Off Air... with Jane and Fi - I'm starting to miss the little thing

Episode Date: December 20, 2022

Another day flying solo and Jane is already starting to look forward to Fi's return.The Times Technology Business Editor, Katie Prescott, is Jane's presenters friend today and tries her best to explain a bizarre cryptocurrency fraud story.Also, the novelist and creator of Grantchester, James Runcie, discusses his new book - and ode to his wife Marilyn's - 'Tell me Good Things'.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.

Well, in the absence of Fi, who likes to drift in at the start of the podcast, I thought I'd just do a more formal introduction and say welcome to this edition of Off Air with Just Jane, because as I established yesterday, Fi is very much on holiday. Now, I'm in a curiously calm mood this week, not because Fi isn't here, because she actually lessens my stress. She doesn't add to it. I'd love her. But because I think I've done almost everything I can do, except the buying of a nut roast, which I'm going to do on Friday.

But I need to do for Christmas. So I just don't think I can ask any more of myself. And I don't think Santa can expect any more of me either. I've even got an emergency present wrapped and ready to go so if somebody comes knocking with a gift I wasn't expecting I'm right in there right in there with a smashing candle I know they'll love and it's certainly something that Thea and I have talked about is the candle being the gift that nobody actively wants but very few people dislike this is actually quite a nice thing to have isn't it there's been some light drama in the house in the sense that something my children and I were using quite successfully as a bath foam for about four or five weeks now. I had a close look at the label last night and it's a detergent

so it's been removed from the bath area and put near the washing machine just to make sure that doesn't happen again but um stubborn stains have all been removed from our various crevices so that is at least something but it is on a scale um nowhere near the drama that occurred quite some time ago now when I due to my short sight mistakenly put earwax remover into a child's eyes, confused my drops. And I think probably that I can still hear the noise. And by the way, it's a really stupid thing to do. Don't do it. But if it does happen to you, you just need to apply bucket loads of cold water as soon as possible.

I had to Google what to do. And clearly other people had done it too, which was of some comfort, but obviously not to the screaming child. Right, let's move on. Christmas approaches. A Christmas tree has arrived in the house, only no one's bothered to decorate it yet. Can I just say nothing looks more forlorn or unloved than a tree with absolutely no decorations on it that's already started to shed so someone needs to get a wiggle on and I'm hoping it will look lovely by the time I get back tonight in the absence of Fee and she's very much back I need to reassure everybody on January the 2nd I have been joined

by a host of very very interesting Times operators and today it was Katie Prescott who is the Times business technology editor. And that was something that was really interesting for me because it's not really the world of business and the world of tech are two completely alien environments to me. And so it was good to pick Katie's brains. And when she was asked about her favorite story of the last 12 months, she picked the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. And here she is making a bold attempt to explain it all to me. On you go, Katie. A chap called Sam Bankman-Fried, who is a 30-year-old crypto entrepreneur, set up this exchange to allow customers to trade cryptocurrency.

So to buy and sell different coins. Bitcoin, you may have heard of, one of the most well-known. He also established his own coin called FTT. And if you bought FTT, that would give you a discount on buying other coins and doing exchanges. So it's a little bit like a Nectar card of his FTX exchange.

Or a Boots card or whatever. Yes, okay. So people were putting money into this exchange. Now, if you think about how banking works in, I want to say real life, but like how standard banking works. You've got retail banks that you and I put our money into. And then you've got investment banks, which trade money, and that's a bit riskier. And the two are kept separate. What happened with Sam Bankman

Freed's crypto empire is people were putting money into the retail bank, and then it was getting traded in his investment bank, which was called Alameda Capital. As that was losing money, they were going back to the retail bank, to the exchange, to take more cash out, to fill holes in its balance sheet. Because they needed to. Because they needed to because they lost their money. And there is no allowed or not allowed in crypto because it's completely unregulated. And so what we've seen here is billions of dollars of customers' money be lost

in this, it's essentially a business setup that shouldn't have happened and shouldn't have been allowed to happen. It's been an extraordinary story to follow because I remember when I first heard about it, I hadn't heard about FTX, I hadn't even reported on crypto that much. And it was billed to me as the Goldman Sachs of the crypto world. This is the blue chip exchange. It's really odd. It seems to be having these financial difficulties. We're not sure what's going on. Fast forward a month later, and the chap who's liquidating the business is a guy called John Ray, who is a sort of very quite dry, witty executive who oversaw the collapse of Enron. And he said he's just never seen anything like this before and what he's uncovered after the collapse of the business

Sam Bankman Freed the founder having signed off a loan to himself for a billion dollars buying holiday homes in the Bahamas for his parents and employees money that people were wanted was signed off by emojis on slack he said there actually no controls in the business they didn't know how many people it employed they didn't know how much they earned it was it just it's this incredible house of cards and they said in the bankruptcy filings it was the emperor's new clothes i've never read such funny bankruptcy filings by the way so i'm laughing but actually it's not funny well because because people lost people have lost money okay can i just i mean do we know who what kind of

people have lost money because i suppose as i am an uber cautious individual and certainly when it comes to to any kind of investment i might ever make and the idea of investing in a world that i knew to be unregulated i i cannot think of anything I'd be less likely to do. But I think people have done that because over the years, we've seen people make huge sums of money from crypto, because it has seen remarkable spikes. So some people have done brilliantly out of this world. Some people in the past have done brilliantly. Now, actually, the price of crypto has dropped. And I think there's a deep scepticism about the industry and deep concerns. The sorts of people who lose money tend to be very young people.

So the average age of someone who's got crypto in the UK is 35. And we think about 100,000 people lost money in the FTX collapse in the UK. And they have nowhere to go in terms of getting their money back. Well, it's a really good point. So the administrators are trying to claw back as much money as they can. And that means things like selling the holiday homes they can get hold of, finding the cryptocurrency and storing it in what they call cold wallets. So literally on sort of USB sticks so that it is somewhere. But they are finding it very hard because of a total lack of paperwork in this business to track down most of this cash.

Right. Okay. It's really just, I mean, there's one eye-opening story after another. Yeah. So no question of a trial or anything yet. Yes. So he's been arrested and he's in the Bahamas. I should have mentioned the business was based in a penthouse in the Bahamas. And, of course, and yesterday, he went to court in the Bahamas, the US is seeking an extradition, it looks like that'll happen in the next month. Okay, I mean, I've got to say, if one of my children were to buy me a holiday home in the Bahamas, I would have questions. I mean, I'm not blaming the parents, or I'm just wondering what they thought. But they were wealthy people, I mean, I'm not blaming the parents or I'm just wondering what they thought. But they were wealthy people too, weren't they?

Wealthy and also highly intelligent academics at Stanford University in the States. I'm not sure what they have thought about it. They were in court for his first appearance. They weren't there yesterday. I was quite surprised. There was a moment a couple of weeks ago, a really bizarre moment, when all of these revelations were coming out about the collapse of the business and things that had been going on.

And he hadn't been arrested. And he did this media round. So Good Morning America flew over one of its anchors to the Bahamas to do an interview. The BBC flew over one of its journalists. And I was a bit surprised his mum didn't step in and say, stop, just do it. Yes, enough.

That is Katie Prescott, the technology business editor of the times and my co-host tomorrow in the first hour of the live radio show is the times radio chief political commentator Lucy Fisher I think probably I'll take advantage of her huge knowledge and we'll chat about the last year and about everything that's happened say what you like about britain but plenty of stuff has happened um since the dawn of 2022 so that should be really interesting um we love hearing from you i know fee does love hearing from you although she isn't here to say so it's jane and fee at times dot radio um we particularly are interested in your plans for christmas Any highlights for you? Anything you're worried about? Anything you're dreading? You can stay anonymous. We will never dob you in. I promise, promise that won't happen. I'll get to some of your emails in a second or

two. But our big guest today was James Runcie. Now, James Runcie is a really successful playwright, a filmmaker. He's been in big, big jobs. He's a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was commissioning editor for arts at BBC Radio 4. And he's the man who brought about the Grantchester Mysteries series. So he's a highly successful writer. Lots of people will have loved those books. I know they really hit the spot with lots and lots of people. But he has written a book, a memoir called Tell Me Good Things on Love, Death and Marriage. And it is in no small way a tribute to his late wife, Marilyn Imrie, who died in the August of 2020. So in the first summer of the pandemic of motor

neuron disease. Now, if you're already thinking, I don't want to listen to James Runcie talking about this, it sounds incredibly depressing. There is no doubt that a diagnosis of motor neurone disease is a very, very tough thing indeed. But James is a really effervescent and interesting interviewee and a very funny person as well. And his wife, Marilyn, is absolutely brought to life and done justice to in this beautiful book. And I hope you agree, she really comes to life in this interview as well. So here's James Runcie. She was amazing, really, because she had such velocity of character and warmth and fun and made people feel at home and good about themselves. And that's what I wanted to

get across in this book, because loads of people, everyone writes memoirs, all writers write memoirs about their dead relations. And what I thought was there are two things I could do. They can't write about Marilyn and also they're not funny. And they're often about me, me, me. And I wanted it to be about her, her, her. And so much more about her and what she was like and to celebrate her and honour her. And I thought she'd be up for a bit of banter from beyond the grave. I was going to ask you that. Would she have liked to be at the centre of this book, do you think? Yes, definitely. I think so.

I think so, but she would have... I mean, she would have wanted to edit it quite a lot, I'd have thought. You're not having that story. You're not putting that in, are you? Well, she'd want to be here talking about it as well. No, well, yes. But I've got quite punchy daughters, so I can what um i mean they do it for her so they've i've had quite a little bit of a a thing on this okay good and it's lovely hearing you talk about that sense of fun because it really comes through in i mean you describe the book as a love letter to her talking

about the start of your relationship and you getting together. Some of those anecdotes are absolutely wonderful. Thinking of the one where her five-year-old daughter at the time ties you to a chair when you babysit her before you get together. Yes, yes, yes, she did. Yes, I did. I offered babysitting, which of course nowadays would be considered

some kind of weird thing. But I did offer, because I didn't really know anybody when I first came to Edinburgh, and Marilyn was really, really busy as a single, and she was a single parent. And so, yes, I did offer to help babysit, and I did cook for her a bit.

And that was a way of seeing her, you know. It was an excuse to see her. And it was, yes, it was great. But my children are a bit, you know, they're a bit bemused by some of it. They said, for example, I mean, it's terrible to go into this really, but I've started, so I'll finish. My Charlotte said to me,

do you really have to do pouring the champagne over her breasts and licking it off? I mean, do you really have to put that in a book? There are aspects of parents' lives no child ever wants to have to revisit. Let's be honest, James. But now you've made them. I know, I know. I thought that you can't also do it. I mean, the whole issue of

I didn't want to plunge into this whole thing about sex, but the idea that you can't talk about it or you somehow seal off areas, you can't really do that. I think you have to include everything, really. I mean, not absolutely everything. There are some things that have to remain private, but generally. No, I mean, yours was a passionate relationship.

Yes. I mean, it's rather lovely to... It is lovely to be able to acknowledge that. Yes. I don't want to focus on this either, but she was 12 years older than you. Yes. And I've just focused on it by mentioning it.

And I think your parents... I mean, your father, in case people don't realise, was Robert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury. They weren't over, am I right in saying they weren't over keen on the relationship? She's very nice, but it'll never last. Right. That was the first one. That was my mum. It's like a withering assessment.

Yes, and my father said, are you asking for my advice on this? Meaning, please ask for my advice. And I said, no, I'm not. And yes, of course course I was supposed to marry Samantha Huntley Palmer Biscuit and live in Hampshire with two Labradors and have three children and to when you are the Archbishop of Canterbury it's a slight facer your son says I'm going to marry a divorcee who's got a child who's 12 years older than me and lives in Scotland and you couldn't marry in church no because And you couldn't marry in church?

No, because divorcees couldn't marry in church in those days. So we had to have a blessing. And we had to be very, very sorry for all of our sins. It was far tougher than... I thought, I haven't done this much sinning. I mean... What were her alleged sins to her? Oh, well, broken of hours, of course. Oh, I see. Yes, she'd been divorced.

Right. Oh, God, it's all... You remember that Oh, I see. Yes, she'd been divorced. Right. Oh, God. You remember that kind of thing, Jane? People used to care about that kind of thing. It all seems a very, very long time ago. And just in case anybody's thinking, when was this? 1875. This was 1985.

1985. 1985. Yes, the 80s. Okay. And you had a tremendously successful 35-year marriage. And you were a very successful fiction writer, and you credit Marilyn with making you a writer of fiction. Well, she would say, why don't you do these kind of things?

So, yes, she would suggest things. And certainly when... So I wrote two novels that did quite well and two novels that did quite not very well at all, sank without trace, because faithfully I tried to be taken seriously as a serious writer rather than a fabulous and storyteller you know so that was a super so and she was doing rum pole of the bailey on on radio four and said um you know that john mortimer he's lovely he kisses me on the lips i said yeah all

right um he um he did have that reputation uh he um he has a lovable returning character what you want is a lovable returning character who people love set in the world of either i don't know the law or doctors or the church and everything why don't we do the church and we started to talk and granchester was a joint invention really oh was it yeah lovable clergyman who was loosely based on my dad a kind of mash-up of me and my dad right and how does that dynamic because you were both i imagine relatively volatile artistic creative types well yeah yeah i was well i think i was the volatile one she was internally volatile do you mean her or my father because Sorry, I do mean Marilyn, not your father. Get the Freudian relationships going here.

She, no, she was very, very, she had a reputation for enormous calm. She was incredibly calm and nurturing and, dare we say it, motherly. So, of course, early on, lots of my friends thought that she was a mother figure, you know. And they would say helpful things like, you know, she's a mother figure because your mother's ghastly. And I'd say, thanks. Yes, your mother was, I'm trying to, Rosalind. Lindy, yeah, Rosalind, yeah. And I think she was a sort of little bit of a tabloid sensation, wasn't she?

She was a tabloid sensation, yes. She was quite loose-tongued. I don't know where I get it from. No, honestly, the last 12 minutes or so have taught me that you may have inherited some of her qualities. Yes. I think, wasn't she known for draping herself across a piano? I'm afraid she did lie, yes, in an evening dress on a piano to model for a concert. It was a complete disaster.

There you are, you see, parents embarrassing their children. Champagne on the breast. Champagne on the breast, lying on a piano. Same kind of thing, really. And Marilyn and your mother, how was that relationship? That was quite difficult to begin with. And then but because she was older, and she knew how to handle my mother, it was better than with previous incarnations of possibilities, or, you know, with girlfriends, you know, she was my mother was very hostile to them, and would tell them what to do. But she couldn't

because Marilyn was already a mother. So that was easier and better and quicker and knew she would just know how to negotiate. It was a brilliant negotiator, Marilyn. Can I just ask, just about the responsibility, perhaps it isn't a responsibility, of being the child of an archbishop. I can't begin to imagine what that is like. Well, you're young, so you don't really know, but it's temporary. So, you know, you either behave well or you rebel. You know, you've got a choice.

And I did a bit of... I did containable rebellion. But people would say extraordinary things. The main role was not to embarrass your parents and not to get into tabloid trouble. And it was the beginning of first tabloid real tabloid stuff so you had to be had to not rise you know so you'd be at a party and somebody say wait are you the son of a vicar you're the son of the archbishop aren't you sons of vicars are either really repressed or really randy which are you and i said well there's only one way to

find out lucy j James Runcie is here. He's discussing his memoir, Tell Me Good Things, on love, death and marriage, because his late wife, Marilyn Imrie, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in, well, was it just before the start of the pandemic? Kind of the day before. Right. I mean, the timing is,

I mean, she probably did find some bleak humour in this, I guess. Well, a little bit, yes. I mean, when they delayed the Paralympics by a year, because she knew she could hardly walk, and she never did any sport or exercise, but she called that, good, another year to prepare. And so she did see some dark black humour in it, you know. But it was very hard because people, I mean, before the vaccine, people were too scared to come in the house. So Rosie, my stepdaughter, and Charlotte, my daughter,

and I did sort of nursing by YouTube. You know, bits of equipment would arrive and you'd think, ventilator? I don't know how this works. You know, feeding, what's this feeding cup? I don't understand. And by the time we got to hoists, I mean, that was just a joke. I mean, really, and frightening because you feel out of your depth. You don't really know.

You think, I've got to make this work. And you get used to the problem with M&D, if it's fast, which it was, which is either a good thing or a bad thing, is that you could just get used to one stage, the next stage kicks in. And so everything you've learned up to that point is irrelevant. And then you've got to learn a whole new set of rules. It's incredibly striking in the run up to the pandemic as well. How long the diagnosis took? Ages. Yeah. They don't like doing it. I don't know why it's one in 400 people get it. So it's weird. And so they don't join up the fact that your

legs ache. MND either generally works from the feet up or the head down. So either your speech goes funny or you start not being able to walk very well and you fall. And Marilyn had three falls before the diagnosis and actually sometimes couldn't get her tongue. She was doing a core teaching and she couldn't say the word vintage. She just couldn't work out how to get the word vintage out of her mouth so she had it from both directions which is why she only from diagnosis to death was five months 22 days and people think you know it's all Stephen Hawking

so you can live 40 years or Doddy lovely Doddy Weir who lasted four or five years you know but this was six months and it was in a pandemic it was incredibly violent in a funny way emotionally violent and and so shocking which is why we you you just all you can do is that you can't do any other thing the advantage was that there were no people we didn't have visitors because we couldn't and also we did Marilyn didn't want to be seen she wanted to be remembered at her best so it was it was completely appalling. And I suppose writing a book is a way to make sense of that, everything that happened,

and also to help people in a similar position or help people facing illness or facing loss and death generally. Can we talk about help? Because you're very good in this book, I think, on how friends and people within the circle should conduct themselves. Yes. And, you know, if you are an intimate friend then you have a more a clearer role but if you're a friend of you know a reasonably good friend it's hard to know sometimes what to do for the best yes as we say in england and indeed in scotland as well i'm sure so how do people make the most of their relationship with the family that's impacted by something like this?

Well, there's so many things, but I suppose number one is don't make more work for them. So don't make them have to do more things like reply. I mean, just say, thinking of you and call me if you need to. Don't write, how are you? Because that means, well, how do you think I am? What on earth do you think I am? And you guys did people write. Yes. How are you? How are you? Because that means, how do you think I am? What on earth do you think I am? And you guys did people right. Yes. How are you? How are you getting on? I'd like the person afterwards saying, hope you're feeling a bit better a month later. I thought, well, no, I'm not actually. I'm not feeling any better.

And Rosie had, Rosie, my stepdaughter, had somebody saying, when she went back to work, she said, actually, I've been feeling crap, really crap. And the person said, oh, have you had a bad week? I just went, no, no, no, my mother's died, actually, I've been feeling crap, really crap. And the person said, oh, have you had a bad week? I just went, no, no, no, my mother's died, actually. You know, and so it's just the crassest. But not creating further work and doing what you're good at. So if you can read a story and somebody can't be read, read a story.

If you can send flowers, send flowers. Even that I found a bit, because we've got so many flowers. Marilyn said it's not a crematorium yet. You see, that's interesting, too, because people do reach for flowers yes because we don't know what else to do and it's nice it's lovely it is but one of your friends i think had or was it relative forgive me i don't know but had the idea of sending the same flowers every wednesday my sister right which is good with the pot so you just take them out of this pot put them back in every so fresh flowers guaranteed every week once a week. No faff. Yeah. And then Bill Patterson, Hildegard Beckler,

sent us seven postcards in a package every week. And so with art, with one line on them about art. So it's Brancusis the Kiss saying, this is you two. That was incredibly moving, reading about how your actor friends would read audiobooks. Yeah, yeah, they did. Sounds absolutely magical. So Pip Torrance read every single Jeeves story,

and Siobhan redman read and deborah finley read and because she was in the acting world you know so the actors do what they do you know and joanna mcgregor played her a little concert you know for just for her you know just filmed it at home and play this is a concert for you marilyn you know it's incredibly moving you know you're also very good on your anger and there is is an occasion when older, it's during the pandemic, when we were all leading extraordinary lives and we were all under strain. Yes. Up to a point.

I mean, I know now just how lightly I got away during that period of my life. But there are a couple of elderly neighbours who are faffing, as we tend to, about their jabs. Yes, about their vaccine. You just go berserk. Yes, because you think you're still alive. What are you complaining about? I had to wait so long for this vaccine. And you are still alive, actually.

And so anyone older who's complaining, anyone older than 72, you just think, actually, shut up, really, frankly. Did you say that or did you just feel it? No, no, you think it and then you say it to your daughter afterwards. No, you don't go around telling people they shut up i don't know james based on based on how you've been since 25 to 4 i'm not ruling anything out no i mean i just i think that's it's just very disarming that you are prepared to acknowledge that you had these deeply unpleasant

thoughts yes yes you want to kill people yeah yeah yeah yeah yes you want them to die right okay on the spot yes yes you do because you can't there's nowhere for your rage to go because you're containing all your love and all your fear because i don't know it was extraordinary when charlotte was born uh you know i didn't realize i thought love could be contained in a certain way i didn't realize i could love and be frightened more than i could and i was at the birth of a child. And then again, as someone approaches death, you can love and be frightened more. So the range of emotion extends even further

and is even more disorientating. This strange, intense mixture of love and fear, or love and terror, is really terrifying. And you can't prepare. That's the other thing. You can read all the books, you can do anticipatory grief, but when it comes, it comes and you are totally thrown by it and it's not like you've read about because it's happening to you in that moment and you can't you've had no training in this even if you've been trained by the death of a parent the death of a partner is different just as awfully

the death of a child is some people so when people i remember once marilyn felt very very guilty for after she went up to somebody and said, you know, who'd lost a child and said, I know how you feel. And this woman said, no, you don't. So, you know, that it's really hard. It's hard for everyone. Yes. Can we talk about grief? There's a quote from your father, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in case we've got any late joiners, who said, it's good to grieve, but a sin to hug your grief. Yes. What do you think he meant? I think it's me, it's a sin to hold on to sort of love your grief, to be, I mean, obviously people grieve in different ways, you know, but as my mother said, after my father died, no one likes a moaner, so it mustn't go on about it. And so one doesn't want to... I don't want to use grief as a career move.

So I'm not doing public events. I'm only coming on this show because you're legendary. James, get on with it. It's true. Katie's petrified. She cares, James. But generally, I don't.'t backing into the limelight so

because I don't want to go on about it I think you need to and you do need to move on because you write and you feel these emotions at a precise time of your life so you feel differently after one year, all this book was written in one year and Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking is the year after as well and then you feel that you should move on people

come up with all sorts of things like it takes two years or it takes three years but obviously it mutates into different ways you know caring the business of caring um in spite of the fact that so many of us have done it or will do it or will be cared for is still not a subject we talk about all that much and I wonder how much caring had you done before you were caring for Marilyn none absolutely it's hard none no no none none at all I mean a bit with my dad and a bit well my mum was got sepsis and went in five days so that was very different so none and you really don't know what you're doing and you you have to be very careful about falling and choking, you know, and feeding somebody who can't swallow very well.

And you think, if she chokes to death, it will be my fault. So those kind of things. So you are very exposed, you know. But in a way, we did as best we could. And I don't think we messed up. And we were very keen that she should stay at home because we could get the drugs to her quicker. Didn't have to ask a nurse or anything.

We could give her things that she needed and we learnt how to do it and make her comfortable and do simple things like lighting the room differently. So you didn't have bright hospital lights. You had candlelight and I could play music. And the flowers, again, scents, perfume, soap, washing, making it feel clean, not dirty, you know, those kind of things. You can be much more literally hands-on.

So, I mean, I've had friends who've cared for relatives at home, and they found it very difficult, actually. I suppose it depends whereabouts in the country you live, whether the community care is set up, people can come in to assist you. You were in Scotland, weren't you? Yes, we had very good community nursing. And we had some... M&D is quite advanced on the nursing and on the care and on knowing what to do. And they know it's pretty serious.

So you are held in... And we had lots of people. Yes, we did. And we had some care that we paid for as well. But the community nurses were fantastic. And we had sort of so we had doctors and we had my friends who are doctors that's kind of the annoying middle class thing where you phone up your friends and say what do you think of this morphine level can

we go up a bit they say definitely if i were you were on that morphine you'd hardly notice james i love the way that having friends who are doctors is what do you call an awful middle class thing yes yes i'm gonna bring all my doctor. I haven't got any doctor friends. I know, get some. Maybe I'm not middle class. I thought I was, but obviously I'm not. I hope there's time to tell the Ken Dodd story because Marilyn had a fantastic sense of humour, clearly.

Yes. And there is a great anecdote in the book about... Ken Dodd. Somebody who had a photograph of Ken Dodd on their mantelpiece. Well, it's a Bill Patterson story, to be fair. And I'll have to do this without swearing, which I will do without swearing. Well, can you not swear, please? I will try not to swear.

No, it's just at North of Scotland, a violinist, Ali McBain, was playing at one of those concerts and went back to the thing all actors and writers and things get very nervous about, which is dinner with local hosts, where you do the concert or you do the performance and then you're taken back to someone's house and you have to sort of perform again, but you perform socially. And Ali McBain went back, the violinist, Scottish folk artist,

went back to the minister's house, a very pious Scottish doer minister, and for a light sherry, sort of lukewarm, you know, thick, sweet sherry, I thought, for goodness sake, what am I doing here? But saw that the minister had on the mantelpiece a picture of Ken Dodd. So he said, oh, God, you know Ken Dodd? And the man didn't answer. And he said, would you like another sherry?

And Alice said, no, wait a minute, this is ridiculous. He must know Ken Dodd. I mean, it's absurd. But how would a minister know? How do you know Ken Dodd? How did you meet Ken Dodd? How did you know the buck-toothed Liverpudlian comic? And the minister said, no, no, no. Are you sure you've got enough, Sherry? And Ali McBain said, look, I just want to know how you know Ken Dodd.

He said, that is my bloody wife. Right. I loved it in the book. I still love it now. And let's give credit to Bill Patterson, whose anecdote it was, but it was dearly loved by Marilyn. It was dearly loved. Good enough for me. That's James Runcie ending on a good anecdote note.

And I just wanted to make sure we got that into the interview because I love Ken Dodd. I just thought that was one of the best stories I've ever heard. I also have seen Ken Dodd live. And my mum and dad once fell out spectacularly, I think about 10 years ago, when my dad told my mum he had a special treat for her. And she got really excited and thought it might be

some sort of mini break or a piece of expensive jewellery. It was, in fact, that dad had booked tickets for Ken Dodd, I think in Southport. And my mum didn't actually like Ken Dodd as much as me or my dad and was very angry because Ken Dodd, I think in Southport. And my mum didn't actually like Ken Dodd as much as me or my dad and was very angry because Ken Dodd Live was an experience that you needed a whole pack of sandwiches for because he could actually perform for about five and a half, sometimes I think six hours. There was just no respite. He just kept going. And some people love him and clearly not everybody not everybody does love him including

my mum but I was really glad he was able to make an appearance in that interview with James Runcie and honestly the book Tell Me Good Things is it's a beautiful thing and it's it's very very moving. Sue email corner this from Sally I've been listening to your show quite a lot since you started and I used to quite enjoy your old podcast as well. I agree with much of what you talk about. However, regarding the World Cup, when you said yesterday, even those of you who are football resistant, I bet you watched at least some of it yesterday afternoon. I wanted to yell at you. No, I'm sure I'm not alone in having less than no interest at all in team sports, the players or the scores. When you have no interest in them,

this doesn't mean that you would want to watch a bit of the final or any other part of it. No, absolutely not. I was so glad it was finishing, but now everyone still seems to be talking about it. The only other time I felt like emailing you was when you made comments about vegans eating food that looked like meat. Thank you for the varied and interesting broadcasts and keep up the good work.

No, thank you, Sally. OK, I take it. Some people are just never, ever, ever, ever, ever going to watch team sport. But what I will say on the subject of team sport is that if Beth Mead doesn't win the Sports Personality of the Year on BBC, I think it's BBC One tomorrow evening, I'll be livid. I do think it's every female sports fan's duty to vote multiple times for Beth Mead tomorrow night. I'll be doing it, trust me. And from Karen, I was listening to your interview with the Whitehalls.

That was Michael and Hilary. They're the Whitehall seniors, the parents of Jack. And in response to a comment by Hilary, you said you'd like a gig involving travel. I don't think I'd say that because I'm the one who doesn't like travel much, Karen. But anyway, perhaps it was Fee. Well, I found you one, she says. We've just got back from the Times Cheltenham Literature Festival cruise on the Queen Mary 2. And we had such a good time. We've booked again for next year. Matt Chorley was on that, wasn't he? Research on our table at dinner with fellow guests revealed that we were all okay

mainly the women huge fans of your podcast. There are men who listen to this you know. So now you're part of the Times Empire you must be eligible to join the cruise and call it work. Matt Chorley obviously had a ball and recorded a few sessions to replay on his show. You could do the same, surely. An event that allows Ed Balls and Rachel Johnson dueting at karaoke, not very well, followed by Prue Leith attempting Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds has got to be experienced.

Hope to see you there, and happy Christmas, says Karen. No, I still... Is it wrong to say i'm still not that interested in doing that cruise um ed balls rachel johnson prue leith and matt chorley and you're at sea and all that catering i mean prue leith must have been poking her head around the kitchen door every five minutes i'd have been terrified if i was working in the kitchen on that cruise uh you haven't quite sold it to me, Karen, but I'm sure Fee will be there next year. And if she is, you make a beeline for her, Karen.

Make yourself known to her. She'll be delighted to meet you. To meet you. Right, it's at this time of the podcast I really do start to miss the little thing. I want her back. Hopefully she's having a relatively good time. But I'm sure she's missing us too. Join me tomorrow.

My co-host in the first hour is Lucy Fisher. She'll talk politics, I know. And I'm also really excited to be talking to one of my favourite writers of non-fiction, the historian Julia Boyd, who's written two fantastic books about World War II, A Village in the Third Reich, which I really, really recommend,

and Travellers in the Third Reich. So if that sort of thing is your bag, make sure you're with us tomorrow Village in the Third Reich, which I really, really recommend, and Travellers in the Third Reich. So if that sort of thing is your bag, make sure you're with us tomorrow for the live show, if you can make it, between 3 and 5 on Times Radio, or, of course, for Off Air. Take care until then. Now, you've been listening to Off Air with me, Jane Garvey. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Ben Mitchell,

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