Off Air... with Jane and Fi - I've blinked twice...let me out! (with Annie Mac)

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

In this episode, Jane & Fi take you through the mechanics of shopping in John Lewis, the tricky dynamics of sex in a long-term relationships, and the heartache of estrangement in families.Plus Jane and Fi are joined by DJ-turned-novelist Annie Macmanus, known as 'Annie Mac', who talks about her new book 'The Mess We're In', her life philosophies and her relationship to her Irish identity. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Producers: Khadijah HasanTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Off-Air. I think, actually, did we forget to mention Off-Air during the radio show? We did, didn't we? No, I think we mentioned it. I did say that I was going to post up some pictures of you trying on the new Dyson mask and sound-cancelling headphones, and we'll talk about that on the podcast.

So it's a brief mention there. It was more of a tease than a mention. Oh, very much a tease, yeah. And you only liked it because it basically made me completely incapable of broadcasting. It silenced you. It reminded me, wearing it, it reminded me of completely incapable of broadcasting. It silenced you. It reminded me, wearing it, it reminded me of that,

what was that thing they used to do to witches, where they put them in a horrible contraption so they couldn't speak? And then they'd dunk them. Witches bridle, was it a bridle? What did they used to call it? Probably. Yeah, a really horrible thing. We do live in better times, don't we?

Well. Marginally. Yes, we do. Well, yeah. No, we do. No, we do. We do live in better times, don't we? Marginally. Yes, we do. No, we do. We do. Do you think that you would have been classed as a witch? Yes, that's what I'm worried about. Back in the olden days.

Do you feel you would have floated? Well, I live alone with a cat, so evidence is mounting, isn't it? Basically, one of them. And you do like so evidence is mounting, isn't it? Basically, one of them. And you do like to, you have your visions, don't you? Where you do believe you're something of a soothsayer, although it never, ever comes true. Yeah, I know. It's just actually some really weird narcissism instead.

Well, that's not a very positive start to the week, is it, everybody? But OK, let's make the best of it. Monday, we're told there's going to be what's described in the mirror, I think, today as a heat plume coming up. A heat plume? And that's brilliant because it'll give me the opportunity to complain about the heat, which I am really missing. How high is the plume going to take us?

They're talking of 30 Celsius, which will be unbearable. It will, Jane. And I won't be able to sleep and it'll be truly ghastly and give me something to complain about. That's all I really care. But I think both of us have made a bit of a leap in our all the weather chats, haven't we? To realise that it's all part of a wider, much more horrendous thing.

And actually, we have to stop doing the, you know, putting pictures of people in bikinis on front pages when it gets hot and actually put a picture of a farm that no longer exists somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. Well, we're in a building where there are tabloid newspapers. You give them a ring and tell them. I'll explain. My climate change thesis. Take it seriously, please.

The week after, we do not expect to see any ladies in bikinis in the fountain in Trafalgar Square. Is that clear? Yeah, I'll keep you posted on that. Tell me how it goes. Yes, OK. Now, we've had some interesting emails in response to our email special. I can't remember now why we did the email special last week. There was some complication, wasn't there?

Well, it's because we couldn't get Sam Ryder on our technical equipment. Yes. So we did the email special instead, really, and a lot of people liked it. So we'll endeavour to do more of those because the fact that we did a podcast dedicated to emails has inspired some more great emails. Very much so. Yes. Two very clear, big topics. The one about estrangement. And I think a surprising number of people have written to us with their tales of estrangement. And I'm only saying surprising because I think it is just not talked about. I think there are far more cases than you would realise.

But as our initial email correspondent said, it's a really difficult thing to talk about. It's accompanied by a bit of shame and embarrassment. And so people are keeping it to themselves. accompanied by a bit of shame and embarrassment. And so people are keeping it to themselves. But I know that some people are incredibly grateful that we had an email on the subject to really start things off. And then the other topic is how often you have sex. Yes. Shall I start with that?

Please start with the sex. OK, thank you. This is from a listener who says, I thought I'd write in response to the lady who questioned whether she was unreasonable for not wanting to have sex with her husband once a week. I think the only answer to that question has to be no, she is not being unreasonable at all.

You can't help your libido and no one should ever feel that they should have sex even when they don't feel like it. No one has a right to it, not even with their partner. Surely her desire not to have sex is more important than his desire to have it. Maybe that's a bit annoying for him, but so be it. I firmly believe that many people are under the impression married couples are having more sex than they actually are.

I'm 32. I haven't had sex with my husband since we conceived our first child over a year ago. Now, luckily, we both have a low libido and it's not causing any problems for us. It used to worry me, but our relationship is really strong and affectionate. We met when we were very young and for several years we were, frankly, at it like rabbits. Then there was a natural drop-off.

By the time I was 25, I had a pretty low libido and now neither of us are in the mood very much. I'm just working out the maths here. They must have a young baby, mustn't they? Yes, yeah, they do. Yeah, yeah, sorry. Really, biology isn't my strength. And while we're certainly on the low end,

asking around my friends of the same age, and this is 30s, once a month or less is not uncommon at all. So my advice to the contributor would be to do her best to reassure her husband that it isn't to do with his performance, but let him know that only wanting sex every now and then is normal and it'll be better sex if they do it when she's in the mood. Well, that's without a doubt true. Thank you very much for that. And this one comes from an anonymous emailer who wanted to tell us about one of her relatives. Although I'm generally very open with close female friends,

I'm hesitant to discuss the frequency of my own sexual activity for fear of being judged. Even in midlife, those who are still very sexually active tend to make it known. I suspect others may feel the same way as me, fearing that talking about their sex lives could somehow diminish their relationship with their partners in the eyes of their friends. And I think that is very true. And also, I think a lot of people feel that there's a kind of disloyalty. People of our generation, I think, feel that there might be, you might be kind of sharing secrets in a way that I don't think younger generations would regard any discussion of sex. They seem to be much more capable of talking about it in the same way that they talk about other hobbies and interests, Jane.

Yes. Well, let's say you're in a heterosexual relationship and you do talk about what you and let's say your husband get up to. Would you be happy with, let's say, your husband going into the same amount of detail if he's out with his friends i suspect the answer is no good point sister the rest of this email is fascinating though while some might argue that this is a private matter it can become problematic if people feel their relationship is abnormal if they're not constantly having sex so as a gentle way to try and shatter the taboo i occasionally share with my girlfriends the story of my beloved 80-something aunt and uncle, who've been happily married for over 60 years. They are the most romantic and devoted couple I know, constantly holding hands and are often seen to be listening to jazz, lighting candles and even dancing in the evening. He still buys her silk underwear. They need no one else in their lives but each other. And they've shared with us in a jovial and affectionate manner that their sexual activity ended in their 50s. Despite this, their bond remains remarkably strong. They are best friends

who are still deeply in love and feel comfortable discussing their intimacy with each other and their family. I'm always taken aback when they raise the topic at dinner, can I say? Romp! That's back to tabloids. It's only ever spoken of in tabloids it's only ever spoken of in tabloids and indeed in that email romp

and in fact Carol Midgley, the brilliant Times writer in her review of that £10 POM show that I was talking about that started on the BBC last night said there was something in that show that only ever happens in TV dramas and that's when a man in the back of a taxi reassures his wife on the cusp of a big adventure

by putting his hand over hers in the back of a cab. And that's true. It doesn't happen in real life. It's like someone never comes into the kitchen last thing at night and drinks from a milk bottle. It never happens in real life. It's always happening on the telly. I'm sorry, I have to disagree about the milk bottle one.

That happens in our house quite a lot, yes. You must live with louts. Well, they're my family. Well, of course, if you only have almond or soya milk, it's not something you can do. Well, I suppose you can. This is from another listener. I'm right with your correspondent.

Once a month, plenty for me, but I try to maintain once a week for him because he seems to need it and it makes him happy. I prefer, frankly, to get a full massage once or twice or even three times a week. I'd happily go to bed early for that. But like you said, sex is in a category of its own within the range of intimacies between a couple. It feels like a duty, even a burden.

I think the long history of sex being women's conjugal duty means that she hardly ever wants to have sex with me has the ring of a legitimate excuse to leave the marriage or relationship. But he hardly ever wants to give me a massage doesn't sound like a legitimate excuse to leave. In the back of our minds is the fear he might leave or find someone else if I don't make an effort to supply a satisfactory minimum of sexual release. My husband is a sweet, kind, gentle man and a lover and a wonderful partner and a father to our kids. Should I not just give him this? And therein lies the dilemma. Interesting. I love the fact.

And by the way, thank you all for being so honest with us. You don't need to do this. We'd never mention your names. You can rely on that. But I do. I am struck by that. Plenty for me, but I try to maintain once a week for him i mean it's like yeah then she'll clean out from you know the back of the fridge and i've maintained but isn't her whole point uh about the way that we see sex as a completely different currency to how we would view any other area of compatibility within a marriage. So isn't her point that she'd rather have a massage sometimes, but if he doesn't give her a massage,

that's not seen as a reason to leave a marriage? No. I think that's a really, really good point. But I think sex is so weaponised within a marriage that it is seen as that. So actually, if you were going to flip that round again and say you know in order to maintain my relationship with my wife sometimes i'm going to give her a massage or pay for a massage you wouldn't see any harm in that you wouldn't feel

that that was in some way compromising yourself but when it's about sex and a man wanting more sex with you than you want to give that's where it becomes also we don't want to miss out um the scenario in which a woman is really keen to have sex and he isn't interested for whatever reason or not as interested as you might like him to be it's not uncommon i remember on the hour of woman that would be something that would pop up quite regularly unfortunate in the email inbox it was it was something that would pop up quite regularly, unfortunately, in the email inbox. It was something that occurs much more frequently in heterosexual relationships than some people would have you believe.

Well, I think if you look at the enormous success of the little blue pill chain, you can see that libido in men and the ability to carry on having a sexual relationship is sometimes challenging for them more so than for us and in a way it is true that women can disguise the lack of libido more than men can which I'm sure is problematic well you know it's problematic in lots of marriages but the currency thing fascinates me because sometimes you know I think you're allowed to

say that you'd rather have a John Lewis voucher. There's nothing wrong with that. Well, Boyd George famously said he'd rather have a cup of tea and now maintains he was lying, which is unfortunate because I admired him for saying what I believed to be the truth for him and indeed for many people. I mean, a really good cup of tea, it's of fairly consistent quality, isn't it? I'd say a 50 quid John Lewis voucher can go a very long way too. Oh yeah, 50 quid. You can buy a lot. You could actually leave houseware, couldn't you?

Travel throughout the store. Where would you start, though? Oh, gosh, where would you start in a John Lewis store? Where do you start? Well, I always go in low and go as high as I can. OK, so you start in make-up. No, I don't start in make-up. I start in the basement of the really posh John Lewis

where you get all those wonderful gadgets and things for dusting specialist areas. Right. Yes, silverware cloths. That sort of thing. That kind of thing. And then you make your way up through menswear, averting your eyes,

all the way up to womenswear and shawls. And then there's no need for either of us to be going to the baby department thank goodness but then we can just have a quick visit to tech and ask a younger gentleman to assist us with our needs oh tech always seemed far too busy for me i forget as far as tech i quite like it up there right some of these ones about um estrangement As Jane said, we will do more email specials because you like them and because we really, really love hearing from you

and because quite a few of your emails just really do need a little bit more time in order to digest them and actually to just read some of them out in their entirety too. So this one about estrangement comes from somebody who wishes to remain anonymous and that is always totally fine by us. And our correspondent says, we've been estranged from our eldest son, now approaching 41, for nearly six years. He left his wife and son 13 years ago and has never got over the fact that we, as a couple, continue to support our daughter-in-law and grandson. Our daughter-in-law has had cancer three times and is at present undergoing chemotherapy.

And our grandson is an amazing 16-year-old young man with autism, hence our continued very close relationship. When our son met his new partner, he cut off all contact with our grandson and us. Despite us trying to maintain communication, he has steadfastly refused to reconcile a situation which has caused me untold pain. And you go on to say, my wonderful husband coats of the situation far better than I do by following the mantra that our son is a grown man making his own choices and that life is too short to grieve for someone who just doesn't want to be part of our life. And you do go on to say that recently though our son came up on my Facebook feed as a possible friend. So I sent a friend request with trepidation and fear of rejection. Amazingly he has accepted me but as yet no actual messages or likes have been sent between us.

Maybe the start of something, who knows? This is the first time I've spoken of our situation outside of our close family and friendship group. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to do so. And my advice, just in case anyone else is going through such pain, is you will get through it and the pain will ease. And no, you're not the worst mother in the world you're just a parent trying to do your best to work your way through your worst nightmare but there might be some light at the end of the tunnel even if it feels like a pinprick of light right now well i wish you so much luck with that and i really really hope that Facebook might enable your son to do more than just accept a

friendship request and that just sounds so very complicated I think if you want to keep in touch with your child's partner after divorce and that enables you to be kind and compassionate and also to carry on seeing your grandchild i mean that's something that so many families experience oh i think it must be horrendous yeah but how that ends up making him feel that you're no longer his family uh is so difficult for you so you know thoughts and prayers and i'm glad actually uh that there has been some catharsis in hearing something from other people going through the same situation. I mean, we don't know what the son's story is, do we? No, we don't.

Or what motivated him to do what he did. But I was going to say well done to that couple for offering so much support to their former daughter-in-law. But that sounds really patronising. But it does sound as though they have been hugely helpful. And I'm sure she will really have appreciated it because she's been through a terrible experience from The Sound of Things with her health. So brilliant that you were able to help her.

Can we just briefly, we've got a great guest today, Annie Mack, talking about her novel The Mess We're In. But I did want to mention this because this is another recurring theme and it's one of those, you couldn't really call it a news story, but I suspect it's something that's very, very real in too many lives. Just catching up with your off-air podcast and heard your care worker's story of problems with male clients. This correspondent says,

this is a huge hidden problem for care workers, especially with the dimension of dementia added into the equation, and it is not just when working in clients own homes. My mother was in a wonderful care home with dementia and both female staff and residents had problems. It's very important there are male care staff working within the home and of course this is not always the case as female staff are always in the majority. Staff are of the opinion that until female and male residents had their rooms in different parts of the building the problems caused by the male residents would get worse and unfortunately we

did have problems ourselves staff cannot have eyes in the back of their heads 24 7 and of course there just aren't enough staff to always work in pairs which is what is required my mother passed away during covid thankfully not from Covid, and it was a huge worry for me on top of everything else. Well to that listener I'm so sorry to hear about your mum but that is just an element of being in a care home that frankly most of us have not considered and it's pretty bleak actually isn't it? And of course it's all down to the lack of they haven't got the staff i mean this is not a brexit podcast or not even a political podcast but we we sort of

know why there are staff shortages in these places and um what was the home secretary talking about today suggesting that some british people had quotes forgotten how to work forgotten how to work yeah so uh that as an issue uh that i suspect is not going to go away but thank you for sharing that experience and um yeah it's good it's good of you to contribute can i just ask you penny to keep on listening uh because i'm going to do your email after we've had our fantastic guest that's penny from australia keep listening please don't go to sleep penny okay maybe what the Small hours of the morning there? Thinking of any old excuse?

I don't know. They're very topsy-turvy. It's very difficult. I don't really understand it. Everyone should simply move to Britain where we keep normal hours. Oh, sorry, you can't come here. No. Or have you forgotten to work? And you're British. Leave. Right, OK. Go to Australia're British? Leave. Right. Go to Australia, if you like.

Right. Let's talk to Annie Mack, Annie McManus. She was known as Annie Mack in her Radio 1 DJ days. But she's quit Radio 1 and is now a really successful novelist. Her first book was set in Belfast. It was called Mother, Mother. Her second one is called The Mess We're In. And it's a tale largely set in North London around the Kilburn area and it follows the story of a young woman

from Ireland, singer-songwriter Orla, who moves to Kilburn with her best mate Nima and his brothers and her brother's band, that's Nima's brother's band, and they share this huge and rather messy house in Kilburn. So it's fair to say that this is a story about the Irish diaspora and a lot, lot more. It's all at times, as I put to Annie, distinctly messy, as the title implies. It's very fair. It's very messy. It's about a young one who moves from Dublin to London and lives with her best friend's big brother's rock band in a house in Kilburn. And she is a bit all over the place herself. She's very scattered. She's very creative in the way that a lot of highly creative people are not very good at just the pragmatic

side of life. But she is pretty talented at songwriting, not that she knows it. And she wants, that's what she wants to do. She wants to make songs, she wants to produce music. And, and I suppose we get an intimation by the end of the book that she might be on her way, but it's very much, I guess people call it a coming of age type of book. It's, it's about arriving in a big city and this sense of a city being able to knock you sideways you know completely flooring you um and how you how you manage to stay on your feet and uh and also feel comfortable in your skin i suppose especially from that young female perspective and it's also without being too pompous about the irish diaspora i'm never really

sure whether i use that word rightly but i think it is about that and about the Irish diaspora. I'm never really sure whether I used that word rightly, but I think it is about that, and about the extraordinary ambivalence that not just Irish people feel, but a lot of people who come to London feel about London, because it's a difficult place, it's a hard place, but it's also a place that offers you the most incredible opportunities.

Exactly, exactly. And funnily, I've done a few interviews about this book so far, and the book is kind of, you know, inspired by when I came to London. You know, I did live with my brother who had a rock band. So it's kind of, it's inspired slightly by that and completely fictionalised and there's loads of other stuff in it. But people have asked me, would you have been able to have your career in Ireland if you hadn't left for London? And I think the answer is no. And I think it's still no. That's, I suppose, why so many people do leave. But what I wanted to show in the book is, I suppose, a different context of of the diaspora and the different generations of the diaspora leaving.

So Orla, the main character, works in this Irish pub and she can't wait to see the back of Ireland. She hasn't looked back once. She's just that London is her cultural North Star. That's all she cares about. She goes there and then she ends up working in this Irish pub and there's a nice irony, I suppose, in the fact that she cannot escape

the fact that she's Irish and all these people, these old fellas, you know, you see, you go to an Irish pub and you see the old fellas staring into their pints of Guinness. It's a lot of that. And they've just got this romanticized view of back home. But the context of them coming here was so different than her. She was able to come because she had a choice. She wanted to, you know, she had supportive parents, blah, blah, blah, blah.

supportive parents, blah, blah, blah, blah. A lot of these lads came when they were 16, 17, post-war with huge sprawling families back home that they had to feed and send checks home for. And it was desperately lonely for them. And they weren't officially like employed. A lot of the time they got paid cash and had, and so they had the kind of quite lonely lives and they've kind of arrived at the end of their lives, still thinking of Ireland as this kind of quite lonely lives and they've kind of arrived at the end of their lives still thinking of Ireland as this kind of mystical romantic amazing place and all it's just like what do you like like it's not that and they're like would you go out with a good good Irish man and she's she's just not interested so I liked playing with that you know yeah no I think that really comes across and I love the character of Pat the landllady, who I mean, I feel as though I could see Pat in my mind's eye because she is a grafter. She's caring as well for her brother who's got dementia.

And she's running this pub, which is also partly a social centre, isn't it? I mean, she's doing social work. A hundred percent. It's kind of like a community centre for this for this group of people, this group of misfits, I suppose, people who don't really feel like they fit in in Ireland or in England. And it's hard work and she's a grafter. But I think there is a kind of sense of initially like reluctant protectiveness over Orla. She's very eye-rolly about Orla because, again,

Orla's so ignorant about the reality of Irish abroad and what's come before her but I think there's a lot of women in the book older characters that that do help her and do guide her and and do kind of provide her with what she needs to get by and I really wanted to show that because that's what happened to me in every level of when I came to England it was always women who I worked for who would then root for me or give me an opportunity here, you know, who took the time to help me and push me and introduce me to people and open doors for me. And, yeah, I wanted to show that for sure. It's also a book about drink and drugs, isn't it, Annie? I mean, there's a lot, a lot of drink and drugs isn't it Annie I mean there's a there's a lot a lot of drink and drugs involved

and I wonder whether you think now with several decades behind you in the music business that actually something really silly is going on where drugs are being taken in plain sight in some creative industries but all of that is still being completely ignored by the political classes. Yeah, I suppose. I mean, in the industry that I came up through, especially at that time, it was so normalised. So you're coming off the back of Britpop, LADEC culture, all of that. It wasn't just normalised, it was nearly aspirationalational and I definitely wanted to show this band who who were young these young fellas who felt like that was something they had

to do and they were kind of enabled everywhere they went by people in their label and you know the industry around them to do that um and when I say that I mean recreational drugs, getting wasted, all of that. It was part of the act in a way. And I think, yeah, I mean, it definitely is still a thing, but I don't know if it's quite the same as it is now than it was then in that I think a new generation have come up and what's different, I suppose, is that back then there was no phones. So now everyone does a lot there's a much bigger sense of um awareness of what you are putting what how you're presenting

to the world so kids now even though obviously hedonism still happens I just don't think it happens in in a way that is so blatant and in a way that is so celebrated, I suppose, as it was back then. You're listening to Off Air. Our guest is Annie Mack. I asked her if she thinks she could have written the book if she was still at the BBC, bearing in mind that The Mess We're In does contain any number of references to recreational drug use. I don't know. I mean, I'm not there now. I probably would have had to go and talk to my boss

and get him to read the book and let him know that that was the case. But it is fiction. So, you know, there's not really much they could have said, right? It's fiction. I'm not certain that what you say is true. I think they'd have. I think they will. I mean, I mean, I don't think they would have had a problem. It would have been the media that would have had a problem and they probably would have picked on that. Well, that's why they wouldn't have been worried about the media. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I meant. But I'm not there. So it doesn't matter, which is lovely. And is that why you left? Because you wanted to plough your own literary furrow. And there's also something about Radio One. I've got a great quote from you here. You describe Radio 1 as, where is it, the Peter Pan world of eternal youth. I mean, should Radio 1 actually have an official retirement age? any types of music whenever they like.

And I think this whole shtick about people, about radio, about it being a bad thing that Radio 1 are like aiming at young people, that's their remit, that's their job. And the BBC has a huge amount of radio stations and places for people to go when they're older. And rightly so, you should evolve. You should have places to go when you want to listen to different stuff

and different people. I was talking really more about the presenters. Oh, well, no, I think there's enough exceptions to that rule, I suppose, with your John Peels and your Annie Nightingale's and your Pete Tong's, you know, the latter two of which are still there. And I don't know, it's something I struggled with a lot, this sense of, am I able to serve my audience if I am sitting during my show thinking about what I'm going to put in the school lunches tomorrow? You know, if I'm not able to go to every gig, if I'm not able

to spend hours trawling through the music blogs. And I think so much about broadcasting in that way is just trust, you know, and I think if you are authentic and honest on air and your passion is real, it shouldn't matter what age you are. And I think that I think it's OK to have older presenters. I genuinely do. Yeah. I mean, I guess the argument might be that a male presenter of any age would not be thinking about what to put in their kids' packed lunch. Therefore, they are free to explore the hinterland of their musical imagination until they're well into their 90s, if that's the way they roll.

I mean, it's not a very good playing field, is it? It still isn't. No, I totally agree. It's a really good point, you know, and I see it in the world of DJing as well. You know, this idea of there being such a lack of female DJs that are moms or, you know, I don't see mothers with mother DJs with multiple kids who are touring the world out on the road. I had to stop my international DJ career pretty much when I became a mom.

But that also coincided with getting more radio shows, which meant I had,, which meant I had a choice to choose a more stable, secure job in London that kept me here and kept me closer to my kids. But I know so many parents who are DJs, traveling DJs, but they're all men because the women stay at home and look after the kids. And that makes me sad. And that is a sad truth that is still the case. With radio, I do think that traditionally the gatekeeper in terms of alt music has always been the bearded male it's it's ridiculous and it's it's i i still

don't understand why or how for some reason they have should have an authority over over um what's hot and what's not more than a woman but it's changed it's changed so much in the last 10 years since i've been at radio i've seen it change so much it's given me hope definitely so the two controllers of the big music networks were radio two and six music oh my god what is this what are you trying to do here to me ladies we're not trying to do anything they're both women and so we might see huge change. Can I just ask you one question about that, though? Did you very much feel that you faced a prejudice

from the people who would previously have booked you to DJ once you became a mum, or was it more that you didn't feel that the whole kind of set-up enabled you to travel with children or an entourage? Yeah, it was definitely the latter. So there was never prejudice about me being a mom, ever. I mean, I don't think anyone gave a shit as long as I could play the gig.

It was more just I didn't feel like I could be away. I mean, my husband wasn't willing to stay at home and be a house husband. That was the difference. We were both working parents and he wasn't willing to make the compromise for me to go off for three weeks here or two weeks there and, or an Ibiza residency, go off for two or three days of every week to Ibiza. But also it wasn't really something I massively wanted to do. And as I said, having the radio job offered to me at that time was so ideal because it just meant that I could take the safe, secure option and be here every day and have that radio show. Back to the book. There are lots of other themes in the book.

And one of the striking ones is about how you feel as a young adult if when you return home, home has changed. And actually, I haven't seen that written very often about in a book. I thought it was an intriguing part of the plot and there's one moment where you describe Orla the main protagonist as feeling like she has become an inconvenient daughter can you tell us a bit more about that yeah so Orla is kind of running away a lot in the book just you know literally and figuratively she's running to England but she's also in her head through her Herculean Hellenism running away a lot in the book just you know literally and figuratively she's running to england but she's also in her head through her herculean hedonism running away from any sense of having to confront the truth of what's happening at home to her family her parents have split up and she just doesn't want to have to deal with it she is someone who has i I would say now that she would be diagnosed with ADHD.

She has a lot of the traits of how women suffer from ADHD and that she has real emotional dysregulation. She cannot regulate her emotions. She feels things so deeply and her emotions very much consume her to the point where she just can't control herself or them and that is very much the case with her parents and her family and she goes home and she has to finally sit down with her dad and kind of try and tell him why she's pretty much ignored him for eight months in London and not wanted to talk to him um and it all kind of blows up a little bit but yeah she i suppose feels

inconvenient because she's always the one that seems to have the problem um whereas the younger sister is has been there the entire time and had to deal with it because she's lived at home the whole time whereas auras has kind of been away she's she's very she's very dramatic she's very quite self-important i suppose in that she's she her that she can't see past her own pain a lot of the time. She must be quite frustrating to read, I can imagine as well. And I think it might be quite a challenge for the reader to always root for her. I think you might want to shake her at some point to be like sort yourself out. There is a hint in the acknowledgements actually at the end of the book that you are rethinking your own view of Ireland.

I mean, you say that you're thinking about it just in a different way. And so you wanted to get away. You said that. But would you think about moving back at some point in the future? Jane, it's all I think about. I'm obsessed with it. Since Covid, I've become really, I don't know what happens when you're 40 but i kind of when i during covid i left for anyone i became 40 i started writing a lot of big things changed and i kind of was able to put my head above the power of power and just kind of assess you know you assess your life you're like where are you how did we get here is everyone happy are we going in the right direction my son is going to start secondary school in a year and a half and those things kind of force you to think right well we're going to

have to be in one place for his sake you know for the next six or so years is that are we in the right place and so I started thinking like that and then the book and writing the book made me think about Ireland so much more um my mom is 81 in a couple of weeks. She is getting much older and it's harder for her to travel over here. So there's a lot of things physically that are happening that are making me think, am I in the right place? And then I suppose this sense of never having thought about my Irishness before now. I'd be too busy loving being in London, loving my career, being swept away with it all and it's only now you know you kind of wake up and you've got kids with English accents and that

you know they support England in the Euros as they should they were born in London they've got an English dad but life moves fast and I suppose I've had a bit of a reckoning where I'm trying to figure out whether I'm in the right place. And I'm constantly thinking about that. And I'm going to my Irish pub down the road from where I live and spending a lot of time there with the misty eyed old barflies. And I have more of a kinship with them now than I do with Orla. You know, the me when I was Orla's age. I feel that kind of romanticised view of Ireland. But whether I do it or not, I don't know. Of course, there's always the chance that if you do do that and move back to Ireland,

your son will turn to you when maybe when he's 19 or 20 and say, well, I'm off to London. I mean, exactly. It's not big enough for me here. I'm going. Yeah. God. And then it would be like some strange, like recurring thing. I mean, it's constantly the case in Ireland. That's what people do. A lot of people leave, come back, have kids who then leave. It's just whether you come back or not. And everyone in my family has returned apart from me now.

So I do have to figure out what the right thing to do is. I'm hoping that it will come to me. Who is your favourite Irish writer? I'd say Anne Enright. I love her so muchwright I love her so much I love her writing it encapsulates everything I love about writing I also have discovered

or rediscovered a guy called Christy Brown do you remember that movie My Left Foot I do yeah he wrote the book for that and I've been reading a lot of him and just the way he writes the kind of lyrical aspect of how he writes the kind of lyrical aspect of how he writes the kind of deeply sensory immersive way that he writes has been so

inspiring for me so that's someone I'm reading a lot of and Brendan Behan and Roddy Doyle I mean there's so many but if I had to choose one it would be Anne Enright. That is Annie McManus better known perhaps to listeners of Radio One as the incredibly successful DJ Annie Mack. The Mess We're In is a book you can buy right now. It is out. It might be lovely, I imagine, actually, as an audiobook because Annie will read it and I bet it's brilliant as an audiobook, actually. Yeah, it's quite heavy on the dialogue, isn't it? Which I think if you can pull it off, works really well on an audiobook.

But if you can't, then you shouldn't do it. Can I just say I'm listening to such a good audiobook again at the moment. Ellie Griffiths, who's a writer I like anyway, the audiobook of her novel Bleeding Heart Yard is read by three different voices. Very well done. They're all great and I'm loving it.

How soon do you leave one audiobook and go on to the next? Because I think at the moment you're doing Graham Norton. I've finished Graham Norton. Ellie Griffiths. Yes. And you've done At The Table and you've done the Julie McDowell one. No, At The Table I read. Okay. But can you literally

finish one and just plug in the next? No, I have a period of sadness and then I move on to the next one. But how long does the period of sadness last? Three or four minutes. I'll park up. I think it's great because I was doing some driving at the weekend and obviously we're commuting it's not easy for me, I live in East West Kensington

I've got to get here to the Tower of London or wherever it is we are and it takes ages so these audiobooks really help that's very true I think sometimes I get here in 19 minutes yeah well I don't I won't be back home until tomorrow I just want to say just two quick emails.

One, the woman who has written in to say, don't read my message out loud, just in case, as it's happened to me before and it was a very humbling experience. I think my emails sound shockingly pathetic when read out loud and not at all how I thought they would sound. Well, can I just say, correspondent? Probably us. That would be on us. Yeah, that would be on us.

Yeah, that would be on us if they didn't sound great. So please, please don't ever think it's you. It will be our bad intonation or we've cut the wrong bit out or something like that. Yeah, it's definitely a it's me, not you, darling. And I just want to say thank you as well, because there's a fantastic tip about trying to help Nancy with her heart murmur. And I'm very, very grateful for that.

Is it a tip that doesn't involve spending 700 grand? It's a sensible tip. Is it? OK. Yes, it is. And here we go, Penny. A photo of me and a couple of friends skinny dipping this morning at our local beach in Fremantle, Western Australia. It's attached to the email.

I'm the one who appears to be wearing my Labrador as a bikini. Well, dogs are good for everything. We swim every Friday morning, nude in the winter, because we can't be bothered to either bring a change of clothing or to have our post-it coffee with wet cozies or bathers, as we call them here. We used to be quite coy, but now we have no shame, another side effect of the menopause. You've now read two emails from my friend and colleague,

the conductor Alice Farnham. We are highly competitive and I feel like you're favouring her due to your unconscious bias. She is a conductor, a male-dominated profession, and therefore more important than me, a lowly soprano, very much a female-only business? Or is it that I keep mentioning my own podcast, Diary of a Teenage Diva,

in which case I will not mention it this time. Beautifully done. Missed the email special. Damn, too busy nude swimming and singing. Cheers, Penny. Well, there you go, Penny. You've got one over on Alice. Well, it's 2-1 now to Alice, isn't it?

And you need to send us another one. Don't feel that you need to send more pictures of you swimming naked because otherwise people will get the wrong idea about what this podcast is for. It's very high-minded. It's high-minded. Yes, that was news to me. But thank you. I mean, I suppose it's good to be part of a high-minded thing for once in my life. Right. Thank you all very much for contributing. Jane and Fee at Times.Radio. Thank you all very much for contributing. Jane and

Fee at Times.Radio, if you've got more to say. We'll keep it going a little bit on the old regular sex thing, because I do think it's such a good talking point. Let's keep it regular, darling. Well, we've been regular now for how many years? We've been doing this sort of thing, shebang, for seven years now. Yes. And we were talking about it earlier today only because the Holly and Phil thing is playing out. Now, they've been TV married now for well over a decade. And this sort of routine where you do work with the same person regularly,

not always easy, is it? I mean, it's easy for you, but it can be difficult for me. Oh, my God. This is now time to call in Julia from Brisbane. Come in, Julia. I've blinked twice. Get me out. Have a good evening. 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, lady. A lady listener. I'm sorry.