Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Let's hear it for the bed jacket! (with Groove Armada)

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

Jane is over bubble baths! She's matured! Please don't bring it up again. She's onto Epsom salts. Once that's been established, Jane and Fi cover resisting film hype, rowing on the club floor, David Cameron pointing at fish, and Howards' Way being our answer to Dallas. Plus, electronic music duo Groove Armada discuss 25 years of their anthem Superstylin' and their upcoming hearing-safe gig for over-50s, designed to encourage people to get their hearing checked. Anyone can take the free three-minute hearing test on the Specsavers website. If you're aged over 50 and take the test, you can join the list for free tickets to Groove Armada's gig at Phonox on Thursday 15 October. Go to Specsavers.co.uk/testlist. You can check out our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@OffAirWithJaneAndFiOur most asked about book is called 'The Later Years' by Peter Thornton. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producers: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Okay, thank you. Welcome to Wednesday's edition of Offair. And we should say that tomorrow's edition of Offair is a book club. We've got round to it. We've finally done it. And our apologies, actually, because usually we try and do the book club with a little bit more alacrity. But it's just been a slightly kind of bumpy ride over the summer. So we have got round to it. And the remarkable Laura Hackett joins us to discuss Jumper Lahiri's, the interpreter of Maladies, our first adventure in the world. to the world of short stories. And I think we have, it's okay, it's okay to think that we have done it. And Laura was brilliant. She was superb. She's so good. She is superb. Yeah, yeah.

Right, let's talk about your emails, which are many and varied. And I don't know why, but for some reason a lot of you really made me laugh today. So we can't always include all the emails, obviously, but we do continue to love reading them. Isn't that true? Well, it is. Also, sometimes you'll start reading an email. And, I mean, I just, maybe we should record the noises made on first reading some emails. Because I do laugh out loud a lot and also sometimes have very sharp intakes of breath.

And sometimes find myself, I do read in bed at 6.30 in the morning. Just letting out a bit of an explosive along the lines of, what? What? I know. And just to think of feet. In her bed jacket. Reading your correspondence. Well, I'm in my sparky 90, yep, when the boyfriend's not around.

We're creating my own crackles. Let's hear it for the bed jacket. Is it still out there? Who knows? I don't know. So, do you know what? The bed jacket belongs in that department that very sadly doesn't exist anymore because the department's door has slightly changed, doesn't it?

Or just disappeared from view. But sleepwear now is ever so sexy. and then there'll be just one rack of elasticated flannelette stuff kind of push towards the, you know, the emergency exit. I suppose if I'm honest, does anybody, I mean, I just wear a T-shirt. If I want to wear something, I just wear a T-shirt. I don't really have formal bedwear anymore. No, neither do I.

I just wear pants, actually. Yeah. That's nice, nice gesture. It's just, can I just say Karen made me release a small, oh my God, expeditive this morning. So here we go. Prepare yourselves, everybody. A couple of weeks ago, Fee talked about the awful process

for retrieving her lost property. First of all, did she get her bag back? I do hope so. No, I didn't. But it's about to go into perspective, everybody. Here we go. I thought you would enjoy my story of lost property and British Rail back in 1979. I was going on my last ever family,

summer holiday to Italy with my parents and brother before I left school. We took the sleeper train to London and then flew out to Florence, mum and I shared a cabin on the sleeper with me on the top bunk. All was well until we were sitting on the plane to Florence when mum asked, where is your hand?

Yes. What? Thank you. Honestly, Karen, you're so remarkable. I have an upper limb difference and in those days I wore a prosthetic hand which was cosmetic rather than being functional. As a result, I didn't wear it much if I could help it.

Well, I'd left my prosthesis on the shelf above my bed on the sleeper. I swear this wasn't deliberate and I can only apologise to the poor cleaner who made the discovery. Two weeks later, we were on our way home having had a fantastic holiday with no need for a cosmetic sleeve filler

at any point. Dad and I went to the lost property office at Euston Station. We explained to the man on the desk that I'd left my prosthesis on the train with details of dates and times. The man didn't react at all, not a flicker. He simply said, describe it.

My dad had a think and said, right and white. This seemed to be enough detail. Three months later, my hand arrived. Three months? Yes, I know. My hand arrived back at our local railway station, ready for collection.

It was completely filthy, but in one piece. I have to wonder what other inappropriate pieces of lost luggage the man on the desk had seen us who was completely unmoved or even amused by our story. Thank you for a fantastic podcast. I've been with you since the start of the Fortunately Pod. I haven't missed an episode. Well, Karen, it's so lovely to have you on. on board. I mean, it's just...

When I read that this morning, I just thought, okay, well, I say goodbye to my yellow wash bag. I'm going to see that again. But just your dad in the moment saying right and white. Oh, that's proper dad speak, that is. But the guy just not batting an eye note. Not batting it. Right, fine.

Yeah. I am still intrigued by why it took three months. I mean, I'm just about old enough to remember British Rail, but all I can really remember about it, because I wasn't a consumer necessarily. I was far too young. It was properly shit. Everything about British Rail was terrible.

I think food was widely mocked. I think trains were... But there'll be people out there who say, no, absolutely not. So take me on if I'm completely wrong about British Rail. Do you know what? That's not what I took from the story, an examination of the state of Britain's railway network in the 70s. Yes, post-privatisation.

But, I mean, you can go there if you want to. But three months, why did they... Surely they could have... I mean, it can't have been, that just can't have been that many hands. Well, I think the situation might be a bit worse now because I think it maybe is a cost-cutting exercise on behalf of the privatised rail companies to not really starve any loss luggage and all of that kind of stuff.

But Karen, the way you tell your story, absolutely superb, and it is delightful to know that you've been with us from the beginning. Thank you. You deserve something for that as well. You think she deserves a lot. Some sort of therapy, I would imagine. Alison in Nottingham has tried a massage chair that might be suitable for us in a hotel in Osaka. It was a game changer, she says.

I'm about 5'4 foot four, so a bit taller than you, but the massagey bits were perfectly placed as I sipped a Sapporo and gazed out over the cityscape below. My partner, 6'4th, couldn't get on with it at all. Perhaps a bit far to go for a DIY massage, but if you're ever in the land of the rising sun, give it a go. Alison, thank you. I mean, the massage chair down at the pedicurist

continues to profoundly irritate and alarm me. So I always say a firm no when it's offered. Yeah, I think I'm going to follow suit next time around. When I went to the hairdresser last week, it actually made me feel a bit peculiar. It was, there was just something a bit kind of a little bit travel sick about it all. There's just a lot going on in a confined space. Yeah, and I didn't like the lack of contrar.

I didn't know when it had stopped. Because then, you know, it does that kind of bit for a while where it just goes somewhere near your kidneys. Yeah. And you think, oh, thank God for that, that's over. And then it starts up again. Oh, God, love it. I can't remember. It's appalling on me that I can't.

Have you seen The Odyssey? Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Our correspondent, and I'm really sorry. I'm not sure I know how to pronounce this. Have you seen Nollegg's email?

Well, I've. I think Nullig has been in touch with us before and given a handy pronunciation guide. Okay. So I'm going to go just firmly and here it is, Nullag. Okay. Thank you very much for the email. She saw The Odyssey last night and she says, well, she could appreciate it's well made if you didn't like it. I thought it was boring, watching all these men kill and be killed and then just journey on.

It was also grey and brown in tone. I thought it was quite depressing. I must be a complete Philistine as all the reviews are so positive. but I just thought I'd share in case there were others out there like me who might be feeling rather alone. Did anyone on screen even mention the name of Anne Hathaway's character, Penelope? If they did, I missed it. I don't know.

She seemed to be constantly described in relation to the men around her, which I realise is the point. But even her husband just referred to her as my love and my wife, etc. At times it reminded me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Well, I mean, Odysseus had been away a while. Maybe he'd forgotten. Maybe he just couldn't quite place her. I'm sure I know her.

Oh, yeah, I love. Maybe he was lingering in British Rail lost property in the 1970s, who knows. I really must make the effort to see it. I really must. Yes. Must I? I don't know. Well, I mean, I don't think you have to.

And it's one of those weird things, isn't it? Do you remember when Barbie was out at the same time as Oppenheimer? Yeah. And everybody was doing, what do they call it? Barbenheimer. Barbenheimer. Where, you know, they were seeing both shows in one day. There was so much hype around it, Jane, I just thought, no, I'm not going to go and see Opinam.

I don't want to see it. I mean, it's just, it's quite depressing territory. Well, it doesn't get much more depressing. Not really. And we waited quite a long time and went to see Barbie right at the end, last opportunity. So, no, I think sometimes when there's a huge amount of hype about the film, it's quite natural to think, oh, God, do I have to join in? Bathwater. Yes.

Angela has alerted us to a valve that diverts Bathwater. down from the down pipe to use as a pipe for the garden. She says, I've got mine set up, diverted into a water butt. Now, this is because there are genuine water shortages now in much of England and Wales. And I'm sort of, we hadn't, we had to have a WhatsApp message yesterday, didn't we, from a man called Neil. He sounded like a lovely guy.

This is a listener to the Times radio program Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4. Well, worth a listen. And Neil was just saying, look, I'm having a great summer. this is wonderful. And I think we do have to bear in mind that for some people, this has been a beautiful time. If you're not looking after anybody, if you're... If you're not commuting, if you're not commuting, if you're in good health, if you're not a farmer, any more people I need to involve? Yeah, if you live in a house where you can get a breeze.

All of that, this has been a glorious summer. And I suspect many people might well look back on 2026 as a truly special time. But there is a huge butt here. This is not normal. It's proper. really weird and there are going to be real problems for the harvest. Anyway, Angela says this valve, I found it online. It's a valve that diverts bathwater from the down pipe. You can use it as a hose for the garden or as I have, I've set it up being diverted into a water butt. Also, if you have a bath in Epsom salts, it's good for you and for the garden and it stops the water butt foaming up. Angela, thank you. Clever. Yeah. You like a bubble bath though, don't I? Well, no, do you know, I've, I've, I've, actually I've grown up now, I've left Mady behind, and I've moved on to all those post-workout

salts, which is a bit rich, considering the workout is the optional bit. The workout is turning the taps on. Yeah, turning the taps on, and walking up stairs to the bathroom. So do you think that they make a difference? Because they are quite a big thing, aren't they? And especially the magnesium salts, they are sold and advertised as having so many properties. Properties, yeah. I mean, I'm not sure about the property. I read an alarming article the other day that said that the bath will soon be a thing of the past completely and that lots of new builds don't have a bath, young people don't want baths,

I was really quite upset on behalf of the bath-loving community. Just not the same, I know you're only lying in your own rubbish, but call me what you like, I love it. Yeah, I wouldn't miss it. Really? No, everybody's different, aren't they? Yeah, I do. I do increasingly like quite a fastidious shower. Yep.

I do, I do. I tell you what I do hope comes back, and I know we've touched on this before, and not in its collapsible form, but the B-Day. So I think if you're going to take your bath out, put a B-Day in, and everybody's happy. What a name for a nightclub. This is from Ella in Shore and by Sea.

It's a very brief one. All the talk of the G-Spot drink conjured up memories of going to the G-Spot nightclub in Hastings. in the early 2000s, quite the night out. Cages and foam parties. Oh God. Ella says, those were the days. I believe it's been converted into flats now, probably for the best.

Excellent. Have you ever been to a club with cages and phone parties? I haven't been to a nightclub since, quite possibly since I was at university fee. Oh my God, Jane. I don't think I have. Have you? Oh, no, you were quite frisky, weren't you?

No, I wasn't quite frisky? And actually my enjoyment of the London nightclub scene in the 1990s was massively hampered by the fact that I was doing a breakfast show. And also I was working really hard. I just didn't have the time or the stamina to... You could come straight from the club into work. Well, we tried that. Yeah, we tried that. Yeah, that didn't really work.

But I've not been a regular nightclub go at any point in my life actually. But I really, really love knowing that they're there. and sometimes occasionally when I've gone to them, I just think, oh my God, this is just heaven. Because losing... Wasn't heaven? No, it wasn't. No, it wasn't.

It was fabric. There's something so wonderful about just completely losing your inhibitions on a dance floor. I think it's one of the great, great places to go in your life and in your head. So I'm a firm believer in everybody's right to go to a nightclub. They are closing all over the country. I think that is right. really sad. I bet Eve's got thoughts about clubs.

Eve, bring her in. Here she comes. Youth correspondent. I am not much of a traditional clubber like that. I feel like not many people my age go to nightclubs. They go to events where DJs are headlining. Yeah. Which brings in our... Which beautifully, beautifully, what a link.

You're about to hear in probably about 10 minutes time from Groove Armada. who've got a special over-50 night coming up in October. But are your generation not going to clubs because the clubs are closing? Or because... You see, when we used to go to a club overnight, it was almost the days before the really superstar rock DJ. So you wouldn't have a club advertising who was DJ. It wouldn't be the big thing on the...

poster but it is the thing isn't it so this is so and so's club night at whatever yeah and it was just the other way around and and also studio three in canterbury it didn't advertise it's decent by name at all shush in brighton was not doing that either i think i clobbed myself out at the age of 18 when i first got my id and now i don't really do that sort of clubbing i i view it as a bit of a misogynistic setting really as well. Oh, interesting. Tell me more. Dave double decks in control. Well, yeah, and it's a lot of like boys

who are paying lots of money to have tables. That's my perception. I'm sure people go and have lovely times. Whereas the events with the DJs feels more like people are there to go and see an act or a musician as opposed to just pulling girls and being a bit slimy.

Yeah. But also I doubt whether you went to the same kind of nightclubs that Jane and I experienced in our, or were available to experience. Did you go to Shush? I didn't go to Shush. But in every town there would be a nightclub that just, I mean, it played the kind of top 10 hits, didn't it? And maybe a little bit of 1970s disco.

But it wasn't defined, it wasn't really defined by its music. So you could be on the dance floor, you know, really moving and shaking to something by calling the gang, or imagination. I was quite fond of body-talk. What was the one where you sat down and rode? Buddy, dog. You got the motion.

Oops. No, no. Oh, God, what was the one where you rode? Bloody hell. I can sing it. I can sing it, please. If you got the motion, rock the boat and rocked the boat, baby.

No, that wasn't the one where we sat in road. Yeah. The Hughes Corporation. Rock the boat? Yeah. Just see if AI's got that far. Yes, just sit there. Let's go to Nella,

who says, tell Hannah, the gut booster salad in M&S, should also be called the gut blaster. It has a similar effect to Hannah's special salad that she made, which is called, shit yourself salad. Nella says, the gut booster from MNS is like a spring clean for the elementary canal, but with a little tub of extraordinarily tasty dressing, which I have managed to recreate. Well, lucky you, Nella.

Is it, I don't believe you want to get up and dance by the Gap Band. Oh, it might have been the Gap Band, yeah. But was it, that title doesn't ring a bell. It doesn't ring a bell at all. No. It is the Gap Band. It's, I don't believe you want to get up and dance, brackets, oops, widely known as Oops Upside Your Head.

Oh, okay. I'll tell you what, that's one to know for Popmaster. Popmaster. This informed discussion of the musical theme in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it doesn't bode well for the interview coming up with Grieve Armada. Now, you say that you say that you, You don't know, only Groove Armada songs, but you will.

When you hear the montage that Eva's going to lovingly make, you will definitely, definitely know some of them. And the really extraordinary thing is how popular they've remained in your generation, Eve, because you just immediately were straight on it. Yeah. Wonderful. So, Sunday night TV themes, tiny one in from Sonia. GCSE Maths is many years in the rearview mirror,

but I still cannot hear these Sunday night TV themes without going a bit cold about undone homework due on Monday morning. Here we go. Songs of praise. Antiques Road Show. Last at the SummerWine. I hate them all. I hated Last of the Summerwide.

I just couldn't see. It's like cobwebs on windows. Sorry. And Howard's Way. Well, no, that was good. I loved Howard's Way. It was super. It was so glamorous.

It was our Dallas. Sonia. What are you talking about? It said on the soul. Way Firth. No, it's on the Hamble. Oh, was it? Sorry, it's whatever it was.

Vicky says, I've been enjoying the funny dolls names, especially Big New. I didn't have any exciting dolls names. Alice and Emma were mine. Oh, come on, do better, Vicky. But my husband's Tesla, I'm embarrassed by having one, asked for a name to be inputted into the app. Do you know this happened? No, I don't.

What was the choice? Well, I'd always said, says Vicky, that if I had a dog, I would name it Bernard Hogan Howell. A former, I think, chief constable of the Met. Yes, that's so bizarre. And I'd call a cat Miss Babs. Unfortunately, I haven't managed to acquire a pet yet. So I have named the car, Bernard Hogan Hale.

Every time the Tesla app on my phone tells me, tells me, Bernard Hogan is now at your desired temperature. It makes me smile. That's absolutely brilliant. I didn't know you could do that. Obviously, I don't have a Tesla. No. But extraordinary.

That would keep you perky through the day, wouldn't it? I think I'd call mine Harry Stiles, just to see that come up on my phone. Harry Stiles is waiting for you outside. Yay! And he's at a really good temperature. Oh, well, who was our correspondent there? That was Vicky.

Vicky? Well, Vicki, would you like to co-own Miss Babs because one of my cats is called Barbara, and she's quite often referred to us. Miss Babs. Yeah, rightly. And also the fabulous Babra-cadabra. Can we just...

Oh, that's good too. You would have a wishy household. The home, of course, still very much available. And absolutely good. No, genuinely gorgeous. Olivia is in Brisbane. And she's popping over to London. She's going to be in London between the 16th and the 21st of August.

And she just wants suggestions for a nice, easy day trip from the city. So I'm assuming you mean Olivia somewhere you can go there and back from London. in a day to see a different slice of British life. I would suggest, because I think you can do this, if you get as far as Paddington, which is a major station in the capital, serving the west of England and beyond, I would go to Bath if you haven't got very long,

and you can easily get to Bath and back in a day from London, as long as you can get to Paddington in the first place, which shouldn't be insurmountable, especially not for someone who's travelled all the way from Brisbane. You should be able to do it, Because you just see, there's just a lot to see, and it's a beautiful place, and it's obviously very different to London. Yeah, I would completely agree. And also, it's quite a good train line, that one.

And you've got nice rolling stock. Yes, you have. Very comfortable seats. What would you suggest? Well, I think if you've come from Australia, then, you know, you have got much, much nicer beaches than us. So I wouldn't head anywhere. Don't go to a beach, no. I wouldn't go anywhere.

So you wouldn't say Marlgate? Coastal, no. No. Okay. No, and I think Bath is probably a very good shout. I mean, obviously there's the Alpaca Farm just outside Swindon. Oh, that's good. Yes.

Yes. But otherwise, yeah, I think Bath would do it. And also you could wander around Bath without actually having really booked anything to do and you would still feel like you'd really seen something. Yeah, but if you have got a bit of time, you could book yourself into the Roman baths because, I mean, what did the Romans ever do for us? Well, so much. Quite a lot.

Well, they gave you your boob, like. bath, didn't they? Absolutely. Yeah. Before that, one does wonder what the ancient Britons were up to. Well, they were showering. Were they?

Can we just say a big hello to Wendy from Fife, who was disappointed, is disappointed that we're not able to do fringe by the sea? And thank you for your thoughts and your kind sentiments for the predicament that Jane finds herself in. Which is a predicament I know

so many of you are in. And I should say actually that as we speak on Wednesday, August the 5th, Raymond has had something of revival. So, I mean, look, it's a difficult time, not least for him, poor soul. But it's just so difficult to predict when somebody is very elderly. And I know lots of people know exactly what we as a family are going through. But look, he's in a safe place. And we're hopeful that he's, well, he is, he's comfortable, which is the best you can hope for. And of course we will try to get to fringe by the scene next summer if they'll have us. And if you've got tickets, just keep them because Ruth Davidson with Jan Ravens will be a really, really lovely hour. And actually, you know, Ruth has got so much to say about Scottish politics as well.

So you could have a really much more in-depth and intellectual conversation than you and I would have managed. Quite right. Yes, Fee. Yes. I mean, it's just true. It's true. And it's not as if there isn't anything to say about Scottish politics. No, there's so much. Yeah. And in fact, only last week they had another great big whammy in the Labour Party. Yeah, oh yes.

Well done. Good point. Thank you. There's trouble in quite a few of the major Scottish political parties. And, of course, there's trouble down south as well. There's trouble everywhere you look. Have we yet found out where Andy Burnham's taking his holiday? No, we don't know. No, okay.

He's just going to get followed, isn't he, until people find out where it is. He's gone. And I feel for him and his family on that score. because David Cameron did use to do and in fact quite a few of the politicians used to do the available photo shoot at the beginning of their holiday on the basis that everybody would then leave them

Which seems fair enough. Wasn't David Cameron once photograph pointing at fish? I do you remember that? Yes. Who hasn't pointed it to fish? I tell you what, that's a place you could travel to as well if you had a little bit more time available you could go to Cornwall and point at some fish.

so maybe Andy Burnham will just go to London's aquarium I mean there's a lot in there I haven't been to that actually oh my goodness it was my kids' favourite destination when they were tiny because they've got this incredible kind of multi-floored tank

so you can you know you can see kind of three floors up and they do have sharks and things like that in it and we could spend hours watching the fish there Hours and hours. I'm very grateful, very, very grateful to that. And the Hornsy Road soft play. Right. Did you have a seat? Can you get a season ticket to the aquarium? Oh, I don't know. No, I don't. Because we did get briefly season tickets to Kew Gardens, which...

That's very good. Well, no, because that had kind of what somebody once described to me as the middle-class wacky warehouse at Kew Gardens. There was a kind of soft play zone there. Oh, I bet that was classier than Hornsey. There's a lot of Bowden, little Bowden frocks down there on a Sunday morning. But listen, I was there too, so I don't know why I'm locking it. There are loads and loads of parents and grandparents out, you know, doing the childcare at the moment in London. So many grandparents. And, you know, props to you, it's a very long summer holiday to fill.

One day we've got to tackle this because it is a form of madness. Most parents, you know, both parents have to work these days, especially if you want to pay off a mortgage and stuff like that. And so, you know, I've seen this. some absolutely exhausted octogenarians doing the swimming lessons and taking kids to the Tower of London and stuff like that. You think, oh God, good for you, good for you. That's a good point. I mean, at the rate my children are progressing, I'll be in my, well into my ninth decade before I'm doing some holiday shift. If I'm spared.

Groove Armada, which in layman's terms consists of Tom Finley and Andy Cato, who formed the electronic music duo in 19. 95. Nine studio albums, two Grammy nominations, over 100 million streams on Spotify. Their tunes are now loved by a whole new generation. Tom and Andy have gone on to other careers. Tom is a therapist, Andy a farmer, who specialises in regenerative techniques

to keep our soil healthy. But they do still groove, and they're putting on a special gig to celebrate 25 years of super styling their mega-90s hit. It's in October at Fonox in South London, and it's got a theme of hearing loss. One in five, music fans over 50 say that hearing struggles have reduced how often they go to live gigs, nearly half have experienced some form of tinnitus,

and over one in ten find that a night out with loud music on will leave them with temporary hearing loss. Here's more about the evening from Tom and Andy. Well, yeah, well, we're involved in this campaign because we wanted to contribute towards hopefully taking some of the stigma that's associated with hearing loss. loss and hearing aids and so on. And so this is a campaign with spec savers. And the idea is that you can go online. You can do a hearing screener.

It takes about three minutes. We both did it. And if you do that, then your name goes into a hat. And some names will come out of that virtual hat for a gig that we're doing at a place. It's a wicked club actually. We've always had to play for a long time in Brixton called Fonox in October. And then after that, there'll be other live gigs with other bands. Okay. Eve and I were discussing this before we started our interview with you and actually complete props to you for the imaginative nature of this as a PR campaign.

And I suppose we're kind of showing the pants of the workings of interviewing people like you. But it's very rare that we get something that is as well thought through as this. Would you agree it's probably quite a good thing to be asked to do? Yeah, you're right, it is. I mean, it's also, from my point of view, I struggle with hearing loss myself. I'm wearing hearing aids now as I speak to you. And without these, I don't think this interview would be possible. I'd be able to speak, but I would definitely be struggling to hear you.

So it appeals on that level. It appeals because we're the sort of generation they're trying to reach. We're still raving, just like all these people are hopefully still raving and hopefully encouraging people to still do that. But I guess the thing for me that really spoke to me was I have the last. couple of years, I found myself kind of maybe avoiding situations where there would be a lot of background noise or sort of tuning out of conversations and self-isolating a little bit, like not so chronic degree, but I was conscious I was doing it. And I've had these now for two years. I have a kind

of side hustle as a therapist as well. And I think I started missing quite critical things in sessions as well. And that was obviously not good. So these have been really transformative for me. and it is hard. Taking the test for the first time is difficult because it's never going to, with me it was quite concerning how much loss I was having to deal with actually. But since I've done it and been brave enough to do it,

wearing these has been utterly transformative for me, so I'm completely going through with it. And hearing loss is going to be such a huge thing for our generation to deal with and future generations, isn't it? because actually listening on in-ear headphones, listening at a very high volume, is already proving to have really cost young people

a part of their hearing that we probably still managed to maintain. So we've just got to talk more about going deaf, haven't we? I think so. I mean, I think each generation is going to have its challenges. So I remember when I started going clubbing in Leeds, there was one place called the warehouse and it was so loud in there

that the joke was and it was literally we did treat it as a joke that when we rolled out of there at whatever time in the morning and we couldn't hear each other talking to each other it was just funny I remember it now we were just thinking what a laugh that was and when we started DJing

either side of the turntables you have your own monitor speakers and these days you can turn them up and turn them down but for like I don't know 20 years. They were just on 11. And you're in the middle of a nightclub. It's lasers, it's smoke, it's sweat on the walls. Really exciting. Loud things are just exciting. And so we've had all of that. And one of the reasons why we're doing this is to put these things on the radar that

weren't on the radar for us. But as you say, this new generation is living a life in headphones. And there's a statistic I can't remember, but it's pretty terrifying when you convert equivalent volume of headphones into as if the same thing was coming from speakers. It's a pretty terrifying conversion. So each generation has its challenges, I guess. Sure. I mean, if somebody had come along when you were in exactly that situation that you're describing in your youth and said, now, in order to preserve your hearing well into your

fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth decade, you really should turn it down now. What would your reaction have been? Well, yeah, I would have said no. But if they come in and said, here's some hearing protection where it will keep the vibe, but after a quarter of an hour, once you've got used to it, it will keep the vibe,

but mean that you're going to leave this club and the thousands of other clubs that I and we've been lucky enough to be in, and you won't have constant tinnitus like I have now, I would definitely have taken it. So we just need to talk about, there are solutions to all these things, We just, we didn't talk about it then

and hopefully we can talk about it more now. Do you think that we will ever get to a place where people are displaying their hearing aids in the same way that we have got used to displaying our eye protection? We are fine to wear glasses now, aren't we? And in fact, it's a massive industry. The designer glasses industry, quite a few people wear frames when they don't even have anything wrong with their eyes.

Can that happen with hearing loss, do you think? Well, I mean, I think it's already happening in a sense. I mean, so the ones I wear now, they're kind of skin-colored. And because, like you're saying, most how many people of the sort of all generations now wearing these in-air pods, you know, just walking around and having conversations with them constantly. So in a sense, these just look just the same. So I don't feel any sense of stigma. I think those ones that, you know, those hearing age, you can see that maybe go back over the ear or the larger pieces, that's definitely. But these ones, these modern ones are super discreet, you know.

And so I don't think I'm necessarily going to start, you know, painting them or making a big fuss about them. But I don't feel any sense of discomfort, like social discomfort about the fact that I'm wearing them. And it means I'm able to have plenty of really interesting conversations again, which is fabulous. Absolutely. Let's talk about the tunes then, if that's okay. This night is also marking 25 years since the release of Superstylent, no G. I mean, it's a great gag if you were fans of Steve Wright in the afternoon. Tell us where you two were when that song was created.

You'd met before, hadn't you, in an attic? And not very many people can say that. No, well, yeah, there's been a lot happen since we met in the attic in Tom's bedroom in Cambridge, which was full of disco records. And that smoke, not unfamiliar to teenage bedrooms. And it was a lot of fun. And we'd moved to London and we started doing parties together. and we've made some tunes to promote those parties,

one of which was at the river. And that went on the cover of music magazine. It was a big magazine at the time. Zoe Ball played it on the radio, and everything went from naught to 60 pretty quickly. So with the time we were working on super styling, we were already signed up to a major label and we'd have all kinds of mad experiences

in the kind of heyday or the last heyday of the old school record industry, lots of generally, well no, exclusively men with cigars and gold jewelry and all that stuff. But superstalling is an exception to a rule which generally states that the best tunes happen really quickly because that one didn't. It started in Fabric, the opening of a London nightclub called Fabric, where our MC who we were working with Mike first said the word

Sound of the Groove Armada were super-stalling and even amongst all the chaos we said to him, remember that. And amazingly we did. And then we developed the tune and the bass line. And for ages, it just kind of rolled around as an interesting kind of underground grover until we moved the baseline to come in where it now comes in and created that moment.

And we debuted that version with that moment as Fat Boy Slim's Warm Up Act on Brighton Beach. And suffice to say that since then, it's a tune that's changed our life. Absolutely. And it's still there, isn't it? I mean, it's still being streamed. It's still being chosen.

A whole new generation. love your music. I have to tell you that my 20-year-old son, he's hard to impress when he says, who are you talking to on the radio? Eyes can glaze over, but not when I said that I was talking to you.

Tell me how that feels. I mean, it feels fabulous. It's funny because we just come off, we're actually hopefully making some sense, but we just come off the back of five gigs in five days. So we... You're doing very well for men of your age. And lastly,

shows were all in the UK and the last show was this place called Kendall calling up in the north and in the lakes kind of thing and yeah we played to a crowd i would say about average age like about 20 about your son and uh and they all know super signing and they love it and we play about six different versions of it just to keep everybody happy and it's a great vibe it feels really lovely to be to be sharing that with people again i think you know sort of streaming companies have issues they need to deal with in terms of getting the right amount of money back to the people that write the songs. But in terms of kind of songs having longevity and having second, third, fourth lives, and it's great that this music's still out there. Because I think that they've been great for kind of keeping superstining alive.

And it's amazing. Like it's a really wild experience when every time you drop it, there's just the same sense of excitement. So like Annie says, when we wrote our song, it was the one that sort of changed everything for us. You know, it changed our lives. Much of we've written some other songs that we like too, that's probably the one that change everything. And it still seems to be doing the business today. Sure. And as you've mentioned, so much has changed in the last 25, 30 years in the music business.

And do you look back and think that you were young in a golden time? Or do you think that the same kind of success would have been available to you, if you had been starting out now? I think it's just different. You know, what we had to put up with was all of the cliches about contracts that are unfair for young and naive artists of being pushed around by sort of the cliched, powerful record company executive to do huge promotional tours of the states

as they try to turn us into a kind of boy band version. of Britney Spears, our label partner at the time, and all sorts of pushbacks and being kind of sold from one record label to another and on and on it went, you know. However, the other side of that coin was these record labels were gatekeepers, and once you got through those gates,

your music was going to get hurt because they could get it played and they could get it distributed. Now it's the reverse. There were no gatekeepers, which is fantastic to avoid all the stuff that I've just spoke to you about. But there's a tsunami wave of new music

breaking every single hour. So from my son's perspective, he wants to make music, he wants to be a DJ, and just finding your way up out of that ocean of tunes is incredibly tough. So it's a different set of challenges. The arc of your lives from a distance seems to be quite golden, actually.

You know, your creativity got the record, it deserved when you were young, you did manage to make money from it, and you've now both found yourself in different careers where presumably you're feeling fulfilled again, Andy in farming and Tom, as you mentioned, in therapy. I mean, obviously I'm not going to ask you to reveal the dark side of your lives, but you do seem to have got it pretty sussed. Not everybody manages to achieve that. No, and I'm sort of a bit of a cliche but I think that the things that helped us do that was we have a always had a fantastic relationship which is really lovely. It's a very supportive relationship because you go through

some and he's sort of touched on it, but some sort of dark times and where periods of, you know, either being dropped by labels or been moved around by labels or times when albums didn't land and you feel quite isolated and that's when you sort of have to roll your sleeves up and I think we've been really good at that. And I think about tons of people that I don't mean have been lost along the way, peers of ours who aren't doing it anymore. And I think we have been very lucky and being rewarded for our creativity and that's fallen for us. But I think we've also not being afraid to sort of graft occasionally when we need to or sometimes take a change of like a vault fast and just move around and do something different

when things felt like they were getting tired. I think there was a bit where we just caught up and everything being very major label. And then we just went very underground and that did for us for a bit. So I think it's about some self-awareness about where you sit in the sort of panting of all this stuff. And we're quite good at navigating that as well. So we have been really lucky, but I also think we've been quite smart at times and we've been grafted at times. And that stuff is also super important, you know. Yeah, no, it's good to recognise the good stuff, isn't it?

Andy, can I just ask you about farming? I mean, in this rapacious summer of heat and drought, how have you been doing? Well, yeah, I mean on my farm, it's a National Trust farm near Swindon, which I rent from them. And so we completed our harvest three weeks early, like a lot of people have. It's actually, it's not just this drought. It's the fact that it's the third drought in five years. It's the fact that it's followed by, you know, record wet winters. So it's this whole whiplash thing.

You know, an agriculture was developed around a stable climate, and that stable climate is rapidly disappearing. and farmers had their backs against the wall before any of this is incredibly tough. The good news is that we know how to farm in a way which materially and quickly changes the ability of soils to deal with droughts, to store far more rainfall and therefore deal with flooding as well. We know how to farm in a way which quickly and materially regenerates biodiversity. We're measuring that across all of our 150 farmers that we work with.

And so what we're trying to do at wild farm, which is a bit all-consuming, it's a big project, but we're giving high-street shoppers, high-street food buyers, the chance to buy food from farmers who are actually doing this, making it happen. Because this is of existential importance. It will make such a difference to our future if we grow our food this way. And it needs to become a movement, like House Music became a movement 40 years ago. What do you need for the government to help you to do that? I've spent a long time working with the government

and it's very, very difficult and I'm sure lots of other people are finding all sorts of different areas. Two things. One is the revolving door of people who you're dealing with and secondly is how siloed thinking is because when we think about farmers, yeah, because they grow our food

but they also determine how much water we've got, how clean it is, the state of our nature, our ability to even just exist in this changing climate. So they do fire. more than grow food and yet when we talk about building a reservoir we'll use the word investment when we talk about supporting farmers to grow in a way where their soil can store far more water infinitely more than all of the reservoirs put together we talk about it as a subsidy so one of the problems with government is that it's all siloed in different departments and what we're trying to do

is create a more holistic economic model that recognizes the the reality of what happens on the 75% of the UK that's farmland will determine our future and that's all it's too. Do either of you two ever put on your own tunes in your house just to please yourself? Do you find yourself getting to 330 on a Wednesday in November and thinking, yes, I need to be shaking some ass. I do. I mean, I'm definitely a bit of a, I'm on the whole Spotify playlist thing now. So I've got multiple's playlist for different movies. But I definitely have, particularly my Balleric playlist, I have a heavy dosage of

GA and Clouds Your Heart, which is one of our shared favourite tunes of all time, one to check out of us. It came on yesterday, and I didn't have a week, but I was feeling a bit emotional post the gigs, and I was deeply touched by it. It was lovely. But I don't put it on, it just pops up every now. Okay.

Okay, it's a lovely honest answer. I've asked that of artists before, and they always slightly deny it, and I think, nah, come on, you're singing your own tunes in the shower. Of course you do. Would you, Jane, if you had written some absolute belters? Of course I would.

I mean, I replayed. some of my greatest news reading hits going back to the 90s. Some absolutely cracking episodes of Weekend Woman's Hour. Shut up. Right, now you've gone too far. Although it is a good program. Anyone can take the free three-minute hearing test on the Specksaver website. But if you take the test and you are over 50,

you can then join the guest list to get free tickets to Grieve Armada's gig at Fonox on Thursday the 15th of October. You go to specksavers.com.com. UK slash test list. They did sound really nice blokes. And what a lovely way to, I don't know, you've had a rock star experience, you've done all that. And now you're just using regenerative techniques to keep soil healthy. What a fabulous life.

No, seriously. It is. Oh, can we just do one more doll's name? You have two minutes. Okay. Oh my God. I come here for a laugh. I don't come here to work.

Emma is in Reddit. She's 56 and she has. Her cousin Charlotte. who was about five at the time. Had a dog, she named after an area in Redditch in the Worcestershire, North Worcestershire region. Unfortunately, the area she chose to name her doll after was Headless Cross.

What a beautiful. I hope she enjoyed a little cuddle with Headless Cross overnight. Children are so weird and so is life. Yeah, and so wonderful. Keep them coming, please. They're making us laugh. Yes, they really are. Right, we'll see you tomorrow for a... book club about our short story collection, not ours, but John Pallahiri's short story collection

interpreter of maladies. 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 it live, every day, Monday to Thursday, two till four, 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.

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