Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Ring doorbells at the ready! (with Bonnie Garmus)

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

Papers are shuffling, indicating that this session is now in progress. Welcome. Fi and Eve cover cabbage longevity, being inside the tent pissing out, an AI-Toblerone debacle, and mental health alpacas. Plus, best-selling author Bonnie Garmus discusses her latest book ‘Peck & Peck’. Jane and Fi will be reunited at Cheltenham Literature Festival this Thursday. You can buy tickets here: www.cheltenhamfestivals.org/events/jane-garvey-and-fi-glover-with-anneka-rice You can check out our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@OffAirWithJaneAndFiOur most asked-about book is called The Later Years by Peter Thornton.If you want to contact the show, ask a question or get involved in the conversation, 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.

Right. Right. That is my paper shuffle, like what they used to do at the end of the news, but they don't do it anymore, do they? Because it's completely paperless. Completely paperless. It's quite a good signifier. Yes, I agree. I very much agree.

Well, that signified us commencing. Yeah. And now you see at the end of the news, people don't really know what to do, so they pretend that they're typing something into a laptop, but they're not doing that at all. and you try and work out, don't you, what it is? Are they doing a control, alt delete? What are they doing? What would yours be?

I'd maybe just fiddle with a button. Would you? Yep. Okay. Didn't love you down as a fiddler? I am a bit of a fiddler. Are you? Yes, it's actually a trait I detesting myself.

Okay. We've still got papers, haven't we? Yes. I took some home with me last night. Yes, and then I realised when I saw them, by the side of my bed, I thought, oh, no, I'm not meant to bring emails home, am I? But it's just, it's me and my daughter

and Nancy, Barbara, Brian and Coolcat in the house at the moment. Nobody else is there, so nobody's really bothered. But it did mean that I could go back through some of the emails we've received over the last couple of weeks, and it has been such a bumpy ride. I kept some back thinking Jane was going to be back next week and then, etc., etc. So we are going to go back to a great name for a cesspit emptied, business, which is in the annals of time, isn't it?

But this one came in from Lisa, who says hello from Lisa the posty, regular truck in the Meridian area, is success. Do you get it? Success. Best avoided hanging around it in the summer heat. You! That is very good. That is very good, but disgusting.

It is always revolting. I don't think you can have. No, maybe that's true. A slogan or a name for a cesspit emptying business that isn't a little bit... Because once you know what it is, it's just, oh right. Yeah. But the problem with exploring this vein or reopening it

is that any time you laugh, it sends you off in a coughing for it. I know, I know. So are you sure you want to do this? No, I'm only going to do incredibly serious things for the rest of this week. eventually the cough will go although there are people you do hear quite a lot of the hacking cough

at the moment in and around the London town and there is a rumour it's just a rumour that it's come in from Australia as all of those Australian lovely lovely young Australian people many of them living in the East London environment and they popped home

for a little bit of family time over the summer and they came back with a buck I don't resent them at all This one comes in from Jackie who says lovely ladies, never girls. I've found so many things you said over the last few weeks have resonated completely with me.

I shouldn't be surprised as you're both of a similar age to me with some similar lived experiences, picking up just a few boys reading, the book club and going grey. So firstly my son in reading. He is 23 in living in the fast lane in London. I tried everything to get my children to read. I read to them, with them, bought them suitable books and was often reading around them.

My daughter read occasionally, and has now really embraced it at 25, but all was in vain as far as my son was concerned. He'd simply never picked up and read a book, so you can imagine I almost fell off my chair. When a couple of weeks ago, he told me he'd picked up and could not put down Fatherland by Robert Harris. Have you read it?

No, I haven't. Neither have I. Okay. End of the conversation. I was so amazed such a first book on asking further questions. He said he liked factual history. So agreeing with a recent emailer on this, as you can imagine, I couldn't be happier.

This will open up a new world to him. Now, we should look up, Fatherland. I really love the writing of Robert Harris. I'm not as good at reading his classically based tones. So the one that's out at the moment, which is a gripper. I haven't read that. I think Jane might have given that a go. I think she did give it a go, but I don't think it gripped her.

Okay. So Fatherland. Hang on a sec. in 1949, so no, it's more modern history. Well, I'm sure that's absolutely brilliant, and you're right, what a first book, what a first book to go into. Next, somebody recommended the Wager by David Gran,

and you passed this by too quickly. It is an amazing true story of survival after shipwreck. It has an incredible twist to it. It's slow at the start, but I literally will never forget reading it. I think that was recommended by your beau, or Hannah's bow. It was my boyfriend and someone else also emailed in to say that we shouldn't overlook it,

which makes me feel a bit bad because whenever my boyfriend tried to speak to me about it, I overlooked him. Did you? Yes. Right. Well, maybe he just needs to listen to the podcast more where he'll feel more heard, Eve. That's just what this podcast is more. It certainly is.

Men feel heard. Making young men feel heard. It's absolutely the reason I get up in the morning. Finally. They don't have anywhere to go. I am quite sympathetic to the plight of the young man at the moment. But yeah, there are some other things on the list as well. Can we just keep those other things on the list?

Finally, going grey. I'm on the path at 60, having dyed my hair for years. I see beautiful grey, often stylish and chic hair, but I also see awful examples. I think it is the transition that's tricky, not so much the final look. I consider myself to be very resilient and not too bothered by other people's opinions.

But within weeks of not dyeing my hair, I reached what I thought was a temporary washing. Mm-mm. And it turned out to be permanent. I had to confess to my lovely hairdresser that we were back to square one. We are off again. It is tough to transition,

but I'm hoping worth it in the end. Keep on carrying on from Jackie. Oh, Jackie. Now, it's easily done. I find it incredibly difficult in the pharmacy aisle to tell the difference between permanent, semi-permanent, just a wash, a wash in, a wash out, a root touch-up, all of those things. Very, very easy to go wrong. You're looking at me with a very, very...

It's a world I'm not particularly familiar with. Yeah, it's an aisle that you've yet to have to stop in you. Well, because I'm in the highlight camp. Yeah. So I can't really do that in the supermarket anyway. But you will be lucky because you're blonde. I think it's much, much easier for blondes to go grey. and in fact friends of mine you barely notice that they're going great it seems to be a rather beautiful harmonious thing

and lens in a bit more yes and I do completely agree with you it is the transition phase Jackie that is slightly phasing me and also this visualization thing has just come along with the wrong time Eve because you know I've never been more photographed

and sent out there as a visual image And Jane and I talk about this in our private time, and in fact we should talk about it in our public time a bit more. There is a minor backlash going on at the moment about the visualization of podcasts. I completely understand why we're doing it, because you do have to go where the eyes of the audience are, and they are heading towards YouTube.

You know, it is the phenomenon of its ilk. So I understand why we're doing it completely. The pressure that it then puts on you, I think is something that we should talk about a little bit more. I think it's really fine for some people in the podcasting world to have more of their visual image out there. They seem to enjoy it. They look good, I think.

Well, you do also look. No, you do. I'm not kind of fishing around or whatever, Eve, but there is something so strange about having actually chosen an industry to work in because it's not the visual image. and to then find that you're just in it anyway. You never ask to be a sort of visual representative of your demographic. Completely not, completely not.

And I think the challenge is to then carry on absolutely being yourself. So, you know, the conversation I'm having with myself about whether or not to finally grow my grey out, I just need to be braver about the fact that that will be captured on camera for the next nine months until I am finally grey. we should stand firm, though. You know, just that intense pressure that we often talk about about ageing is just so bloody darts.

It is another thing. It's another thing to factor in when already everyone has so many gripes with their appearance to then have it put on blast. Yeah. Isn't something that you asked for. It's happening. It's happening because it also ties into the conversation

that we have about AI and everything else that we shouldn't resist it because then you end up left behind. Completely. No, you want to be, I absolutely want to be. inside the tent pissing out. That's very much where I want to beat you. But I just have to stand really, really firm and also be that person

that I would like to have seen more of when I was a bit younger. Well, yes. Which is the person who just gets on with ageing and doesn't, you know, seek to... But that is what I meant when I said you didn't ask to kind of be this symbol. No, not at all. No, and I don't regard myself as simple either.

I did also think that maybe there's something very clever that we could all do as women who do want to go grey along the lines of Movember where actually we could all have a couple of months and we could call it going back to your roots and we could do a bit of a campaign where instead of the money that we spend on route touch-ups and visits to the hairdressers

we could all put that money into charity, couldn't we? And then we would have some kind of feeling that we were all doing something together. That's a fabulous idea. So we could do that. Not least because it costs so much to get your roots done. Well, it certainly does, doesn't it? So if anybody is up for that, then in all seriousness,

I think we could start something really fun. And it's always more fun to do those kind of things together. We could share quite a lot of pictures. But I shouldn't talk about this without Jane because Jane did go down the I'm going to grow my hair out root and then went, nope, I don't want to do this anymore. She turned around and went back. So I don't want to make her do something she doesn't want to do.

But, I mean, actually, you can't make change. She doesn't want to do. God forbid. We'll be okay. Right, thoughts on that. God, how do we get there? We get there from Jackie's email, didn't we? You have another couple, I think, about what has proved to be, obviously,

such a rich seam of experience for all of the wrong reasons about the hassle that we get on public transport. I'm going to come in with this one from Rachine, which is, well, in regards to women's experience of men on public transport, I wanted to share my experience as it stayed with me almost 10 years on. I'd been attending an early evening event at the Royal College of Nursing. I'm a nurse. At said event, there was a man who was being persistent about wanting to continue chatting, turning up at every corner of the room I moved along to. I grew tired of this and decided to make my way to the train station alone

as I had a three-hour journey home ahead of me. With my stranger danger senses already heightened, I boarded the evening train aware that there was not many people around and mostly men in the carriage. We set off, and ten minutes into the journey, I noticed a man standing behind me in the aisle just looking at me, not saying anything. He was smartly dressed,

but looked as though he'd had a drink or two. He began to just lean towards me, and it got to the point where he was standing directly above my seat in the aisle, blocking my exit. At this point, I looked up at him and asked that he please move away from my seat. He just stared at me and seemed to mutter something, at which point, a man behind him,

kinder spoke up and asked him politely to move away from me. This caused the man to move slightly and I took this as my opportunity to collect my belongings and move to another part of the carriage. Somebody went to report his behaviour to the conductor. However, in the meantime, the man's phone rang persistently and he wasn't in a fit state to answer it. The bystander instead answered it for him. It was his wife and she explained that he is a type 1 diabetic and prone to having hypoglycemic attacks, which can cause you to appear quite drunk. The conductor had arrived and called out for any doctors or nurses on the train. At this point, I sheepishly got up, went to the man, feeling so embarrassed for misjudging him.

He must have been trying to ask me for help, but was too poorly to get the words out. I sat with him taking his blood sugars and rubbing sugar into his gums until the next stop, where an ambulance crew got on to intervene. This has caused me to reflect so much. It's so important to stay safe, especially in light of these. horrendous experiences described over the past week. I don't know if I should have done anything differently, but I was

relieved to have been able to help in the end. Love your podcast, Rishim. Oh, Rashim, it's such an amazing story and just well done for telling it, because you're definitely kind of telling it against yourself. But it's so true, isn't it, that our experience just makes us immediately go to

a suspicious place rather than the guy, I mean, maybe he sensed that you were the one person in the carriage who might be able to help her. And he just couldn't get the words out. I think she was right to have her guard up, but it is nice to have a slightly lighter email amongst some that we have received.

It is. And overwhelmingly, people have said the same thing. Practice in the mirror, go to a self-defense class, do the Susie Lampbellu Trust online class, just make yourself break through what will in the moment be a fear of shouting or doing something or whatever. And it really, really genuinely makes a difference.

so many people have emailed to say that. Just practice losing your fruit loops and then in the moment it will be easier to lose your fruit loops. I just want to say a very big hello to Louise because you sent such a lovely, lovely picture of you and your friend Kate, isn't it? Who helped you through your recent cancer treatment and the picture is of you dipping in the sea in Cornwall

from a couple of weeks ago. and you both look really, really happy and the water looks calm. You can't even see any poos floating around in it. So it's always worth celebrating the good clean water when we find it. And also thank you for the picture. Now we've had so many place names and I'm going to compile them all.

We'll do a massive great big readout list. In fact, if I can get my WhatsApp together, that'd be quite a good fun thing to do at Cheltenham, wouldn't it? Yes, it would actually. Right, Eve, I can get on the case. Get your WhatsApp together. Get my WhatsApp

together. The picture that Louise has sent in is from, where is that? I think it's brain tree. So this is an actual sign, an actual street name.

Here we go. Pig's Head in the Potage Pot Gant. That's the actual street name. What? I know. Madness. What madness.

Thank you as well to everybody who wrote in saying that Joanna can just jog on. So Joanna was the person who wrote saying why don't you just stop doing this shenanigan podcast because you're not together enough

and it was she felt insulting to the listener. We've had so many emails, you're all absolutely lovely and we've had messages for our Spotify and all of that kind of stuff. And it's always important to read out the people who are finding it difficult to listen to us and whatever. But overwhelmingly the message is

we are right, obviously, to let Jane be where she needs to be and we are right to say thank you to our company actually because it's only good practice, isn't it Eve? Where companies get the credit for being nice places to work and allowing enough time off when you need to go and do your caring duties. So, you know, we're very happy to advertise that actually. I think for some people it might have struck a bit of a nerve

because they found themselves in places where they haven't been given enough time off in times of need. And that is difficult because it can end up staying with you for life, actually. So let's sing the praises something good when it happens. But in answer to your very specific query, Virginia, you are coming along on Thursday and your daughter has taken a day off work in London

to come along to Cheltenham. And yes, Jane is going to be in Cheltenham. We are both interviewing. Annaika Rice will be on stage at Thurton. 3.30, please do come along if you can. This one comes in from Pat, who says just over 30 years ago, my son entered his second year of uni and was self-catering. During one of his rare phone calls home from the phone box,

I was amused, delighted and proud to hear him state, doesn't a cabbage last a long time, mum? And it does. It does. It really does. It really does, doesn't it? You can make a cabbage last, especially in red cabbage. You can make it last a whole term. Which is good because if you're making a bit of a cold sore or something,

they are enormous. They are huge. You don't need them. Yeah. And I don't think, you can't really do that thing of coleslaw on a Monday, red brace cabbage on a Tuesday, something differently. Yeah. Too much cabbage.

Too much cabbage. Way too much cabbage. My son and son-in-law, both now in their early 30s, read really widely and have eclectic tastes. One is currently reading The Pearl by John Steinbeck, and the other is reading The Devils by Joe. Abercrombie that comes in from Liz. We are deciding our

young male perspective book at the end of next week, Eve, aren't we? Yes. Yes. Can you give out a little bit of a warning to all of the people who are still receiving scams? Yes. So this has been ongoing for quite a while

and we've tried to mention it as much as possible but unfortunately people are still getting in touch. It's still happening. There's not much we can actually do to stop it. There's a scam circulating at the moment where an AI bot gets in touch with authors and offers them an appearance on the radio show pretending to be Jane Orfei and it's very flattering and it has lots of detail that they've managed to strip about your book and your work and then eventually they will ask you

for a fee to appear on the radio show which we would never do it's not Jane and Fee it is unfortunately a really nasty scam and we apologise yeah and please I mean just don't ever ever think that we would ask for money for any guests that appear but it's such a clever thing isn't it

because you're right it's the way that it says oh your book is amazing in this particular bit we found particularly interesting and that keyed into something else we were talking about it has a lot of flattery we actually got we've had quite a lot of few people kindly flagging it to us but one person said when they realised that it might

be a scamment. It was AI. They replied and said, okay, but I have a few conditions. I want to be dressed entirely in rubber and something else and something else. And the chat pop came back and said, okay, that sounds great as long as you'll be entirely dressed in rubber and we'll do this and they'll do that. And it was just completely outlandish. But the AI hadn't picked up on the sarcasm. So just went along. And that's when they clocked that it was definitely a scam. Well, I mean, why not have a really decent laugh at AI's expense? Have you seen the Tom York keeps on coming to my house dressed as a big fat snail AI thread? No.

You weren't expecting that. Do you what, I will... Hang on a sec. It's not actually as a giant snail. This is an AI thread. You can find it on the Instagram. Tom York from Radiohead keeps dressing up as a toblowerone ringing my doorbell, then running away.

So this is somebody who's popped it into, let's just say it's either chat GPT or Claude or something like that, the reply. If Tom York is repeatedly coming to your door while dressed as a toblerone, ringing the bell and running away, don't confront him or chase him. Lock the door and avoid opening it and document the incidents.

New question. Why is he doing it? You can see it's him because he doesn't hide his face, A.I. If he's deliberately doing this and making no attempt to hide his face, there's no way to know his motive from the behaviour alone. He may be trying to provoke a reaction, play a prank, or simply get your attention. The important point is you don't need to work out why he's doing it

to set a boundary, don't engage. Keep documenting the incidents. New question, why would he do this? He's such a talented man. He could be making music. Why is he wasting his time, ringing the doorbell of an unknown while dressed as a tobarone? AI.

There's no rational. explanation for Tom York to dress up as a toblower own and repeatedly ring your doorbell like this. New question. It's a homemade costume as well. It must have taken him ages. You can see he's used bits of sponge for the honeycomb and cardboard for the Nougar. AI. That makes the behaviour even more inexplicable. A homemade toberone costume involving sponge, honeycomb and cardboard Nougat would, Nougar, whatever, would require considerable time and effort. Whatever Tom York's motivation he's putting substantially more work into the doorbell routine and simply buying a costume and doing a quick prank. Do you think it's safe to confront him? No, don't confront or chase him.

Keep the door locked. Don't open it while he's there and document the incidents. And so it goes on. Oh my gosh. He then, whoever it is, he or she then says, what should I say to the police if I have to call them? And then this is the icing on the cake. Final question to AI. Can you make a poster for me to put up alerting neighbours. Just let it be known that there have been sightings of Tom York from Radiohead dressed up as a to-per-roan in the area

ringing on doorbells and running away. And that is the poster which we will put up on our Instagram. Oh my God. It just merely laughs so much, so so much. Did you have to slightly question the sanity of the person who came up with him

when you do? But I think that it is very much why AI was invented. This side of things is going to keep us going in the doom loop that we've also entered into about it. So at the bottom of the poster it says, if you see him or experience this behaviour, please take a recording and report it to the authorities, if necessary. And you just so wanted Tom York to actually reply. I don't know whether he did.

It's been liked by a lot of people. Yeah, I hope so. Oh my gosh. It's good, isn't it? Yeah, that is really good. We'll put the final poster up on the Insta. Now, Bonnie Garmes' Lessons in Chemistry is a publishing phenomenon, winner of so many prizes.

It spent years on the bestseller list and sold millions of copies. But it might never have seen the light of day. Bonnie Garmis knew she wanted to write, but an earlier manuscript was rejected 98 times, enough to put many people off. But she kept going with her day job as a day job as a day. copywriter, often being on the receiving end of the kind of sexism that runs through lessons in chemistry. That sexism is directed at the heroine of the book, Elizabeth Zott, the talented

chemist who couldn't get taken seriously because she was a woman, but who had the last laugh by turning her scientific knowledge into a blockbusting TV cookery show. Well, now Bonnie has given us Batter Gray, a young man whose love of poetry leads him to New York and the shimmering illusory magazine publisher Peck and Peck. That's the name of her new novel. It's all about justice, about words and their beauty. You have got a lovely, lovely description of what it's like to be a novelist right at the end of your book. And I'd like to start with that, please, Bunny. Here we go. I find writing a novel is like setting out on a long hike with an outdated map and not nearly enough food. The entire thing is uphill. The trail is badly maintained. The weather is terrible. The shoes

aren't really waterproof, the socks don't wick, the blisters don't heal, and that middle toe no longer looks quite right. There's a lot of backtracking and self-doubt, a lot of time spent in the woods. But can you finish the but for us? Because that sounds horrible. It is pretty bad. But as I say in the book, the people you meet along the way are irreplaceable. And I think the views, you will never ever see views like this in your life, you know. So it's all worth it, but I think it's hard. It's hard work to write a novel. And when I first tried it, well, with Lessons and Chemistry,

I remember thinking, I felt like I just ran five marathons back to back. So if one more person says, isn't it fun to write, I'm going to kill them. And presumably you didn't. No, I didn't. Nobody said that. No, no, no. We will come back to Lessons in Chemistry, but let's talk about Peck and Peck. And let's talk about how in your head you first met the hero of the story.

a young man with a very interesting name. Yes, batter gray. I first met him when I was driving home from work one day, and I heard a poem come on the radio. It's a poem by Nikki Giovanni. I hadn't read poetry much at that point. I didn't really listen to it, but I heard this poem once when I was 14,

and then that day I heard it again. And it's called the Laws of Motion. And as I listened to it, it started making me question, I was doing with my life. And that's where Batter Gray comes from, questioning whether or not he's on the right track, because Batter Gray's only skill, apparently in life, is that he has an ear for poetry, which is a skill that absolutely no one cares about or wants or probably would ever put on their resume. He finds himself at PEC and PEC, which again is a very interesting name to

choose. It's this extraordinary, almost magical poetry establishment, isn't it? Yeah. He finds himself there. The name peck and peck came from the word peck, which has double meanings. It can mean to harm someone to peck at them. It could also mean to kiss them. If you're in a company, there's a pecking order. There's also a pecking order and a family. And when we say that we feel peckish, we're in need of something, but we're not sure what it is. And that for

send up the entire book. It's a book full of conflicts, but at the heart of it is this young man who's really trying to make his way in the world and is getting stopped at, you know, every single point. And it gets very confusing for him. It's a real love story about creativity as well, isn't it? Can you tell us a bit more about that? Yeah, that day that I was coming home from work, and this was way back, I was working in technology in advertising. And I was really, um, happy that day because I felt like technology was really moving in a direction I didn't feel comfortable with. When I started, it was the kind of innovative, creative, first, you know, do no evil kind of thing. And the people that I worked with and that whose products that I would,

that I would write about were so excited about doing things for humankind. And then it really shifted. And it shifted, you know, for me, I started seeing the shift around 2009. And that day when I was driving home and I heard that poem and it's sort of like you know taking stock of yourself and I thought what am I doing and so at that time I thought creativity and originality they want it to go away they want people to conform and they want everyone to think alike because people are much easier to control that way so in the book batter takes us on his own journey through his young adult life but it is also exactly that. It's the journey about how commerce and creativity

have combined with not a particularly easy outcome often. But what I found fascinating, Bonnie, is that you don't publish poetry within the book. Peck and Peck is a journal devoted to poetry. The book is absolutely full of poets. Bata wants to be a poet, but there's no poem in it. Were you tempted to put some in it? Well, I did put little tiny snippets in.

So the very first time I wrote it, there was no poetry. And one of the reasons is because if you stop an average person on the street, they will tell you that they don't like poetry. And I really understand that because I had to be kind of dragged kicking and screaming to it. And once I became a little bit of a fan and I read a poem a day now and I have for about a decade, I realized I was stunned by what I was missing. I couldn't believe how many of the answers and questions we grapple with today are answered by the poets. And they answer it very simply and very economically. And so I became fascinated by it. But that's sort of how it all evolved was this idea of I couldn't actually.

I had a permissions problem too with poems. You use one line or five lines and there are poets who go, okay, but you can't publish this one in Germany. or you can't, I don't like, you know, the Bay Area, so you can't publish it there. It's like, wow. So I had to be very careful about what I could include. And unfortunately, these days, poets are misquoted. So I used to have a quote in there from Carl Sandberg until I found out that the quote I thought I had had been rewritten by AI. He never said what AI says he said.

So I couldn't use that. Therefore, it got smaller and smaller. But in a way, I just wanted to give people a flea. flavor of this art because I know some people go, I'm not going to read a book about poetry. Well, I found it intriguing and I didn't actually realize that there weren't full poems in the book until I kind of got to the end of the book. And because there's a meeting, isn't there, between Bata and a man who turns out to be very significant in the plot when he's originally in the copy room downstairs and this strange character comes in and says,

read this piece of poetry. And initially Bata goes, I don't think that's great. But it turns out to be of great meaning, but I hadn't kind of noticed. I didn't know what the poem was, so you've done it well. Oh, thank you. Thank you. You know, I was really, really aware that I didn't want to bore people. I also didn't want to prove their point by putting in poetry that they might find boring. I just really wanted to, and this has been interesting. I've talked to people who've read the book now, and they said, I went and I looked up that poem and I read it or I heard it, and now I get it. And that's really what I was hoping to have happen. And you do write towards the very end of the book a very succinct sentence that just says poetry is problematic.

Yes, it is. And you've just explained why. Yeah. Poetry is problematic. And we could, I think, all do with more poetry in our lives. But you've also just been quite illuminating on perhaps the difficulty around access to poetry. If people are terribly protective about this, stanza and that verse, it's creating a barrier, isn't it? I agree. And poetry can seem very elitist. It can seem very hard to understand or so far out there that, you know, you think, okay, this doesn't apply to me. And what I've learned by studying poetry is that it comes in a million different fluencies. It's impossible to become fluent in poetry because poetry keeps evolving. It keeps representing the culture very accurately, by the way. It will never, I believe, go extinct because it is so much smarter.

than we are because it keeps changing its spots and it keeps reaching people in a different way and that's the poets doing that. They're really leading the frontier in that. Do you think that we will inevitably give an awful lot more credence and credibility to poetry, to art, to writing once we get over this extraordinary bright light of AI?

We're in a place, I think, at the moment where we are terrified by it and we assume that it's going to kill creativity. But we will want original thought and original beauty even more, won't we? I completely agree. I think, you know, I was at a university recently in the United States,

and there were about 1,500 students in there, and they said, now that none of us want to go into computer science, what should we go into? And I said, what about the humanities? What about the arts? I mean, the clapping, the laughter, the cheering, the relief of having a choice to do something creative was so palpitable that day.

I could, you know, sense it from everyone because I think at our hearts, we are all creative people. I'm mostly concerned right now about AI going into education, especially of younger people who haven't had a chance to develop reasoning or even their imaginations. And to have your imagination replaced by a machine, which is conforming you. it's not teaching you is really frightening to me. So I do think there's going to be a huge call for people in the humanities. I just hope it happens really soon, sooner than later. And commerce will always come into play, won't it?

And this is exactly what lies at the heart of your book, whether true creativity can somehow win out. We won't talk about the ending to your story to not ruin it for your readers. but we're right to be fearful that the march of the dollar will crush so many people in its way. Yes, and so in my book, you know, there's this late stage capitalism at work. There's someone running this company who doesn't really care about poetry. He cares about the bottom line. And, of course, that's how corporations operate.

You know, they have a duty to their shareholders. And I think that's gone to the extreme at this point. So I hope that we can shift gears and I hope that we can do it more rapidly than it's being done. Because I do see a really huge impact on entire generations of young people who won't know how to think, who can't make a decision without consulting a computer. AI is a confidence eroder. They will not know. Somebody told me the other day that they had to ask chat GPT,

if they should wear this shirt with the bottoms of whatever they had on. And I said, don't you have a mirror? You can't even make that decision yourself? Yeah, that's worrying. Yeah. I've seen a lot of people who've definitely asked Chachy-B-T for their wardrobe combinations. Many of them in this building. You wrote lessons in chemistry from a place of anger, didn't you?

Because you were just really sick of being an invisible woman in the workplace. Tell us a little bit about that and whether there is a similar anger that spurred you on to write peck and peck. I do think I tend to want to write about things that I'm passionate about and sometimes that passion starts in frustration or anger. And yeah, so for lessons in chemistry

I was definitely that woman in the all-male meeting who was just being ignored simply because I was female. And somebody else once he presented my ideas in his voice using exactly the same words, all the ideas were acceptable. And that day when that happened to me, then it happened, you know, I'd been in plenty of meetings where you're ignored. But that day, I just decided, no, no, this is the last day of this. This is the last day. And so that's

where lessons in chemistry came from. And peck and peck, actually the idea of it came before lessons in chemistry. And when I was thinking more and more about, I was having almost a panic attack. Where is technology marching off to? It's 2009 and I'm feeling very uneasy and it's, it's, now it's 2026. So in fact, it moved in the direction that we were all hoping it wouldn't go. Elizabeth Zott comes into my head at least once a day because it was just such an extraordinarily clever thing to do, Bonnie, to put her in a kitchen, in a commercial kitchen to, to, to tell us the lessons of life. So I think of her when I'm cooking of an evening

and I recognize that it is a valuable thing to do. How often do you think about her? Do you think about her every time you cook a meal too? She comes in my head constantly. You know, she's, when I, people ask me who Elizabeth Zop is based on. She's not based on anyone. She's my role model. As for thinking of her when I cook,

She is a much better cook than I am. I'm a pretty bad cook, but I live with really good cook, so I think that's okay. I'm a really good cleaner upper. But I think Elizabeth Zott comes to me very, very frequently when I start to lose confidence or if I'm plagued by self-doubt, I can hear what she would say about that. And so that helps guide me, and it's been invaluable for me to have written that character just for my own self-worth. And can I ask you, as clearly a sensitive writer, when you write moments of real trauma and tragedy, of which there are many in lessons in chemistry, where does that leave your head?

In trauma and tragedy, I do feel each of those moments very strongly. And I've certainly talked and heard from a lot of people who also feel them very strongly. I think if I can't feel them, I'm not doing my job. are you ever tempted to write yourself better on the page? I don't ever put myself in a book. I don't put anyone I know in a book. First of all, I'm under too many NDAs to ever go down that road. But also, if you write about yourself, I mean, this is just me, but I think if you write about yourself or you write about people you know, you've now just limited your character.

I don't want to limit my characters. I don't want to especially be exactly like my characters. It surprised me how many people would say Elizabeth's thought is so unlikable. And I think, oh, in and then some of the other people would say she's so likable. And so I just liked hearing the divergence of opinion on how people feel about these characters because we all read differently. We all see something differently. So if I started to put someone I know on the page and someone would say, you know, my best friend,

they'd go, oh, I hate this character. I think, oh, you just insulted my best friend. So, no, I don't, I'm not in it. It's interesting that you say that there's such a wide interpretation of her as a character. I was fascinated to read that some of the book covers around the world seemed to have made quite a wide interpretation of what the book was about. Yeah. Tell us about those.

Well, the United States, they came out with a cover that was extremely controversial. It was a little bit of a Barbie cover. And, you know, you could certainly see it on the bookshelf because it was just this very bright kind of coral pink, very much the antithesis of Elizabeth Zott. But they defended that choice. And, you know, back then I didn't have much say. I, you know, I kind of registered my concern. But what was funny was that it became a talking point in the United States. This is how women in science are represented as Barbie.

and it became a very angry sort of call to action. And so I was at an event with all women scientists, and they took out their books, and they took off the cover, and they threw them away. And I had to tell my publisher, this is getting to be a big deal, and I think they really understood it was a big deal when the New York Times wrote an article with the title,

Don't Judge this book by its cover. However, I will say I had a European publisher whose designer sent me his first design, and it was of Elizabeth Zott naked. She had a pot and pan over her private parts, and that was it. And I'm pretty sure he hadn't read the book. But anyway, I said, okay, this is unacceptable.

And I have to say, he ended up doing one of my most favorite covers. But when I explained what the book was about, he said, oh, my creative brief, and this is how it read, was, Bimbo teaches cooking. Whoa, who would have given him that instruction? I'm really curious about that. No one has claimed ownership. Good God.

But that was a different, you know, it was a different country, so. Yeah. It's also extremely inadvisable to ever cook naked, especially with hot pants. Yes, well said. Oh, my goodness. Font is incredibly important, isn't it? Yes.

In the world of Peck and Peck. Tell me about fonts. And do you get a choice in which font the book? comes out in it. They've been really great about including me and some of these decisions and uh I study typography um at one point I love type as so much to such a sort of an anal degree. Is it a fetish? Yes a little bit. I mean it's just like oh you know and kerning and the whole letting everything to me it's really really important and I was taught that that should be important and so there's a little bit I would say of training in one of the characters in Rainy Gray where she talks about how important

topography is. And when you think about it, topography is, of course, an art. But it's how we form our words. Every typeface says something. It has, it's why it's a typeface. It has a personality. It always comes in a family. Sometimes the family fights. That's called kerning and letting and spacing. And so you have to make the family work well together and make it work with other fonts together and that's what a really truly great graphic designer does that is something that is getting lost in the digital world isn't it we are all reading stuff with the same font probably the same font size right and you know it's very interesting when i studied typography we could name 10 or 12 fonts off the top of our head where they would these will increase your reading ability by 20% you know

if we knew that now we wouldn't be reading these fonts that we're using Right. What's the worst font for readability? Oh, there are so many really, really bad ones. Digitally, I don't know if I could really choose at this point. The very cursive ones. Oh, yeah, you can't read fast. Yeah, you can't do those. No.

Quick chat about greyhounds, please. Okay, our time is almost up. But tell me about your greyhound. Obviously, a huge character in lessons in chemistry is a dog at 630, the dog. Is your current greyhound a numerically named? K-9? Yes. So although 99,

unfortunately she passed away. But she was just incredible. She wasn't the dog in lessons in chemistry. The dog in lessons in chemistry was our previous dog Friday. But 99 Greyhound, our very first dog that was, you know, a breed. We'd only ever had mutts. But she was a rescue greyhound.

She'd raised, you know, for six years. She had all the broken toes. And we ended up just, well, we adored her, you know, the most, the quietest animal, the most sensitive thing. We just love spending time with her. And she became very much a part of me as I wrote. You know, she'd come over and nudge me and then look. And I swear to you, I have a picture of her where she's looking at my computer and like, no. You know, I don't like that phrase.

I think they're incredibly emotionally intelligent dogs. I have a grey hand myself she's very intellectually stupid but emotionally she is absolutely brilliant I think they do sense atmospheres emotions

all kinds of things yes 99 seem to have one special ability that that floored us and worried us which is that she could sense sadness deep sadness in people and she would approach somebody just out of the blue

we trained her to be off lead. So she was very impeccable off lead. But occasionally she would look across somewhere and see someone reacting to something or being in a certain way. She approached an elderly woman on a park bench in Hyde Park. And she just pressed her entire large body up against this frail woman. And I ran over there and I apologized. And the woman said, no, it's the first time I've been touched in 10 days. My husband died 10 days ago. And that was our 99. whenever she sensed. She found a child crying after school one day, walking by himself,

and she ran up to him, and then she pressed her body. And then the mother came running up, and she was very worried. 99 was quite large. But then the child just instantly quieted, and then he wanted to take her home. And she wanted to go home, you know. She wanted to stay with him until he was okay. I've got all the tingles, Bonnie's all the tingles. It's such a pleasure to meet you.

Thank you very much for coming in. I've really, really enjoyed talking to you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bonnie Gamas and Peck and Peck is out on the 13th of October. Is that today? It is. Oh, crazy days.

Okay, good to know. Paycheck comes in at the end of the week, lovely. I'll buy you all a couple. Lovely. So we don't have a podcast tomorrow. No. But we do hope to see as many of you as as humanly possible live at the Cheltenham Literature Festival

on Thursday. We're interviewing Anika Rice. That will go out as a Twixmas special. There won't actually be a podcast episode on Thursday, but maybe take this as your opportunity to retune your radio, four times radio, and hear Jane and Fee reunited

in conversation with Anna Kna Kna Knaz. Absolutely marvellous. You take over the mantle of corporate Cathy. You do it beautifully. And then Jane and I, fingers crossed, we will be back together again for the whole of next week. And I'm going to apologize in advance because I don't even say it.

I know. So, I mean, we just couldn't see this coming, but I'm off on secondment the week after writing a very, very, very arduous piece for the Sunday time spa supplement. Oh, God, you've got to own it. It's lacquering. I've got to own it. But it does

mean that I'm going to Germany on holiday, a topic that we've discussed on this podcast before. Not many people do, but I'm going. That's true, actually. Yeah. Oh, you're going to come back so zen. Well, I don't know. It's an interesting one, isn't it? I can't wait to go. It's a medical spa. And I have tried one of those before. I check myself out after four days. I just found it so ridiculous. I wasn't in the right headspace to go to any place where deprivation was involved. It just wasn't the right time of my life to do that. I actually just needed to be eating large donuts and somebody stroking my hair. I think this is very different. And I am intrigued by it because apart from anything else, I think you do I don't know a 58 year old

who doesn't want a bit of a health check do you know the most bonkers thing that they offer are you going to have salmon well yeah I mean there are quite I don't think it's very bonkers it's very methodical okay yeah so it's quite clinical yes it's quite clinical and you're absolutely

eating at a certain time it's I'm not doing medical fasting that's not for me at all just makes me want to weep but it will be you know it's quite a kind of controlled thing And it is aimed at just making you better, actually, without too much kookiness involved. There is one trip out, Eve, which I just couldn't believe it when I was reading through the schedule.

Because there's a lot of stretching and there's a lot of movement and all that kind of stuff, but it's very much all on campus. The only trip out, it's in a minibus, is to an alpaca farm. Of all of the things. I'll be so intrigued to hear what the health benefits of that. Just to cheer you up, maybe. It is. Just for your mental health.

It's like the support pets that they get on the campus university. It's exactly that. We are going to an alpaca farm where I will be able to be photographed with my spirit animal. Just put your fingers really deep in the fur. I know. I just love the way they run,

the fact that they bounce. So does everyone go or just you because you put on a form that you love alpacos? No, they didn't, they're completely unaware of my alpaca love. That's what's so incredible about it.

So they're not organising individual trips for everyone to various. Oh, I've got a book early to avoid disappointment. Make sure I've got my place on the minibus. I'm going to be sitting right at the front. I mean, I'd drive it if I could, Eve. You know I would. And, yep, I mean, I may never come back.

I might meet an alpaca with teeth as squiffy as mine called Fred. I'd happily ever after. Just bring him back. He'd love Dalston. Yeah, you would love Dalston. It's only a matter of time before in Dalston, you see somebody walking across Londonfield with a pet alpaca. It'll be in my life. lifetime, that's for sure. And there'll be one of those young gentlemen's

congregated facial hair wearing crocks and socks. A very literal case of when an owner looks like their dog. Yeah, no. Would you like to see my albaca face? I don't want to say that it sort of rings true, but it does. It's like a corporal albacca. Bye. Congratulations, you've staggered somehow to the end of another off-air with Jane and Fee. Thank you.

If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do it live, every day, Monday to Thursday, two till four, on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale. And if you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online, on DAB, or on the free Times Radio app.

Offair is produced by Eve Salisbury, and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler.