Off Air... with Jane and Fi - It's time to think of Jane.

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

The pilot light is on. Welcome. Today, Jane and Fi discuss hedgehogs, the Kate-o-meter and Irish funerals. Plus, journalist Jenny Kleeman discusses her new book 'The Price of Life'. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfiAssistant Producer: Eve SalusburyTimes Radio Producer: Kate Lee Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I don't think of rabbits when I hear Bright Eyes, but that might be because I didn't see the film. Do you just think of pain? Of who? Pain. Yes, I just think of suffering. Bright Eyes. Right, welcome to Off-Air. I was going to do this yesterday and I completely forgot.

We ran out of time on the radio show, but Kathleen Moran had written a very funny article for The Times about a train journey between London and Birmingham. Was it on time? It was the service superb to the air conditioning work and the Wi-Fi came on first time. What do you think? Probably.

But she ended up just feeling really embarrassed because there were Japanese tourists on the train. Sorry. Well, she asked why. And the Japanese tourists were finding it all very difficult to deal with. She says, a Japanese couple sit on the floor beside me. I've travelled by train in Japan. They serve delightful ekiben boxes of sushi

as you go past Mount Fuji at 320 kilometers per hour. Whereas on that journey between London, Houston and Birmingham, you don't get as fast as that. It doesn't go up to that speed. Not 320 kph. No. I'm not sure I'm bold enough to take 320 kph. I like the way you say it are you gonna hive off into transport broadcasting because that really rolled off your tongue well I I don't like to boast but I am the person who failed the audition for AA road watch I did go for that job what do you mean well you know the way you do the it's the AA sponsored traffic and travel reports oh on the radio on the radio okay on the m25 this morning I went for aored traffic and travel reports. Oh, on the radio? On the radio, I went for that.

On the M25 this morning? I went for a job there, and I didn't get it. It's down to two lanes by the Dance and Interchange, all of that. God, Manchester. And all those other places that seem to crop up on the... Anyway, I don't know why I'm reminiscing, because they turn me down.

Well, there was a thing, wasn't there, in this country this weekend that the M25 was closed for the first time in 40 years? Oh, it was big news, wasn't there in this country this weekend that the m25 was closed for the first time in 40 years oh it was it was big news and it was meant to be it was it was termed calmageddon yeah because it was going to be so appalling and there were these diversions going through little surrey villages and stuff and everybody was warned to stay at home and some clanger of a bloke said stay at home and do some diy instead which is not very helpful if it's your job to be out and about but anyway it didn't turn into calmageddon because

everybody did just find alternative ways to go places and it was incredibly calm and it was just very funny report of somebody somebody had filmed the bridge where the press were allowed to be to film this karmageddon chaos and it was just silence underneath like just all these film crews sometimes britain delivers or doesn't depending on what you want to see but we're in a strange place in this country at the moment because people are still we're trying we're not going to talk about that woman who's occupying these huge amounts of media space we're not going to talk about that woman who's occupying these huge amounts of media space. We're not going to talk about it. This is the place where you won't hear anything.

Well, I cannot keep up. About what's really going on. I can't keep up with where you are on the katometer because sometimes I think you have actually been waking yourself up an hour early so you can get all the news. But if you don't want to mention her, that's absolutely fine by me. I've officially got to the point where I just can't take

any more of this. Have you? Well, I can't take any more of people saying that it can't take any more, because that's consuming an enormous amount of airtime. And then there are the people who say, well, I was never interested. I've never been remotely interested in where she is or what's happening to her. But why don't you believe people who say that?

Because there just are a lot of people who genuinely, genuinely don't. I'm not sure the stats back it up. Because if you look at the most read articles, she's always at number one. Look, I don't think she's been abducted by aliens. No. Although, you know, I think if you ever wanted to dispel the Disney princess myth,

just look at her life. Yeah, it's not much of one, is it? No, not at the moment. Anyway, I was very grateful to the listener who emailed yesterday about anal cancer and asking if we could mention it on air. And actually we did, I don't know whether the listener was able to hear it, but we did it on the radio programme yesterday and we featured it in our health news. So you can listen back to Times Radio on the Times Radio app. It doesn't cost you anything.

And that would be at around about, it was about 20 past three on Tuesday afternoon that we talked about it and we talked about the symptoms because our correspondent has had it. She has recovered, but she just believes that perhaps not many people know much about it. I've left my emails. I brought in Gino DiCampo instead. I keep doing this, Eve. I'm just really, really, really sorry. Okay.

Eve runs faster than I do. I can't really run across the newsroom. I feel that some terrible thing would happen. I could do just a couple of comments from the Twitter. Go on. happen. I could do just a couple of comments from the Twitter. Go on. So Jim is joining in with our search for merchandise

on British burnt out pier allotment or whatever we're going to call our three word merchandising opportunity. This is our tribute to Megan's, gosh it still hasn't stopped, American Riviera Orchard. Well done. Wow. Which Jim calls

American Ranch Eldorado. Yeah. Okay. Well, he says it's just got to be Jane and Fee tea towels because we were musing on the demise of the informative tea towel. So we need to write some things of certainty on tea towels. I'll take them all, Eve. I'll take them all.

You've got that poor girl running around after you all the time. That's not true. Jackie says, I was listening to your radio show today, but I was triggered when you played Art Garfunkel's Bright Eyes. I was taken to see the film of Watership Down as an eight-year-old and suffered six weeks of night terrors after the violence of General... And I confess I don't remember.

General Woundwart. Fast forward 30 years to Christmas 2009 and I was on holiday in Yorkshire with my best friends and our dog. The dog caught a rabbit in the garden and simultaneously my best friend and I broke into a rendition of Bright Eyes to accompany our husbands trying to rescue the rabbit as the dog unceremoniously dispatched it in front of us. Fun times, says Jackie.

Thank you. Yeah, that song is, I find it, I don't think of rabbits when I hear Bright Eyes, but that might be because I didn't see the film. Do you just think of pain? Of who? Pain. Yes, I just think of suffering. Bright eyes.

I don't know, I really do love Art Garfunkel's voice, but he and Paul Simon massively fell out, didn't they? They do not get on. No, and it's a real shame, that, isn't it? Are they both alive? They are still alive, and I did see a documentary. It might even be the Imagine one. Maybe it's the Imagine one, I don't know.

It was detailing Paul Simon's contribution to music, and the inserts from Art Garfunkel were beautifully edited. Right. But basically it was Paul Simon saying, I wrote everything and I sung everything. Oh, okay, right. And, you know, there really wasn't a huge contribution and then Art would pop up saying completely the opposite.

But it just was one of those wonderful, wonderful TV edits. But it's terrible when you just don't want them to fall out, do you? You don't actually. And I would say Art Garfunkel's album Breakaway is still one of my favourite albums. It's some lovely songs on Breakaway. I'm not going to say it, but just explore Breakaway. It's a beautiful album.

But on the subject of friends who do seem to be genuinely friendly, or did, unfortunately, I did see the very last episode of The Hairy Bikers last night on BBC Two and it was really beautifully done, really, really well handled, but it was properly sad.

Obviously, Dave Myers has now died and they went down to Cornwall in the final episode. It was really lovely. If other people saw it, I'm sure they'll agree with me. It was really nice. On your other TV recommendation, The Gone, on BBC4, I'm not enjoying the goat theme. Oh, the sacrificial thing?

Yes. We'll get over it. No, it's not very nice. You know when they say no animal is harmed, which I completely believe, but it's dead. Was it always dead? Aren't there places where they can recreate dead things? Oh, I hope it's a recreation.

I'm sure it will be. Because, I mean, like you, I don't want animals being killed for television. No, I don't like that theme of, you know, ritualistic abuse. It crops up in lots and lots of stuff at the moment. I think it's a kind of... It's almost like it's a go-to theme in dark times because we've explored all of the other dark times.

So let's go to some really weird ritualistic abuse where we could just make it as dark as the human mind could ever be. I know that there are... I mean, you're right. We do try to retreat into suggestions of Satanism, don't we? I would just find it very difficult to keep a straight face at one of those events if I was asked to attend one. Do you just think about the gathering in the middle of a wood in the middle of the night in the English countryside.

I know what you mean. Sacrifice a dormouse or something. You just couldn't be bothered. They're always wearing kind of, you know... Hoods and... And bear skins and ponchos. And you think, yeah, have you panned down? You've probably just got some trainers and socks on under that

because you're not walking through the woods. You're wearing a sensible fleece. This one comes from Janine who says, I've just started watching The Gone, gripping so far, thank you for the recommendation. Oh, good. And just wondered that Jane said she'd never seen a TV drama set in New Zealand.

And the one that I was struggling to reach for, Janine has correctly identified as Top of the Lake with Elizabeth Moss, directed by Jane Campion. Absolutely brilliant. Although it was on a while back and Janine thinks about 2015. That's quite a challenging watch as well because it's got some themes of not very nice things happening to women, but it was really, really extraordinary.

On a lighter note, Amy is a dedicated listener from Australia. She was chuckling at our efforts to try and emulate the Duchess of Sussex what about British coastal woodland says Amy you could sell bluebell scented candles peat infused face marks can't do peat

why not? you're not allowed to take up the peat it's not environmentally but I know what you mean Amy we'd find something else maybe just a little bit of mud some mud from London fields bramble

jelly i envisage a range of linen products that pay homage is that right the white road said homage homage thank you to the hedgehog and once ubiquitous but now sadly endangered woodland icon perhaps you could one up megan in the charity stakes by donating some of the proceeds to efforts to save the hedgehog so we don't know that they're not going to donate a substantial amount of that money to charity. We shouldn't prejudge that. Well, let's prejudge it. Amy ends up by saying,

I was also thinking you could do something fancy with fruit, but perhaps you could just sell fresh apples and berries as they are for massively inflated prices. This would be the ultimate tribute to Harry and Meghan's status as grifters. Excellent. We've always said... Keep them mean. Yes, we're actually substantially less mean

to Harry and Meghan than lots of other people in the media. I think I was their last remaining support. You were very loyal for a very long time. For a really long time. And I've just managed to convince you that they may not be a million percent perfect. But nevertheless, I think they have.

Look, they're doing their thing. Let's leave them to it. Like you, Fi, has been to the Garrick Club. This was a topic for us yesterday because the Guardian newspaper has finally tracked down a list of the members of the Garrick Club. Now, I mean, it's great journalism. I wasn't actually losing sleep over not being aware of who was in the Garrett Club and who wasn't, but a lot of men are, and they are influential, a lot of these geezers.

I've been inside the club as a guest, and I'd rather let myself down. I was in my 20s, and I was a very junior barrister who'd been involved in a long drugs importation gang type trial with lots of other barristers, all male apart from me. It was traditional at the end of the trial to take the judge to dinner as a guest of the barristers, both sides, particularly if everyone had got on well. This is new to me. Is that OK?

It was new to me too, says Catherine. That's very strange. A bit clubbable old boys type stuff. I was a grammar school girl, but actually the whole thing was a lot of fun. The QCs, as they were then called, were all members. Like Fi, I vaguely remember the inside, lots of wood panelling and heavy drapes. Dinner was in a private room. I don't know if this was because of me being vaguely female

there was champagne fine wines port we toasted the judge who was ironically not present at the dinner because he had pleurisy not sure why i remember that detail 25 years later i was extremely refreshed and weaved my way to the ladies powder room only i got lost on the way back to the dining room and found myself creeping around the apparently deserted garrett club it was a friday evening it must have been very late and a distinguished member of the club sir john gielgud noted thespian had died that week i found myself by a bronze of the great man and as if by magic the maitre d from the dining room appeared and escorted me firmly but politely back to our room. I noticed I was minus one hold up,

which incongruously I'd lost in the loos. The rest of the evening I haven't committed to memory, but I woke up next morning fully clothed with a Garrick side plate. It has all the worlds of stage painted on it in my handbag. Brilliant. Oh, by the way, this gets even better. I am now a judge. I know. I am still waiting way, this gets even better. I am now a judge.

I know. I am still waiting to be taken out for dinner. It's fantastic. Right. Just to say, we're not going to mention your name, but we both very much hope we come up before you.

And we'll take you out to dinner. What's that? There used to be, what did they call it? The Masonic sign of distress. That if you were a Mason and you were in the dock and you found yourself up before a beak, you could tell the judge that you were also a Mason

by waggling something. Yeah. I don't know what it was. So do you know what the Mason's handshake is? Well, I think I do, but I could be wrong, isn't it? Is it the middle finger down? You tickle, don't you? You tickle with your middle finger.

Is that right? So you tickle the other person's palm. It's not being funny, but if we both know, it's not much use, is it? No, but nobody's ever going to use it on us. I mean, I do the special Tufty Club handshake. I still think it is one of the most unexplained areas of weirdness

in our society, that the Masons exist and are unchallenged and, you know, to our point about the Garrick Club, I think you can visit the lodge, can't you, as a woman, but you can't be admitted to the lodges yet? They have, well, I think they have ladies' nights at a lot of lodges. But can you be a Freemason as a woman?

I still think that it's only men. But if you are in central London, you can visit their incredible headquarters on, is it Great Queen Street? And just the most mind-boggling mansion of devotion to Freemasonry. It's like a cathedral in there, isn't it? I'm going to say it's properly strange. Yeah. I tell you what, if you are a Mason, or if you're with a Mason,

you're married to them. Or maybe, I think richer territory might be if you've been married to a Mason, or if you're with a Mason, you'd like to know. Or maybe, I think richer territory might be if you've been married to a Mason. Yes. Or if you've been to a ladies' night. It goes on there. And it's very easy to be cynical about it and just assume because it is also secretive

that very odd things are happening. But, you know, tell us that they aren't. Reassure us, please. There is a kind of old folks Masonic home near where my parents live. So they look out, they continue to look out for members as they decline. So lots of groups do that, don't they? Yeah, and you could argue that's perfectly all right. I think that's the benign side

of it, it's the prevalence of Freemasons within certain professions that's always troubled me well it was the police wasn't it and the judiciary anyway, as he says put our minds at rest or not. And also some of those ceremonies down at the lodge

keep doing the good stuff says Carla who's a councillor there have been lots of very kind well-handled discussions about death and the death of close and much-loved relatives in january i returned from holiday to a letter asking me to phone a solicitor after checking my identity they asked me to contact a city council department the next day mr m a lovely deep voice gentleman at the city council, told me, I was the only surviving relative of a man I'd never met and never wanted to meet, my biological father. The man I'd never met was dead. What would I like to do with the body?

After we're chuckled at not fitting in with societal expectations of death and established it's not legal to put a ne'er-do-well in a wheelie bin, I decided on cremation with no service. I'm 56 and to say that was a weird few days I'd never expected is an understatement, but the weirdness has been compounded by doing a very adult thing alone and not grieving for someone I never knew. Super strange, but an illustration of things that can and do happen. Isn't that a remarkable story? I thought that was quite remarkable. And as she says, it's just, that's strange. Yeah.

To get that phone call out of the blue and to then have to have a word with yourself about how you should be feeling in that moment. You can't conjure up feeling from nowhere. As she says, she didn't know him. No. But also to be asked to do something in the event of somebody's death a parent who hadn't contacted you hadn't made things right

if they'd been wrong whatever it was but really tragically story must have had our correspondent as next of kin yeah so color i hope you're doing okay i mean that really is a remarkable story and from the way that you tell it you sound uh, you know, very sorted about it. But I think we could all understand if you weren't. Sarah sent a very lovely email as well, just about, you know, silly merchandise and stuff like that. But I just wanted to read out her ending to us, which says, thanks for keeping the pilot light going. And I thought that was just such a really lovely phrase. And I know what you mean. There are some kind of go-to places, aren't there, in favourite authors or TV or radio or whatever it is, that does feel like it's a pilot light.

What, just the constant flicker? Yes, just, you know, it's just the boiler's on. It works. That's, yeah, I like that. Can I just say there's no worse sight on earth in midwinter than no pilot night. Exactly that. Somebody somewhere should write a poem about that.

When you open the door of the airing cupboard or wherever you currently store your boiler in there, it's not on. What rhymes with boiler? Spoiler. Spoiler, yes. I literally don't think anything else does. Toiler?

No. No, let's not go there. So it's a short... Well, you could do a limerick, I'm sure. Now, we live in interesting times and the Irish Taoiseach has resigned today. Very suddenly. Slightly suddenly.

I think it is a bit of a surprise. With immediate effect. With immediate effect, yes. Oh, I hope he's all right. That's Leo Varadkar, but that just reminds reminds me we've got an email here from an irish listener sarah who is actually very interested in the subject of funerals and she says i listened to the episode with linda robson robson when she described her mother as having a lovely death um and actually um sarah wonders whether linda's mom was irish she was actually irish so that that

would explain uh perhaps why the family's approach to the whole thing was pretty positive. And I know that seems strange, but you probably know what I mean. One thing I'm curious about, says Sarah, is funeral etiquette for different nationalities. Perhaps you could throw this out to your listeners. I worked abroad for many years in a multicultural environment. When one of my English colleagues' mother died,

the Irish amongst the workforce started preparing to attend the funeral because that's what we do. I asked my colleague if she could give me the details of the venue. The look on her face when I asked immediately set off alarm bells in my head and I realised I had obviously overstepped the mark. She replied by saying that as we hadn't been invited to the funeral we would not be able to attend needless to say this was totally alien to the irish i don't know if you know the funeral traditions in ireland but in this country you never get invited to a funeral you just show up in fact if you don't make an appearance it will be considered as an insult as a result funeral attendants can go into the hundreds i mean that, that is really interesting, isn't it? And there is a sort of stiffness about some English funerals,

not all of them, but there is a sort of, you know, really an unpleasant formality. And that's so interesting. I know a lot of Irish people would go out of genuine respect to any funeral. But in England, on the whole, you just don't do that. to any funeral. But in England, on the whole, you just don't do that. No, but I'm going to stand up for the cold comfort of an English funeral.

Sometimes I think I have felt it's what I know and it kind of works and there's something about a chilly church and formality that maybe it is simply that. It is just what I know. So I don't think it's all bad. I don't think we grieve well as a nation. But that's a different thing.

And the very, very simple but slightly kind of contained funeral, which usually happens, doesn't it, in this country, within a couple of weeks, actually. It can take weeks depending on the time of year dying um i think it's that's i sometimes think that that's that's the only thing that you're kind of capable of you know if you are only recently adjusting to your loss and then the thanksgiving service which seems to be much more of a thing these days i don't remember anybody

having a thanksgiving service when I was tiny. No. But people do tend to do that now, and that's much more liberated and warm. Yeah. Everybody's there and hundreds of people turn up. But Sarah, seriously, I've got a good question. If you are going to, I mean, have lots of hundreds of people turning up at a relative's funeral, are you expected to cater for all of them?

I bet you are. I mean, you must be. Yeah. And that must be quite an outlay. So you expected to cater for all of them? I bet you are. I mean, you must be. And that must be quite an outlay. So you must have lots of funeral insurance plans in Ireland to make sure that you can get enough cheese and pickle sandwiches and sausage rolls for 250 people. Yeah. I wouldn't bother.

I'd ask people to bring their own. Right. Pack a lunch. In death as in life. There's a free bar for ten minutes. The coffee's generosity, really, really. It does have bounds. Never even started to amaze.

Here's Glyn to the teacher who's struggling with the relentless slog of paperwork and admin at her school, I suggest, before switching careers completely and ditching what can be the best job ever. She thinks about moving to another school. In my experience, the amount of tedious form-filling, tick-boxing and detailed marking required of teachers is purely down to the leadership culture of the school, which is largely driven by the head teacher. There are lots of

realistic and understanding head teachers out there and I think it would be a great shame for your correspondent to throw away their vocation based on one bad experience. I'm sure she's a great teacher and would be a real loss to the profession. Big shout out to all the dedicated teachers out there. Oh, and could they do something in form time tomorrow about cyber flashing? And it's probably kick it out National Veruca Day next Monday. So remind the kids to wear odd socks

and bring a one pound donation. And if they could put together an assembly on the situation in Gaza, that would be super we hear you glenn and we're really really on your side i haven't heard the word veruca for a while welcome back veruca um this is from liz uh same subject i've been reflecting on the teacher from south wales who feels she's only qualified to teach i appreciate i've not met her i suspect given her career date, she'll be able to demonstrate a huge array of skills though. Of particular interest is that she worked her way up from nursery nurse to TA to qualified teacher, which is in itself really impressive. I would guess our listener would be able to say the following in terms of her skills. Organisational

abilities, able to work to tight timescales, able to work alongside others in a team, able to work to tight time scales able to work alongside others in a team ability to work under pressure experience of dealing with conflict confident communicator experience of dealing with the public brackets parents and i could go on consistently reliable turning up to school day in day out i do hope that's helpful she may need a bit of coaching re-interviews um yes i'm sure that's true um job interviews well i speak from a bit of coaching re-interviews. Yes, I'm sure that's true. Job interviews. Well, I speak from a position of total ignorance about job interviews. When was the last time you had a job interview? Well, I suppose it would be my application

to join the BBC's Trainee Reporter Scheme, 1992. Right, OK. Did they ask you where you could see yourself in five years? Yeah, they did. Did they? Okay, and what did you say? Well, I said in local radio. Right.

Because that's where I wanted to be. Right, okay. Now, we've probably got to get a crack on because I have got an in-depth interview coming up with Gino Di Campo. Yes. And it's going to be a little bit problematic, actually. You've handed this one over to me.

Well, can I just say I felt, because you're on holiday next week, I deserve I mean, you know, it's time to think of Jane, go from me and let you I mean basically you tousled me to the ground and said

nothing will get between me and an interview with Gino De Campo, so I had no choice I so didn't so I thought I would be absolutely fine as Gino De Campo we'll have a lovely you know we'll have a lovely bounce around but you've done a bit of in-depth research olive oil and you know your favorite grandmother who taught you to make pasta oh how dare you be so cynical about celebrities honestly but it's got quite complicated for a start the first piece I read uh this is uh this is how it starts. Gino De Campo likes to work

for only six months of each year. The rest of the time he's at his vineyard in Sardinia. He takes a month off at Easter, then all of June, July and August, plus the half of December for Christmas. We're lucky to get him today, aren't we? No, no, listen to this.

That leaves one more month, October. That's just for me here, sir. It's I go back to Italy by myself. I need time to think, write, fish, ride my motorbike and look after my vineyard. My wife and kids understand. They have no choice. It doesn't matter how much money anyone offers me to stay and work, I'm going. So there's that.

But then there's this very difficult headline today because he had to put his restaurant chain into liquidation and he owes the taxman and former staff just under £5 million. So I've got to go there. No, I've got to go there. And he's on to talk about food

waste and now I'm feeling slightly nervous Jane because that's a lot to pack in. Can we just talk about penises before we go? Oh, yeah. Okay, I'm not connected. Jackie says, I just wanted to say a few words in support of naked attraction.

I agree it is exploitative, as is much reality TV, but it's much more inclusive than Love Island, for example. There are gay, straight and trans daters and many body types. I've watched with my teenage daughter and it's let her see that not all people look like the bikini clad babes and hunks in trunks on other shows. And quite a few people

wrote in to say we should both give naked attraction, if not another chance, just a little bit of a break in our condemnation. Right, okay, we're calling a halt to condemning naked attraction out of hand. Okay. Okay, we're calling a halt to condemning naked attraction out of hand. Okay. Now, let's bring in today's guest. Today's guest is a journalist and author of some repute. It's Jenny Kleeman, and her latest book is about a really, really interesting topic.

So it's about the price of life. She's gone on an adventure around the world, looking into some quite strange parts of life, actually, that we don't often look at. So how much would a hitman cost you? Would you be able to answer that? I remember someone telling me, and this is a terrible quote, you can get anything done in London for a grand. Well, actually, a hitman now is, she's found the average price to be £15,500. Okay.

Yeah. But she also looks into other areas, stuff like, you know, how much is the average ransom for a kidnap victim? And some really impressive stuff, actually, around compensation. Because if you lose a loved one to a violent crime, you're entitled to compensation in this country.

But in all manner of kind of different matrices, and you know, some families are not getting as much money as other families. If you were visiting London from a different part of the world, you will be getting something different from your government. Really interesting stuff that we just don't talk about very often. So she came in to see us at Times Towers a couple of days ago. And the book starts off in quite a light-hearted way. And I think actually, as a reader, you're quite grateful for that because there are some other darker moments coming up. So it starts off with her telling the story of a website

which is called rentahitman.com. A guy called Bob set it up. And he was somebody who sort of 20 years ago used to buy domains, thinking that he could flip them and sell them for a lot of money. So he'd buy names that he thought other people wanted.com. And he also was a kind of tech entrepreneur, he wanted to make a kind of search engine optimization business. And so he and some friends had this idea that they would have a business called Rent a Hitman, as in hire somebody who can get hits for your website. So given that he was someone who was

really used to buying domains, he bought rentahitman.com. But then the business never really got off the ground. And it just became another one of these websites that sat in his portfolio of names. He put it up for sale. He put a kind of, not even a clickable link, but like a cartoon on the homepage saying, this page is for sale, this domain is for sale, contact renter hitman dot com. And yeah, he forgot about it and then two years later he checked the contact rentahitman.com uh inbox and it was full of messages from from people who were looking for contract killing who wanted to pay people to kill people and these people weren't being shy about it were they so one of them was uh was it a woman in canada she was a british woman who was in canada

at that point she wanted to take out three people in the cotswolds in the cotswolds yes and she was very persistent about it so bob had this kind of he was sort of fascinated by these emails and he decided the best way to deal with them was to reply and say do you still need our services do you want me to put you in touch with the field operative? And if they replied, he decided he would put the police in touch with them. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about this in an almost lighthearted way and that's how the book starts.

But of course, that's an incredibly, incredibly serious thing. And in fact, Bob has probably saved the lives of hundreds of people, hasn't he? Because he kept the site going and dobbed people in when they got in touch. Of course, the people who fall into Bob's inbox are not very smart. They're the sort of people who will go to rentahitman.com and click on a link. And when you go to that website, it's obviously a bit of a joke. So as Bob himself says, he only catches the low hanging fruit. But if there are that many people prepared to do it, how many other people are prepared to go even further with much more serious characters?

So the point of that chapter was really to say that murder for hire is a lot more mundane than you think. How do you arrive at the figure that the average cost of a hitman is £15,180? It's quite specific, Jenny. It is very specific. So I spoke to some academics who've done some studies on this and they looked at, it's not massively scientific, these criminologists, but they looked at the reported prices

charged by people who've been caught. So, of course, we only know about unsuccessful hitmen, the one that have gone to prison, whose stories are reported in newspapers or revealed in the courts. And they looked at the cost of the average British hitman, and the cheapest was £200. Some prices went up to £100,000. But the kind of hitmen in our popular imaginations,

the ones that are dressed like James Bond and appear and disappear without us noticing, we don't really know very much about them because they tend not to be caught. Yeah. And the rest of the book, really, I think, tells us much more about the cost of a victim's life, doesn't it? Not the criminal's life. And one of the most depressing stories is actually that of Sarah Zelenak, who was murdered in the London Bridge terrorist attacks. Can you tell us a bit more about her? She was 19 years old. She was an au pair in London in 2017. And she was killed in the first of the two London Bridge terror attacks, where three terrorists drove a van across London Bridge. They killed two people with a van and then the van crashed at the top near Borough Market.

They got out of the van and they stabbed many other people, killing six of them. And I chose this as an example of how unfair criminal injury compensation is because of the eight victims, they were from many different countries. And I knew that if you're killed in a terrorist attack, your family will get a massively different payment according to where you're from. So I thought that this would be a good case study.

But when I investigated it, I found out it wasn't just where the victims were from that was the the determining factor in how much compensation their families got it was also how they were killed and the families of those killed by the van were able to get probably I mean it's estimated to be it's never been revealed but it's it's in the ballpark of over a million pounds each in compensation those two people whereas the families of those who were stabbed by the same people only seconds later um just got whatever was statutory compensation for their from their country so in the case of the one british victim his family would have got 11 000 pounds it is such a disturbing disparity isn't it and really shows the whole point that you're

trying to make in the book you know who decides the value of a life. But I think people would also think that it's just quite distasteful for our government not to have redressed some of that balance. You know, the fact that Hertz paid out because they're a big company and there was an insurance policy running on that van. But those other poor people who died that night got really nothing, actually. £11,000 is nothing. Through doing the reporting on it, I realised actually it's quite a useful tool for showing injustice, for showing where systems aren't working. And, you know, when compensation is unfair, what happens is charitable contributions tend to make up the difference

when people aren't eligible for compensation or when people are really facing hardship because of it. But the government payouts in criminal injury compensation, it's still our money. It's just collected through taxes rather than through charitable donations. So it still falls back on us. And it is just incredibly unfair that this is the system. And also that the amounts of criminal injury compensation haven't been adjusted since 2012. So they haven't been adjusted for inflation.

They haven't been adjusted when all of these inconsistencies have been revealed. And how does the system even work? I mean, if a child or a teenager is killed, is the compensation scheme looking at that entire life that they would have had ahead of them? Not at all. And that's the interesting thing is when the NHS works out whether or not to fund a drug, it will look at the number of quality adjusted life years that drug will add to a person's life. So if it's an intervention that would save the life of a child, they'll pay a lot more money for it than somebody in middle age, for example.

But when it comes to a child being killed in a terrorist attack or in a road accident, even, the compensation is always the same. It's the same figure for someone at the beginning or the end of their life. And do you think from the people that you met in writing the book that one of the problems is they are just dealing with so much, so many other things and the grief of losing a loved one that actually the power to protest, to change a system would understandably be really beyond them. Yeah, it's the last thing on their minds. And also there is a sense of community among the people

who are killed in a terrorist... family members of people killed in a terrorist attack. And as Sara's parents told me, they weren't going around asking each other, what did you get? And, you know, they didn't know. I told them. And it was one of the most painful parts of the reporting. I had assumed they knew that there were different amounts of compensation paid, but they didn't know. Really, the last thing you want to be thinking about is, hey, has some clever lawyer managed to sue somebody and get more for that

family than for mine? Just a brief mention about some of the things that happen in other countries. I was also absolutely astounded to read that if you are murdered in America, in a case of, for an example, the mass shooting in Las Vegas, the families got a lot of compensation because the gunman was in a hotel. So that hotel had insurance. But the gay men who died in the nightclub attack, was that in Florida? Yes, the Pulse nightclub shooting. Didn't get relatively nothing because it was an independent nightclub

that wasn't part of a big chain. And with the Las Vegas shooting, the man who perpetrated the attack had also researched shooting people from the top of a cliff, for example, or shooting people from an Airbnb. And if he'd done that, the families of the many people he killed would have got absolutely nothing because there's no one to sue. And actually, it's France, I think, that's got the system right, where the French government says, you know, you can't sue anybody, you can't sue car manufacturers, you can't sue car insurers, we are going to pay out and we're not going to pay for the price of someone's life.

We're going to pay for the cost of your bereavement. So if you lose a grandchild, you get a certain amount. If you lose a spouse, you get a certain amount. It's a reflection of what you are going through as someone who has lost someone. Let's talk about drugs because that was a fascinating chapter as well. And I think actually, you know, barring tragedy,

it's where most people are going to encounter exactly what you're talking about in the book. Because that was a fascinating chapter as well. And I think actually, you know, barring tragedy, it's where most people are going to encounter exactly what you're talking about in the book. Do I deserve, does my life deserve to have something spent on it? So can you tell us about the case of this extraordinary drug, the 1.8 million pound Zolgensma? Zolgensma, yes. It's a gene therapy for a condition called sma spinal muscular atrophy which is a very cruel disease it's a disease a genetically inherited disease you're born with it

and uh babies born with sma1 uh something like over 90 of them die by the time they're two it's a motor neuron disease so it's a wasting disease the baby appears totally normal and then loses lots of its functions muscular functions and so can't swallow can't crawl can't walk can't cry loudly can't cry loudly uh and so um it's a really horrible thing to watch as a parent and until very recently there was no cure you just watched your your child very slowly die and then there was a a medication called spinraza which is incredibly expensive uh that i think came out in 2015 and and the nice the national institute for clinical excellence who decides which drugs to fund um was was reluctant to fund um spinraza um because it was so expensive. And then it eventually gave that the green light. And

then this drug Zolgensma came along, which fixes the problem with the faulty gene with one dose, but one dose costs £1.8 million. Right. So what do you want the reader to think when they get to that chapter? I felt very conflicted because, of course, I want Edward, it's the baby who you use as an example. Of course, I want his life to be valued. But also, just as a journalist and citizen of a large country that just seems to be struggling financially at the moment, you know that that can't be made available to everybody. Of course. I mean, we live in a world of finite resources. The NHS has limited budgets and needs to make sure that they're being fair.

But the other thing that I wanted to point out is that this £20,000 to £30000 pounds per life year in good health that the NHS is prepared to spend to keep you or me alive is also arbitrary. When I asked them where this number came from, I thought they were going to say, well, we have this budget of X billion a year, and there are X million of us and we do the maths and that's how much we can afford. But it's actually just a number that is a convention. It's based on the cost of dialysis in the late 90s when this system was set up and so uh this is how much the nhs is going to spend to save our lives but it doesn't really come out of anywhere it's just a kind of token that allows different diseases to be compared a

cancer drug to be compared with a gene therapy like this um and uh it's amazing really that this is this kind of arbitrary number is a life or death figure that your or my life might depend on yeah and all our lives are connected aren't they and let's end by talking about having a 23 pound manicure what what does that tell us about who's doing the manicure, what kind of life they might have, what they might be paid? Yes, so there's a chapter about slavery and I like getting my toenails done. And there's a place around the corner from where I live

where I've been going for a long time and then I found that they only took cash even after the pandemic and that made me feel a bit strange. All the people there were Vietnamese. There was a huge tragedy where so many Vietnamese people were killed in that lorry tragedy. And it made me think, oh, my gosh, are these people being trafficked? How can it be financially viable for someone to spend over an hour doing my feet for £23 in London? And actually, I went back there as a kind of project, armed with all the advice that you're meant to bear in mind when you're seeing if people are trafficked, and I actually couldn't really

tell. And I was sort of thinking, you know, this is a bit dodgy, but maybe they're just incredibly badly paid. And it made me realise there isn't actually, there's a very fine line between incredibly low pay and slavery. And all of us are prepared to turn a blind eye to it, or at least look away if we are the beneficiary of it. And we are the beneficiaries of a lot of very dodgy labour. It's not just manicures and pedicures, it could be childcare, it could be getting your car washed cheaply. It could be the cleaner in your home. There are lots of questions that we have got used to not asking when there are affordable luxuries that are a little bit too good to be true.

So we're all putting prices on lives and looking away from our actions as we do so. Thank you very much indeed. The book is £16.99. That's quite a lot, Jenny. I hope it's worth it. Good value. Jenny Kleeman, and the book is out now at £17 basically. You'll only get a penny change from it. And it's worth thinking, isn't it? You know, if you go for a kind of brag about how cheap your pedicure is. That's because somebody else isn't really able to brag about their life because it's costing them quite a lot more.

Yeah, I think we don't question this enough because it's too uncomfortable. Yeah. It really is, isn't it? It is. I would highly recommend reading the book. I don't think it's one of those books and I don't think Jenny would expect anybody to sit down

and kind of read it all in one gulp. No, I've got a copy. It's really interesting. It's one of those books and i don't think jenny would expect anybody to sit down and kind of read it all in one go no i've got a copy it's really interesting it's one of those things you can dip into and be just fascinated by something on every page genuinely and really learn some stuff along the way and all of those compensation schemes i think just that very simple point that no family is in the right place to then campaign for a change in a government policy when they're spending the rest of their life dealing with grief. So, you know, where is the impetus for that to be looked at and for that to change? So the book is called?

The Price of Life. And it's by Jenny Kleeman. Right, we are back tomorrow. I mean, it could be on the same day, because I know people who listen to three or four of these back to back. Do you? Yeah. Are they all right?

No. Well, get better soon. Thank you very much for your emails. We love reading them. Can't thank you enough for taking part. Jane and Fi at times.radio. Well done for getting to the end of another episode of Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler

and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. And don't forget, there is even more of us every afternoon on Times Radio. It's Monday to Thursday, three till five. You can pop us on when you're pottering around the house or heading out in the car on the school run or running a bank. Thank you for joining us. And we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon. Don't be so silly. Running a bank? I know ladies don't do that. I'm sorry.