Off Air... with Jane and Fi - I've crashed the junction - with Jenny Eclair

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

Jane's away and, in her absence, Fi is teaching Ed Vaizey all the radio lingo. What's the difference between a bed and a jingle? What's "crashing the junction"? And what does that big red light mean?They're joined by comedian Jenny Eclair to talk about Taskmaster, podcasting, and everything else in between.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Radio Producer: Kate Lee Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Oh, look, I'm on a different microphone. That's better. Oh, hoving interview. 30 years in broadcasting. And what does the red light tell you? What does the red light tell you? You're new to broadcasting. What does the red light tell you? What does the red light tell you? You're new to broadcasting. What does the red light tell you? It tells me that the radio's on.

Yeah, it means you... It tells me that we're being recorded. I've got to sound like I'm sensible. I've talked over the red mic twice, I think, in shows I've presented or co-presented and it's been very exciting. I talked over a song on your show yesterday when you weren't here Fi saying how long do you want this song to go on for and everybody collapsed in the studio instead of helping me okay and also there are also things I'm discovering like the cough button have you used the cough

I have used the cough button but I think the cough button cuts everyone's microphones. Because I had a guest and I used the cough button because I was genuinely coughing. Actually, I was eating because I have a section in my show where people are bringing food. And I thought, I'll press the cough button because I'm so greedy. I can stuff my face while my guest is boring on.

But I think I inadvertently, I still don't know the answer to this question uh but a sort of mini crisis seemed to ensue um and then there's the talk back one where you can talk to your producer but you can't talk to your producer if the red light is on because everyone can still hear you yeah that's very true okay well you're you're definitely getting the hang of it i also like i, I like the jargon. I like things like the bed. Yes, which means the... Normal people would call a jingle.

No, that's different. So a jingle will be something that has an ident on it, keep up at the back. So that's going to tell you something about the station. But the bed is just a piece of music that comes under whatever it is you're saying. So we have a bed going up to the news at Times Radio. Yes. you something about the station but the bed is just a piece of music that comes under whatever it is you're saying so we have a bed going up to the news at times radio yes but that's definitely different to a jingle but you know what my favorite what phrase that i've learned is when

my producer says that was a great show but you crashed the junctions oh yeah love crashing the junctions and i go out of my way to crash the junctions oh no don't do that i can tell my listeners i just crashed the junction but that's i think that's very that's like the that's the absolute basics so if you're a kid at school that's the equivalent of going to sit in a classroom you just can't crash the junction should we tell people what crashing the junction so the junction is the bit quarter past, half past, quarter to and the hour where you say welcome to Times Radio or something like that. That's the junction.

Well, you're going to say you're meant to sort of shut up as the jingle or something starts playing. But I always, when it starts saying this is Times Radio, you should have shut up by then. But I never shut up. Do you feel that you're going to get the hang of this or it's always going to be a feature of your show that you won't? Do you practice at home?

Well, I just, I wish people would just say, I mean, like today, you did not crash your junction, even though the guest was still talking yeah very close to the junction but you masterfully took control because at the end of the program we're meant to say goodbye and thank you to the team that's helped produce the show and i had a bit to say and you had a bit to say but you took control because the guest talked too long you shut him up you cut him off you read it out and you didn't crash your junction. And I was just in awe. Well, that's very kind of you to say so.

But it would be absolutely foolish of me not to admit that Jane and I crashed so many junctions when we first joined Times Radio. Because we were quite new. Kate's laughing, our producer, because we really did. For two quite long in the tooth nags, we were crashing what were known as the hard quarterways all the time, and those are the ones that come at quarter past because we just weren't used to them. And that is enough kind of inbreeding, festering, in-store. I think people will like it because I love doing the show

because I grew up listening to speech radio. I love radio. And I think if you love radio, it's quite nice to hear what happens behind the scenes. Yes, a little bit of it. But I think... We've just done a little bit. Yes, yeah.

I'm not proposing an hour-long podcast on Junctions. I have crashed. There'll be one somewhere, though. There will be one somewhere. Can you remember the name of the guest who was boring on about food? That's a terrible thing. It was a cultural guest, actually.

So what happens is I have a section where the producer brings food from a restaurant that he wants to get great service at. They bring food. Then the culture guests come in, and we're all meant to eat great bread together. Yeah, how lovely. But I hoard bring food. Then the culture guests come in and we're all meant to eat, break bread together. Yeah, how lovely. But I hoard the food.

Oh. And I ask them a question and then I press the cough button and shove it in. Okay. So do you know the most unpleasant thing about the cough button? And every studio has one.

I thought you didn't want to talk about it. No, no, okay. So sorry, sorry. I lied. I absolutely lied. I just didn't want you to talk about it anymore. I just wanted to talk myself. So the terrible thing about the cough button

is it goes straight into the producer's ear. It's like a cough dump. So if you cough, you press the cough button and cough, the only person who hears it will be the producer. If they're wearing headphones. So the listener doesn't hear it, but the producer does. So you can actually, if you hate your producer, I mean, there's a play in here where you sort of hate the producer. If they're wearing headphones. So the listener doesn't hear it, but the producer does. So you can actually, if you hate your producer, I mean, there's a play in here where you sort of hate your producer.

Yes, and you could bully them. You can torment each other using different technologies. And imagine... Well, the listener remains oblivious. How unpleasant that would be if you've got a producer who cannot stand the sound of someone eating, and you just every time... Like my children.

Can they not stand the sound of eating it can't stand the sound of me eating okay genuinely oh right well it's difficult no it's difficult isn't it sometimes the sounds of eating they are uh right it's ed fazy and feed lover with your off-air podcast for today and tomorrow because Jane is on her holidays. I think she is doing a kind of national tour, actually, of Britain, visiting friends and family. And so she'll be back on Monday, and Ed and I are here for today and tomorrow.

And then on Thursday, it's the other Jane. Jane Mulkerins will be doing the podcast with me then. But we'd love to still hear from you. It's the same email. It's janeandfeeattimes.radio. And we did posit this yesterday, but I don't think anybody's taken us up on it yet, that if you've got bewildering questions

that you've always wanted to ask a man, Ed Vasey has volunteered himself to be a kind of totem pole of wisdom. You've made it sound like i'm sort of the last man alive well does it feel in a world of women we found this man we've got him in a cage and you can ask him questions so there's one huge question living next door to the big yeti yeah something like that uh there is one very big question i'd like to ask you about, but maybe can I ask it today and then we'll talk about it properly tomorrow? OK. Yeah. Well, just because on this podcast, we have talked quite a few times about the feeling at the moment that there is so much.

There's an epidemic of violence and aggression towards women. And that's been borne out in some horrendous cases. violence and aggression towards women. And that's been borne out in some horrendous cases, Sarah Everard being just one of them. And we have talked about the fact that in our community of women, it's a conversation that is obviously full of universal condemnation for any kind of male aggression towards women. But when we talk about it, we always come to the same conclusion.

You know, it's just crap and it really does need to stop. And we've often wondered whether men, when left to their own devices, actually have any kind of a similar conversation about the rather tawdry state of the world at the moment and the fact that women are having quite a hard time and that maybe we've not achieved the kind of safety and gender equality that many of us as younger women hope that we would so it is a massive question i'm not expecting you to have all of the answers now but i think um maybe our listeners would be quite interested in hearing whether or not even really features amongst male conversation oh that, that's a huge question. It is.

In which I could dig an enormous hole and then fall in never to be seen again. Well, can I leave it with you? I think the answer to your question is, first of all, what is a male conversation? Oh, I just mean when... Because it's quite rare. When men are together with men, yeah.

And secondly, I don't think men do talk about it enough, if you want an honest answer to your question, which I suppose you do. I don't think they do talk about it enough if you want an honest answer to your question which I suppose you do, I don't think they do I think they do talk I think men are not particularly I think about this a lot weirdly I think how men communicate with men and women communicate with women is different and I think men

on the whole keep it superficial I think the most the way that a male conversation might have changed is that we talk more about things like our health, for example, than perhaps we did in the past. I think if I was speaking for my own male ecosystem, if you like, that men are aware, obviously, of this issue

and are gobsmacked by it and want it to stop and obviously i think uh with wives and daughters as well as part of our family uh thinking what they risk or go through uh is very much in men's uh consciousness but do we have in-depth discussions about it? I'm not sure. I think we probably would if it related to a specific issue. If your daughter was going somewhere, will she be kept safe? Or if your wife had experienced something horrible. And things like in the workplace, for example.

So I suppose our question, the place that we always end up, and we have talked about this with lots of other women at shows that we've done and what have you, is just there just seems to be an enormous need for men to call out other men because you're just much closer to the problem than women are. And trying to work out how men can do that i think is actually quite a big question of our time it's a really hard thing to do uh and again god it's almost impossible to use words carefully enough without getting into trouble but it is very hard to know at what point you say that is unpleasant unacceptable behavior but to intervene as in somebody saying something inappropriate to someone

which they could potentially pass off as banter do you intervene and risk big escalation or do you let it pass and I think the world is moving towards intervene because you don't start pushing back on this

unless you are consistent Well thank you for your honest replies because i was very happy to just leave it with you for 24 hours see how it simmered uh but i'm sure that our listeners will have lots of thoughts and we'll be grateful to you for answering uh shall we immediately dive into what turned out to i think be actually really fantastically fun half an hour spent in the company of Jenny Eclair. Oh, yes, she was great. She was on fire. She was, wasn't she?

She came fully loaded, three Weetabix. She did, she did. No messing about. We weren't entirely sure why she was on the programme. She started the interview before we did. She did, and she wasn't entirely sure either, Ed, was she? We did remind her. Yeah, so I think, actually, the interview that you're about to hear

benefits enormously by us not saying very much else about Jenny because that's how it started when we were in the studio. So here is Jenny from the block. I have told you I'm deaf in my right ear. Yes, that's why Fee put me here. So you can only hear pertinent questions. It's a temporary thing, I hope. I might have to, I've got a blocked ear.

So infuriating, isn't it? Very infuriating, Jenny. When I blow my nose, it's like a hot, wet wind. Okay, and does it ever pop out? No, it won't pop out. Oh, I hate it when that happens. But I think there's a private blocked ear clinic in London that sort of,

you know of specialises You'll have to get behind all the cabinet ministers' spouses who are queuing up to get in God damn them I don't want this to turn into our own personal surgery but I had Covid over the weekend too and I lost my hearing and my left ear Really?

Did it pop? Did you have a satisfying pop? How did you get the pop? It didn't pop. It just did something overnight and I woke up and I could hear it. It was like a miracle. Honestly, that happens to me. Right weekend for that to happen, Jenny.

I will feel like I've been reborn. But I am expecting now some emails. I would have preferred to pop it. I don't want my deaf ear to go away naturally. I want to be able to pop it. I didn't care. You want to celebrate that moment. Yeah. I know. Do you know what? That't care. I want to celebrate that moment. Yeah.

I know. Do you know what? That's such a man thing to say, isn't it? Just a round of applause. It's like when you're landing in an aircraft. Does that still happen when you're in first class, Ed? I'm afraid it does because... Do you know the funniest thing about Ed?

Even though the air is purified. We've got to say your name, Jenny. Oh, good Lord. I'm so sorry. I'm Jenny Eclair and it's lovely to be a guest on this programme. Earlier, seconds ago, half an hour ago... Is this for the podcast? Ed put a photograph up on his Twitter account,

and I just sort of thought, I'd never really met this man before, but I now know more about him than I need know, just by dint of fact of the photo you put up, where you'd obviously only looked at yourself... Yes. ..out of the three of us, and thought, Oh, I look great great i'll put this photo up exactly and didn't even look no at fear and i exactly looking a bit insane well i trusted our producer i thought she's a professional it'll be a perfect photograph oh dear but the thing is jenny i think you and i can probably take it can't we can take

i think we can yeah right uh Do you want the serious introduction now? Oh, go on then. It's very nice as well. Here we go. Jenny Eclair is our guest this afternoon. A titan of comedy, she's also written novels, currently hosts a hugely successful podcast, presents art shows on the TV and is a keen painter herself.

She was the first solo female winner of the Perrier Award in 1995 and she basically hasn't stopped delighting the nation since. We are allowed to talk to her today because she's here promoting Taskmaster. The new series is on Channel 4 right now. OK, job done. Oh, well, that was marvellous.

I think great. I love this sort of keen painter, keen but talentless painter. Oh, no, don't immediately go into self-deprecation, Jenny Leclerc. I'm a a dabbler i'm a weekend dabbler with the paints and the watercolors and all this sort of thing and i live with a man who is actually a really talented artist he was a sculptor he's you know he's just he's a designer blah blah and he is gifted he's gifted but he is the worst and cruelest critic because he won't say anything. He won't even lie for me, even when I'm not 100% and I'm struggling with the COVIDs over the weekend and I'm trying to keep myself sane painting.

I go, oh, Geoff, Geoff, what do you think of this? And he just goes, oh, hmm. And he won't, he won't. He's like the worst art teacher in the world. And then I sort of do this thing where I go, oh, here's Mr Powell, the art teacher. Mr Powell, the art teacher, the dream crusher. I was going to do art for a living,

but then I had this teacher called Mr Powell. And Mr Powell just trod all over all my ambitions. And we go, we just have this fictional kind of thing going on. And has he ever said, that's absolutely brilliant, Jenny? There was one painting of the Hyacinth. I once did it on some linen board, and he said, stop there before you ruin it. Oh, that's interesting.

That's proper art teaching there. And can you criticise his work back, or not really? The trouble is, he's really, really good. Yeah, but I've just sort of stopped saying anything now. He does black and white, and sometimes I say, oh, I could just colour that in, and that annoys him, because he doesn't really like colour. Anyway, more about, you want to know about taskmaster well we'll we'll

try you're here to promote it well i don't think it needs me your your pr department has sent you to get more viewers you know i think it's doing quite well without me sort of you know putting my tuppany hapeworth in um how do you describe the programme to somebody who'd never watched it? Right. Well, for starters, I'd suggest you watch it. My sister had never watched it. And she sort of doesn't really get it either. She's an academic. And she said, oh, you know, I don't know how you bore that.

And I said, well, I thought it was enormous fun. And she said, that is it was enormous fun and she said that is it though isn't it i said no there are 10 and she went oh sorry i can't swear on here can i no you can imagine what she said um it rhymed with hit um and uh why are you looking blank because i just i thought your sister would come out with slightly something stronger but but i guess she is an academic yes i know we work that out um but it's one of those programs that i think is popular because it allows you to slightly switch off a little bit of your own brain doesn't it and just stay with it because

i'll make you laugh somewhere down the line i've never thought quite so hard um doing something to be quite honest i was really concentrating trying my very best but it is also the kindest program I've ever done in television often there's some a little bit of an edge where you uh can feel the cringe of humiliation where um and I've done a lot of you did I'm a celebrity does that have an edge edge? That does have an edge, yeah. There were moments on that where I thought, why didn't I die of shame in the night? And I've got...

I knew that I had a reservoir of sanity left that was ebbing slowly away. You know, like a reservoir will have a crack in it. Yeah. And you just know that it's going to be very dry soon. And I was third so i got out just before i really lost it um so you did almost two weeks oh yeah i did ages in there i can't really remember and are you aware uh constantly in your head of how things might be edited to make you look crisps there's camer them eating crisps. There's cameramen behind the tent walls.

But that's a very long time ago. I mean, that's sort of... I was going to say 1950, but I meant I was 50 when I did that, and I'm now 63. So it's, you know, you can do the math, as they say, annoyingly. But you get all the bits round the outside, like you get to stay in the luxury hotel before... Well, is it a luxury hotel?

I don't know. You tell me. It's a bit like... This is just a punter. Have you been asked to be on it? I'm sure they've begged you. You must have been... Listen, you'll have been offered. No.

I'm a celebrity and strictly. No, never. I was offered back in the day Splash, which Penny Morden did. Oh, I did that. Penny Morden did. Yes, I remember. But the idea of me appearing on television with my top off

was not something you could have you could have worn an all-in-one you could have gone victorian bathing good um i did that yeah yeah um because listen you get tom daly teaching you to dive i mean you know and how often have you used the diving skill since never but i dream of it okay i sometimes dream of diving and it is one of those delicious uh dreams it is a lovely one taskmaster i think they have a crew of people who know that the only way they're going to get the best out of you is to make you feel completely and utterly secure in the nonsense so it is very much like full regression to childhood and but without any any fear that anybody's going to call you any stupid names it's an absolutely glorious opportunity

to um be seven again yeah and that's why it's nice to watch because it's just it's i think as we all have to say at least three times a day now a safe space isn't it it's a safe space yes yeah voiceover describes what's happening on your iphone screen voiceover on settings so you can navigate it just by listening books contacts calendar double tap to open. Breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. Our guest is Jenny Eclair.

Can I ask you a serious question, please, Mrs? If you were a young woman now, would you choose to be in the limelight or would it be more off-putting to be in the limelight no i want more limelight no i you know i've never regretted for a second uh any amount of limelight i mean i was desperate as a very small child i mean i didn't grow up with television i was an army brat so we lived abroad and i think that was why taskmaster sort of really did take me back to being seven, because that's what you did. You played out and you had buckets and sticks and did stupid things and tried not to die, really.

But I used to think when I was very small that every bone in my body was broken. So I would have a running commentary. That's the first time Ed's actually looked up at me. I'd have this running commentary in my head, which would go like this. There she goes, walking across the road, like any normal little girl. But this little girl is very special

because she is the only little girl in the world that is able to walk around even though every bone in her body is broken. And I was this medical kind of marvel thing and that one day this would be discovered and you know for once my parents my sister would be really impressed my brother wasn't born at this point um and I think that when you're born with that kind of neediness of attention that there's no real kind of I don't think it's easy to be put off yeah you can't stop

until you get it you can't stop do you think it was uh you were born with it or do you think it was part because you had this peripatetic lifestyle moving around the world i think that i was born with it because my sister my brother had very similar backgrounds and uh they're not quite as needy although my brother is a barrister and he is one of those rum pole of the old bailey kind of stand up and i do think that he's probably very magnificent in court my sister's a quieter version she's an adjudicator and very very very clever um so there are a lot of army and navy brats in the business. Oh, really? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I didn't know that.

Oh, yes. And what would your advice be to young... I'm staring intently at Jenny in case she accuses me of not looking at her. I've just smirked at him to see how that works. Let's see if we can put him off. No, I don't mean that at all. Would you have any advice for young women who have exactly that kind of sense about themselves,

that they need to keep going until they get the bright lights on them because it is just a very different place now isn't it that seems to savage young women in a way that you probably didn't have to be savaged yourself I was so savaged I was so I think that it's very different now I think one of the great things is oh it's it's it's the yin and yang and the pros and cons and it's very different now. I think one of the great things is, it's the yin and yang and the pros and cons, and it's very, very difficult to say which is harder. For me, I felt very much that I was, my route was permanently blocked by the Oxbridge thing at the time. I'm not looking at anybody.

My daughter went in the end. I cried my eyes out. What, because she left Fremont because she was going to Oxford oh god I was so disappointed how did she turn out oh she's a great playwright she's a great playwright yeah she's turned out all right and she's all right and she's made me a grandmother so uh all is forgiven all is forgiven yeah hard work though isn't it but i mean as a woman starting in show business as it were in the 90s it must have been a much tougher 80s love 80s yeah it must have been a much tougher gig because as you say it was a male dominated

sexual harassment yeah and i was cute difficult to get a career going now at least i mean i'm not under playing at all what it must be like to be a young woman starting out in this business, but at least a lot of these issues are now open and talked about. Do you know what, at least? At least there's City Mapper on your phone so you know which bus takes you. I spent all my life with the A to Z open

on, you know, that crack in the page where you just thought, oh, I don't know. How do I get to Crouch End? But that kind of acid rain of misogyny on social media and stuff is not to be underestimated. No, no, it is horrific. But we used to get it sort of live on stage. I mean, you know, you'd do the Tunnel Club

and you would hear comics being sick in the toilet before they went on because the nerves were so... Because the abuse was fairly toxic well but it was I don't think it had that the the social media thing and now the the horror of it is that there's so much anonymous hate that just comes I mean everybody every one of us probably in this room has had to come off Twitter for a couple of weeks at some point because something's gone so nasty and I find it very very very difficult I feel physically frightened in my bed on the I think two or three occasions it's happened when um you know I got myself into trouble with anti-vaxxers once and there was another thing that I don't want to go into that I handled clumsily.

And this seemingly inability these days to be able to say, sorry, sorry, I got it wrong, and people move on. We learn and we move on. Oh, no, that must... We must shred, we must shred everyone to absolute pieces. We must tear them limb from limb. And that's what's horrific. But I also, on the flip side think that

that uh comedy is much broader now and i think that um particularly in the 90s you had to sort of fit into a type of niche i mean i was it was the ladec culture and you had to fit in with that um otherwise you just got drowned out i think there's a lot of different kind of comedy now and i think it's easier for people to say no i belong to's a lot of different kind of comedy now. And I think it's easier for people to say, no, I belong to this tribe. I am this kind of comic. I don't have to do those clubs where people behave like that. I don't have to, you know, I was doing comedy to people that I wouldn't have got into a lift with. Yeah. And trying to impress them and trying to make them like me. You know, now I wouldn't, I I can't do that I have a niche audience hopefully

which is built up from the podcast older and wider and you know mostly the audience who come to see my my stand-up shows and I'll be back on tour at the end of the year with 60 FFS plus extra material for 2023. They are, I'm not preaching entirely to the converted, but it does look like, I look at it, it does look like my old school reunion. Tell us something about the success of the podcast because it's a beautiful thing, isn't it? Well, we're copycatting you lot. You know, it's you first.

And then we sort of, we got those coattails and thought let's ride those let's do another middle-aged lady podcast um so you've got fortunately we've got older and wider um and it is i think because we we don't have any employer so we are and we is you and judith holder judith holder isn. Judith Holder, she was a big shot TV producer and she produced grumpy old women and grumpy old men and a lot of shiny floor shows back in the 80s and 90s and Aspel and all those sort of things. So there's photos of her with Liz Taylor.

I mean, she's been around the block a few times. She's hilarious, isn't she? And we're very different from each other. I'm sort of a bit rough and she's she lives in a fat cottage in the country and you know she's had lots of dogs and and she'll just slip into conversation oh yeah we've been to barbados loads of times the middle name of my child is bad yeah yeah yeah yeah it's just like she continues to sort of shock me even now and um and i'm sort of i i kind of sometimes lead her astray a little bit.

And she started swearing a lot more since she began working with me. And I've more or less stopped because it really makes me laugh that now she is the potty now. You've handed it over to her. Yeah. But do you know what, Joan? It's a wonderful thing, isn't it? Because I think it just, it validates all of the things that middle-aged women want to talk about that have so often been dismissed. And they're only dismissed because the default position has been male.

They're important things, aren't they? All of them are important things. We encourage a lot of crafting. And I do have a theory about knitting. I think knitters are the cleverest people in the world. I think that's why women did so well at Bletchley. If you can decipher the knitting pattern for a Tam O'Shanter, you can beat the marbles.

The turn on the heel of a sock. Can you do that? Can you do that? Can you imagine? We're talking six needles now. There's a whole film in there. There's possibly a new detective hero who knits like crazy and then solves fiendishly complicated crimes.

Absolutely. It's the same kind of brain. And this comes out once a week, your podcast. It certainly does. Because we had Kate texting and saying, why aren't you on the radio anymore? But you can listen to Jenny on the podcast. Yeah, the podcast is available. Use that little purple app, the microphone.

I know that one. It's called Older and Wider. And there are 200 you can catch up on, more or less. Oh, fantastic. So, you know, should you end up in prison, that's what you can do. Or you can listen to it while you're knitting. Yeah, absolutely. And we are doing it live.

I know you've done, fortunately, live. We call it Off Fair now, Jenny. We're doing it in June and July. Sunday afternoon matinees only. That's a good idea, isn't it? I'm not interested in, we're not dragging them out. And what we want is for women to come by themselves. So many people say, oh, I can't go to the theatre at night by myself. I can't do this. I can't do that. You can come to the theatre in

the afternoon. You can go at night time as well. But let's face it, if you want to be back home for Antiques Roadshow, you know, we're three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon and I just I mean I will be back on the 176 bus by Hoppus 5. That's very sensible. Yeah. The quite wonderful Jenny Eclair who you can see in the new series of Taskmaster which is on Channel 4 and you can also book to go and see her fantastic podcast Older and Wider. I think there are some seats available in a live show that she was talking about. They had to extend their run-in because they'd sold out

to the original shows. And I love the fact that it's on at a decent time. So you can get back in time for Antiques Roadshow. And also what she said about that enabling lots of people to come on their own to see a show i thought that was very thoughtful i did as well i think um there's not enough of it about i mean

i think i feel this a lot about the way the arts are performed i've got into trouble for saying on a program on another station that i thought classical music was presented in an incredibly boring way and a few people have tweeted saying you you know, what a philistine I am, which is what always happens when you say things like that. And again, you know, I've often thought, you know, theatre, 7.30, with an interval, home by 11.30, if you're lucky. Why? And, you know, you could, first of all, you know,

I think putting on a play for four hours is antisocial. And why not have it potentially at six or try out different times of the day? Yeah. And do you have any thoughts about how to encourage people to go to stuff alone? Do you think would that ever have been within? Oh, that's an interesting question. I hadn't thought about that angle. Is it a government brief to solve loneliness? One of the absolute epidemics of the modern world? to solve loneliness, one of the absolute epidemics of the modern world? Well, I shouldn't say this, but somebody, a former colleague of mine who's a former MP tweeted today, and it showed this graph,

the older you get, you know, time spent alone. It went up like this, but I thought that to me is a graph of great optimism. I can't wait just to sit on my own all day. But I quite like my own company, so I can see that loneliness is a problem. But I mean, it is a massive issue. Can you have dinner alone in a restaurant? It's a bit of a taboo.

Yes, I agree. Can you take your book, sit in a corner with a glass of wine? I don't want to sound too much like a demographic stereotype. And have a nice meal. Can you go... You't want to sound too much like a demographic stereotype, and have a nice meal. You really want to see this film, suddenly you've got a spare Thursday night,

no one's around, you go on your own. Yep, and it just seems incredible, doesn't it, because there are so many ways of meeting up with people now, on Tintinet, and stuff like that, but in real life as our kids would say IRL

there definitely still is a stigma about being on your own so you can lose yourself in a world online where I think you can find, we know you can find all kinds of satisfactions to being lonely but actually we're still not very good at extending that kind of hand to the people around you when you're out on your own

and thinking who's that weird? Yeah, and that's what I mean. There's just still a really weird stigma around it. So all hail Jenny, because I think you'd go along and see one of her shows and you'd absolutely talk to the person that you were sitting next to and you'd know that that was an okay thing to

do and you'd all have an absolute blast. So we wish her well and also I just really hope she gets completely better soon because she's had the COVID too and quite a few other bugs and lurgies and stuff like that. So we love hearing from you all. Please do continue to get in touch. It is janeandfeeattimes.radio.

Do you want to do a quick email before we say goodnight? Apparently you and Jane, in the pre-ed age, asked for comedy book recommendations. Kay has recommended The Rosie Project by Graham Simpson and The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne. The first is all for laughs, the second is not so, but still produced genuine LOLs for me. And for David Cameron's benefit, that means laugh out loud,

not lots of loves. And has been loved by all the many friends i've recommended it to treat yourselves k and the reason i want to read out she says she loves the podcast and she also says i find myself increasingly addicted to exclamation marks so i'm consciously trying to avoid using them full stop she uses one exclamation mark in this whole email, so she's doing very well. Well, I'm absolutely with her on that too. I use too many exclamation marks and sometimes I know that it genuinely offends younger

people. Does it? Yes, because there's something... Oh no, there's a whole thing... What's wrong with them and the exclamation marks? There's a whole thing about punctuation on text where they find it a little bit aggressive. Oh, any punctuation? Any, and especially the a little bit aggressive. Oh, any type of punctuation? Any, and especially the exclamation mark. Well, I mean, using proper words in text is offensive to the young people.

Sometimes it is, yeah. Where did this K thing start? K? What do you mean? Well, you can't, no young person can write OK. Oh, they do KK. Because their time is so precious that to type two letters in their precisely calibrated energetic day would throw out their whole schedule. So they can only type one, which is K. I always try to be incredibly nice to the young people, Ed, because unlike you, the graph of loneliness doesn't appeal.

So I'm going to say that's totally fine by me. Right. We reconvene at the same time tomorrow. Wherever you are, have a very good evening, and if you can join us on the live show, Ed is here just for one more day, so don't miss it, 3 till 5 on Times Radio. Have a very good evening. It's gone so quickly.

It has. 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.

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