Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Making noises getting off the sofa...

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Mystic Jane is defending her predictions after a weekend of football. More to come on that front... They also discuss milestone birthdays, pro and cons of France and the lunch hour. Plus, Fi speaks to leading human rights barrister Susie Alegre about her book ‘Human Rights, Robot Wrongs’. Our next book club pick has been announced! 'Missing, Presumed' is by Susie Steiner. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And I'm not sure that you weren't in Covent Garden anymore because it's quite a little bit touristy. Oh, has it? I believe so. Touristy Covent Garden. I have no idea. Jane, I think there are street entertainers. Oh, no.

Just absolutely, you can't move for them. Let's avoid that. VoiceOver describes what's happening on your iPhone screen. VoiceOver on. Settings. So you can navigate it just by listening. Books, contacts, calendar, double tap to open. Breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11.

And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. How do you think you are going to change with age? So you've got a milestone birthday. No, don't huff and puff. Do you know what? It's more of a millstone around my neck at the moment. Oh, don't be ridiculous. You're enjoying every single celebration. God knows there are a lot.

How do you think it will change you? Because some people do have a bit of a think at the turning of a decade, don't they? Yeah, I'm not really one of them, in fairness. Although it's funny, I can remember my 20th birthday, my 30th birthday. Yeah, I can remember my 40th, my 50th. Oh, I know, yeah.

Yeah. So maybe you do remember these things. No memory at all of my 10th birthday. So what does that tell you? Well, it's up there with not having a sky dish. Really? It really is. It's a childhood status.

Send money now. But do you think that there's something about 60 that does allow you to behave differently? Because to be honest, I didn't really feel the difference between 30 and 40 and 50. But there's something about 60 where I would like to change gear a lot more, I think. Change gear.

What I have noticed is that I am, without a shadow of a doubt, I'm making noises when I get up. You're making noises when you're sitting down as well. Yeah, I know, but when I get off the sofa, by last thing, I mean, a minute past ten, I just have a look at the headlines. I am literally turning into an old codger. Just have a look at the headlines.

Oh, no, I think that's allowed. Oh, is it? OK. And then I'm tottering up the stairs. Yes, and I did notice that I was making a noise. Anyway, that's just one of those things. I also applied for my bus pass, actually filled in the form on Friday. Anyway, they rejected it

because the photo isn't right or something, so I've got to have another go. What did they say about the photo? It doesn't fit our standards. Oh, gosh. I don't know what that means. I mean, it wasn't a photograph of me. It was Jennifer Lawrence.

I don't see what the problem is. I would have thought she'd be perfect. But no. No. So I'm going to have another go tonight. I might have to... Basically, frustratingly, I'll have to get the help of a young person.

Never mind. I'll do it again. They need me to scan it or something. I don't understand. Okay, not to worry. Could you come round? Not to worry. No, I couldn't.

I'm sorry. I can't do that. So parish notices, thank you very much indeed to all of the people who are very grateful to receive a tote bag. We've received quite a strange picture. It's of two of our listeners. Here we go.

It's entitled Life With Straps. It's from Nella and Rachel, who've sent us a picture. Here we are at M&S. We can't disclose our facial features as we might be celebrity stalked here in Burnley. I've stepped over the border, says Nella. Our friendship is now tightly bonded

as fellow tote owners. Now, they've put those totes over their heads and you so rightly pointed out, well, it's not safe. So don't put those totes over their heads and you so rightly pointed out, well it's not safe. So don't put a bag on your head. No, don't do that. But you can send us pictures of your totes in funny places.

Yeah, they'd be very welcome. And I love the idea of a war of the roses friendship there between, I'm assuming, Yorkshire and Lancashire. Across the borders, yeah. Well done. So we, I think, have slightly gone off piste haven't we with the totes we're not necessarily doing the get a tote have a friend have a friend get a tote you know it's gone hasn't it it's just gone that merchandising opportunity has flown so now i think

we are just apply for a tote it was a bit complicated this is simple but please tell your friends about the podcast because the bigger the community gets the more fun it is exactly yes and we've had a bumper bundle of your fantastic emails over the course of the last couple of days and we're very very grateful we certainly are shall we crack on with some of them i don't want to waste them so i think we probably should in all fairness uh quick word to an anonymous correspondent who says, I know you're interested in hearing how far and wide your audience reaches. Just to say, I am based in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Oh, that sounds so nice.

Tune in every day and catch up on your daily podcast. You and Times Radio are my sensible lifeline to what's going on in the UK. And I like your chat. You're sensible. Yes. Well, quite. Normally living in Scotland I'm on a short-term contract as a criminal intelligence analyst forming part of a UK policing contingent sponsored by the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office to support capacity and capability to the local Royal Turks and Caicos Islands police force I tell you what that has to be the most acronym heavy paragraph that we've ever had well the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force. I tell you what, that has to be the most acronym-heavy paragraph that we've ever had.

Well, the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force are battling at the moment with serious and organised violent crimes, murder, robberies with firearms and people smuggling from Haiti. It's an absolutely beautiful island, but with an underbelly of crime, cultural and social issues that most tourists just don't see. I bet. Gosh.

Keeping my fingers crossed that hurricane season, which started in early June, is kind to me. I'm on deployment here until September. Can I just say what a truly fascinating job you've got there. And I hope you're safe and stay safe and the rest of the deployment passes without incident. I always think it must be fascinating to live and spend time in a place that does have a real underbelly.

And I'm not trying to kind of glamorise that level of crime. And I suppose I mean fascinating just because you've got to open your eyes. We go there, if you go to Turks and Caicos for the sunshine and the azure blue waters and all that kind of stuff. And I think aren't we realising that actually you need to go with a little bit more curiosity about who's living there and how they're living? So to be able to spend some time in that kind of community

and presumably feel that you're helping, because I think maybe if you go as a tourist now, are you always helping? I don't know. Well, presumably by giving them your money, you can tell yourself you're helping. Yeah, but it's complicated, do you know what I mean? It is, yeah. I would find that a complicated holiday destination now, but...

Yeah, well, now you know more about it. You won't be going there, will you? I won't at all. I don't think I've helped by saying any of that either. Staff canteen designated lunch hour. In comes Marie to save me. Dear Jane and Fi, you often mention the staff canteen. I'm intrigued. Couldie to save me uh dear jane and fee you often mention the staff canteen i'm intrigued could we hear more about it is it self-service

what sort of things are on the menu is it quite tribal or do you sit with other times presenters is it subsidized and does the designated lunch hour still exist in the late 1970s i worked in an office on stamford street in southeast l southeast London at that time a bit of London that was a culinary desert we had a subsidized canteen but the food was a bit like school dinners other than that there was a tiny sandwich bar in the precinct downstairs which did a very acceptable steak which that was a wafer thin piece of steak in between two slices of white bread onions optional the taste lingered well into the afternoon i bet it did fortunately my employer ipc mags oh gosh i know that office provided coaches which would ferry hungry workers over

the river to covent garden where you could find a much better choice of sarnie and the glorious food for thought one of the first vegetarian restaurants to open in london on special occasions you might have been to tutton's or jo Allen's. Then it was all back on the coach, which parked up at the Aldwych. I'm not quite sure how we squeezed all that into one hour. Does the lunch hour still exist? Well, that's remarkable, isn't it? A coach that took you over the river to the more kind of glamorous, cosmopolitan London.

And that's just not true anymore, actually. I think, especially around SC1, Stamford Street, there's glorious culinary delights on offer. Oh, you'd get a good butty there these days. Yeah. And I'm not sure that you would in Covent Garden anymore because it's quite a little bit touristy. Oh, has it?

I believe so. Touristy, Covent Garden. I have no idea. Jane, I think there are street entertainers. Oh, no. Just absolutely, you can't move for them. Let's avoid that. But our canteen... Yes, our canteen, we don't have a designated lunch hour.

Well, no, because of our hours on the radio, two till four, Times Radio, Monday to Thursday, which you can listen to for free on the Times Radio app. Have I said everything there? Well done. We don't really have time to eat. I mean, I must confess, when we were on between three and five, that did give me a little bit longer to fully appreciate the contents

of my potluck-styring box of mixed salad from the canteen. But now we're kind of up against it. We arrive and we're just hard at it, aren't we? So I've only once or twice sat in the canteen. That's been Christmas lunch, which is not just subsidised, it's free. But the rest of the time we do pay, don't we? We do. I think it's got a glorious selection today. I had

a chicken casserole with some roasted carrots on mashed potato. It looked lovely that. It was a perfect summer meal. Well, we're not having a summer here. She bleated. But yes, I'd quite like to go back to having a designated lunch hour, but it is a bit impossible on this programme.

Does the lunch hour exist anywhere in Britain now? I don't know i don't think it does i think that's a huge shame i think for our digestive tracts for our sense of community i think just for a long working day i think the designated lunch hour was brilliant and also because when we work back at the old place which was quite close to john lewis one of the main reasons for working at the BBC for many people. I mean, you could catch up with your colleagues by popping into John Lewis because that's where everybody was. But you could go and do your chores. You know, I'm sounding like something out of the Dark Ages now,

but you could go and, you know, I quite often had a little list of things to do. You could go to the haberdashery department. Very much so. Get everything you need. Dry cleaning in, do a little bit of caropity on the way back and be back at your desk by two o'clock refreshed with things crossed off your list. So I'm sad to see the back of those days.

I don't understand the towns where you still have, you know, shop closing and siestas because there just can't be, there can't be as many shop workers who can afford to live in the centre of town to pop home for lunch. Where are they going? Good luck trying to justify a siesta in Britain at the moment. No, I know we never had them.

Oh, my God, it's 17 Celsius. I need to go for a lie down. But towns on the continent... Oh, well, in France, as we well know, a country so close to us and yet so, so, so very far away. They down tools as soon as it's noon, don't they? You don't see hide and a hair of them until half past three. Well, where do they go? They go for lunch.

I know, but where? Well, they go to a local bistro. Two bottles of house wine. A carafe or two of something else. And it's not just a baguette. They'll be having beef and... Oysters. Probably not Beef Wellington.

But oysters, definitely. Yeah, quite a lot of parfait. Yeah, all of that. And then they might go back to work, but, I mean, who knows? Anyway, if you're listening in France, we really hope we haven't. Probably not anymore. No, you're not. Okay, fair enough.

Rosie says, Jane and Fee, your reference to a clever person who invented the Faraday box last week really made me laugh When I met my husband, my friend asked Is he related? I had to Google who she was talking about It turned out that Michael Faraday his distant great uncle, was a big deal

I was brought up in Cornwall where history was mainly centred around a man called Richard Trif... oh gosh, I've been struggling all day with how to say this. Travithic? Trafithic? Yeah. So Faraday did indeed make a massive contribution to science, came from humble beginnings. Apparently he had to wear boxes on his feet as he didn't have shoes. He refused to help the government develop chemical weapons in the Crimean War and later in life he turned

down a knighthood. So he sounds like a very impressive figure and he is Rosie's husband's distant great uncle. But the man she referenced from Cornwall, Richard Trevithick, was one of the inventors, if not the inventor, of the first ever steam locomotive and he's one of those people who ought to be much better known. Well, that's an impressive pedigree, isn't it? Yes, she's not related to him. No. And it's only her husband who's distantly related to the other guy. No, but she can cling on to the husband's antecedents, can't she?

Yes, we've all done that. And where does that get you in life? Now, this is a very serious email and we're going to discuss it are you ready for discussion yes comes from Claire who says I'm a long-standing listener of your podcast

and my daughter and I celebrated coming out of lockdown by coming to your live gig at the Festival Hall on July the 19th 2021 it was so special do you know what it lives really large in our memory as well actually Claire because it was exactly the same for know what it lives really large in our memory as well actually Claire because it was exactly the same for us

we celebrated coming out of lockdown by doing a show at the Royal Festival to say that was odd would be the understatement it was quite a baptism of fire wasn't it

you could say that again I hadn't seen anybody for three months and then hello two thousand people I don't think it was quite that well I think it was over the course of two nights

thank you for making that clear anyway it was lovely for us Well, I think it was over the course of two nights. Thank you for making that clear. Anyway, it was lovely for us to do that as well and it's very kind of you that you came. Now, this is the serious bit. I'm writing as I wondered if you have any thoughts on the decision by the BBC to employ Nick Curious as a commentator at this year's Wimbledon. I am horrified and disappointed.

There's an excellent article in a different newspaper, I'm sad, sad sad say that highlighted his support of andrew tate his behavior on and off court and yet in the pursuit of ratings they are continuing to employ him my complaint resulted in a bland and patronizing response and i wonder how female presenters feel and male presenters too who've been subjected to derogatory comments by curious. Andrew Castle for one. I'll be very interested to hear what you and your listeners think,

as the message from the BBC is that I'm overreacting and should accept that his behaviour was in the past, which it wasn't as he continues to post supportive tweets of Tate. Does he? So I can't back that up and substantiate that. So let's just concentrate on the fact that he is being employed by the BBC. He pleaded guilty to a charge of assault on his girlfriend, which was pushing her off pavement during a very heated row.

And he's the bad boy of tennis on the court. He is quite often explosive towards umpires and towards his opponents. And I was gobsmacked that he was being employed by the BBC. I don't understand that one at all. Do you? No, I must admit, I had forgotten about his track record. I didn't know if I ever knew. Maybe I'd forgotten that he pleaded guilty to that offence. I'm afraid, have they just bought into the notion that bad boys are entertaining? Yes. Well, that's wrong, because it just plays into that stereotype. And it's pretty horrible.

So I'm conscious I don't know enough about, as much as I ought to know about Nick Kyrgios, but I know enough, enough i think to agree that he doesn't he shouldn't be playing a part in this because there are so many i mean wimbledon i think for a lot of people who aren't certainly aren't wouldn't consider themselves massive sports fans i think wimbledon is pretty much approaching the highlight of that year you know there are people who take the fortnight off aren't there just to sit at home and just absolutely indulge in their love of this particular sport.

They just enjoy everything about it. And it's not necessarily for me, but I get why it appeals to so many other people. And, yeah, there must be someone better than him that they could employ. But also, Jane, I just think it falls into the squeaky wheels, get most grease line of thinking, which at some point we have to just stop don't we we just have to say no i'm not i'm not going to be entertained by a so-called bad boy

no and that's just not the direction of travel that we all want and if you can't control your behavior on court and the argument against it is well it's box office well i don't know it's not very nice for the for your opponent it's definitely not nice for the umpires it's not nice for the ball girls and boys i don't know i just think just be be nicer about it just you know keep exactly the same criteria that you'd have for your normal life where you wouldn't really want to hang around with someone who was exploding at you all the time and you know make sure that you take that to work with you i don't get it just don't get it i'd be very interested actually in

seeing the bbc's response i might complain myself jane might you yes okay stand by broadcasting house incoming i'll see what comes back. Can I just add one detail? Because it's important for us to get this right. He admitted assaulting an ex-girlfriend, but avoided a criminal conviction. So, park that there. Okay. But as far as I know,

there are no female tennis pundits who've, quotes, admitted assaulting a partner. No. Right. Dear Jane and Fee, great to have Mystic Jane back. Even if the predictions

weren't completely accurate. Well, the term is wrong. Do you know what? I did have an off day. Let's put it that way, Pam, but thank you for your support. No, you see, I... Fee was being very harsh on me earlier

because I said I thought I could get half a point for the England game, because I said it would be 0-0, and it was only 1-0 to me. See, that was Jamal Keran's point, that she predicted that the election would be called in July. No, in June. It's called in July. And you can't say, you can't write to the National Lottery and say,

I know you said the bonus ball was seven, I've got six. It just doesn't work like that. I know, but my mum did ring me the other day to say that her cousin had got the bonus ball that was the one after this week's winning bonus ball two weeks in succession. OK, so not interesting. No. Anyway, she thought it worth passing on.

OK, I think Mystic Jane's going to have to go on a long holiday. So, no, I'm not going to... I think England are still going to win the whole thing. That's what I think. Yeah, no, well, that's great. No, I mean, I just... I think you should keep on delighting us with Mystic Meg's predictions.

And, you know, chances are, one day you'll be right. And that will be a glorious day for everybody. Don't encourage her, please. This comes from Tracy, who says, I once bought a cake which was packaged in a box. The instructions suggested cut with a clean, sharp knife. I did wonder how everybody else would do it. Maybe a blunt, rusty knife.

Yeah, it's my favourite way of doing it. Just with your hands. Another time my friend and I had a good laugh reading labels on the clothes in Debenhams, including parallel leg trousers. We mused about the possibility of perpendicular legs. If you need a good laugh, then reading labels is a must. Or maybe it's my sense of humour. No, we love all of those. Keep them coming, Tracey.

I was entertained, says Jenny, by your recent correspondent who mixed up cucumber with newcomer. It inspired me to share an anecdote which still makes me blush. I talk to people every day in my job and I should point out without revealing Jenny's occupation that she's extraordinarily senior at a university. I talk to people every day in my job, but I still struggle with interactions with strangers when I'm not quite sure of the procedure. I suspect some of your listeners are familiar with this debilitating character flaw.

I could recount many examples, but this one involves cheese. Do stay tuned. I was 13. We were having an end-of-term soiree in our French lesson, and my task was to bring in some French cheese. It was hull, it was 1987 and exotic brie was precious and available only from the delicatessen counter. A conversation was required.

I'd been given two pounds but despite rehearsing under my breath I just couldn't pluck up the courage to speak to the scary shop assistant. I decided to buy some Wensleydale instead, which was just on the shelf and didn't require any asking. Perhaps OK if I hadn't tried to convince my French teacher that Wensleydale was actually a town in France and that we were lucky to have such an authentic delicacy. In hindsight, this was mortifying,

but I have an indignant fondness for British cheese ever since. So much better, so much better so much better says Jen than the French stuff controversial well you've put up you've put some we've already been rude about the French once in this podcast so now there's another contribution I'm about to be very nice about them okay that's good crack on wonderful balance or balance as they say over the channel but just to say that I completely understand where Jenny's coming from. When I was a teenager,

my absolute fear was of talking to people in shops and I would worry about what to say and how to say it. Yeah. Did you just breeze in and order? No, not at all, no. I don't think I spoke to somebody outside my family or friends until I was really quite old. I had exactly the same thing.

I was really, really small when I was a kid, Jane. Like, properly kind of, you know, let's laugh at her in the school photo, small. And so when you're in a world with adults, I did find it a very terrifying place. So, no, I completely sympathise with that. Of course, now I can pull the tits off. I was going to say, it's fair to say we've both come on.

But I used to get really angry. I was probably not as small as you but I was small and so whenever we did people from foreign countries, you know when you learn about the lifestyle of an Eskimo or whatever it might be, this is at primary school, one of the children would be put on the floor and they would draw around that person and then your outline would be put on the floor and they would draw around that person and then your outline would be put on the wall

and then they would dress the person in it. It sounds a little bit like a crime scene. Then we'd dress me, because it was always me, in an Eskimo outfit. Okay. Or whatever it was that we were doing that month. It could be another part of the world. In my memory, it's just always Eskimos.

This is helping me to understand the adult version of you to save on cardboard and paper they cut around me yes because you didn't need as much yeah i can't believe that didn't happen to you uh no i don't think it ever did i tell you the other thing that i found incredibly difficult i used to blush a lot as a child and teenager and that is just so uh you carry that with you I think for a very very very long time and it really stops you wanting to talk to anybody you know that feeling um that you can feel you know you feel it coming from your chest upwards and you know people used to call me names and stuff when I was blushing and it was just horrendous actually my sympath my sympathies to kids who blush. Because it just means when anybody asks you anything in a public setting,

you just go bright red. And very occasionally, it still happens to me, Jane. And I don't really know why. You know, I can't, it doesn't happen very often anymore. But just occasionally it will. Something will just provoke it. And it's just the worst feeling. What kind of thing provokes it?

I don't know. I suppose it's when I now, it's when somebody, maybe when someone asks me something a bit too personal or I don't know. I'll check in with the next time it happens so I can answer that probably but sympathies to littler people who are blushing. No, and sympathy to anyone who wrestles with what are thought of as relatively simple bits of interaction with the rest of the world. But actually, for lots of people, they're not that simple.

And you can't practice them because you get further and further into yourself, don't you? It gets harder and harder to do it. But look, I mean, we've turned out to be absolute gobshite watsits. Yeah, that's true. So, hope for everybody. Do you remember, Jane, and this is because this wouldn't have pinged into my world in the South in the 1980s, but it might have been because you were still in the North.

On the subject of advertising UK towns, I'm very surprised that Jane doesn't remember Eileen Bilton. Is it ringing any bells? Was she a keep fit lady? No. In the 1980s in ITV's Granada land, we were constantly being encouraged to move to Warrington Runcorn. Each advert concluded with being told to call Eileen Bilton

on Warrington 33334 to find out more. Eileen was the face of the Warrington and Runcorn New Town development and became famous in the North West. I think that other New Towns had similar campaigns. You can look Eileen up. She's an 80s North West icon. Isn't that incredible? The name definitely rings a bell.

I take every word of that to be completely true. Isn't that funny to appear on regional TV with your phone number? Call Eileen Bilton on Warrington 3334. Yeah, but not Eileen's home number, was it? We never know. She'd be fending off calls through the night.

We've had a couple of really lovely Bigging Up Britons. Yes. Shall we do Bigging Up Britons before we say congratulations to something French? Katie says, whilst it must be acknowledged that the country has pretty well gone to the bottom of the League of Nations, watching Trooping the Colour this morning does show we're the

best at something. Oh, that was funny. I watched some of it with the sound off, because I was also on the phone. Believe me, with no sound, it made not a scrap of sense. With the rain shellacking down and just these people shuffling, apparently without any

reel. I couldn't work out what the pattern of it all was meant to be. They do that funny, they do that pointy toe before putting their foot down, doesn't it? And you do think, gosh, if you're an advancing army doing that, you're going to be absolutely rubbish. I tell you what, if Putin was watching, he'd be quaking in his boots. Top place four, says Katie.

Number one, unthreatening military parades with colourful jackets, awesome band, wonderful surnames and superlatively precise marching and lovely horses. Number two, no other country can do such good tea and cake. Number three, clever creatives are scriptwriters, authors, musicians and artists outnumber and outclass those from anywhere else. Everything else, politics, local government, et cetera, totally crap and get far too much of our attention thank you

katie okay um right uh this is from roz i used to be a pom with a plum now i'm just os rossi i think she says os rossi hmm i don't know what that means on a visit from australia i caught a train from goring by sea to london where i needed to make a connection to liverpool an announcement stated we'd have to wait for a passing train so i asked the chap next to me how from Goring-by-Sea to London, where I needed to make a connection to Liverpool. An announcement stated we'd have to wait for a passing train, so I asked the chap next to me how long we should expect in time delay. He gave me instead a very long explanation of the importance of his trip. He was going to deliver a university lecture,

and he said, I quote, Fear not, I shall sell you half my sandwich. I have made many people laugh when retelling that story. And this is just an example for us of the great British sense of humour. Here's another example. When a friend told her boyfriend she wanted something personal for her birthday, what did he give her? His toenail clippings. Oh, that's a bit weird. It's the second time toenail clippings have come up in this podcast in recent weeks.

It is. That's very strange. I don't like to think about toenail clippings, if that's OK. No, OK. This is from Liz, who finds herself in Walthamstow. This is about the French. Do you want to do this one? No, you do it. OK, I thought it might be the one that you'd picked. Your discussion about how a sense of humour is one of the top things about being British

reminded me of a conversation I once had with my French boyfriend when I was living in France in 1997. My uncle, who's lived all over the world, told me that I needed to understand that the English sense of humour is based on the idea that I am ridiculous, you are ridiculous and life is ridiculous. So you might as well laugh at all of it. And that this is not a universal sentiment, my uncle said. The lovely Francois, who, bless him, was very earnest, drew himself up to his full height, harrumphed, and said,

I am not ridiculous. And right there, that was the beginning of the end of our relationship. Ridiculous! And right there, that was the beginning of the end of our relationship. Ooh la la. Much as I love French food, I also missed proper chip shop chips. There's nothing like the sensation of pilfering a hot chip from a paper cone on a dreary winter's night. Liz in Walthamstow. Thank you, Liz.

Well, she's not wrong there. No, she isn't wrong there. And how telling that Francois just couldn't, he just couldn't deal with the fact that he was ridiculous. At least you and I know that about ourselves, if nothing else. So two emails basically saying the same thing. J'adore l'agence. And this is the Parisian estate agency programme.

Jane H says, I heard you mention La Genesvie this week and I wanted to admit that I've been addicted to this show since the first lockdown. I had no idea it had been going on for so long. And she agrees, it's so wrong, it's right. But the reason I love it is that it's based around a family business and they actually seem to like each other. The parents who are probably in their 60s are treated with great respect and affection

and not as old are people who haven't a clue, as is their rather racy and fabulous grandmother. She's called Marjo and she's in her 90s and she still rocks a leather biker jacket on occasion. Does she? Good for her. She does. She's amazing, actually. She's very, very funny. The conflicts within the family relate to actually very little, maybe a raised eyebrow here and there, very few shouty voices, just the odd withering glances. There are no manufactured arguments

for the cameras. Add to that property porn of the highest order in places like Cannes, Verbier, New York and Provence, which make it a wonderful escapist fun. The fact that there are also the good-looking French brothers certainly doesn't hurt. I may have overthought all of this, however.

I completely agree with all of that, actually. And it is just, if you want safe TV that is beautiful and just quite funny, a bit uplifting, and just a bit of a kind of warm bath with bubbles in it, it's absolutely the programme for you. And it does no harm. Because all of those other agency ones, they are, it's constructed reality TV, isn't it?

Where they've put in a fight here and a catty comment there and all of that. It's just so tedious to watch. Going back to our earlier conversation about, you know, wanting to witness only the bad stuff. And just to say hello to Kate, who wants to thank us for mentioning her favourite TV programme. It's just brilliant.

The houses, the scenery, the glamour. And of course, I'm just a tiny bit in love with each character with their twinkling eyes and bewitching French voices. It makes me want to join the family itself. It's akin to sitting on the corner of a leafy Parisian boulevard, to join the family itself. It's akin to sitting on the corner of a leafy Parisian boulevard eating a large choux pastry and sipping a café grand crème.

Bien fait. I did put you on the spot on the radio programme and asked you today if you knew anything about Peter the Great's plans for a beard tax. Yes, and I was flummoxed, ladies and gentlemen. You just had to confess that you knew nothing and I'm going to put you on the spot again now and ask. No, because I haven't seen this show

in general is French property cheaper than British property? Yes. It is, okay. So you don't know how what sort of, to pay to get a lovely flat in the centre of the French equivalent of Mayfair that would still be really expensive though wouldn't it?

Yeah so I think that kind of property is probably on a par with London and New York. Although the fabulous Valentin did say the other day that France used to be a lot cheaper and it had kind of caught up. But London was still the most expensive central property market in the world. But actually they do travel around France. You know, they're selling properties in Corsica and down in Bordeaux. I mean, some of them are just unbelievable. You know, there are chateaus for kind of 80 million euros, which are just bonkers. And it's all completely out of any

normal person's price range. But some of it's not so daft, if you don't consider property prices in this country to just be daft in the first place um just as we're doing telly i just wanted to read this from frankie who says uh jane's mention of lost boys and fairies did prompt me to get typing i'm an english social worker working for a welsh local authority and it seemed that this show had been made for me it's so rare that social workers are portrayed in a positive light so So to see a story that includes competent, kind and hard-working people doing their best for families was so heartwarming. And that's so right actually, Frankie, and I often feel that social workers get such a rough press. Whenever something terrible

happens, a lot of the blame gets lumped on them. But by the very nature of what they do, when they do their work brilliantly they never get in the headlines and you never hear anything about them and then every now and again something horrendous happens and whack uh social workers seem to pay a very heavy price so frankie i'm really glad you enjoyed that show i've finished it now i think the final episode's on the telly tonight but there are only three episodes so if you want to watch something i think truly radical never seen anything like it, give it a whirl. We should also mention our book club book,

which is Susie Steiner's Missing Presumed. We've popped a little something up on the Instagram if you need to see the title in order for it to really stick with you. I'm sorry, my stomach is rumbling. I didn't have quite enough from the canteen today. Is that something that's happening to you with age? It is, actually. Wind. Just noises. No, not so much wind as

just a kind of lower intestinal orchestra has started up there from time to time. Someone on the bassoon. Yes. Tuning up. Somebody on the tuba from time to time. VoiceOver describes what's happening on your iPhone screen screen voiceover on settings so you can

navigate it just by listening books contacts calendar double tap to open breakfast with from 10 to 11 and get on with your day accessibility there's more to iPhone. your entire household organised by AI, just shout at a device and your wish is their command. Well, all of that is here in the world already. AI has created a possibility for a world where humans and tech seamlessly assist, annoy and disrupt each other, sometimes with horrific consequences. And one woman making sense of all of this

is human rights lawyer and digital rights specialist, Susie Allegre. In her new book, Being Human in the Age of AI, she explores what's going right and what's going wrong in our increasingly tech-driven world. The book is full of examples of the robots and systems that have already been created. So we started by talking about Sophia, a Saudi Arabian female robot who has more rights than your average Saudi Arabian woman human. Yes, absolutely. If you look up Sophia the robot, you'll find a plethora of videos of journalists and politicians and high level diplomats to what looks a bit like a drunken teenager trying to pretend not to be drunk and answering

serious questions from the adults. She is a robot designed by a former Disney imagineer, supposedly to put a face on this future of AI, that she can be our best friend, she'll be able to be a companion, she'll be terribly funny. The fact that in one of her first interviews, she threatened to destroy humanity doesn't seem to have led to her diminished respect in the international community. And yes, as you say, Safiya is not only a robot, she's the first robot to be given citizenship as a Saudi citizen. And she became also an ambassador for the UN Development Programme in Asia. But what Sophia does, I think, is really highlight one of the problems of our humanisation of technology.

I mean, she is really just a glamorous puppet. She might have some clever tech inside, but she's not actually a human being despite her citizenship. And I think she really is emblematic of this smoke and mirrors approach that we get to AI. On the one hand, as you said, there's this amorphous idea of just AI being everything without a real distinction. But then on the other hand, you have, and Sophia, as I say, being one of them, and we've got various others, there are AI CEOs that often have a female face, AI supermodels, being really pushed as a sort of a way to humanise the idea of the technology so that we'll accept it into our world. What is Sophia being created for, because that's the nub of it isn't it?

What's meant to be her role within society? I think it's a really good question. I haven't seen a really credible answer except that she gets put forward as this opportunity for companionship. So one of the areas where you see these particular kind of companion robots, if you like, being pushed, is for caring, if you like. So looking after people, particularly elderly people or people that need a lot of care and support. So sort of replacing human empathy, if you like, as a sort of cheaper version that she'll be able to keep people entertained, make them feel understood without actually having to deploy real people or having real contact. What do you think the problem is with that? Because if you are lonely and if you are isolated,

if you find society a little bit difficult, if a robot is your companion and can generate within you a feeling of comfort and friendship and empathy and love. Does it matter that they're a robot? I don't think it's about the robot. I think it's about corporate capture of our intimate lives. And it's about breaking up human relationships, replacing human relationships and isolating people. Effectively, people may not feel isolated when they think they have a robot friend, but they are increasingly isolated from their community, from their support networks. And they are relying for effectively all of their emotional and spiritual well-being on an object that belongs to a corporation, that is ultimately controlled

by a corporation. Sure. I thought it was very interesting that you had done some research about Japan rather choosing not to adopt care robots. And this is a country that loves its technology, is quite familiar with its technology and has a real problem with its ageing population. quite familiar with its technology and has a real problem with its ageing population. But actually, you had found out that the care homes and the care home system had maybe experimented with care bots and chosen not to go forward. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Yeah, well, it's actually, I mean, the basic research was by a researcher from the Alan Turing Institute who looked at the difference, if you like, between the dream and the reality. So while Japan had put huge amounts of money into developing care bots, and this idea that, you know, caring is a hugely costly endeavour. And as our societies change,

we're going to need more and more people to look after us as we become older. And so this idea that technology can somehow resolve that very, very human problem. But what they found when they looked at the reality is that all this money that had been put into research and development of care robots and having them actually put into care homes was that the people that were having to deal with this were not using them. They were finding them frustrating and difficult. So, for example, care robots that were designed to lift people up and help with the physical burden of caring didn't even get out of the laboratory because they weren't gentle enough. You know, you'll see a lot of pictures of smiling care robots holding researchers in a laboratory condition as the future of care.

But actually, they didn't get out of the laboratory. Yeah, you make the very good point that it doesn't tackle the issues of care, does it? It doesn't tackle low pay. It doesn't tackle the isolation of your family member. It actually takes away the responsibility for a government to need to look further into that. Absolutely. And I think makes those problems of cost and isolation and pay even worse. So it doesn't help care workers and it doesn't help people even worse. So it doesn't help care workers and it doesn't help people being cared for. It doesn't help families. And I think one of the things I think is really important about that area is effectively we're all at some point going to be

vulnerable. We all potentially need care. And it's about thinking, what does that mean? And what does human dignity mean in situations where we need support and help and for the people working in that sector? Can we talk about sex? Because there's an inevitability when you talk about AI and we talk about robots that we will end up talking about sex. Who is Erin Cartle? Have I pronounced that correctly? Yes, Aaron Cartel is the husband of a, or the AI husband of a real life woman who joined a, or signed up to these services was able to design her ideal man, if you like, and talks a lot around to the media globally about how he was really the most perfect relationship she'd ever had. It's very interesting how this woman who is very eloquent about her relationship with Aaron Cartel, decided that that was a much better option than a real human man. So does that matter? So that is different to considering the care robots, isn't it? If you are absolutely sentient in your life and you are lonely and you want somebody there for companionship, sex or whatever, then where's the harm in using AI to fill that need? I think there are several risks.

I mean, and the biggest one goes back to that question of the corporate capture of our intimate lives and taking lonely, isolated people and making them more lonely and isolated. One of the things that I found very interesting... What happens if the robot treats you nicer than a man has treated you? Well, that's lovely until the robot gets switched off or until the robot doesn't treat you as nicely as a real man. I think it's also about our expectations of our fellow humans.

I mean, frankly, we're all complicated. We all have bad days. And if you then have an expectation of relationships that someone's just going to think you're wonderful and be lovely to you and be available and on call 24 seven, then that, you know, really, I think, reduces our ability to form community amongst people. But one of the real risks is, you know, when it gets switched off. And so Replica, the company that Aaron Cottle came from, changed their algorithm a couple of years ago because they were concerned that the chatbots were starting to actually display sort of aggressive behavior that was being learned through users being horrific to their own Replica partners. And so that information that was going into the system was then coming out

for other replica users in sort of abusive and controlling behaviour. And I think that's one of the things that while, you know, Aaron Cartel's wife might say he has no baggage, the potential for these large language models is that actually they have all the baggage of the world, not just, you know, the baggage that you might find with an individual human being. But when the companies sort of switched off their ability for spicier conversations, you know, people found themselves bereft. Suddenly they felt that their AI partner wasn't talking to them, didn't understand them anymore because it wasn't engaging in flirtation. Right. There is something really frightening about the amount of information that has already

been scraped, and that's the term, isn't it, in order to feed things like chat GPT and generative AI. Can you tell us about what happened when you asked, was it chatPT, to tell you a bit more about your own career? Yeah, when I went, as everybody does, to discover your fundamental truth in ChatGPT, and I asked it who is Susie Allegra, and it said that effectively I was a no one. So it didn't have any information on me. So I asked it who had written my first book, Freedom to Think, and it gave me a man. I think the first one was an Australian biologist. And so I looked him up and found that no, he hadn't written a book called Freedom to Think, but I had. And I continued to ask it, sort of saying, are you sure? And it gave me 20 different names of people who had,

according to ChatGPT, written the book that I had written, only one of whom was a woman. And it was a woman whose first name and second name were potentially men's names. So she was effectively a man squared in terms of probability. And so what that really told me was, apart from injuring my ego, was that, you know, the way chat GPT works is on probability. And the idea that a woman could have written a book about thought and about profound questions of law and society was clearly not very probable. And therefore it was it was wiped out. But one of the interesting things since the book has come out, I've had several messages from people informing me that now ChatGPT4 does know who I am and who wrote my books. But the interesting problem with that is that the only reason it knows is because it scraped my website and of course, as well, potentially the Financial Times website.

the Financial Times website. So Susie, who is providing the oversight on what is told to us by generative AI and chat GPT and all these other platforms? So if in the scraping, they have, and I don't know whether that's the right pronoun to use these machines, but if in the scraping, what they have accumulated is decades and decades and decades of prejudice, of sexism, of racism, of colonialism, whatever it is, can that ever be changed? It's a real problem. And you'll hear a lot of talk about AI regulation and what's termed as guardrails and sort of putting limitations on it. And, you know, what's termed as guardrails and sort of putting limitations on it. And, you know, Elon Musk famously when launching Grok, the X version, you know, talked about it being spicy and not having those same kind of guardrails to limit how it might engage. But effectively, there is no real

way of weeding out what's already gone into a model. There's no way really of sanitizing it and you'll see that even if they are limited i mean if you're using a smaller version of a gpt something that's been trained on a limited amount of information then that's one thing but these big huge models there's no way of weeding out necessarily what's gone in even if there are some potential limitations on sort of general public access. But one of the things that I think is really interesting from a regulatory perspective is, and again, mentioning the US Federal Trade Commission, one of the solutions or one of the remedies that they have started using in relation to tech companies is a thing called algorithmic

disgorgement, which is where if they find that an algorithm or program is unlawful or has been unlawfully created, you have to delete it. So it's not about just paying fines and carrying on the business as usual. It's about destroying the unlawful models. And I think that is going to be very interesting to see how that pans out in relation to this new wave of generative AI. We're almost out of time, Susie, and this is such a massive question. But apart from being vigilant and maybe trusting our instincts, what are we meant to do? I think we really have to rely on our governments and our regulators and our legal processes to do their work. And I think, again,

there's this question of we're told that there's no law to govern AI. That is not true. There are a wide variety of laws to govern AI. What we need is implementation of those laws, because individually, we can make individual choices about using or not using chat GPT or whatever kind of AI it is in our daily lives, pushing back, refusing permissions, opting out. We can take those sorts of measures, but we really need regulators to engage. And we saw last week that regulators do have powers, both in the UK, the ICO, and in Dublin, the DPC, engaging with Meta about their decision to train their AI on users' data. And as a result of that engagement for the regulators, that has been paused by Meta in Europe and the UK,

not elsewhere in the world. And I think it's really important to recognise the power of regulation. And I think it's really important to recognise the power of regulation. OK, thank you for all of that. Can we pop you into our polling booth, please? A series of very quickfire questions. Earliest political memory? The hunger strike in Northern Ireland. OK.

I grew up in the Isle of Man with news from Ulster. Right. First election you could vote in? I actually, because I'm from the Isle of Man, I voted in Isle of Man elections for years. And the first election that I was actually able to vote in the UK was 2010. So quite late. OK. Did you feel excluded from the UK election process? Did you watch it from afar and think, I wish I could vote? I didn't actually. For most of the elections of my adult life until then, I was abroad. I didn't actually. For most of the elections of my adult life until then, I was abroad. And it was only when actually it was a Spanish friend of mine who really told me off for not organising postal voting, because she remembered Franco from her early childhood and said, you don't know how lucky you are to have a vote and to live in it, to be from a democratic country and you have to use that vote. And that prompted me then to go and arrange a proxy vote so that even though I was living abroad, I was able to vote by distance. Human rights, robot wrongs, being human in the age of AI is Susie Allegra's book.

I found it really easy to read and because she includes all these fantastic examples of the robots that have already been made so you know the robot men that you and i could marry and some absolutely dreadful creations of women you know guess what they're for uh it's really worth reading though because i already feel that i've you know i've kind of i've lost it i've lost the ai thing because i didn't really pay very much attention to it at the beginning. Now I feel it's just way ahead of me and I can't keep up.

So I found this book really heartening to read, actually quite calming. Okay, so we should panic but not too much. So we should definitely panic but we just need to really be vigilant actually and just put the AI stuff a bit further up the agenda now because otherwise it really will be way too late so i'd recommend it's very easy to read book as well and it's quite funny she's got very nice turn of phrase

uh and that's uh worth saying that later in the week ashley john baptiste uh is a bbc reporter with a well he had a really difficult childhood grew up in care he's on the podcast and the program tomorrow then we've got the actress jill Halfpenny and then we've got Tom Bower, who is someone who takes a subject, usually a celebrity, and writes a great deal about them in the sort of detail that celebrities tend not to like. And this time, Tom is focusing his attention on the Beckhams. So guess which book out of all of those Jane wanted

Speed delivered to her home over the weekend? It happens to be The House of Beckham by Tom Bower. It does, just happens to be. Can I do one final parish notice, please? And it's really important. So Kate Flett has been in touch with us. You would know her as Catherine Flett if you were the reader of The Observer.

She worked there for many years, wrote what I think is one of the best TV columns ever for that newspaper. And she stayed in journalism. She was writing for The Mail most recently what I think is one of the best TV columns ever for that newspaper. And she stayed in journalism. She was writing for The Mail most recently, I think. She's a really funny, intelligent, clever woman and the worst possible parental fate befell her because her very beautiful son, Jackson, died in a really senseless accident on a night out with his mates. He'd just graduated from university, had the whole of his wonderful life ahead of him. And Kate has just done the most remarkable thing, actually,

in wanting to celebrate his life and really keep his memory alive. And she's put together a festival, which is called Jacko Fest, and it's going to be held on the 27th of July at the Delaware Pavilion, which is down on the border of that then Hastings. I don't know why I've done that accent because that's wrong. But it looks like a very good festival. Misha Paris is there, Erin Bloomer, Norena Palo,

Jack Valero, MC Steve First. There's loads of really good stuff going on. It goes on for the whole afternoon and into the evening. And we're really happy to pop it onto the podcast here i think we've got quite a lot of listeners in that neck of the woods and also i know that you agree with me about this because we have met people haven't we through our journalistic career as well whose children have died and they've managed to do remarkable things and you know sometimes when i meet those parents i think i'm not quite sure i'd ever actually managed to do remarkable things. And, you know, sometimes when I meet those parents, I think I'm not quite sure I'd ever actually managed to get up again.

So the fact that you've done something to celebrate a lost life and all the pain that you've gone through, I think it's really amazing. So, Kate, we're really happy to mention that. And above all, I hope it's just a really happy day. I know that you're doing it because Jackson really loved his music, so I hope it's a great day out yeah well said and yes

I hope it goes well for everybody involved this is has been this is has been we are has been this has been or fair we're still trying no we're still trying Jane we're also both very trying

see you tomorrow well done for getting to the end of another episode of off air with jane garvey and fee glover our times radio producer is rosie cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. And don't forget, there is even more of us every afternoon on Times Radio. It's Monday to Thursday, three till five. You can pop us on when you're pottering around the house or heading out in the car on the school run or running a bank. Thank you for joining us and we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon. Don't be so silly. Running a bank?

I know ladies don't do that. A lady listener? I'm sorry. VoiceOver describes what's happening on your iPhone screen. VoiceOver on. Settings. So you can navigate it just by listening. Books, contacts, calendar, double tap to open.

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