Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Mary, mother of a Fiat Panda

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

From stock market advice to travel tips - we really do it all on this podcast. Jane and Fi chat good morning Cava, Emmerdale Farm, and Boris Johnson dog toys... Plus, former CEO of Unilever Paul Polman discusses the One Young World Summit. We've announced our next book club pick! 'Just Kids' is by Patti Smith.You can listen to the playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3qIjhtS9sprg864IXC96he?si=uOzz4UYZRc2nFOP8FV_1jg&pi=BGoacntaS_uki.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 Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Virgin Mary never passed her test, but she's very much, she never got the chance. When did she die? We don't know. Nothing about her life is... Well, it was definitely before motorcars for a bit. Greetings, everybody, welcome to Wednesday. You find us both in Times Towers today. Although something interesting is going to happen next week

because Jane Garvey is taking away with her some remote recording equipment and the outside broadcast that is the spare room at sheltered housing is going to be fired up. Turns out the best place to do anything of this nature is the kitchen. So I won't be in the spare room.

Be in the kitchen. This is going to be, it's going to be an experiment. But people have come with us before. They stuck with us during a pandemic. Oh my goodness. And we were in various degrees of domestic disarray during the pandemic. But we never missed an episode, didn't we? I don't think we did.

We didn't. We fired ourselves up in various different locations and rooms and benches and all kinds of things. And we just got on with it because that's the nature of the business and our dedication to our jobs. Especially before Christmas. I really want to miss an episode. You make a good point there, sister. Let's just keep it real. What's the matter, Eve?

Yes, okay. Do you want to do that for you? Yes, okay. So Eve has just reminded us that we need to do a call-out because tomorrow we are talking to a money expert specifically about female investing. So if you've got any questions, where to start, where to stop, how long to do it for, all that kind of stuff. Then we would definitely like to hear from you today, please.

Jane and Feet at Times Dot Radio. Obviously she won't be able to give any specific tips, although we will press her for them because that's all you want to know, really, isn't it? What shares have you bought? Yes, I just want to know a really, really good tip at the moment that means that I can be one of those really super smug people in the balcony cruise department later in life

who says, yes, well, of course, I was in a video right in the beginning. You know, where I, do you remember, there's no reason why you would, I bought Deliveroo shares. Yes, and they tanked, didn't they? Absolutely tanked. And then the other day, I got a, I mean, who gets a check these days, by the way, I've got a check in the post for my delivery shares because Deliveroo has been delivery shares.

Deliveroo has now been sold and I'll just be completely honest just to display my own stupidity. I bought £500 worth of delivery shares when they were first floated and my cheque was for £240. Okay, Jane. Well, I don't know why I'm laughing at she.

Well, I don't know why you're laughing either. Because the only two shares that I hold and both of them were on tips that I'd heard from somebody. Not from me, I hope. No, not from you. One is Gregs, which are down 45%. Down 45%. I mean, in fairness, I could see why you went.

For the same reason, I went for delivery because it was, I think it was during the pandemic. Well, we've both got a similar theme, haven't you? I thought, well, I'm eating a lot. Yeah, exactly. If I am everybody else's. Because Gregs had had that fantastic, I mean, they do their publicity brilliantly,

you know, where they'd had a, you know, the launch of a, I don't know, a restaurant, Fennix, and then that does something clever with the vegan sausage roll up north. I don't know what it was. Anyway, I bought it into those. Those are running at 45% loss. And the other one was rent a kill

because I thought, well, there are bound to be more plagues. Oh, gosh. Those are down 25 cents. I've never bought anything. So, I think what we've illustrated there is, we're not experts. And that shares can go down as well as well. Oh, they so can.

But we want to be positive about investing because there is such a disparity between the amount of money invested by men and the amount of money invested by women. And across the course of a lifetime, you are undoubtedly better off if you have done some investing. So that's what we're trying to tap into. And we shouldn't be scared of it. You and I have now made fools of ourselves. But we've owned it. And you're right, I mean, women's pension funds are just nowhere near as big as. They're tiny. And we just don't tend to want to put our money into markets. That's just a truth.

But actually, as we discussed today with our guest, who's the former CEO of Unilever, Paul Pullman, we are frequently the very, very valuable customers of companies. So we're quite happy to be targeted to part with our money, especially when we hold the household purse strings. But we are not represented either on the boards of those companies or as investors of those companies. but those companies are dedicated to asking us to open our wallet and give them our money.

So we are trying to square that circle in our own tiny way. I was always boggled by just how many products were actually all owned by Unilever. I mean, just everything. Practically every brand of washing powder, I mean, not every brand, but so many of them are all Unilever, aren't they? They are. So I've heard the company described as Dove to Marmite. It's Dove to Marmite and everything in between.

See, I didn't know they own Marmite. Yeah. Right, okay. It's not for everybody, Marmite, is it? No, I've always thought, actually, interestingly, that that was one of the most successful ad campaigns ever, the idea that people do feel strongly one way or the other about Marmite. It recognised a truth about something, didn't it?

Well, it kind of did, but also I'd say I can't be the only person who's pretty ambivalent. Sometimes I fancy it, sometimes I don't. Oh, I don't like it at all. Okay, right. No, okay. Now, the playlist is going great guns. Indeed, to spare our executive producer Rosie

we can probably say it's done, can't we? So we're just going to do these mini-playlists. They're going to have very specific titles and they're just for all of us. They're going to go up on Spotify. This one is called I've got the house to myself. Should I just run through what's on it? Yeah, go for it.

Okay. So you have chosen. Odyssey and Native New Yorker. I've chosen Candy Staten, Young Hearts Run Free. Vicky has chosen Don't Stop Believing by Journey, not the glee version, not the glee version. Helen has asked for the Gibson Brothers, Kayserami Vida. Oh, well, that's a happener.

I could do a jiggle to that. Liz Stewart, originally from Exeter and Devon, but now to be found in Melbourne. Good morning, Liz. You're topsy-turvy world. Echo Beach, Arthur and the muffins. Now, that is a banger. It's slightly melancholy, isn't it?

Okay, Beach, far away in time. We've got time for melancholy. That really reminds me of teenage discos. Very much so. You couldn't dance to it, but everyone tried. Rachel suggested no control by One Direction. Yes, I've got a bit of time for One Direction. For One D. Okay.

Seduke, Stevie Wonder from Hazel. This is just going to be fantastic. Could I have this kiss forever by Enrique Iglesias and Whitney Houston? Some really, really good choices. And almost finally, penultimately, Claire, with Living on a Prayer, which you always sing along to when you hear it. come up on the magic or the heart and Eve is going to have the final choice.

Did you know this? What would your choice be? You can come back to us later in the show. We want to thank as well the correspondent who just said what a lovely soothing voice Eve has. Oh, very much so. You are soothing and calm and collected and you should do more voiceover work really.

Well, she's actresses, but we haven't really made too much of this but she's a trained nurse. That's why she's working with us. She's been picked to be both a producer and also just someone, you know, who can sort out our medication in the late years. Absolutely not. You're not. Leave me out.

Okay. So as far as I can make out just from anecdotes that have come from you over the last couple of weeks or so, Jane, you're asking a lot of people whether or not they're interested in caring for you. Well, I've been, shall we say, I've been made to concentrate on the subject. You know, you can't sign people up and hold them to. why not you know you can't go on eve what was it put your microphone on go on give us all a treat you've got lovely calm boys club chopicana oh fantastic fantastic

that is brilliant so this is I love this playlist I love this playlist and we're going to all put it on and we can think of each other whenever we listen to it that everybody is just having a little what will it be if it's 10 tracks kind of 45 minutes of gentle jiggery of just like wolf this is our time and of course the great thing ladies and some gentlemen

she can combine it with housework tick two boxes how fabulous that would be Club Tropicama drinks are free that suggests it was an all-inclusive and I don't know about that I've got a number of experiences of all-inclusive

I would say one not so good one very good indeed much more recently I thoroughly enjoyed it How many stars did it have Because I think an all-inclusive in a five-star resort, which I know occasionally you've accidentally put yourself into and made yourself suffer right through. But that must be amazing.

I mean, if you can tip up at the buffet and you've got a choice of king brawns. Yeah, well, at breakfast. Or longestines. Then that's great. But it's when you've got an indistinguishable buffet of beige. Which very much reminds you dimly of the, evening meal the night before.

Very much so. That's when you've got to worry. But, no, my most recent experience was on Crete about seven or eight years ago. So I haven't been back to an all-inclusive since. But I very proudly wore my wristband. And I was always, just as I, if I'm honest, I'm, I'm, you continue to be agape at those people who smoke outside hospitals. They're just, you know, they are patients.

Let's just, let's just say it. And you do sometimes think, goodness me. Is it wise to have a fact in the circumstances? But still they do fee. Sorry, why have we made the leap from the breakfast buffet wristbands? No, I was always, if I'm honest, and it's an internal thing, but I would be amazed by the number of people having a cocktail at sort of 10 o'clock. I know what you mean.

I mean, you just think, crikey, because there was always a mocktail available. That was the wonder of the all-inclusive. Plenty of choice. So for a while, I used to go on holiday quite regularly with a group of girlfriends. And actually, we're going to try and... I like your, just say, girlfriends. Girlfriends, yep. We're going to try and revivify the experience now.

We're all less kind of shackled to different things. But we had a category of hotel. Or is it? Actually, for me, it's quite nice about it. We used to have a category of hotel that was, it was morning carver. Because there's a certain type of hotel where a good morning carver

defines the breakfast buffet experience. Yes. So it's not a good. good morning champagne. No, no. It's a morning carver kind of place. Well, I did stay in a hotel, a really beautiful, quite extraordinary hotel in Seville, a couple of years ago, one of those last minute things. And they had Carver with the breakfast buffet there. And yes, the locals, and indeed many visitors were thoroughly enjoying it. Yeah, I would just be really, really unhappie. Yeah, by 11 o'clock. Oh, you'd feel really jaunty for about 10 minutes. And then by the time you

started off to your sightseeing expedition, you'd have that dull ink. Yeah. No, very much so. I'd be so so grumpy by five o'clock. So, no, it's not wise. But, I mean, everyone else seemed to be enjoying it enormously. I hope you're enjoying these travel tips because you won't have got much out of our stock market advice earlier. So this is all absolutely golden, for those of you planning, a trip in the near future.

What's the strangest thing? Because this is always fertile territory. What is the strangest thing that you've ever eaten at breakfast time in a hotel on holiday? Oh, I think I'm fairly certain I had some. of cottage pie brilliant it was like a continental

cottage pie so I don't know I don't know why it was being served at breakfast probably because they needed to get rid of it but I also had one of my happiest most genuinely orgasmic moments of life nothing to do with sex inevitably but I bit into what looked like a small donut

I wasn't expecting much from it and out came this most extraordinary kind of confectioners custard, vanilla, scented unctuous, wonderful potion I still think about. Okay. I hope that's brought it to live for everybody. So you had

a filled custard donut. That was in Spain. Lovely. Back in Spain. So as you know I'm in my Greek period at the moment. You certainly are, aren't you? But I do find there's a lovely dish on a Spanish breakfast buffet which is basically roast potatoes.

with some peppers strewn across the top and baked so you can convince yourself you're having a really, really healthy dish but it's not because it's slathered and butter and olive oil and salt or whatever but I do like that very much indeed

and then to be followed by one of those mini smoked cheeses you know what I mean the ones you can never open you need a special kind of chainsaw actually well they are designed to get into those to frustrate you I think also you can work off a few calories

when you're trying to get into it So that's quite helpful. Yeah, and they're strangely unsatisfying. You always need more than one, don't you? I'm a bit bland, I think. Yeah. Okay. So, can we just say a very big hello to Leslie,

who is and has been and always will be, our ghost writer, and people really enjoyed our conversation with her. And Leslie says that we've very much got the kind of bit between our teeth on this subject. And we really have, and I think we're going to try and carry this on through our interviews, not to be a kind of

make gotcha moments and make falls out of people who come on the show but we talk about it with Penny Lancaster don't we at the start of our interview with her in Cheltenham because she is brilliantly honest in her memoir about the fact that she wrote it with

somebody. So she told her stories to a ghost writer and it was really important for her because she has pretty severe dyslexia as well and so he had a really lovely conversation about Helena, the girl who had, you know, woman who had helped Penny bring this thing to fruition. And it's just nice to be able to do that, isn't it?

Because then you're not kind of feeling like you're in some weird alternative universe where we're all pretending that something pretty obvious isn't going on. So, Leslie, yes, we're going to carry on doing that. And do you know what? I'm going to save your beautiful poem about grief that you have sent us to another time because we do inevitably talk about death on the podcast quite a bit and the next time that we do I will make sure that we do read that and actually I might ask Eve if she could do the reading of it

because she has got by far the best voice on this podcast so we will save that for another time but thank you for staying in touch with us the way we're acting it's almost as though Eve's been given she's been given the offer of alternative employment and we're absolutely desperate to keep her here with us nothing could be further from the truth well we are desperate no no we're not

no we are desperate to keep you Do you want to leave us? Of course she doesn't. I mean, honestly, she's... Oh, the very thought. Katie says... I didn't think that was very convincing, I know, nor did I.

And he slightly looked away into the middle distance when answering that. She'll get on fine with Rory and Alistair, won't she? The stuff of nightmares for us, that is. Katie says, I'd be interested to hear whether Lady Glenn Connor gives any credit to her ghostwriter, who happens to be the daughter of French. friends of ours. Thank you for this, Katie. Well, Lady Glenconnor, I don't want to speak ill over at all, actually. I have no reason to. She's coming on tomorrow, isn't she going to be

a guest on the podcast and on the radio show? She is a woman who is having the time of her life in her, let's just be honest, in her what she would acknowledge would be her later year. She is 93. And she's just having a wonderful time. And she's bringing out, I think, a book a year, Lady Glentconnor. She was Princess Margaret's Lady in Waiting. Quite a lot. and I do recommend that you seek out some of her stuff because she has stories to tell that really would make your hair curl about her marriage in particular.

She's suffered terribly, but she's come through with real verve and spirit and she's going to be on tomorrow and we are, well, we are going to have to ask her about, you know who, because... Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, I'm just going to call him Andrew Windsor, if that's right. I don't see why he gets to choose a great big hoof in name.

Well, I think there are... If we say Mamp, well, there's all sorts of stuff about him. Anyway, right, if only we had time. The Reverend Richard, Cher, is our regular correspondent from the state. I was catching up with the podcast last night. I heard your guests say his version of a prayer for a parking space. Yeah, he's got a prayer for everything, the Reverend Richard Coles. And they work, do they?

Well, he's having a good time in life, isn't he now? Actually, that's true. He's doing all right. Wonderful ad for... Actually, I missed a trick. We should have asked him who the patron saint of Channel 5 Sunday night. drama is because he's good on patron saints he knows them all I bet there is one

um my Catholic saint prophetess my Catholic family always uses the old Hail Mary full of grace help me find a parking space and it always works at the Virgin Mary never passed her test but she's very much she never got the chance did she when did she die we don't know nothing about her life is um well it was definitely before motor

I don't know, but I don't remember she gave birth and then after that she appears to be completely missing from the stories as far as I could, seems very unlike history you hinted a dark truth there what's happened there you really do, yeah have you seen

if she had been in the era of the motor vehicle I think she would have had a scoda a fiat panda I see her in actually a careful driver of a fiat panda That's what the Virgin Mary would have driven. Okay. I always thought the Fiat Panda just looked incredibly flimsy. Well, I bought two.

And I'm still here to tell the tale. Just about it. Well, that's good. Can we just do a very quick one from Alley in New Zealand? Pray tell what Scrabble app do you use and does it have cheats? No, it doesn't have cheats. And it's kind of the original, Allie. It is the Scrabble one by...

Mattel. I'm finding it hard to find a legitimate one without the pesky cheats allowed. I don't even know what you mean by that, but is it that some apps have got the ability to move your tiles around and pretend that the dog needs letting out so you create a diversion and

then pick a new tile from the bag? I mean, I've never done that and I would never do that and you definitely can't do that digitally. I'm looking interested but I've never played Scrabble. Oh my good God. Sorry. And call yourself a woman of words. Wow. I didn't. I'm addicted to it at the moment.

Are you? Yes. Completely. So what time do you start? Well, about 10 to 8 in the morning because Waffle got boring so now it's Scrabble. So Waffle just looks one dimensional

and incredibly dull once you get into the online Scrabble world. And you can play against strangers. So, Ali, if you download Scrabble by Mattel, then find me on the Scrabble thing, me Jiggy Wattset

and I'd happily give you a game. I'm not doing terribly well in the leaderboard. I'm playing against my partner at the moment. But he's a man. You can't expect to meet him. He's winning about seven to three.

And does he call himself a gentleman of letters? No, he doesn't at all. No, he's got one GCSE and technical drawing. Technical drawing. So I don't know what I'm not. He's done a right for himself. He certainly has now. What did he?

What is technical drawing? I'm just displayed my inner. I don't know. I think it's the things that you need to know, if you're going to draw a diagram on one of those leaflets that you and I never read in order to put together. He's very good at putting together flat pack. Oh, well, you can't. I mean, that's nothing to. Yeah, don't knock it. That's impressive. Yeah. I think more people should put that on dating apps, actually, because that's what we're really often. Good with an Allen key. Oh. It's got the full set. He's foot. It's got all the key. Stop it.

Well, you started it. Actually, we should just mention earlier in the week, we're having our literary salon on a Monday now with the, he is funny, isn't he? Robbie Mellon. The Times and Sunday Times literary editor, he straddles both mighty organs. Well, he does.

And he was, I think he was the chief judge in the Bailey Gifford Non-Fiction Prize. Yes. And the winner, it turns out you've read the book and I haven't. So tell our erudite audience here. Well, it's the collected diaries of Helen Garner and I have not read all of the diaries.

Yes, so I've dipped into it. And I'm so thrilled that she's won because they are unflinchingly honest. She has lived quite a life. I think some of the detail that she allows us to see from her head is incredibly useful. Is she hard on herself? No, she's, well, is she hard on herself.

She's hard on her decisions sometimes. but actually she's also really good at being quite gleeful and I think that is the right term about her honesty and how much she enjoys it. So it's a very, very visceral form of diary writing and I commend her to our audience. I couldn't, I mean, I haven't been all the way through the diaries because it's quite a lot actually.

But I think for that to have been the choice in a very densely packed erudite, let's take on the big themes of the world shortlist. Absolutely brilliant. That a woman's voice about her domestic life has been recognised. Oh, well, good. Okay, so that's Helen Garner, and the book is collected. Well, it's collected diaries.

It's got a subtype. Anyway, you'll be able to find it. You'll be able to find it. Just type in Helen Garner. And I think the other one that people really rave about is the spare room, which is her fiction. She's got a huge back catalogue. People in Australia will know an awful lot more about her.

Brilliant. Okay, let's talk about pets and their toys. This is horrific news from Martin in Wimbledon. Our Cavapoo, Hetty, has enjoyed working our way through several examples of the pet hates product range. Now, these are the little tiny, cuddly toys for the pets in the form of politicians who, shall we say, attract both supporters, absolutely acknowledge that, and also people who intensely dislike them. Hetty has enjoyed Nigel Farage, Nicola Sturgeon and Pretty Patel. However, she still has the original toy she got as a puppy nearly five years ago, and that's Boris Johnson.

She did detach an arm early on, but otherwise he's remained pretty much intact. A recent 60-degree spin has restored that irresistible luster to his locks. He's now her treasured possession, ready for some boisterous play. but also for those special moments when she finds a nice spot and hamps the living daylights out of him it's good to know that in a quiet corner of Wimbledon sorry I can't thank you enough for this

Boris is still somebody's cup of tea right I was in Wimbledon the other day don't often go there and it is very respectable but it is kind of, it is good to know there he is. There's Boris after a recent encounter with Hettie and he looks absolutely exhausted and he only has one arm. Anyway, Martin, that brought me great joy.

So thank you very much indeed. It's just such a great idea, isn't it? It's a brilliant idea. Just no end of fun with all of these people who, you know, we may have taken a little bit of a dislike to sometimes, I mean, obviously very popular another circle. Oh, that's it. I think we've absolutely balanced that out

wonderfully, haven't we? But yeah, a dog dry-humping Boris is never not going to be funny, is it really? Can we just say huge thank you to everybody who sent in pets with cones? So just a couple of mentions, Rose, you've got a very, very beautiful cone there for your hound with poor prints all over them. There is a new thing as well, isn't there? Which comes in from Catherine. These are the kind of body suits that you can put on your pets,

which seem far, far, kinder. Well, I don't know. How on earth would you get a body suit on a cat? Well, I suppose if they were comatose, you could get one on. Yes, I think you could just ask the vet to put one on before they wake up. But it's much nicer, isn't it? Yeah, you think. And also, because then they can still fit through gaps and stuff like that,

which the cone is obviously a little bit difficult to do. So we're going to pop them all up on the Instagram and they make for a lovely little gander. And thank you to Minnie in the Royal Borough of Penge for this wonderful image of Fianai as the newly elected by popular vote, British Royal Family. Good choice, Minnie. Yeah, we're sort of standing in what appears to be a stately home.

Dora is looking resplendent, so too is Nancy, and the family motto underneath, proudly displayed, Life is International, which is very much the mood of the moment here. Minnie, thank you very much indeed. Now, Minnie has taken that picture from the early fashion shoot that we did when we first came to Times Towers.

Do you remember that? Unforgetable. Really unforgettable. Where did we go? We went somewhere very close to the... We went to Bermansy Street. That's it. I'd rather like it around there. Well, it's very lovely,

and it's the type of place that attracts a very, very kind of high fashion crowd. So we were very much not fitting in, really. And Minnie has captured us there. You're in double denim. And I'm in a kind of all-purple suit. I quite like that, actually. It was the best of some alarming outfits because then we were popped on line bikes, weren't we?

I don't want people to go back in time and revisit those images. But thank you for reminding me of what was... A really... An experience. Just extraordinary, actually. I mean, it made The Handmaiden's Tale seemed like a gentle episode of, I don't know, cash in the attic. Emmerdale when it was Emmerdale Farm

Those other days And he sucked and just used to slice a loaf It was all that happened I couldn't believe Emmerdale Farm when I first started watching it Because you were constantly waiting for a plot To be delivered But then it got crazy

And then it got mad with headlines Hijackings Yeah All kinds of things Anyway Right we really have covered some ground The guest is the former CEO Of Unilever and

a man, do you know what, he's just right at the top of the international corporate tree, Jane. And we don't often have great big business people on the programme. So this is a delight. When Paul Pullman launched the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan in 2010, his aim of CEO was to double sales at the sprawling conglomerate and halve the environmental impact of its products. During his tenure, he delivered total shareholder returns of 290%. He retired at the end of 2018, partly over his desire to take the company's HQ to the Netherlands.

He is Dutch, but also the voice of the naysayers was there among shareholders over that, and they also didn't always see eye to eye with his campaigning vision. So what is his legacy to the corporate world? Well, he put politics with a small p right at the heart of corporate with a capital C structure. It doesn't always work, for example, with Ben and Jerry's, which was bought by Unilever, expecting to be able to retain its political shape. Most recently, it wanted to launch an ice cream flavour to support a ceasefire in Gaza.

One of the founders, Jerry, recently left in protest at Unilever's suppression of the activism there. This isn't during Paul Pullman's time, but we do talk about it in the interview. And Mr. Polman remains a massive figure in the corporate world. He's the co-founder of the consultancy Imagine, has worked alongside the UN for many years,

and is currently in Munich at the Young World. World Summit, where the brightest minds in the younger generations meet to thrash out the rubbish that we, the older generations, have left for them. Mr. Pullman puts it better. The summit has been going on since 2010. What we are basically doing here, bringing a group of young people together, call them social entrepreneurs, call them innovators within companies, and really work, if anything, on their leadership skills, joint action, sharing best practices. and hopefully create the leaders that are more driven by purpose than profit, if you want to, with incredible ideas to change the world.

So we have done this, as I said, since 2010. So we have about 20,000 of them now in the world, actually working on impact with incredible activities, nearly reaching 1 billion people with their projects. So a tremendous change that were galvanizing as a result of this. And it's four days of energy that is beyond belief when you come here. Although we're there to mentor and to help and counsel, at the end of the day, I leave with more energy than it came. Do you what, Paul, we so need to hear about that energy at the moment, don't we?

Because I think for many of us, we look out across the horizon of news and we are holding our head and our hands about the geopolitical situation. And maybe also about the belief that the next generation will be able to solve the problems that have been created and left by older generations. So do you believe that basic premise that will actually all be all right? Well, I don't know if we're all right. Already today we have clear warning signs

that we are playing with modern nature in ways that is probably not sustainable. Now, of course, we're moving and making this a greener economy and making this a more sustainable economy. It's not that we're falling backwards. You might believe that if you read some of the newspapers, but in reality, we're moving forward. We've just waited so long to attack many of these issues

of deforestation, climate change, inequality, that we have to work a little bit faster. I'm interested in that statement, though. I mean, is it true that we are moving forwards if the strong men who are in charge seem to want to completely disregard climate change and its impact, even though it might be affecting their citizens. And they want to pursue fossil fuels, they want to pursue wars, they want to pursue things that don't seem to fit the agenda you're talking about at all.

Yeah, we are dealing with obviously a phenomena at the political level, at the geopolitical level, that we haven't seen. seen in our generation, at least. And to be honest, if you take one of the major countries, the United States, where we clearly have someone in office that climate change is there, that undermines the science on which we like to take our decisions, et cetera, at the end of the day, even in that country, the economics are going to drive it more than anything else. And the economics of green energy, for example, are now increasingly.

more beneficial than the economics of fossil fuel. And it's not surprising, you know, digging something deeper and deeper out of the ground was a limited resource and only burning it once cost you far more money than putting a solar panel in place that you can use for generations, nearly. So even in the U.S., you see a lot of actions at the state level, at the local level, that we should not underestimate. I know, Paul, that you quit when you were asked in a restaurant whether or not not you had any allergies that you did, and it was to Donald Trump.

And I wonder where Keir Starmer lies in your mind. Is he a food intolerance? Is he something welcome on your plate? How's he doing in your eyes? Well, yes, a tough challenge. Not only the moment he came to office and some of the things he might have inherited, and I leave it to the UK citizens to decide when it's time to go to the polls. But I was in a global context, which I look at.

I think the UK has set an example on their agenda. I think they're smart to do that. The opposition seems to be moving away from some of these promises under the false belief that that is better for the economy, that people will not pay higher prices as a result, this false dichotomy that is out there between sustainability and cost of living. But the reality is, even in the UK, people already pay today more for their energy or for their food and for their health care. exactly because we're not addressing these problems.

So you would dispute the basic premise and it is used by opposition parties in this country that net zero is just incompatible with growth and at a time when we desperately need growth we simply cannot afford to be making these decisions based on something quite far off in the future and expensive to deliver. 46 countries in the world are in line or ahead of the Paris Agreement.

They are decoupling faster than is even required to stay at one and a half degrees. And these countries are all over the world and doing reasonably well. So they show that it can be done. The leading companies that tackle climate change at the core of their strategies and tend to be a little bit more progressive than other companies, collectively are outperforming the market. The green indexes that we see are doing better than the efforts, stock performance of the market.

Increasingly, the financial market is actually betting on that direction. You take a very simple thing, the food and land use strategy in the UK. The UK is the lowest biodiversity of any OECD country. And yet it is a limited amount of money that needs to be invested every year to reverse that and have the right and consistent policies. That will save you tons of money on your health care when you're struggling to not provide a decent NHS services anymore. Can we also talk about AI, and I know that it's on the agenda at the One Young World Summit as well,

where you're talking about ensuring AI democratizes opportunity instead of entrenching inequality. So many people are so fearful of what is coming around the corner with AI. And particularly for the younger generation, who might find that their working environment is so radically changed by, it. They might actually not have a working environment. What do you think? Yeah, the topics here are circular economy, anti-hate, sustainable growth, but also responsible tech. And the discussions of AI are enormous. Some are pointing out that we might have an AI bubble or not, a lot of fear of job destruction. The reality is yet to be found. One thing is clear that as far as a conversion to a greener, more inclusive economy is going,

AI can pay enormous roles. The benefits that I continue to see myself in education or in health care, just to name a few, are enormous. So how do we create a human AI and how do we put guardrails around it? Even though I have low expectations of global agreements around this, there seems to be more progress on regional basis. Isn't one of the lessons that has been learned from the Internet, that actually if you leave the direction of travel

entirely in the hands of a very few people, they will compete with each other to get things to the market without those necessary guardrails. And the difficulties that we have had with the internet no longer being a safe space on so many levels, if we were to learn the lessons

and how to avoid that, we'd really be doing something about regulating AI at the moment, wouldn't we? No, that is that the same as if we don't put guardrails around CO2 emissions, if we don't put guardrails around biodiversity destruction. What you are talking about is what I call the tragedies of the common. In this case, it's very clear that there are potentially very negative effects and that we have some indicators already in some of these areas.

And certainly putting the power in a few people's hands in California would seem to amass more and more money and benefit from this more than society at large at this moment is not a smart thing. But the reality is we are living in an environment where not all the politicians in this world sing from the same hymn sheet or have the same values and where AI is has become a political weapon. And we need to be sure that there's pressure enough on our elected officials to ensure that there is a responsibility. Can we also talk about women, Paul? I feel very much that Unilever targeted me very successfully, all my adult life, actually. and I have been the budget keeper of a household with kids in it.

I've used so many products that came under your auspices at Unilever, as will so many of our listeners who are predominantly on the podcast, absolutely fabulous middle-aged women. So that's all good, and I think that many of us appreciated your commitment to sustainability. But the simple truth is that we then don't tend to be shareholders of big companies who are targeting us as customers and we aren't on your boards and I wonder whether you would see that

as a bit of conundrum as well. Well, I want to be clear talking for Unilever in this case that when I came to Unilever, we did not have that diversity on the board. We had a white British man and white Dutchman and they could disagree so we thought we had diversity on the board

but we changed the board immediately. we had 50% women, as it happened to be, people from Africa, from the Far East, from the US. We had a truly global board with amazing individuals on that, and that helped us implement a strategy a little bit more courageously than we otherwise. We also made very clear that the world cannot function if you don't fight for dignity and respect for everybody or equity or compassion, whatever word you want to put around that. So we did not do our DE and I efforts, just pro forma or just in our head offices or a few parts

of our organization that we could display in a sustainability report I said if we really want to do this we have to drive these values into our total value chain so when we were creating jobs for three and a half million small holder farmers which is absolutely needed it in places

like Africa I wanted to be sure that half of them were women we were building tea plantations and gave the growers of the tea a stake in the factory there we wanted to be sure that half of them women. When we worked on entrepreneur programs and set up small businesses, I worked with social entrepreneurs. I had an award at that time that was chaired by the Prince of Wales,

now you're king. We wanted to be sure that at least half of them were women. But you have all of that stays. Since you left, Has all over the day and place? It goes up and down a little bit, but I think the company continues to be in a significantly better position than any other time in its history. But not everybody is doing that, and it still remains a problem, doesn't it? And that imbalance between what you are as a woman who spends money in the economy and what you are as an investor in that economy. One is up there and one is right down there.

And we are not represented enough on boards, even though there is proof that if you have women on boards, your company will be better. So, you know, there'll be people listening to this who go, oh, God, not banging that old drum again, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever. You're all doing fine. But actually, we're not. It still remains a really, really important thing, doesn't it?

100% agree and I've continued to champion that even after my time at Unilever and one of the things for example here at One Young World is you see actually that there are more women than men and most if not all of them will be very successful including in managing the financial affairs of or making their money work where it has the biggest impact over and over it's proven that if you invest there if you have to make a choice better and fast in women because it gives society but also the businesses itself, a better return. I firmly believe that.

But it's the same for people, LGBT, it's the same for racial diversity, it's the same for age. You know, I fight for these things because of a basic value once more that we need to fight for dignity and respect for everybody. If you found yourself sat in a room with the strong men of the world at the moment, Paul, how do you think that chat would go? Well, I went to the White House if you want to be specific in your question. question, to convince him in his first time to stay in the Paris Agreement, and that didn't go well, was one of my many failures in life. And, you know, I had the opportunity not in this term, but to talk to him. I would really point out very simply that the 32 technologies that are absolutely vital for

the future of humanity, and think about battery, photovoltaic, electric vehicles, etc., 28 of those, China has a big competitive advantage. I would make him a little mad by saying most of the technology, they probably stole from the U.S. But if you want to make America great again, which nobody is against, I want Britain to be great again, I want the Netherlands to be great. So I don't get emotional by these slogans, but then, you know, invest in the future, don't invest in the past.

And don't let China run away from it. And as time goes by, there is an increasing evidence that the strategy of denying the economics or denying the planetary boundaries, or denying the science, or denying the will of the people, by the way, including in the US, is not a good strategy for long-term success. So this scenario is being written, and it has not fully played out. Yeah. Final question, and I don't know whether you are willing to comment on this, but Ben and Jerry's, which was part of the Unilever family,

I think after your time, has had some difficulties within the Unilever family. And we can hear your politics displayed in the answers. that you're able to give us today. And I wonder whether you think that politics and personal displays of politics just will never be appropriate within a large corporate setting. Is there a cowardice involved in those decisions or is it just a fact? So what do we call politics nowadays? I think a company needs to be concerned about biodiversity destruction.

A company needs to be concerned about climate change. A company needs to be concerned about the growing inequality in this world. We also have children. We also have grandchildren. Increasingly, we see the politicians operating under a timeline and election cycles that don't match where the private sector is. So you might call things politics or not politics. Frankly, climate change should not have been politics. It should have been driven by science, like it was for many times in the UK.

Until now some political parties come in, reform the conservative surprisingly, and start to make it a political item and drive this as a point of differentiation. Outright wrong. because we're denying science here. Well, I think it's an absolutely beautiful political speech and I'm taking from that that you don't want to comment on Ben and Jerry's. No, I can comment on Ben and Jerry's. I'll do that in two seconds. Ben and Jerry's is an activist brand.

They have about a thousand different campaigns a year. Also, when I was at Unilever, I love the brand because they pushed the boundaries on many things. They fought for LGBT and in Ireland and got that approved. They prevented destruction of the coral reef. You know, they want less money in defense and more in education in the U.S. It's an activist brand. An ice cream has nearly become an excuse. And Ben and Jerry themselves as individuals are great activists.

They are worried that under the new structure of independent company that Unilever has decided to do after I left, that freedom to be an activist, which was firmly ingrained in the agreements when they were acquired by Unilever before I arrived, that that is being put at risk and they want to safeguard that. Can it be safeguarded within that new ice cream company that is being set up or does it require Ben and Jerry's to operate independently like a B-Corp, whatever?

I leave that to many people that are more qualified than me. But it is not surprising that there are some issues that are controversial in this case, the Palestinian issue where many people felt that there was genocide going on where finally stories are coming out and images that were beyond belief that touched the hearts of many people.

And Ben and Jerry's is an ideal brand to say, we fight for that. And we want to be sure that what we do in our business model gives people the right to their land, that they can live with dignity and respect. And the world standing by not acting was something that for that brand, thankfully, in my opinion, personal opinion, I'm not talking for Unilever here, was courageous and to speak out about how that is being done and what is happening at a personal level there behind the individuals and the company, I'm not privileged stuff. But I always have appreciated Ben and Jerry's pushing you into the area of discomfort

because it's only in that area that more discontinuous change happens. And if we are afraid to embrace that, we're afraid to live fully. Paul Pullman, he was joining us from Munich to talk about the young person. and summit that is being held there. And actually I do like his positivity, Jane, because I think it is very, very hard at the moment to look across the business world and not be distracted by the people who are just making

an absolute bloody fortune when you and I know that quite a lot of the tail end of that fortune is distress for individuals. And, you know, when you and I watch the TV, we see roomfuls of men making these huge decisions about the world and I thought it was good to hear from somebody who just has a different take

he's not in fashion at the moment but his company when he was head of Unilever made money from being sustainable and for reducing environmental harm and for having an awful lot of women involved go figure well isn't that funny right interesting and by way of contrast it's Lady Glenn Connor on the podcast tomorrow

Important contrast. Well, contrast is everything. That's another of my great. It's not as good as life is international, but it's not bad. Right, thank you for bearing with. We love hearing from you, as you know, it is Jane and V at Timesport Radio.

Congratulations. You've staggered somehow to the end of another Offair with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live, every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4 on Times Radio. The Jeopardy is off the scale. And if you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online, on DAB, or on the free Times Radio app. Offair is produced by Eve Salsbury. and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler.