Dickens kind of came along and smacked me over the head and said, look, here's how you write about orphans. You let the kid tell his own story and you give him a cracking good plot and really good, memorable characters. And there you go. Well, Barbara, you mentioned your region and your community um for those of us not in the united states we are perhaps familiar with the big cities the tourist destinations if you like but tell us about appalachia and where

you grew up and the impact that had on you um you are you alone. Even, even most people who live in the U.S. don't know very much about this region. Appalachia is, it doesn't belong to any one state of the Union. It's about parts of about six states. It's mountainous. It is historically a region that has been treated really as an internal colony of the U.S. Its resources have been taken out. First timber, then coal, tobacco. It's a region of small family farms because of the topography. We don't have any flat land here. It's all very steep. So this is a region that has been made poor by its exploiters. And we don't show up in mainstream culture in the US, except as hillbilly comedy or poverty documentaries. So one of the things that I can do as an Appalachian is represent my region with some more nuance than you're likely to see anywhere else.

Your father, I think, he was the local doctor, wasn't he? He was. He was the town doctor. Right. So you were not poor. I didn't have demon's life. I wasn't born on the floor of a single wide. But I shared a lot of demons um feelings of being uh sort of looked down on in school because I never really had the right clothes or the right things I mean plenty of kids didn't we had a caste system our in our school there were the it was a very small town and there were the town kids and there were the country kids those of us who lived in the country and rode the bus and showed up at school with, you know, muddy shoes were never in the inner circle. So I know the story of the kids who, you know, who are who always feel like outsiders.

It's not a stretch for me to imagine the life of Demon Copperhead. I love some, well, I love your writing, but some of the turns of phrases that you have, Barbara, are so magnificent. And one that just really made me smile is just a tiny one when you describe a cat oozing out of a room, which I really enjoyed. And I wonder just, you know, with how you write, whether those things come to you just as you're, you know, putting a whole paragraph down or, you know, does that come to you in a moment and you've got a fantastic kind of notebook of little bits and pieces that

you're going to place into a book somewhere, sometime? I'll say, first of all, that that I'm I'm blessed to have grown up in a region where people use really beautiful, colorful language. We are a culture of storytellers for all of the hard knocks that this this region has suffered and the poverty and the sort of all the all the challenges. It's a really fun, joy-loving culture. And the way people talk is so interesting and entertaining. And everybody tells stories. So that's my culture. But I'll also tell you that none of it is easy. The work is the work.

Every sentence of this book has been rewritten anywhere from, you know, five to 75 times. I, you know, I do a draft, and then I do another draft and another and another, I rewrite it until every sentence feels perfect to me, or as perfect as I can make it. So it's sort of like, but it's supposed to sound easy, you know, you should, I don't want you to be reading it and thinking about me, you know, grinding away the revisions at my desk. It should be like a ballet. You know, what you see on the stage is the character is the you know, the dancers defying gravity. You don't see that their feet are actually bleeding. Let's never think about your bleeding feet, Barbara. Thanks for that, Barbara. In my case, it's my fingers, I suppose.

But, you know, you want to make it look easy. You want to make it an experience for the reader that just, that flows, that pulls you into this world, asks you to sit down and just be with these characters and love them and listen to them and take this journey with them. Barbara Kingsolver and her novel Demon Copperhead is available now it's been much acclaimed and it's a it's a proper trip actually because she is just inside the head of this young boy becomes a young

man during the course of the novel and it's powerful stuff isn't it she's brilliant. Yep she is I don't know what else to say I mean she just is for once just agree with me okay now listen jane you're on your holidays and i would just like you i won't mention where you're going because you're entitled to improve uh but mine heads lovely at this time of year oh dear i've just dropped you in it um it's it would be nice if you just bring bring me back a sort of, not a pharmaceutical, but a kind of beauty-adjacent product. Oh, okay. That I couldn't get here. Okay.

Okay, that they don't sell here. So I always think the Greeks do the best body lotion. Yeah. But you're not going there. No. But I could always pop over there, you know, after I've got back. No. So I would just like something unique to the place you're visiting, please.

Okay. Would you like it for face or hair or body? I've given up on the face. I'm having my hair done tomorrow. So something for the body. Okay. Right. I'll see what I can find.

I'm going to a destination that I think has a plethora of that type of stuff. So I like that kind of a challenge. Well, I'm actually quite looking forward to the anecdotes that I think will result from your trip. Yes. So I'm excited to see you. And you haven't even left yet. No. Very happy Christmas.

And I hope that your next week is good, but not too good, Jane. All right? OK. I do worry. I do worry. I can't wait. I'm driving her to the airport. Cancelling my passport You have been listening to Off Air

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

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