Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Just a walking gobsh*te (with Sarah Vine)

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Jamal Kerrins is back for one day, and one day only. The Janes chat Liverpool (of course), hanxiety, and bears. Plus, columnist Sarah Vine, former wife of Michael Gove, discusses her memoir 'How Not to Be a Political Wife'. If you want to come and see us at Fringe by the Sea, you can buy tickets here: www.fringebythesea.com/fi-jane-and-judy-murray/ And if you fancy sending us a postcard, the address is: Jane and FiTimes Radio, News UK1 London Bridge StreetLondonSE1 9GFIf you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] next book club pick has been announced! We’ll be reading Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession. Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve Salusbury Executive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I believe I do give quite good value if I have a couple of drinks. After that, nobody would want to be around me. No, you're under the chair. I wouldn't want to be around myself. Quick and easy. Mobile plans totaled $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at phys.ca. This episode of Off Air is brought to you by Thomas Fudge's Biscuits. We've got a bit of a reputation, haven't we, Jane? Our desk here at Times Towers is pretty famous for having the most delicious sweet treats in the office.

Yep. Guilty as charged. But we're not into any old treats. No, sir. only the most elevated biscuit makes the grade. Because we're so classy. May we introduce you to Thomas Fudgers, born from the expert British craftsmanship of inventive Dorset bakers in 1916. Thomas Fudgers' Florentines are an indulgent blend of Moorish caramel, exquisite almonds and luscious fruits draped in silky smooth Belgian chocolate. Oh, you've said a few key words there, Fee.

Exquisite, Moorish, exactly the way my colleagues would describe me, I'm sure. Did you say sophisticated? I didn't, but I can. Just like the biscuits, you're very sophisticated, darling. And like you, Thomas Fudges believes that indulgence is an art form and it should be done properly or not at all, Jane. I concur. Thomas Fudges, hats off to Remarkable Biscuits. I love crumpled linen and men in denim shorts. It was interesting.

Not together. The occasional pairing. I think we're operating. You're on. Welcome to Thursday's podcast. You'll already have heard her very sultry tones. Lamar Kerens is back with us. Good to have you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. One day only. Well, yeah, Fee has gone on one of those trips to test out the area around a university. So she's not, it's not for herself. She's done studying, that would be the name of my house.

She's gone quite a long way this time hasn't she? She's gone quite a long way. Yeah, I went to the same location and decided that, well, in the end, we didn't, in speech marks, we didn't apply for it. I'm trying to think if my parents went to any universities with me. No, I can't imagine anything worse than them coming with me cramping my style when I was looking around Leeds and you know working out which Northern University had the best totty. It would be really annoying having

my parents in town. What was that really what was on your mind? Of course it was. You and I are so different. I just want to know about the library. That's all I cared about. No, I was looking at the boys. No, it's actually gone to a beautiful location. So I imagine that she'll love it. Well, it's not a location she's unfamiliar with. And the other way that you're just, you're not mentioning it. Is that for protection reasons? Just in case, I don't want to cause any alarm to anybody. In case there might be a throng around me. A throng which we couldn't have. Actually I'm glad you're here today because there's a Heston Blumenthal documentary on television tonight, isn't there? And was that the reason that you interviewed him?

And he was this amazing chef and an amazing man. You did an interview with him for The Times last week and it was about this documentary that's on tonight. Yeah, so he's yeah, the documentary was premiering last night at the Sheffield Documentary Festival and is now on the BBC tonight. Yeah, which is all about his living with bipolar disorder. So we found out, I found out that it was gonna premiere and then asked if they'd do an interview to promote,

yeah, the documentary. And I went to Provence to meet him where he now lives with his wife. And I have to say it was probably one of the more unpredictable and kind of intense interview experiences that I've had in recent times because even though, so he was sectioned 18 months ago by his wife following a period of really manic behavior, which had sort of been building and building over some years, I think, particularly exacerbated during lockdown. She had him sectioned and he spent a couple

of weeks in a really, really kind of brutal psychiatric hospital in France and then another six weeks in a clinic. And he is much better than he was, but he's still quite heavily medicated. It was an interesting experience to interview him because he was very present and I could tell that he was listening and he was very thoughtful about his answers, but it was almost like he was on a slight time delay and as if the medication was just sort of slowing him down a lot. And this is obviously someone who has been, you know, full of the most ingenious ideas and, you know, extraordinarily creative. And where the documentary really gets to, and a big

part of our conversation was that it seems a lot of his career was spent in a state of hypomania, which is this state sort of between mania and depressive periods, but it sort of fluctuates. And it can be a state that's kind of pleasurable for the sufferer to live in because you are you have a lot of energy you don't sleep very much. The creativity of the school. Yeah and that's a really unfortunate part of his illness is that he's not sure how much of the creativity was kind of I don't know enabled by his illness and whether he will have the same amount of, you know, amazing off-the-wall ideas while he's medicated because one of the other factors of hypermania is that you

take a lot of risks and you are sort of unencumbered by fear and, you know, he was very fearless in his approach to cooking and to, you know, creative menus and to really pushing the boundaries of cooking. So, yeah, he's a really, really, really lovely man and I enjoyed spending the day with him and his wife so much, but he's got a long way to go. Well, I wish you well, but what's really impressive and it is impressive is that he has come out and talked about being sectioned and it happens, people are sectioned, you very, very rarely hear from them about what it is like and let's just be honest, you very rarely hear from a white person, middle class, impeccably connected, brilliantly talented, telling their story of being sectioned.

Yeah and this is one of the reasons why he wanted to do the documentary, he wanted to do the interview because people have said, don't talk about your diagnosis, don't tell people. Well, no, because the world is full of people who can't wait to tell everybody about how they've got anxiety. And I don't mean that dismissively, I really don't, because I know that can be absolutely crippling. But there are other conditions that never, schizophrenia is another one,

never gets any airtime because people are frightened. Yeah. And they're not frightened anymore of anxiety and depression. Although when we talk about depression in public, it tends to be, let's be honest, at the milder end of things. If you have absolutely diabolical depression, that's not really discussed very much either. No. A kind of catatonic version of it. Anyway, there's a lot to admire about his approach to this. It's a great documentary, I would really recommend everyone watching it. It's very, very raw, very honest. I'll be really interested to see what you think.

Well, hopefully we'll get a chance to discuss it. But yes, lots to admire about Heston Blumenthal. Thank you for the postcards, which continue to come in. And we are very, very grateful. This is from, I think it's Anne, could be Annie, Thank you for the postcards which continue to come in and we are very very grateful. This is from, I think it's Anne, could be Annie, apologies if I've got that wrong. Thank you for the podcast. I cannot tell you what a difference you make to my life here on the beautiful Blue Mountains

in Australia. Your friends I've never met. Oh Anne, what a lovely thing to say and what a lovely picture. If you'd like to invite us all to the Blue Mountains Anne, I'm very happy to come. Anne was born in Liverpool within the sound of the cop. So it's a good job she's not here. She'll have a klaxon, will have gone off internally. She did say she might listen on her train journey.

Yeah, what she'll be binging and ponging. Say it again, cop. Liverpool. There we are, that's working her up. This is from Laura. Greetings from one of the most beautiful spots in the land. Longtime listener, your podcast contributed to my improvement in British English and kept me company in my first lonely months in the UK.

I'd like to say thank you to you for many things, but I haven't got enough room here. By the way, I'm one of your Spanish listeners. And guess what? Laura is living in Liverpool but she's popped up to glorious Windermere where she got this wonderful postcard so thank you very much indeed for that yes you know what you can do it's Jane of Fee Times Radio 1 London Bridge SE 1 9GF. I wonder how well how one, moving to the UK and moving to Liverpool can get on with understanding the accents. The accent. Maybe she needed some respite so she's gone to the Lake District.

I had a really good Geordie friend who spent his gap year in Australia and they just didn't understand a word he said. They were like, is that English? God, your Aussie accent is even more offensive than ours. That was actually a bit more New Zealand, but we have had a request for a New Zealand accent. I was just giving that one a head. All right, well, Sarah says, hello from a weekend in Devon. It's damp. Well, it won't be damp in Devon today. This must be from a while ago. I couldn't post it in Devon because the grumpy man in the general store wouldn't sell me a stamp on a Sunday.

What? Is there a rule about that? I don't know. The image on the card though is of the ancient tar steps. They look very interesting. They're on Exmoor. Sarah, thank you very much for that. And we love your cards. Honestly, we do. This is from Ukraine. Greetings from Sumi in Ukraine. I'm here with a food truck chef who cooks for people in need. Right, okay. Pop in and see my boyfriend Vitaly Glitchko. Yes, give Vitaly a call because he'll, if you just mentioned my Karen's name and Vitaly will come running. But yeah, thank you for that. That's from Felicity. Best of luck with

what you're doing there. We're not talking much about Russia, Ukraine at the moment, are we? And we shouldn't forget. No, absolutely. We absolutely shouldn't forget. Right. Big guest in this podcast is your old showbiz charm, Sarah Vine. Now, before she went to the Daily Mail, and we do talk in the interview, I recorded it earlier this week about her reputation as one of these so-called Wednesday

witches. The women who seem to be employed just purely to slag off other women and we discussed that and she gives a reasonable answer to that and in fairness she was a really good person to interview, really up for it and lively and brilliant so I want to thank her for that. But there is a tradition isn't there in what we used to call Fleet Street of women just... We still call it Fleet Street. Having a pop at other women. It's a concept now though.

Yeah. Well, did you know her when she worked at the Times? No, because I wasn't working at the Times then. Well that's your get out then isn't it? I was probably at the Sunday Times, some of the Times she was at the Times, but we didn't cross over. Right. So one of the themes of the book actually is that both she and Michael Gove, they do worry about money and I'm not, you know, I'm not, we all worry about money to an extent. But it is quite interesting how much they worried about money because there

was a real element with them that they were trying to keep up with people who had inherited wealth. Absolutely. And that's not a privilege I've got or one I don't think that you have. No. And that can have an impact. So we had Sarah on the cover of the magazine a couple of weeks ago and that was something that really came through in Janice Turner's interview too. There was a moment when George Osborne said to Michael, I think Michael had been fined for flipping a house or something.

In the expenses thing. In the expenses thing. And he said, well, you know, we do need the money. for flipping a house or something and in the expenses thing and he says well you know we do need the money they were sort of living in you know close they were living in Notting Hill the cheap end of Notting Hill and sort of living a lifestyle they couldn't quite afford on their salaries but because they they did feel that they had to keep up with the Jameses and Michael sort of complained about you know not being able to flip the houses and George Osborne just said

well why don't you just ask your father for some money yeah I mean it's unbelievable but it's not. No. Because if you are, and this probably applies to Britain and may not make much sense to people outside the UK really, although it could, is if you meet these glossy people with that sheen of inherited privilege and wealth, they are very different from the rest of us. Met one just coming out the lift, didn't I? Just now? He did today. We won't be naming him. He was in a very nice suit. You could just smell the money. I will just say

that no but you're right and I think there's a lot you can say about our current cabinet who have perhaps been slightly underwhelming. But what you can't accuse them of is being privileged or elitist or having inherited wealth. I mean, 95% of them are state school educated, a lot of them grew up in single parent households, a lot of them grew up in kind of poverty and had difficult upbringing. So I think what they are is real and relatable in terms of the majority of the population. Whether they're going to be effective or not remains to be seen. You've been very balanced in that comment, Jane. This is from Julia and it's actually about property.

She says, both my mum and dad saved all their lives. They were teachers, so not hugely wealthy, but through fairly frugal living and the luck of being born when they were born, they were able to save about 100 grand each by the time they'd got to their 70s. However, my dad then got dementia and his entire savings went on the care he received, followed by my mum, who although she was only in a care home for the last year of her life, all her savings went as well. It alarms me that my husband now, now in our late 50s, have worked all our lives and we are nowhere near able to save in the same way.

It'll be even worse for my children in the beginning of their work lives who find it impossible to save. Who will pay for our care homes in 20 years' time? I'm sorry to be negative, says Julia, but it feels like a bomb that will go off in the next decade or so and the government will be left with a huge problem. And another one on the same theme, this is anonymous, my parents died two years ago within five weeks of each other, my mother died first of Alzheimer's, she'd forgotten how to swallow, which is a rare side effect,

so we had to watch her starve to death. I'm so sorry to hear that, how traumatic. My father confessed to me and my brother at breakfast about a week after her funeral that my mother, my brother and I had been left the entire estate of a very wealthy bachelor uncle in his will 35 years ago. This was to be split equally between us. But my mother had decided it was best if she took it all. We were never told about the contents of that will. Wow. I mean that, that is quite the story. I thought I'd moved on, says our anonymous correspondent, but I was re-triggered by a news item a couple of weeks ago about a mother who'd been sent to prison for stealing her children's inheritance. My hurt has resurfaced and I'm left learning how to forgive all over again. People who say it's only money

have never been through what I've been through. OK, no, I understand you. That would make anybody fume. How your mother did that, how she was able to do that, I can't possibly understand. I thought if you'd been named in a will, I thought you had to be told. But if you're a child

or maybe under 18 maybe you don't get to know. Can a lawyer please explain that? Can I just go just on the subject of care homes? Tell me if I'm wrong and I could well be wrong about this because fortunately it's not something I've had to deal with yet. I've got several friends dealing with it. But if you are in a care home for someone like Alzheimer's or dementia, you have to use your own savings until they are gone. And then when they are gone, is that when the state?

Yeah, so they may sell your house, whatever. That's all part of your state. But then at what point are you deemed to have no money? It's more complicated because if you have a partner who is living in the property, they can carry on living in the property and that's not counted. So I think I understand it's savings up to about 24-25 000 pounds must be used by the individual to pay for their care. When that is gone, the property isn't part of this if there's somebody else in it. If there's somebody else, but if there's nobody else in it, then that gets sold to fund. Which does mean to our earlier correspondent, I think Anonymous' experience is much more

unusual and I totally get why you live it. But to Julia who wrote about her own feelings about what will what will she and her partner do because they can't save and their children certainly can't save either and they've inherited nout because their own parents who did save and were able to their savings went on their care. We've got to sort this out. No we really do. No government ever has sorted it out. No. A few have had a bash and we're supposed to be having another bash now. I know, social care is just... Well it's also sort of folded into health a lot of the time and it shouldn't be. Because it's a completely different problem that we need to solve.

Foxes, also a problem. Slightly smaller problem but depends where you are I suppose. This is from Terry who says, I was interested to hear about your fox problem in London and no doubt elsewhere We live on Exmoor so no problems here. Well, why no problems there? Well, I guess they're all foxes, but they're not urban foxes, are they? Don't know. No foxes in Devon? Someone let us know. Wild camping? I don't know. What the wild camp in Pudmore? I don't know. Don't want to go I don't know. I don't want to go into who bears humans. Right, so your bomb. Our daughter lives near Los Angeles in a huge conurbation of houses

and sent me this video early one morning. At midnight she was awoken by the fridge light being on. On investigation she found a huge bear wandering around her kitchen. Her tiny dog Doodle did his best to see it off but got swatted away, coming back valiantly to no avail. Having cleared up the cat food, he ambled into the garden and away. Recently there have been other bears. One woman found a bear swimming in her pool in broad daylight. All the houses are situated at the base of the San Gabriel mountain range. They also have to put up with coyotes running everywhere, so don't feel too bad about the foxes. I have to say, it is really funny. I've never had any problems

with bears in Brooklyn, but I was in the Poconos with some friends, which is a sort of... The what, dear? The Poconos. Where are they? They're in Pennsylvania. Mountains? Lakes. Okay, yeah.

And my friend's family had a little sort of holiday shack. And one morning we were there and we sort of saw something out of the corner of our eye in the woods. And we thought, what is it? And it was a very small bear, well I mean small in bear terms. But we were sort of like, you know, we were like, oh, should we go out and look at it? And then we realised, no, it was such a small bear that there would be a very big one coming quite soon. So yeah, we sort of, you know, got the kids in, got the dog in and watched this sort of baby bear and mother wander past and check the bins.

Because mum wouldn't let bear out on its own. No, exactly. Bear was just going ahead. But they are, I mean, it is quite amazing when you just see enormous bears a lumbering past. Take your word for it. I think we've been lulled into a false sense of security because we use them as cuddly objects. Teddy bears. Yeah. But they're not. They're not, no. They're not benign. I went hiking in California, we had to have a bear safety briefing before we went out hiking. I mean, no, it's a real thing. I'd love to have had a life where I'd attended

a bear safety briefing. Would you though? I think I would. Would you? Yeah, I don't know. Which is a good question, no. Slightly cuddlier wildlife, although these aren't cuddly. Diana's in Nottingham. Listening to your chat about hedgehogs earlier in the week, a street near where we live recently, a couple of years ago, won, and get this Jane, Britain's biggest hedgehog street for connecting the most houses to the Hedgehog Highway. It was an honour for the village and an initiative I definitely supported. However, at a village open day I was guilted into buying a bridal ticket

from them, the star prize being a hedgehog house. I never win anything, so imagine my joy when they called to say I'd won. A nice lady offered to come round to advise me where to put the house and proceeded to offer, i.e. insist, on performing a garden hedgehog survey. She took photos and spent an hour with me and then I subsequently received an email complete with diagrams showing where I should make hedgehog holes in the fences and walls. We positioned the house where she said to in our pretty unkempt garden which she assured me the hedgehogs would love. Needless to say the holes never got made and the house remains uninhabited and I dare not show my face in case she asked me about it.

I love hedgehogs and I want to protect them but it was just a bit too much. Yeah I mean I didn't realize that being a hedgehog surveyor was a real job. It obviously is. Do you know what a bridal ticket is? Is that like a raffle? No idea. It must be a raffle I guess. B-R-I-D-A-L or L-E? B-R-I-D-L-E, bridal ticket. It must be like a tombola or a raffle. That just sounds like a weighty responsibility you just weren't ready for.

And I wouldn't be ready for it either. I mean, drilling holes in specific locations to make them hedgehog friendly. It's not going to happen I'm afraid. Yeah, oh no, but I mean sometimes you can just go a little bit too far. Was it one of Britain's usually failing infrastructure projects that was delayed for years? Yes, it was bats and bat tunnels and... Oh, a bat conservation tunnel. Bat tunnels, yeah. There wasn't a hedge, what was it? Was it HS2? Yeah it was HS2 and it was bats and what's

the other thing Eve that they, there were two things, it wasn't a hedgehog. But it was another, was it voles? Okay well Eve will get to work on that because she just never stops working. Yesterday I heard you talking about anxiety. Yeah. Yes and Victoria has written in to say she has a quote by Kingsley Amis, part of a longer piece on hangovers which helps and makes her smile next time she finds herself worse for wear. Well presumably this is out of copyright so can we hear it? I think we can. Kingsley Amis, metaphysical hangover, when that ineffable compound of depression, sadness, open brackets, those two are not the same, close brackets,

anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure, and fear for the future begins to steal over you, start telling yourself that what you have is a hangover. You're not sickening for anything, you have not suffered a minor brain lesion, you're not all that bad at your job, your family and your friends are not leaked in a conspiracy of barely maintained silence about what a shit you are. You have not come at last to see life as it really is and that there is

no use crying over spilt milk." I like that. Thank you, Kingsley. I would just like to point... He probably had a few hangovers at the time. I reckon he did. I reckon it was quite obvious. I would just like to blow my own trumpet and point everyone towards a piece I wrote about three years ago on anxiety. Because I had, I do suffer from anxiety. I always have though. It's definitely got a little bit worse with age, but I've always had it. I used to have it as a student. And I thought it was just me. Booze, blues, as I used to call it. We never talked about it then. We never talked about it, no. But one day, about three years ago, I had such bad anxiety at work on a Friday,

and Harriet Walker, our fashion director, was having to basically just like stroke my hair and pull me back from the edge. And she only does that on every other Wednesday. Exactly. Normally, yeah. But I thought, you know what, I've never read a piece that actually explains anxiety, so I just thought I was going to go off and write a piece. And it was really interesting because I spoke to lots of scientists and experts about it. And it basically is it's all chemical. None of it is actually psychological. But because we are sentient beings, and we like to make meaning out of everything, we basically

try to explain what's happening. We basically think it's in our heads and it's in our bodies, if that makes sense. So what's happening is basically when we get drunk or even have a bit of alcohol, we get the chemical messengers in our brain go, well hey what, because GABA floods our brain to relax and then the brain, the whole system gets out of whack, there's too much GABA and then your body thinks oh my god you're so relaxed, if a woolly mammoth came around the corner, you couldn't run away. So then it floods us with glutamate,

which is the one that makes you kind of excitable and is your flight and flight hormone. So basically your body's all out of whack, doing a kind of panicking with all the glutamates. So basically, it's just, you're basically in a state of just complete chemical disarray. And then you've got blood sugar crash crash which makes you really jittery. Yeah but basically it's all chemical and so glutamate is also the chemical that helps you encode memories so if you drink a hell of a lot

basically you stop your brain from recording things which is why you get memory loss as well which makes you doubly panicky because you think but what happened because I can't remember it. So it's a totally chemical reaction. Sorry, I didn't try. No, go on. I'm not that sorry. We were talking yesterday about how we approach social events and Fee said she thought she was a better guest if she didn't drink. In other words, she was better value and I feel the opposite. I feel if I've been invited to something, people kind of think, well, I know which version or at least I think that they think they want the version of me that's more outgoing than I truly am. And because I've been asked to something, and therefore, I cannot navigate

a social occasion really without drinking. Really? And I believe I do give quite good value if I have a couple of drinks after that, nobody would want to be around me. I wouldn't want to be around myself. But I do not know another way of getting myself through an evening of socializing, particularly when I won't know all that many people there, unless I was going to say resort to alcohol. but I don't really mean it because I enjoy a couple of drinks. It's just that the next day sometimes I don't. So what's the solution? Do you, you can't, do you go out regularly and never drink? Hmm, I don't find social occasions any easier with a drink but then I'm a gobshite anyway so I think you know it doesn't really matter to me. I, but then I'm a gobshite anyway. So I think, you know, it doesn't really

matter to me. I don't need the social lubricant or the extra confidence of alcohol because I've already, you know, in the same way that our brains are flooded with GABA and glutamate, I'm just a walking gobshite. So I don't, I'm not nervous going to parties or meeting people. I just like drinking. Well that's just very, very honest. I just enjoy it more. I'm not sure I bring anything more to the table with any booze. But I just, I have a better time. Independent visitors. Yes Eve?

It was badges. Badges, thank you! It was badges. Badges thank you! Yeah, bats and badges. Anonymous says, based on the email yesterday I wanted to share my email about being an independent visitor. This is something I just didn't know existed. I started when I was 24 with a 12 year old. She's just turned 18 so you can do it when you're very young then, or anonymous, correspondently, only 24 when she started. This Jane is when you play a part in the life of a child who's being looked after and you can just spend time with them. It's a commitment, I think it's a couple of times a month, maybe less than that actually.

So this is children in foster care? Yeah, maybe in or in any kind of care that, where they're not with a parent or in a home as such. I started when I was 24 with a 12 year old and she's just turned 18. For her birthday we did a special outing of French macaron making which she loved. Our match is coming to a close shortly as she's no longer officially in care. Right. We've had a really good time over the years expanding her interests and I've watched her confidence grow. She didn't find school easy so it's been so nice to see her in the last year go from an apprenticeship at the local

hospital to being offered a job there, well how fantastic. I will definitely keep in touch and I'm planning to be matched again with another foster child next year. I'd really recommend it to everyone. When I started I was worried it would take up a lot of my time but one day a month is really nothing once you plan things in advance. I have no other so-called young people in my life so it's been really fun to go to a range of activities I wouldn't normally have found myself. The supervision team I do it with is an Action for Children so there you go if you're somebody who feels that you have got time to offer to somebody, action for children might be a good starting point. What an incredible thing to do. Really good and I didn't

know about it until somebody else emailed so thank you for that. Because we were talking, there was a piece that we were talking about on the live show about fostering the other week and you know I think it's probably an awful lot of people out there who think they've got something to give, but fostering is such a huge commitment. And as we talked about in that piece, also financially quite a stretch because you're not supported that much. But that's an incredible way of just giving of your time. I think once a month, if we're honest, who couldn't do that? So yeah, shout out to all those people who have already done it and thank you for telling us about it.

I've really enjoyed your discussions of Mother of the Bride outfits this week. I've had some cracking. Fortunately I've never put my mum through that But my mum's very stylish so she would be fine But I've enjoyed this email from Emily who said she's really enjoyed listening to our episodes discussing Mother of the Bride outfits she said who said she's really enjoyed listening to our episodes discussing Mother of the Bride outfits. She said, my tale is more Mother of the Groom. As Mother-in-law's go, mine is fabulous. However, mine made a wee blunder with her outfit for our wedding. Or did she? I do find this a fairly extraordinary tale. It is an extraordinary tale, but I love it. So my mother-in-law, says Emily, is quite wacky, and would never be caught dead in the kind of outfit that the hell hole of a shop you discussed with sell

We're very relaxed about what people water our wedding and just ask people to be casual and comfy I had a small baby at the time of wedding planning and so if people did discuss the finer details of outfits I think I was really listening to them. I'm trying to cut a long story short here The punchline is that my mother-in-law turned up dressed like an undertaker. Big black top hat handle. Was this a protest against the patriarchal nature of traditional weddings? Maybe she's doing some magic later. I don't know. She had a black trouser suit on with a quirky hat, says Emily. I've got no idea why and I've never asked. Never asked?

She's busy, she's got a small baby. I would have asked. I found it rather amusing and was amazed at how many people came up to me and asked why she was just as an undertaker. They seemed angry for me. The two of us get on just fine with Emily. One day I might ask ask can you ask this weekend Emily and report back. Shane Garvey needs to know my own mother who is an absolute high since bouquet came dressed as a pair of national trust curtains. She may as well have visited that shop. The pics of the two of them with pics with the two of them in make me giggle every time I look at them. But on the side note says Emily my mother is also an independent visitor

and is on her third child now. She's still in touch with the first two and despite her being a funny old bean seems to have had something wonderful to these young people. Please push the scheme on the show. Right. Well there you go. Charitable end there. Have you called your mum a pair of National Trust curtains I mean. I mean I don't know what your mum will, what view she'll take of this. Is she a listener? Who knows? Well, if you know Emily's mum. And if you can explain why you felt the need to attend a wedding dressed as an aunt to take her. Maybe she was protesting about the marriage. It sounds like they get on really well.

Yes, so that is... Or do they? Well, yeah, underlying tensions there possibly. If your mother-in-law or father-in-law attended a wedding dressed, your wedding preferably, dressed in an alternative way and it's still something that occasionally crops into your subconscious or indeed conscious mind, please do let us know about it. It never ceases to delight me. People are just properly odd, aren't they? The podcast has really introduced me to

some of the odder crevices of our lives. Now it's the queerest folk indeed. I just want to end before we get to Sarah Vine with Siobhan who just says, I mean like a lot of people at the moment, she's just feeling just a bit frazzled and the heat in the UK isn't helping, it has to be said. I know it's not affecting it, it's just that in London it's properly hot today, isn't it? It's been warm. It's very warm. But today it's hot. It's hot.

I would just like to say this is the only kind of temperature in which living in a basement flat in Brighton is delightful. Okay. I've managed to just about turn my electric blanket off. Oh, Jane. I do live in a very damp, cold basement and you know, there are days when I've, you've seen me on a screen and I've put my seven jumpers on. But it's absolutely delightful there. You're not imprisoned in this basement. You make it sound as though someone's keeping you there. People will be concerned. Yeah, no, I mean, only my mortgage is keeping you there. People will be concerned. Yeah, no, I mean only my mortgage is keeping me there. It's a prison of my own making. Right, thank you for that. I'm just, people

need to know. Siobhan says, it does cheer me up though when I hear you two having a spontaneous love together, sparking off each other with your witty one-liners. Thank you Siobhan. And sometimes of course you're sometimes immature, but that's mainly me to be fair, but hilarious innuendos. I'm 52, so mid menopause journey, kids leaving home, world ending, etc. I find I experience spontaneous laughter very, very rarely. Despite focusing on the problem and trying different things to get me going, such as comedy nights, etc. It seems almost nothing can summon up those gorgeous, uncontrollable hysterics of one's teenage years.

I've felt sad and I've been wondering if I'll ever laugh like that again. I wonder if others at this stage of life are feeling the same. I've even considered laughing therapy. This morning, perhaps having immersed myself in your fuzzy and silly mood, this is after Fee and I did a podcast on Monday when I was just hungover and tired after a weekend away and Fee had accidentally taken too many antihistamines. Anyway, she went out for a dog walk with a lovely old mum friend of hers and she says, we managed to make light of our worries, finding humor in our sometimes over inflated anxiety over insignificant things,

as well as my healthily developing Mary Whitehouse style judgment of my teens natural teen behavior, which by the way is hugely less worth worrying about than the antics I got up to myself during my heady and youthful years. We got a bit silly together and it just felt wonderful. Wonderful to be reassured that I can in fact still giggle. Yeah, I mean you can laugh in later life but I think Siobhan is onto something. There is just something about those heady nonsensical bouts of just hysterical laughter. I wonder whether that is confined to your adolescence really, if you're honest. I don't know. I don't know, I still get school assembly giggles. I had them terribly on the desk last week actually, sitting at my desk.

I was direct messaging my colleague. Someone said something funny. Yeah, there was a woman sitting quite nearby having a very loud discussion which was completely inappropriate to the office. And my colleague and I were just dipping in and out of it and we just couldn't contain ourselves. It was a school assembly moment. Well, a tantalising hint there that life at the very serious newspaper, The Times, may occasionally have its lighter moments.

Yeah, so serious that yesterday I came to work in a parasequentials which cheered everybody up. I thought she was entirely appropriate. I was definitely pushing the boundaries of our office dress code rules. If Sarah Vine had seen you, what would she have said about that outfit, Jane? Nice shorts, I think she would have said. Thanks, Eve. I should say that Eve is... Just handing you a phone. But just you.

This feels secret. Like my offspring, she's building up to Glastonbury, so sometimes she's not quite as slick and efficient as she once was. It's true, Eve. I mean, you know... Eve, how many days are you taking off? Because... Oh, it's because of your print-out.

One of my colleagues is taking the entire week off. She's going Wednesday to Wednesday. Back on Wednesday. So Wednesday to Wednesday too then, yeah. I really cannot wait to work with Eve on that Wednesday. Well, it's great, isn't it? Because she only has to speak for the first five days of being back. She was just a shell of herself sort of shaking in the corner. Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers.

Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Well, this is like a free and easy podcast, which isn't scripted, but I've now got to move, and you'll just have to listen to this into radio mode. This is the introduction I've already written for the radio this afternoon to the interview with Sarah Vine. Sarah Vine is I think it's fair to say in the UK a notorious figure. She is a newspaper columnist, she once worked at The Times, she now works at The Daily Mail which is a newspaper that lots of people love to hate, people hate to love or whatever it is, but lots of people read it, whether they admit to it in public or not. Such a nasty slurp. So Sarah Vine was also married to Michael Gove, a very senior and very successful Tory party politician who got as far as education secretary. I think that was his most significant post and some people think he did great work there, other people couldn't stand the man.

Anyway, that's politics I guess. So what I've written here is, Sarah Vine has written a book called How Not To Be A Political Wife, a memoir. Well in the good old days a political wife gritted her teeth and just got on with it and if that meant posing for the press, clinging to the arm of a man who'd just been unfaithful to her, so be it. But these days we do things differently. So let's meet shy, retiring, daily male columnist Sarah Vine, who had a bash at being a Tory wife and found herself wanting.

Her husband was Michael Gove. I asked Sarah whether she thought anyone who reads this book might change their view of her. I don't know. I'll have to find out. I mean, I hope so. In fact, one of the reasons I wrote it was because I got to the stage where,

I got to the stage where so many people who know me, who actually do know me, were coming up to me and saying, I met someone the other day and I happened to drop into a conversation that I know you and they said, God, is she as awful as she seems? And so I got to the seems and I sort of thought I probably just need to put my own character down in a book because everybody thinks they know who I am and what I am and quite a lot of it doesn't really bear any resemblance to what I think I am. So that's part of the reason I did a memoir.

I think that's a good reason for doing a memoir generally. Okay. Let me just, I mean, I've got a snapshot of your work from the Daily Mail just over the last couple of years, I suppose. It's the headlines, isn't it? And I appreciate you don drives me insane, writes Sarah Vine. Sarah Vine, sorry, but Rottweiler bosses do achieve the best results. Sarah Vine, I was groped by a celebrity, but I've never have taken it to court. I mean, there is... But that is just a snapshot. There are lots of other articles which are very sensible.

And Sarah, I'm here to tell you that sometimes I read what you've written and I agree with you. But sometimes I think, oh my God, she's written what I'm thinking, but there's no way I'll ever say that in public. But I would never admit to thinking it. Is that the problem? Well, I mean, that's the job really, isn't it? I mean, my job, you know, I'm a writer.

The way I make sense of the world is I write things down, okay? And, you know, I don't always expect everybody to agree with me. It's really just a conversation. It's designed to make people think. The whole point of a newspaper column is not just reinforce everybody's already entrenched views or sort of play to a kind of tame docile audience. It's to stimulate people to think, you know, they might change their mind, they might not, they might entrench their views. But the point is, it's a conversation and it's a debate and that's the thing. And the main thing is, I do think it's important to be able to have, it's important to be able

to disagree with people without deciding that you hate them. Because you know, I disagree with lots of people who I'm very fond of and who are great friends of mine. I just don't happen to have the same views as them. That doesn't mean to say I can't stand them or don't want to ever see them again. And I always say to my children, if you do something annoying that really annoys me and makes me angry, it doesn't mean I don't love you, you've just annoyed me.

So the things are different. And I think people get too, everything is so polarized at the moment. It's like you can't disagree with that anyone without them being evil, which is ridiculous. Your critics will say, you are, you areite, you are one of the polarizers, you make people feel in some cases slightly worse about themselves than they might have, they might have started the day feeling. But I think if you read my pieces they are

generally very, I mean I'm not, I don't dial things up, I tend to dial things down when you actually read the piece. Those are headlines, you know, headlines are headlines. And they're designed to drag you in. But on the whole, I don't think it's unjustified to suggest that you take a sometimes snipey negative attitude towards women. That you are one of the Wednesday, is it the Wednesday witches? All too often it would seem, go straight for the female of the species and have a right old go. Well, I think, you know, I think that's sometimes the female of the species does stupid things and I think then it's at that point it's a sensible thing to point that out. You know,

women are not infallible. I'm a great supporter of women and anyone who knows me knows that I've helped countless friends, women. I'm always very, I'm one of those people who really does, you know, try and do as much as I can for women, especially in the industry. But, you know, there are times when women behave stupidly and they do things that are not great and don't necessarily do women kind any any favors. So I just think sometimes you have to, if that happens, you have to point it out. I'm never going to say I don't read what you write because I do, but there are just not male columnists who go for men in the same way as some women, including you, go for women. I don't know. I mean, I think most male columnists can be quite sort of, I mean, particularly if you're a politician, if you're the wrong end of a male critics pen and you're the Prime Minister, you will get it in the

neck. I don't know. I don't think it's a question of... I mean, I'm quite rude about a lot of men as well. Well, let's get on to that. Frequently. Let's talk about your former husband. I'm not just rude about it. If someone does something that I think is wrong or silly or misguided or whatever, I'll say it doesn't matter who they are or what they are. And so on to Michael Gove, to whom you were married for many years.

How long were you married for? 20. Yeah, that's a long time. It's a long time to spend with anybody. And you are incredibly frank about him. You were very honest about yourself. I'm the worst person in this book, to be perfectly honest. Well, no, your father is. And we'll talk about him too. So Michael Gove comes across, this

is just what I gathered from what I've read in the book. A hyperchondriac, not terribly good with money, incredibly anxious to impress, at times absolutely no empathy. I mean, the idea that he would take to his bed on the day you moved house, leaving you and your mum to do the do on what is one of the most stressful days of anybody's life. Tell me, was he really that bad? I mean, everything I've written in the book is true, yes. More? No, I mean, I suppose these are snapshots, but generally speaking, Michael is a person who is very kind, very polite, but he's very wrapped up in his own head a lot of the time.

And particularly, I mean, those are all the things that you list. Those all came towards the end of our marriage. So as I say in the book, and if people read it, they'll see, you know, at the beginning, he was just brilliant, and you know, in a million different ways, which is why I married him, obviously, because I'm not an idiot. But, you know, the book is really about how politics sort of enters people's souls and does something quite strange to them. You know, and it is an addiction. It is for me, it's a bit like a gambling addiction. You know, it's, it's the, you know, how the gambler always goes and says, if I could just get one big win, all I need

is one big win. This next one is going to be my one. Politics is sort of the same. It's a study in failure really, because it's very difficult to actually do anything that you want to do or get anything done. And so, but you keep going back to it always. You keep going back to the sort of source, which is to, because you want to make things right. And that has a detrimental effect on your personal relationships.

And I would argue your sort of soul in a funny kind of a way, you know, I think it does erode a part of you. I mean, at the end of the book, I quote the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, and you know the story of Edmund who has the shard of ice in his heart and he's tempted away by the white queen with the Turkish delight and it's like politics is a bit like that, you know, you're transported off to this world and the people who love you find it very hard to reach you in the end because that's what becomes the main thing. So all of those things are in the book because they're sort of moments that for me crystallized that movement.

Yeah, I mean, it's true that when you first met him, you were captivated by him. I think it's fair to say he was a strange man in some ways. Yes, but there's nothing wrong with being strange. No, there isn't. I mean, he was kind of wonderfully strange. I mean, he'd spend all this time in the bath and he'd... Not all his time. Well, a lot of time. But he would have a bath. I mean, most men don't have a bath I mean, he'd spent all this time in the bath and he'd read... Well, not all his time. Well, a lot of time.

But he would have a bath. I mean, most men don't have a bath. Well, yeah, that's right. That's a plus. But then he'd emerge and you describe him, I think, pink cheeked and smelling beautiful. He'd spent two hours in the bath reading Paradise Lost. Yeah. I mean, there were clues, weren't there, that this wasn't going to be the most straightforward of relationships. Yes. And I think that, but, you know, I mean, I think when you get married, you know, you

have a lot of hopes and dreams, don't you? So you don't necessarily see things that, you know, you don't, I mean, I didn't analyze it in that way. I mean, it was a hard decision, not a head decision. There's quite a lot in the book about class and the idea that you just didn't always feel completely at ease with the company you found yourself keeping? Well I still don't. I mean I never I don't think I ever will. I don't know that I ever will fit in because you know I didn't I didn't grow up in Britain. I grew up in Italy and France

and very different places you know very different cultures and when I came back to the UK I felt very alien. I didn't feel like I fitted in. I didn't have the same sort of, I don't know, I just didn't, I didn't really understand it. And it's the contrast in the book, which is referred to a lot between you, the Go Vine Union and Samantha and Dave, as he always is, Cameron. Yes, they're so sort of, they were so sort of everything for them, you know, they just, they just, everything didn't come easily, but of everything for them, you know, they just, they just,

everything didn't come easily, but they were at ease, you know, in a way that I've never really felt. You know, I always feel awkward in those sorts of situations because I'm not quite sure how to behave or what the right thing is to do. I don't really understand. I mean, it's a bit like it's a foreign language to me, if that makes sense. You mean navigating your way? Navigating the sort of social classes in Britain, it's a foreign language to me, if that makes sense. You mean navigating your way? Navigating the sort of social classes in Britain, it's very difficult. And it is absolutely true that if you've never had to worry about money, you inhabit an entirely different universe.

Yes, I think it's not just money though, I think it's also if you go to the right schools and you know the right people, it's very unconscious. You don't realize necessarily that you are in that world, but you are. And so I don't think it's conscious snobbery. I just think it's just the way it is because that's your reality. So if you're me, and you're sort of 18, 19, 20, nobody cares what you think or say because you don't have any relevance in society. Whereas if you're them, it's different. You know, you have some. So Dave is, how would you, I mean, what was your kind of, if you had to think of one adjective

for Dave, I mean, he's quite, what would it be? I think probably smooth, smoothie chops. Smoothie chops. George Osborne. Oh naughty. In what way? He's just very mischievous. Is he? Yeah. You see I mean a lot of these amazing intoxicating evenings you describe, a lot of people would think oh my god I couldn't give it, I'd rather chew my own head off than spend the evening with the Camerons and the Osbournes. I'd rather chew my own head off than spend the evening with the Camerons and the Osbournes. I mean, I don't know. I always found them incredibly fascinating and interesting. I mean, Dave is very bright, very eloquent and very engaging. George is also, but in a sort of slightly more, like I say, more mischievous kind of a way.

He's more of a provocateur, I would say. Dave's quite conventional, whereas George's, you know, he's quite, he can be quite counterintuitive. Yeah. Your daughter, both your children are referenced in the book and they're both very sharp, clearly. Yeah, I interviewed them for it. Yeah, so they're completely on board with all this. Your daughter said that you had a special laugh that you would pull out when you were sparkling with your... I know, she's brutal, my daughter.

I love her for it. I've got daughters and they are capable of absolutely cutting you to the quick. She was basically saying, mum, kind of you're showing off, you're trying to fit in. She spotted it, she understood it and that's really fascinating to me that she could see it all and knew exactly and could see how brittle I was, you know, and how hard I was trying. But what is really clear is that you and Samantha Cameron had a genuine deep, deep friendship. You don't ask somebody to be a godparent to your child unless you are really confident that your friendship will last, will endure. And it hasn't, has it?

No, it hasn't. No. And I don't't think, I mean I don't think any friendship would withstand the pressures that ours came under to be perfectly honest. Was it really a case post-Brexit that you had to just stand by your men? Yes, I think that's correct, I think that's correct. I think that you know, we'd chosen our, you know, choose your champions as it were, like they do in the computer games and you sort of had to stick with it really, yeah. And have you heard from her recently? Is there any way that you can find out whether or not she's...

No, but I don't, you know, I don't, I would, if I were her, I mean, I don't, I don't know why I would. I mean, you know, one of the reasons I've written this book now is because I did realize, I mean, I think for a few years afterwards, I sort of had this idea that there would be some form of rapprochement. And I think I got to about sort of last year or the year before and I realized there wasn't ever going to be. So there was no point in, you know, holding my tongue anymore. This book isn't going to help, is it?

No, but it doesn't matter because that chapter is over. That's one of the reasons I've done it is because I would like to draw a line under all that. I need to draw a line under all that. I need to draw a line under all that, because it was very upsetting for me, and very tumultuous and confusing, and I made loads of mistakes, I got lots of stuff wrong, and I've been very honest about that in the book. And I just wanted to, like I said before, the way it makes sense in the world is I write stuff down, so I thought I just need to write this down, because I need to get it in some kind of order so that it's not just swirling around my head like like a sort of hysterical mass of confusion which is

what it was doing now I'm now it's all safely in a book it's contained in a vessel It's locked away forever for everyone to read. Exactly and you know if I ever when I'm old and I can't remember my own name, I can read the book and I can remember what I was like. You did have by your own account a pretty rotten childhood. I mean, it's funny my childhood because people think, oh, you grew up in Italy, that must have been fabulous. And, you know, Italy is fabulous. It's a beautiful country and it's lovely. But in terms of the sort of in terms of my family life, no, it was quite hard, I'd say.

Yeah. And yeah, and I didn't realize just how tough it had been. You've also had health issues as well. You've talked about your underactive thyroid. Yeah, I mean, I started losing my hair when I was sort of 14 or 15. I think that was probably through stress, actually, because I was very anxious as a child because of my relationship with my father, which was very difficult. And we should say your father is alive. He is alive, yes. I would, if I were him, I know he hasn't read this book, I would frankly be mortified by

the way my conduct is described. Yeah, I mean I spoke to my brother about this because obviously he was there as well so he's probably quite the best judge and it's interesting because the book is actually, because I think sometimes when people have slightly traumatic things in their life, you know, one of the problems with Michael and me and Michael was that we went through a very traumatic thing and then we both responded very differently to it and that was one of the reasons why the marriage sort of broke down because I went one way and he went the other, you know, and the same was true of me and my brother with my father is that he

went one way and I went the other. So your brother hasn't been affected? Well, no, he has, but in a very different way, in a very, very different way. He's a very different person to me. He's, you know, very, very low key. He lives in Madrid. He's very, he's an artist. He's a very different, he's much more sensitive, I think, probably you'd say than I am. Anyway, but so we sort of lost, so we don't really get, we don't really have a lot in common. So we don't really spend a lot of time, often siblings are like that. But I, I talked to him about it and he said,

Sarah, I, you know, he said, I'm fully behind you. And, you know, I've read, I've read it and quite honestly, you know, you've been very fair. So I don't feel too bad. So for people who haven't read it and perhaps won't, your father was, he did, I mean, he placed such great store on your appearance. He was really very, very cruel. Yes. And I think I was never pretty enough,

never clever enough, and certainly never thin enough. That was one of the main problems. And it's quite difficult for me to be thin because I'm five foot eight and I have size eight feet and I'm built like a brick. I can't say that word, but you know what I mean. Everybody does. But by the way, you're not.

A brick outhouse. I mean, I can't believe I'm doing a touchy-feely thing with Sarah Vine, but you know, you're a... Well, and the reason it's all in the book is because I think it does inform my behavior. You know, everything that I, all my mistakes in my life that have been made and there are very many, are all come from that really deep seated insecurity and sense that I am fundamentally very unlikable. And so therefore, that's why I am able to write quite hard hitting stuff because I can take the blows.

Well, you can, but some of your victims of your more acerbic columns, they might have had bloody awful childhoods too. I know. I mean, you know, that's, that's what they always say. I mean, I try, you know, you try not to pass it on, but sometimes it just pokes up that it just comes out, doesn't it? And it's sort of, maybe it's not conscious. It's just, and again, this is these are all thoughts that are in the book and that they're all things that I think they're quite interesting to think about and why you end up doing certain things and why you end up being the way you are. And I think my father, you know, in his defense, he had a very difficult childhood, you know,

I mean, if you think about it, he was born in 1946, that whole generation during the war, what they saw was unbelievably traumatic and yet they were just expected to just sort of go back to work and living their lives as though nothing had happened. Yes, and I understand your need to try to make sense of it, but I'm sure that you would never ever ever, neither you nor Michael Gove would ever speak to your daughter in the way that your father spoke to you? Oh, no. I mean, that's the one thing I mean, I've never in both my children, I have a son as well. I never, I would never mention their weight to them at all ever. It's the one thing I've never commented on. I've, you know, I just, it's just something that you should just never do as a parent. If you, if you, if you don't want to cause problems, just ignore it. So you have broken the cycle. I've tried to, yes. I mean, I may not have succeeded, but I have tried very hard. Yes,

I think that that was always in the back of my mind. I did keep my father very much at arms length when the children were small, which was not a problem because he wasn't very interested anyway. Right. Well, I mean, people, they won't need to read very much to draw their own conclusions about your father. I have to say, I mean, yeah, anyway, you don't need me to tell you about him. But what about the future for your children actually? If they were to choose politics or journalism, what would the advice be? I think that, I mean, it's difficult to tell the children because they seem to be quite

tough at this stage, but you never know. I think sometimes these things can hit a bit later on. They're both in their early twenties. So you have to see how it goes. My daughter seems to have got the, slightly got the politics bug. I mean, she's an avid listener of, you know, the rest is politics and all of those political podcasts and she's quite, she's very interested and she understands it as well. And my son is the same, they do and they understand the world.

So it's quite, you know, for them, it makes sense. So could there be a future VineGov columnist or cabinet minister? I don't know. We'll have to wait and see. Look out world. That was Sarah Vine, whose book is out now, How Not To Be A Political Wife, a memoir, and we were just speculating there about what the Vine Gove children might get up to in the future. I'm sure they've got talent, it's just a question of where they take it.

Yes, Jane? Yes, Jane. That'll do. OK. Sorry, I was just checking if I needed to do anything urgently. Right, you were just playing with your phone. I suppose this is what happens when you work with young people. Right. Thank you. I thought that was you. Well, you are significantly younger than me. Thank you very much for being here today. Thanks for having me. And let us know what you think

about any of the subjects we've been talking about. And I'm particularly vexed by people who just have won hedgehog houses and then just haven't lived up to the responsibility and haven't had proper hedgehog holes drilled into their fencing. Shame on you, but I totally understand why you didn't. It's Jane and Fee at Times. Radio. Congratulations you've staggered somehow to the end of another Off Air with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live, every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4, on Times Radio.

The jeopardy is off the scale, and if you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online, on DAB, or on the free Times Radio app. Off Air is produced by Eve Salisbury, and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler. ["The Daily Show Theme"] Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email,

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