Off Air... with Jane and Fi - It's rubbish, but it's varied rubbish (with James Comey)

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

The Hot Priest Challenge is being put to bed, due to some fundamental holes in the business plan... Jane and Fi also cover Facebook for OAPs, the importance of local newspapers, clothing alterations and swimmer's ear. Plus, former director of the FBI James Comey joins Jane and Fi to discuss the US election and his latest novel 'Newport'. Our next book club pick has been announced! 'The Trouble with Goats and Sheep' by Joanna Cannon.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! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

They're not wildly well endowed. I would say it was kind of bang average. Well, I mean, that's, you know, to be fair to the man, he's not, um, I wouldn't have said he'd exaggerated his jobs. Hi, I'm Katie Prescott, Technology Business Editor at The Times. On the 1st of October, I'll be hosting our annual Tech Summit in London. We're bringing together a stellar lineup of tech leaders in the room and on the stage, including Demis Hasabis, the founder of Google DeepMind, and Peter Kyle, the UK's new tech secretary. You can sign up at the following address, times-event.com

forward slash tech summit hyphen virtual. I hope you can make it. Chambers, Liv's and Bronwyn, no and I didn't ask about it because I thought that's just a bit dull now. Do you want to do parish notices right at the beginning or right at the end? I just want to briefly, we'll go to parish notices now, but Paula in, who's in Mallorca, is it Malorca or is that just how you spell Mallorca? It's just how you spell, I think the double L in Spanish is always a Y, so Medellin, Mallorca. Paula, let's just kill the Hot Priest sperm donation chat with this one. I'd call the service, let us spray, says Paula, right? Paula, no more,

thank you. We might have to put this to bed. Yes, for a long, very long lie down. But quite a lot of people have pointed out that the art of dispensing, well, self-love, the art of self-love is not something that a priest in the Catholic Church is allowed to do. So fortunately, the sperm bank falls down at the first hurdle really doesn't it? But does it counters masturbation when you're making a donation? Specific question. I don't know. We'll have to wait, well let's hope God gets in touch.

I don't know who makes these rules. I've never really understood it. I'll tell you what, I sent an email to the Restors Entertainment today because I had an entertainment query I wanted answered. Why don't you pop that in an email and see whether they can answer that? To the Vatican podcast. I tell you what, the Reverend Richard Coles would know the answer to that one. Okay, well, that's the man of the cloth. Let's make contact. Tote winners then in parish notices 18 slash 09. Asen Monaco

Immerson, Kisnia Loeffler, Jane Duff, Sarah Laufner. This is like some kind of pronunciation steeplechase here. I would have thought I've only got one of those right so far so I'm really sorry. Rachel Fright and a happy belated birthday, Caroline Robinson and her sister Lynn. Well done everybody and we really hope those totes bring you pleasure. Margaret's given us a recipe. Has she? For what? Mayonnaise. Do you want it? Wow, okay, okay. Yeah, go on. Well, she says, I too have got memories of growing up in England and only having salad cream on my mother's neat and tidy 1960s salads. We couldn't afford mayonnaise.

Imagine my dismay when I emigrated to New Zealand as a young woman to discover a recipe for mayonnaise made out of condensed milk. It was very commonly used and nobody thought it was weird. I suppose it was Moorish because it was full of sugar like tomato ketchup is. You just mix a whole can of sweetened condensed milk with a cup of malt vinegar, a teaspoon of salt and two teaspoons of mustard powder, whisk it up and it goes thick, keeps in the fridge for weeks. I'm not surprised, probably stays like that for years. I've become a snob in my 60s and will frequently make my own mayonnaise with proper eggs and olive oil. I never cease to be amazed by the variety

of topics discussed on your programme. Keep up the good work, kind of girls, Margaret. Well, we have gone from pre-sperm to mayonnaise in barely two minutes. Is it a bigly? Who knows? Don't visualise it. Go for it. Let's actually go to Ireland and Scepter. Checking the obituaries was a very Irish daily habit. My mother checked them every day in the Irish Independent as we were country people, that means rural. Dublin people probably posted in the Irish Times or both. And I'm sure Cork people would post in the former Cork Examiner, now simply the Examiner. She also read all the anniversary announcements in the local Connacht Tribune.

My colleague at work finishes her workday by checking rip.ie before she shut down her PC. It's known as Facebook for old people. Using cheeky for nouns like pizza etc is a bugbear of mine. If somebody says to me in the morning they're having a cheeky coffee, then I'm sorry to say the day hasn't started well. Okay, it's quite a variety of subjects covered there. Thank you very much. Yeah, I know what you mean. Cheeky whatever is for me on a par with Holly Bobbs and other irritants of the semantic world.

Okay. So can we all abandon having a cheeky anything? Yeah. Do you like guilty pleasures? Sometimes I get annoyed by guilty pleasures because it's a very passive aggressive way of saying you like something isn't it? I mean if you want a nice doughnut, have one. But don't give yourself a hard time about it. What was your local newspaper called? The Crosby?

Herald. Herald. OK. By the way, turned me down when I offered my expertise there. I said I would like to do work experience. And they said no. I had a no level in English and they seemed able to do without me. And they've closed now.

And I think actually I've really missed that newspaper. I'm probably not alone. I used to love it kept going I think probably closed about a decade ago. Hasn't really been replaced as a kind of free sheet. It's not the same and for all the mockery I would love leafing through it when I went home. Always, always. So good. Yeah. I always really love the titles of local newspapers because they go beyond sometimes, don't they?

So you will have something like the West Stratton Bugle. Yes. Yeah. I mean, we had the Hampshire Chronicle. The Hampshire Chronicle. And it was a big one. It was the size of, you know, a big broadsheet. It was a weighty thing and we've talked about this before. It had the market prices, the agricultural

prices on the front. And then you had... Right on the front. Oh yes. No, no, that was... Well, that's significant though, isn't it? That was the front page. And then you had to wait a while before you got to the social pages which were a sort of endless fascination to a young teenage girl. The town's women's guilds, bring and buy sale. I used to love mocking it, but you know what?

Obviously I love mocking it as a teenager. I actually really, I would cherish it now. And the Crosby Herald owned by the same group and only about five miles away, the Formby Times, the times of Formby. I mean, Formby was just another slightly closer to the seaside suburb of Southport stroke Liverpool, which merited its own newspaper. I mean, just extraordinary. I mean, I know that if you appeared in both newspapers in the same week, it was regarded as an absolutely astonishing feat, because sometimes there would be a social event that would straddle both Crosby and Formby. And if you also made it into the Southport Visitor, then my god.

You'd probably committed a crime. Actually, almost certainly you had appeared in court. Yes. I would love if anyone has got old copies of local newspapers if for some reason you've kept them or whatever I'd just be delighted to see them and if you've got funny names if you can go beyond a bugle and it would be very good to hear from you too and You know sometimes nostalgia is just a bit pointless and icky isn't it? But I do think the demise of the local newspaper is such such a sad thing. It is. And putting my pompous head very much on, holding local councils to account.

Well, just totally Jane, totally. And if you don't understand what happens to your neighbours, then you will not make, I think, the right judgement about what happens to strangers. It is quite often, it is only that empathetic connection of something that happens to someone you know that brings into your life experiences that are different to your own and you just don't get that because the whole point of the bloody internet is that it sends you in a direction of someone like you instead of someone who's not like you. And local papers were absolutely a place of just being able to witness lots of things, lots of things going on.

Yes, and it wasn't all about seeing people who'd been to school with appearing in court. No, it wasn't. But, you know, sometimes, let's be honest. It wasn't. So yes, much missed and they're kind of, yes, they, I've started a sentence, I can't finish there. Lovely, I enjoyed it. Pickles and juice. This is from Melanie who says she's in sunny Somerset and it has actually been a lovely week, certainly in the sort of south-ish area of England this week. I'm relatively fit and healthy at 68 but I have for the last couple of years suffered with cramp in feet and legs in the evening and during the night, and it's wildly painful.

I was told that a gulp of pickle juice stops it quickly. Willing to try anything for relief, I did swig some. Sure enough, it really does work. is that it shuts down the misfiring of neurons that transmit pain, but please don't take that as gospel as what do I know with just a few made-up O levels and no medical training whatsoever except St. John's ambulance when I was seven. All right Melanie, well you've absolutely nailed the fact that you are not yourself, strictly speaking, medically qualified, but I'm interested in that. I wonder how that helps you, but I'm glad it does. And Sophie says, I was interested to hear Jane talking about her predilection for sauerkraut. No, it's not mine, it's the it's the offsprings.

I wondered if she tried fermenting any foods herself in my fridge. I currently have some home-produced sauerkraut, kimchi, a sourdough starter and my most recent creation, ginger shots. My dear friend Richard has been the inspiration for most of these. I wanted to get his name in as he's a great fan of the show and would love one of your totes. Well we might consider him for next week. Can we do that? Yeah we can. Good. Well done Richard. Richard has been friends with Sophie since they met during freshers at the University of Surrey in 1984. Richard's ginger shots, which also contain turmeric and chilli, proved to be great pick-me-ups the morning after we celebrated 40 years of our friendship.

That's good, isn't it? It is. And for everyone who's heading off to freshers and maybe at freshers and maybe even finding it tough or you're the parent of someone there. I do think it's worth remembering that however tough those early days and weeks can be, you may well, even without realising it, have met one of the great friends of your life. And that seems to be what happened to Sophie when she met Richard. So lovely to hear about that. Sophie has a photo of Pope Francis on her fridge. He may not be a hot priest, but I think he's got a lovely smile, says Sophie. Which world leader do you think has the loveliest smile?

Gosh, I mean are you asking? Yeah, what do you think? I don't know, I always, I find myself regarding any smiling world leader as being a bit superficial. Biden's got good nashers but I suspect they're not all his own. No, I think he's got very, I think he has got nice twinkly, he's got kind eyes hasn't he? Don't you think? I think sometimes when Macron smiles I think you've practiced that mate. Yeah well are you saying the man is familiar with his own image in the mirror? I'm saying that exactly that. Does wear a good suit though doesn't he?, he's very easy on the eye.

He is. I know it's a bit of a cliché because he's French, but I do think he dresses well. I mean, he's not a tall man, is he? No, I think he looks immaculate. Anyway, let's not dwell on the appearance of male world leaders. Stop it. Stop it. Turmeric is very, very good as an anti-inflammatory, isn't it? I know lots of people who are using it to calm down various inflammations and squeaky joints and all of that kind of stuff and they really swear by it. Well, that is a magic fridge, isn't it? So you've got all your pickles and you've got your ferments and you've got your anti-inflammatories and then you've got your pick-me-up gingers.

That's a little business you've got going on there. This is anonymous. Excuse me. I was wondering if anyone had tips for saying goodbye to a childhood home. I'm in my 30s, haven't lived there or anywhere near for years and wouldn't consider living there, so selling it is a no-brainer. I don't have any family left so maybe my grief is stored in the house but also I was absolutely miserable when I was growing up so I'm very confused and frustrated that getting rid of the house feels so sad. I don't really want to be

storing lots of furniture and mementos but I'm worried about regretting that later on. How to let it go? I'm a single pringle so I don't yet feel settled enough to know how my future looks, if that makes sense. Anyway, I thought that lots of your listenership might have dealt with something similar, so I was hoping it might make a good topic. And our correspondent goes on to say, I had a sad birthday recently where I was by myself, received no gifts and felt so alone in life. The podcast plays a big part in managing my loneliness and I've never missed an episode. I am trying to meet people but I have an intense job, antisocial hours, and find it hard to get to anything regular.

So I'm always hoping you'll make an Offair community one day. Well, it doesn't go beyond the realms of possibility. I think the Offair sheltered housing is definitely an opportunity further down the line. And I would say as well that if you, I don't know whether you're anywhere near London or it might not even appeal to you on a Tuesday night, but we are doing a show, aren't we, at the Barbican and loads and loads of people come along on their own and it's a really good laugh and you're allowed to use the men's toilets. Oh it's great. Yeah. We just we never run that past management just tell people.

We just announce it. Just a go for it. A little bit of power goes to our heads as you may have noticed. Yes to that correspondent, absolutely come along to that show if you can be bothered and I appreciate you. Why would you want to be bothered and maybe you can't get to London? Lots of people do as he says, come on their own and chat to other people. Because it is, I mean without being ludicrous, this is a kind of crazed community.

Somebody asked me, oh I know, it was my dentist the other day, he said, what is your podcast about? I said, what's it about? Erm... Did he ask you that when you had two of those foam things down the side of your gum? I spat them both out and addressed him. Anyway, I've made another appointment. What will you see this time? Thank you. Oh god, I'm trying to move on from that. No, it's, oh she's brought it all back to me. What is our podcast about? And I don't know and nor does Fee, in truth. But also we shouldn't examine it. We shouldn't examine it.

Never examine it. We're not going to navel gaze our own podcast. But it very much is about a crazed community of people who are actually... The joke is that we're the sane ones in the world. Everybody else is bonkers, but only we know that. And that's why we want this to be a completely safe space for you to express all sorts of different sentiments. And I really feel for that individual, that sounds tough. I think I've never actually sold a childhood home and I bet it does bring up a whole load of issues and it's quite telling isn't it, that she wasn't actually happy there but it's still something that is very upsetting and perhaps even

more upsetting because it's an environment that didn't hold very many happy memories for you. And I'm really sorry to hear that by the way. So yes, I'd love to hear from other people. Have you ever sold it? No, we moved around too much, Jane, so it's not been a thing in my life at all. But I know for friends who didn't, and do you know what? I've always envied them actually I think to have had the same childhood home to go back to well into your adult life is a real real privilege and and I mean I'm also really fascinated by that sense of it not having happy memories but somehow that doesn't mean that you want to let it go either. And I suppose it's just a, I mean, it's a part of you, isn't it?

It's a grounding part of you. And maybe is it a place where you can kind of, whilst it's still there and in your life, you can kind of park your bad memories somewhere. They belong there, that's what happened. You know, perhaps you feel that you might be, you know, it might be a bit untethering to not have that place, that physical place in your life.

Let's try to be positive. You might find that when all this is over, you feel a lot better. You may well do. So let's hope it is that version of events. But thank you for planting the seed and let's see what other people say about that because lots of people of around my age and a lot younger are in a position like our correspondent of selling a parents home which I assume is is what is happening here. Yep it is a tricky one and and also I think it's a really valid conversation to

be having if you're you know if you're facing that kind of downsizing move or moving into sheltered accommodation or whatever it is and you're feeling very upset and possibly a bit guilty about your adult children not having access to their childhood home. Well I mean, ludicrously, I think I said the other day, didn't I, that I was angry with my parents for getting rid of my smash hits collection. That was well into my thirties. And I was actually absurdly cross with them when they moved out of the home in which I'd grown up. It's just laughable. What gave me that right? Their lives had every right to move on in the same way as mine had. But I did feel a bit, oh, oh. But I suppose that's about not having

asked you as well, isn't it? Whereas. Whereas presumably you do have to have the conversation. They did tell me where they were moving to. Yes. You wouldn't have blamed them if they just about had to the other end of the country. But also I think this is so poignant, isn't it, because our correspondent doesn't have any family left. So I can completely understand why taking away that physical symbol of your family is going to feel really, really tough. So yeah, we'll pop it out there to the off-air crowd and they will have many, many thoughts.

Quite a few people have emailed in with their pictures standing next to Anthony Gormley. Not the Anthony Gormley, but obviously the many, many, many cast versions of Anthony Gormley, not the Anthony Gormley but obviously the many many many cast versions of Anthony Gormley around the country. Nobody I suspect apart from Anthony Gormley and maybe a couple of other people I don't want to plant nasturtiums in his character would ever be able to tell us whether or not it is a real depiction of Anthony Gormley. Can I just say that the statues, they're not wildly well endowed. I would say it was kind of bang average. Well, I mean, that's, you know, to be fair to the man, he's not, I wouldn't have said he'd exaggerated his jobs.

What are you basing this thesis on? Very little life experience. Very little, relatively speaking. I honestly don't know how to follow that. Amanda Bishop, don't laugh, she sends some really lovely ones and I didn't realise actually, and this is going to sound really daft, I didn't realise that they really were genuinely life-size. Is that a daft thing to say? Well no it isn't. I thought they might actually be an awful lot bigger because when you see them without anybody standing next to them on Crosby Beach, they just look so imposing. And elsewhere because they're at the childhood home in Norfolk of, I can't remember the woman's name now. Do you remember her? I think she's been on the programme. She was the lady-in-waiting

to Princess Margaret. Yes, and I do have the name here because I think that is exactly where Amanda has taken these pictures. Yes, so Amanda says, on the recent topic of Antony Gormley, our time together, and she has been telling us about her and her sister who's called Fiona Jane. Oh, lucky girl. I know. So our time together included a few glorious days in Norfolk. We took great delight in

experiencing the Antony Gormley Time Horizons installation in the extensive grounds of Houghton Hall. This is a temporary installation of 100 of the life-size Gormleys, I believe the same as those at Crosby, all at the same height above sea level, so some sit on plinths while others are partially buried in the ground. Oh right, I didn't realise that. So at Crosby they've got the sea coming in but here they just planted them. Yes. It's thought-provoking, sometimes beautiful, sometimes disturbing, fascinating and hilarious in parts. We didn't see the Gormleys as egocentric but rather a simple representation of the human form, albeit male, in body, mind and soul. A few photos attached for your interest.

So thank you very much indeed for sending those. I mean it's very much an artist's thing isn't it to use yourself to express your vision of the world through art. And I was thinking it's not that much different to a memoir is it for a writer and isn't there a saying that you should always write your memoir before you write other people's stories because actually such a huge part of creativity is the self. Yeah although loads of great novelists have never written a memoir. No but they probably... Do you think they will have witted away at home in the nicest possible way? Possibly, yeah. Before they were, yes, we don't know that do we?

There must be loads, you're right, there must be loads of unpublished memoirs by great novelists. Yeah. If you're a great novelist and you're listening, let us know. Yeah, well I don't know. Melania Trump's memoirs coming out in a couple of weeks. It is, isn't it? Now we've put in a bid, but we don't have high hopes.

How hopeful are you? And there was a nanosecond, wasn't there, when we considered the fact that it might be an explosive tell-all, but it's not. It doesn't sound like it is, does it? Because we read the blurb yesterday and it was not good. My Wonderful Life, a bit like that. What was it? Did the blurb say something like she'd had a seren... I can't say that word.

Serendipitous. Meeting with her great love, Donald. That's one word for it. Oh come on, Fee. Swimmer's here. Do you do one first? Well actually this is from Helen who says, I'm writing following your conversation about celebrities disclosing medical details publicly. I'm a doctor in the NHS and I was diagnosed with breast cancer just days before we went into the first lockdown. That must have been really tough. It was picked up on screening, came as a total shock.

I found telling colleagues and friends, largely via remote technology, incredibly difficult. Their response was lovely and supportive, but also quite overwhelming, to the extent that I stopped telling all my friends. I would tell them later once I was through my treatment. Now whether you're a celebrity or not, we all have the same biology, but how we choose to disclose our medical history is our business and it should be respected. Some find it helpful

to talk about every detail and indeed may help others by sharing their experience, but others choose not to. No doubt there are plenty of celebrities out there who do keep things private. Victoria Wood springs to mind as somebody who kept her diagnosis completely secret while she was alive. And absolutely right that Helen, that I think is why so many of us were so shocked

when we heard about the news of her death. Helen says, when I was diagnosed, the voice in my brain every 10 seconds or so screamed I've got breast cancer, I've got breast cancer and it went on for weeks. If I had to deal with this also being broadcast on TV, radio and social media I think I'd have lost the plot. For me I needed distractions and other topics of conversation. One of the most helpful comments I had from a friend was, I'm here if you want to talk

and it's equally fine if you don't. And I think that is worth bearing in mind. It's hard to know how best to help somebody in that situation, isn't it? Because the last thing you want is to be thought of as someone who doesn't care, but not everybody going through any kind of illness wants to talk about it all the time, 24-7. Helen, thank you very much for that and I trust you're doing fine now, but thank you. Terry Wogan didn't make his cancer public until very later on, did he? He obviously didn't want to fuss.

Yeah, yes, that's true. I've forgotten about that. His death was a great shock as well. So here I am saying that I've been really shocked by the deaths of two people that actually I really did like and admire. But they didn't owe me information about their illness at all. No. Do you think it goes back to the same point, well it totally does, doesn't it, that Chapel Roan's trying to make at the moment about drawing that line around yourself and not necessarily not everybody's automatically allowed in just because you're living on a part of your life on a public stage. But I think also

some of the correspondence we've had about that public announcement things have made me think about whether or not it is actually quite useful and it's just something that I need to get used to. So scrolling through whatever social media it is late at night, I just need to have a bit of a word with myself that there might be something on this, you know, someone who I really, really admire might have died and, you know, instead of being just constantly outraged by the fact that that's how I found out about it, I need to adjust my set, don't I? We all have adjustments to make.

Yes. What adjustments will you be making over the weekend? Well, I'm going to go to the dry cleaners to pick up the inevitable pair of trousers I've had to have shortened. So that's my adjustment. That's your adjustment. I swear, that guy who's very good, it's so good to have this kind of service in our local village in East West Kensington. But I must have given that man realistically over the last 15 years 10% of my earnings to have things shortened, sleeves, trousers. No, don't be ridiculous because we earn the same and I know what you earn and you do not

buy that many trousers. Sorry. I just got to correct you there. This is the rest of the household. We all need sleeves shortening. I can't do it. Ten percent of your salary. Okay. Five percent. Not even that.

Okay. A percentage. No, of course, if I paid attention in needlework at school fee, I'd be able to do it. Well, I still don't really understand why you aren't going with the double sided sticky interface. Oh, I've tried it. And they flap out. Do they? Okay. Hi, I'm Adam Vaughan, Environment Editor for The Times. At the 2024 Times Earth Summit, our discussion on the essential steps for a net zero transition will be set against

a backdrop of the biggest election year in history. The governments voted in this year will face a crucial period for the sustainability agenda. This transition will be theirs to accelerate and all our futures will be affected by whether or not they do so. To book your ticket to this year's summit, head to timesfsummit.com forward slash virtual.

Now look, it's probably time to bring in our guest and there's never been a better or more terrifying time to talk to this bloke has there? When our next guest talks about the future of America, we should listen. James Comey is the former director of the FBI, a post he held from 2013 until he was fired by Donald Trump in 2017. He leaked details of meetings he had had with the president where Trump had asked him to drop the FBI probe into a former national security adviser who was part of a wider investigation.

You may remember this into whether or not Russia had played a part in the US election. Now, since leaving that post, Comey has been vocal about the damage he believes Trump could do to his country. He said that a second administration would be a danger to all Americans and that a victorious Trump will be surrounded by those at the bottom of the barrel. James Comey has also turned his hand rather expertly to writing novels

and his second book Westport is a classic corporate crime spills out into real murder and somebody finds themselves scapegoated for both. James Comey, welcome to the programme. Thanks for having me on. How tall are you? Let's just clear this one up for starters. Six foot seven, six foot eight. I am, I don't know how your audience tracks it, but I'm 203.2 centimetres, six feet eight inches.

OK, right. Well, congratulations. We must never meet in person because between the two of us, Jane and I only top out at about seven foot. Now tell us a little bit about Nora in the book and the pickle that she finds herself in. Nora is a federal prosecutor in Manhattan in the first book called Central Park West and she's modeled on my oldest daughter who is a federal prosecutor in Manhattan. In the second book she leaves government work burnt out and a little bit discouraged and joins a gigantic hedge fund, a financial manager in the suburbs of New York and finds herself the subject of a

murder investigation and so it's a bit of a whodunit told in a different environment than the first book. This is in the private sector. And it's a bit of a whodunit told in a different environment than the first book. This is in the private sector. And it's all about justice, isn't it? And it's such a fantastic kind of ploy for the reader to meet this person who has had injustice placed upon her. And we're pacing ourselves through the book, trying to hope that good will come in the end.

You do say, I love the author's note at the beginning James about that, the difference between fact and fiction which for you puts you under way more scrutiny than most novelists and I wonder how often you have to check in with yourself as a writer to make sure that you are not stepping into a place where people are gonna say I recognize that person, I recognize this crime. Yeah you're exactly right. I have to think about it carefully for a number of reasons. When I'm writing about what happens inside the FBI I have to ask am I giving away official government secrets that I'm prohibited from giving

away so I have to check myself there carefully and in the private sector I to ask, am I giving away official government secrets that I'm prohibited from giving away? So I have to check myself there carefully. And in the private sector, I was the chief lawyer of the world's largest hedge fund for three years before I went to the FBI. So I don't want to give away things I'm bound to protect as an attorney for a former client, but I also want to make it real. I'm trying to take people inside worlds that I've known and show them what they really feel like. And so it's a balance and I actually don't mind if people who really know the insides notice some Easter eggs I've laid for them that the rest of the world won't see.

I don't think many of our listeners will really know the place that you're describing, Westport, Connecticut. So can you tell us a little bit more about it? It does play quite a key role in the wealth of the world, doesn't it? It does. It's a wealthy suburb on the shores of the Long Island Sound, just north of New York City, so about 50 miles north of Wall Street. And it used to be, 100 years ago, a vacation, a place where wealthy people had their cottages, but with train service and better roads, it's become a commuter place. But it's also part of the Gold Coast of Connecticut,

which is crowded with financial managers. So some of the biggest money managers in the world are there, and the one I worked for, the largest, is in Westport, and so that's where I put this fictional hedge fund. Tell us a little bit about the greed that is involved in that world and how you as a lawyer, and I am presuming that some of the motivation for choosing that career was to fight for truth, how do you react as a person when you're in a world that is about the accumulation of wealth predominantly? It's a fascinating environment. I left government in 2005

during the George W Bush administration and I became the chief lawyer at a gigantic corporation, Lockheed Martin Corporation, and I was recruited to go to this hedge fund five years later by the promise that I'd get to feel what a culture that tries to root out the poisons of hierarchy and all the backstabbing that you find in large organizations. I'm sure not where you work, but other large organizations. And they said, we're trying to build a culture

that's different than others where truth is the paramount value. And I thought, that's pretty cool. I'd like to see what that's like. And it was fascinating. I'm very glad I went. I told them when I left three years later, I'm also very glad I left because money is not

the motivator at the center of my life. And I just didn't find much joy working in a place where money was everything. A lot of very good people work there, but money is warping because for people who have a lot of money they struggle with trying to justify it and many of them have to tell themselves a story that I deserve it because otherwise the cognitive dissonance is disabling and that it's hard to live, at least for me, long term in a world where money is everything is Cognitive dissonance at the heart of the American dream though

Yes, it is. I mean America is there two values intention I guess in every country but especially in America One is our our energy our search for opportunity and to make your own way and to make your own money. And the other is security, that is taking care of the less fortunate, taking care of our neighbours and there's a tension there in America. It's one of the things that makes my country both wonderful and really weird and frustrating and depressing at times. And what's going to happen to your country in the next six weeks or so? What do you think the result of the election will be?

I think Kamala Harris is going to be our first female president and I feel very good about that. I'm deeply optimistic. I think something has been unlocked. Some of the enthusiasm we haven't seen in our country since Barack Obama ran in 2008. Something's been unlocked and I think it's going to sweep her into office. It'll be closer than ever it should be. I keep remembering this line that Abraham Lincoln liked to quote at the end of our Civil War in 1865. He used to quote someone who told him, there's always enough virtue to save America but none

to spare and that's the way it's going to be this time as well. But how big does Kamala Harris have to win in order for Trump not to be able to challenge the election outcome, or will he challenge it whatever? Oh, he'll challenge it regardless. I mean, she could win all the votes, including maybe Melania's, and he would still say it had been stolen from him.

That's what he is as this narcissist. He has to set it up so that he can't ever be a failure, ever be weak, ever lose. And so we're just going to have to deal with that. That is the price of Donald Trump being at the centre of our national life. So what would the FBI be doing at the moment in preparation for that kind of spillover of Trumpism if Harris does win? Well, they'll be trying to understand first in the run-up to the election what role, if any, are foreign adversaries trying to play in manipulating the American public and maybe, although it's very difficult to do, trying to reach the voting mechanism itself. And then they'll be trying to understand are there acts of violence that can be discerned needles that can be found in America's haystack of

strange people to prevent either individual acts of violence or organized acts of violence. I think there's much less chance of the kind of January 6th organized violence that we saw. But there still is a significant chance of individual violence motivated by the language in a lot of our public discourse that reaches warped souls. So obviously we've seen two attempted assassination attempts on Donald Trump and we have seen the effect that that's had on the FBI and people having to no longer belong to the FBI. Do you think that we've got to the stage where actually there isn't anything

that a federal department could possibly do to guarantee the safety of some people in public life? Well, I think it can always be better and I think the Secret Service is under-resourced and has long been under-resourced and stretched, especially during a presidential election year. But again, as you said, we're a country of 330 million people where we have more guns than people. And so finding individual threat actors,

and all of whom will be armed and trying to stop them, is a very difficult mission. Frankly, it starts with the candidates themselves being more prudent. Donald Trump's habit of playing golf every day whenever he feels like it is a tremendous burden for the Secret Service. You did talk a couple of moments ago about the level of public discourse but also in America in any political system. It's about the way that other departments behave and I wonder whether you have come to regret the publication

that you made whilst at the FBI about Hillary Clinton's personal emails which definitely had an effect on her popularity as she was chasing the presidency. Yeah I don't. I mean I regret deeply being involved. I've had a effect on her popularity as she was chasing the presidency? Yeah, I don't. I mean, I regret deeply being involved. But if I had a magic wand, I would go back and have the FBI play no role. But given that we were stuck in the middle of it, we were the ref with a whistle in our mouth. In stoppage time, we had to make calls. And I still think even after all this time that we made the right call, the least bad call, I just wish we hadn't been involved. I don't know whether it had an effect on the election,

I'm increasingly seeing arguments that it didn't, but frankly it doesn't matter. We had to make a decision based on what we thought was the thing most consistent with the values of our institution, even though we hated being in that spot. Did you see in your time as director of the FBI stuff that you think would actually be helpful for the public to know? It would better inform us about how our world is actually operating. It would better prepare us for some of the stuff that we are witnessing now and that undoubtedly will be coming our way in the future. I don't think anything particularly FBI like.

I saw a lot in the FBI and have since seen of our grappling and fits and starts with trying to figure out as ordinary citizens, what is true. And we are stumbling our way towards a world in which we can sort that out. I'm reminded that after the invention of the printing press it took about 200 years for the scientific method to develop and lots of other ways to deal with the torrent of falsehoods spread by printing presses. We're 20 years into this information age and so I don't want to be too hard on us but we have to continue to try to find ways to arrive at truth.

Where do you think America's position in the world really lies at the moment? I mean, many people have watched the unfolding situation in the Middle East, and we would value your opinion on the latest attacks with walkie talkies and with pages. So feel free to share those with us. But perhaps we look to America and what Antony Blinken says at the moment, with more hope than we should. Is it possible for America to really de-escalate a situation in the Middle East anymore? I don't know, is the honest answer. Maybe at the margins. The world was never susceptible of management in the way that you could run a small company.

America remains the indispensable nation and has a really important role to play. But it can play that at the margins using the force of its money, of its stature, of its alliances, but our amazing planet is way too complicated to think that any one country can steer things reliably. Yeah, but America sometimes acts like it can, like it believes that it can. Except when we're trying to, thinking about electing people who want to withdraw from the world.

Look, that's the tension of American history. We've always been torn between this, let's pull up the draw bridges and hide behind our oceans, or let's go out there because we can change the world. We can sow democracy around the world. Some place between those two extremes, the extreme of pessimism and the extreme of optimism, lies a useful role for us to play in the world. We just have to play it with a sense of humility, which we've earned from our history. When you're sitting in a room with Donald Trump, how do you feel? A slightly ill to see that the person who is president of the United States has a hunger for affirmation unlike any I've ever seen in an adult before. And seeing that person in a position to make decisions

that affect the lives not just of Americans, but of people around the world, it's a difficult thing to digest. It produces a slight sense of nausea, honestly. So tell us a bit more about that. I mean, you've had five children of your own. I know you and your wife had fostered children as well so you really know what a affirmation seeking child might look like I would have thought. So tell us a bit more about that. Well the process of growing up for

all of us was realizing that the world isn't just me and my hungers and my needs and my my wanting mom and dad to tell me I'm awesome all the time. It's the process of socialization is learning that you are enmeshed in this amazing and often frustrating network of humanity where you have to help others in order to help yourself. When you have to forge alliances and bonds and connections to people to communicate effectively with them. Somehow all of that got left out of Donald Trump's upbringing on what happened to the guy, but he is someone who has a hole in the center of his chest that he has to fill in every moment. And the decision he makes in every moment is what will

fill this hole right now, which is why you see him saying things over hours or even over minutes that are contradictory and nonsensical. Because it's not about that. It's about filling the hole, getting you to tell me that I am wonderful. And think about being an intelligence community needing to brief the president of the United States. I mean, we wrestled with it. I was only with him for five months, but how to get him to pay attention to what you were doing and to try and just to sculpt your presentation so that it fit his view of the world which is all about him. You were a Republican weren't you before the troubles with Trump. So I imagine that you have friends,

possibly family, who are still Republican. How could anybody in their right mind think that Donald Trump is the right person to lead that party? We struggle with seeing that sometimes over this side of the pond and we're probably wrong not to ask more questions about how he is still so powerful within the party. That's a great question and I think at the root of it lies our fundamental misunderstanding about how people make the most important decisions in their lives about faith or about politics. We think we are rational creatures but our irrational cognition is a latecomer to human evolution. We make decisions based on instinct, intuition, emotion. And Donald Trump has succeeded in touching those moral taste receptors of a lot of Americans in ways even they can't articulate.

And he starts with an advantage. Our popular culture made Donald Trump a huge, important and reliable figure, which is all at odds with the facts, but we made him that way through 14 years of television on his well-reviewed, well-watched program, The Apprentice. And so we put him at the center of our life. We gave him a head start like that. And he speaks in ways that resonate with a lot of Americans who feel left behind, who feel disrespected, who feel like everything is changing and we have to stop it from changing.

Faith is gone, community is gone. Look at all these people don't look like me flowing into this country. And I know my British friends deal with similar challenges in a country that's your country that's changed a lot in the last 20 years. He spoke to that in ways people can articulate, but they resonate with.

And now a lot of them are trapped. The thing about a demagogue is he traps you because to get out requires you to admit something about yourself that is really hard to admit. You would think people would look at January 6th and say, I don't want any part of this. But in a way, the darker the moment, the deeper they're drawn into the demagogues world because it's painful to say I made

an enormous mistake and so it's going to be closer than it should be for those reasons but I'm I remain deeply optimistic about America in the short run now but especially in the long run. And where do you think Donald Trump ends up in 10 years time if he loses election, if he then loses some of that political power because any call to arms that he makes doesn't actually work, who does he become? Well it will ebb very slowly. That's the nature of the unwinding of a cult. The demagogue doesn't release his hold all at once.

It will have to slowly leak away. And he'll eventually be, he'll still have significant influence, but at 90, he'll be standing in his bathrobe on the lawn at Mar-a-Lago, shouting at cars. And some people will still listen to him, but it will slowly ebb away. But it'll be a decade before the Republican Party can decide what its future is. That's quite some visual image and we'll end it there. It's a real pleasure to talk to you thank you very much indeed for your time this afternoon that's James Comey and his second novel

is out it's called Westport this time the lawyer is on trial we're rooting for Nora. That was really interesting and I just let's just to know that they the FBI had to wrestle with how to give an intelligence briefing to the leader of the free world who had a very short attention span and wanted everything to be about him. That it's completely boggles the mind and people are still prepared to vote for him. Well, there we are. And his novel, if you like that, I would say very American, very page turning kind of drama that you won't automatically know every single character because it's set in America and it's all about the world of hedge funds and big money then you'll be intrigued by it. But just to be fair to ourselves, it does start

with the mutilated body of a woman. So I just feel that we have to put that in there now because we've talked so much about this. I don't want anyone to think, oh they never mention it when they've got a good guest on, but that's what happens. Okay. Well, that's how the book starts, But there is a lot more. Anyway, that was James Comey. Listen, you can't say you don't get variety on this podcast. We do have a former head of the FBI there. Now back to Hot Priests. I've got one about swimmers here to end on as well. Okay, so we'll round off the week. I mean, this podcast might be rubbish, but it's varied

rubbish. Glyn, we love your involvement. Thank you very much for this. I've got news about holy fakes and unholy realities. It says, well, we haven't got time for everything, Glyn, but we will include this. The famed hot priest calendar renowned for featuring attractive clerics has been revealed by its photographer to have few actual priests as models. An article I found online explains despite the widely circulated images of cassock clad men the calendars creator Piero Pazzi admitted that not all were genuine priests some of them Fi were not even Italian. Oh my gosh! Among

the revelations is that Giovanni Galizia, who has graced the calendar's cover and looks a bit like Mac Damon, is not a priest. Galizia, now 36, works as a flight attendant. Excellent. Glyn, thank you very much. Chicken or beef? What would you go for? I'd always... Vegetarian option. Oh yeah, well they don't get anything these days. You're lucky to get a body on British Airways. Right, let's round off with swimmers ear. Well, swimmers ear is the worst pain that's ever been experienced by Sarah Louise Tilsley. She informs us that swimmers ear is a fungus that grows on the eardrum in humid climates

when you're constantly jumping in and out of the water because the humidity is very difficult for the ear canal to dry. She knows this because she grew up in a very humid Bermuda where every summer I would first catch swimmers ear, wake up screaming in pain, I'll be banned from the water for a week, ten days, so it would be bicycles around the neighbourhood which would result in... has Eve lost us? Have we lost Eve? Something just fell over. It was the light thing. Do you know what? That's because somewhere up there, God was listening. Could be that. I tell you what, we can sue and we'll split the compo. Anyway, I just want to complete this. Ten

days, it would be bicycles around the neighbourhood which would result in road rash which wouldn't scab up in the humidity. Oh god. In Bataiko. I love that. In Bataiko, lovely. Well, what a glamorous note. On which to end the week. Look after yourselves. Yeah, God willing. Goddess willing. Balance. Keep everything in there. Congratulations, you've staggered somehow to the end of another Off Air with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live, every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4 on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale and if you listen to this you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online on DAB or on the free Times Radio app. Off Air is produced by Eve Salisbury and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler. Right, what are we doing? It's a trail for the podcast. Excellent.

Giles Corran has no idea. She's decided to go out there and let Trump stitch himself up. So, so he goes, they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs. And she goes, hee hee hee. Unvarnished, unapologetic. And mostly unusable. Listen on the Times Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.