Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Royal flush - with Susannah Constantine

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

What would you do if you blocked the loo at a high powered event? Turn to the sister of the Queen and use a cake slice? Surely not...but if you did you certainly wouldn't keep that cake slice...would you?!Fashion guru Susannah Constantine answers that and so much more in her new memoir "Ready For Absolutely Nothing" including how it feels to be ghosted by Dolph Lungren, stalking Scissor Sisters front-man Jake Shears until he agreed to become her friend, and whether Elton John falls under 'E' or 'J' in her address book.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Radio Producer: Rosie CutlerPodcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Drift off with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Welcome. You're sounding a bit nasal now. do you think you've got my call? Don't, because since you told me about how actually incredibly serious your bug last week might have turned out to be, I've become a little bit paranoid. I've used the anti-thingamyjiggy germ sanitiser about four times today. And one of our very young, fit and healthy producers, Hugo, he's been flattened by something over the weekend. Yeah, he has. Can we just repeat what he just said? You said to him, have you done a COVID test?

He said, yeah, short pause. Well, my flatmate had the same thing. And he did one. He did one and it was negative. It doesn't work like that. I don't think he's a medical student, is he? Or indeed a fully trained doctor. He's currently a journalist here.

But yeah, I mean, to be fair, I think that is the young people's approach these days to the COVID, isn't it? I mean, they're very fortunate because obviously most young people completely breeze through the whole thing. So to them, it's just something they'd rather not be part of their lives. be part of their lives yeah but i guess if you are going out and about and you suspect you have covid you are of course at risk of passing it on to people who might be a little bit more frail and vulnerable that's the issue like me jane i mean i'm about three times the bloke's age anyway can you ever have imagined when we were back in the dark days of covid being able to talk about it in such a light-hearted way no and you know we need to be incredibly grateful to those people who made it

possible for us to talk about it in a really light-hearted way i bought a friend last week for her birthday the book by kate bingham about the vaccine and she's reading it and um i think i hope it's going to be really interesting it's one of those books i bought for her in the hope that perhaps when she's finished with it, she might lob it my way. Give it back to you. Yes, just so I can have a look. There are two types of books this time of year, aren't there? There's that one, and then there's the one that you buy for yourself

and think, I'm never going to read that. Oh, look, it's Christmas. I'll hand it on. Which reminds me, what am I going to do about your Christmas present, bearing in mind that you go off at the end of this week? Well, I don't want to put a cat among the pigeons here, but I actually wrapped up your present last night. Oh, shit.

And I will be bringing it in. Well, you wouldn't say no to another emergency candle, would you? But I tell you what, if you buy me a bottle of sparkling water and a mince pie from the cafeteria and call that Christmas, we're not friends anymore. Well, I actually lit, I think, the candle that you bought me the Christmas before last. I lit it yesterday afternoon as I wrapped my presents

and watched Meghan and Harry. Yeah, not my present, though. You didn't wrap my present, you just lit my present. Yeah, that's true, actually. It's rather put me on the back seat. Sticky wickets. Very sticky wickets.ave the stray cat set for uk transfer it's a story we didn't have time for in our very busy program she was busy today it was wasn't it yeah with some very interesting features in it and the lovely susannah constantine who we'll get to in a sec but this did

make me laugh jane uh so i mean the headline tells you everything that you need to know, really. But just to flesh it out a little bit, Kyle Walker and John Stones found a lovely cat in their hotel when they were over in Qatar. I've just learned how to say that in time for the... Yeah, it's a bit late in the day. The tournament to finish. And they nicknamed him Dave. Walker says, Dave is fine.

Hopefully I can stick to my promise that he will come home with us if we win the World Cup. So that was the promise they made to Dave. There's no reporting of what Dave's answer was. But anyway, we haven't won the World Cup. The team are coming back, but they've decided that they want Dave to come with them. But Dave's got to go into quarantine. He has. Dave was taken away yesterday by Qatar's Animal Welfare Society,

which is being paid £2,000 by the players to prepare him for travel. He'll be microchipped, vaccinated, neutered, warned about the strikes as well, I hope. And he'll spend four months in quarantine before making the trip to his new life in Manchester. The Football Association approached me, this is Janet Berry, 68, head of the Animal Society, to help them after the players said they really wanted him properly looked after and brought home. What relevance is that woman's age? Why do they do that?

Newspapers have got me, I know we're now working for an organisation that does produce some very successful newspapers. Janet Berry, comma, 68, comma, head of the Animal Society. Dave's a really lovely, talkative tabby. How old is Dave? It doesn't say how old. Oh, well, that's unfair. A sexist.

Weirdly, our cat actually went out this morning. She never goes outside. She chose this morning to go outside. Maybe she was looking for Dave. I was just going to say, I don't think Dave should go to Manchester. I think Dave and Dora should be happily ensconced together in East West Kensington. I don't like the sound of Dave. If he's a Manchester City fan, he's got no place in our house.

He can bog off. Actually, I did notice some very big paw prints on the easy grass first thing this morning. Foxes? It is the foxes, isn't it? They are, and the paws are quite substantial, the prints. Well you might have a lost big cat from Dartmoor, I mean that can happen. Oh you mean the Worcestershire Wildcat spends his winters in West London? Yeah. It is possible. I didn't actually, this summer was was notable for the absence of stories about big cats roaming the countryside.

I didn't actually hear very many of them. It was so hot that people didn't go to the pub and drink huge quantities of ale and then suddenly see big cats in the distance. It didn't seem to be a thing. But maybe they're just resting and they'll be back next summer. I hope so. Oh, I very much hope so.

I didn't think it was the summer. I always thought it was a bit of a kind of winter pastime. What, the big cat spotting? In my local radio days, it was always high summer across Herefordshire and Worcestershire. A lot of people would indulge in a liquid lunch and then they'd suddenly see something on the horizon

and we'd send the radio car out there. Bugger all. Nothing going on. There never was a big puma roaming around the Vale of Evesham. I mean, you would be surprised, let's face it. Although anything is possible. Yeah. What have you got there?

No, I was just about to say that, like most people listening who, like myself, are regular users of London's shimmering Euston station, by some margin the worst station in London. And I have to use it quite regularly to get back up to the North West. And on Saturday, they were, I hate the way they use this language, they were trialling their new notice board. Now, Euston has had that same notice board for

decades, the big electric one that's right in front of everybody as you walk on to the ghastly concourse at Euston Station. They've now invested in two notice boards that stand vertically in the middle of the concourse. Oh, a little bit like the new edition of the BBC's News Information Wall. A little bit like that. So basically there are two large notice boards and you can walk around them rather than just everybody craning their necks and gazing up at this huge notice board. But it's colour coded and quite confusing. There are big hands on the notice board saying, stop and wait on the concourse and other things like that. But anyway, miraculously and to my complete amazement, considering the bad weather, my train to Liverpool left on time, arrived on time,

and it was the same on the way back, allowing me to arrive for the second half of the big match. Of course, I rather regretted the effort I'd made. And I was thinking, I was saying to you earlier, it is weird because we think, you know, the England football thing is a massive thing. But Euston was really busy on Saturday night when I came back. And there were people milling around, the bars and the pubs were absolutely full and no one was talking about the football.

Nobody apart from me appeared to be listening to it. So a lot of people just aren't that interested. But do you think it is because it's a winter fixture? So the visibility in summer is just much more obvious and obviously it's just much more fun, isn't it, to gather in great big astroturf drinking dens which there was one i think uh the last i think the euros houston had quite a lot of action there was one over at wembley the box park at wembley yeah but now you

know everything has been indoors some quite strange times as well uh so So I think it's just one of the many things that might be considered the next time the country in the Middle East wants the World Cup. That and some other stuff, Jane, which we've also stopped talking about. Yeah, well, that's a good point, actually. All those concerns early on about the rights of women, the rights of gay people, the migrant workers.

But maybe we'll go back to talking about it now that we've no hope of winning the thing. And I do hope for what it's worth. I do hope Morocco win and not... I don't want France to win. Sorry, I just don't... Because I don't think a part of it... I don't think they care.

Oh, la, la. I don't think they care enough. Que le monde. Right, we'll have Susanna Constantine in a moment after Fee has visited Email Corner. Yes. Dear Jane and Fee, this one comes from Vicky. Love, love, love your podcast.

Literally little rays of sunshine for half an hour, four days a week. My sister introduced me to you and we diligently discuss every podcast you do as we love it so much. Well, I don't think it bears that much scrutiny, actually, Vicky, but hey, hey. Please, please, please say hello

to my beautiful, wonderful sister, Rachel, as it would be such a huge talking point for us and we just won't stop laughing. Last year, Rachel had a hip replacement at the incredibly young age of just 50. I know listening to you was a huge help during her recuperation. Well, we're delighted to say hello to Rachel. That's just a very kind email, Vicky. And at this time of year, we're very grateful for it.

So, yeah, hello, Rachel. All the best to you, Vicky, and hello to Rachel. And I hope your recovery has gone really smoothly. I know a couple of people, a couple of friends of mine have had hip replacements, and actually they've recovered really well, although I think you have to put the effort in. I don't think recovery is something that happens without you doing quite a few. All right, staff sister.

I did sound, I suddenly went all starchy there, didn't I, as though I was patrolling the wards. You got your watch the wrong way up on your blouse. This is from Diane. You said that you'd like to hear about the lives of listeners. Well, here I am. Thank you for this, Diane. Diane says, I'm twice divorced, child-free, 62-year-old retiree,

relocated to North Yorkshire. I recently heard the phrase emotionally self-sufficient, and this describes me perfectly. I live alone and I thoroughly enjoy my solitude. I worked for 41 years in public service roles and also got a great amount of satisfaction from work. Towards the end of my working life, I also cared for my elderly parents who developed dementia at the same time, dying within seven months of each other just before I retired. Oh, gosh, that, that's a lot to

deal with. I married men, says Diane, who quotes, needed me. My subsequent short-lived relationships have confirmed to me that my taste in men is questionable and I am happier as a single person. Since retiring, I've embraced having no commitments and having responsibility for myself alone. I've tried volunteering, but I find I have limited tolerance for the extended company of anyone other than my much-loved family and my small circle of friends. As an introvert, I love time alone, I'm not shy, and my small talk exchanges with neighbours and retailers provide me with all the human contact I need. I've realised that for all my working life, I played the part of an outgoing sociable colleague, but actually it wasn't the real me.

I didn't have the confidence to be myself. As a people pleaser, I'm aware I have difficulties setting boundaries with people. Being largely isolated helps to avoid this happening, though in truth, it's a skill I need to develop it's a work in progress um i feel i'm finally involving into being evolving into being myself without the constraints and expectations of my earlier life and it's so liberating says diane well she sounds a happy woman doesn't she i think that's a deliciously self-aware email and i love everything about it diane and I think sometimes you know if you have to give yourself a little bit of a good going over especially in midlife

and really shake out the bits that you've been doing all the way through just because convention dictates and I think you're so allowed to do it I think it's the perfect time for a little bit of exfoliation of the characteristics that you no longer need yeah just hanging around there well as some i can relate to a lot of what diane says actually and i a moment thoroughly enjoying i know people occasionally don't mind the occasional sort of book tip or something and we're just about to um hear an interview with susanna whose book we really love but i am so enjoying is my audio book at the moment ruth jones's book love untold which is a really i was going to say sudsy, but that's unfair.

It doesn't do it justice, actually. It's just a book about the lives of four women, a great-grandmother, a grandmother, a mother and a teenager. And it's just so involving. And Ruth Jones reads it. Oh, that's nice. So it's great. You feel like you're in Wales with her,

living through the lives of these women. Anyway it's great. You feel like you're in Wales wither living through the lives of these women. Anyway, highly recommended if you're looking for what I'd loosely describe as a comfort listen over this rather depressing time of the year. I thought you were going to say I agree with Diane, I'm an introvert and I was just preparing my response. Hang on. I think a lot of broadcasters

are introverted egomaniacs like Terry Wogan said. I don't think either of us are introverted, Jane. Do you think you are? Can we just let... Diane, you've started something, you saucy little devil. Yeah, but thank you, Diane. And that's exactly the kind of email we like, isn't it,

where someone just says, this is me, and you can take me or leave me, but I'm happy where I am, and good for you, Diane, thank you. It's janeofv at times.radio. Just to say, Ruthie, we've got your email. We're just subbing it down. We'll bring you news of Ruthie's life, which, as we predicted, turned out to be quite extraordinary in places.

Just to remind everybody, Ruthie was the lady who emailed last week to say that she'd left. She'd left the north of England. Yes. And she'd hot-footed it to Manhattan. And she was a bit kind of dismissive of her adventures in Manhattan. But Jane and I could smell something there. And we knew that there was more to that story than Ruthie was letting on.

So we'll bring you news of that later on during the week. We do love hearing from you. It's janeandfeeattimes.radio. Or you can tweet us at Times Radio using the hashtag Jane and Fee. I don't think anybody ever has, though. No, but we don't want to stop encouraging them, do we? Susanna Constantine was our guest this afternoon and we were both really thrilled that she came on the programme.

She has written an autobiography called Ready for Absolutely Nothing. And if the image you have of Susanna is as very confident very outgoing quite strident you know when she was doing her fashion TV show what not to wear. She could be really annoying. Oh and so bossy I remember one time when she just really quite openly squeezed Sophie Raworth's boobs but you know that I think Sophie may not have forgotten either but But everything that I thought I knew about her, she confounded me in her memoir. She had a really painful childhood, lots of money around,

but not enough of the other stuff. So the book is really surprising and also just fantastically funny in parts with all of her showbiz anecdotage. She started by telling us why she wasn't joining us in our studio. I'm speaking to you from my bed, as you can see, and fashion guru I am not right now. But I do feel like the big guest because I'm just kind of lying here like a lump between the sheets.

So in that respect, I am the big guest. You are a big guest. Okay, now, can I ask, how long have you taken to your chambers? Have you been there for a week or is it just a couple of hours or what? No, today's the first day I've succumbed and I've had it for two weeks.

And I know, Jane, you've been battling this too. And I've been kind of to Scotland and all over the place. Stupidly went cold water swimming when I was just getting it and now I'm paying the price okay what can I say right well I wonder if there's any chance you might spend a bit of time writing a sequel to your memoir because I'd read it I've read this one and I think there's more do you think you've got another book in you seriously um I mean definitely I've got another book whether you, seriously. I mean, definitely I've got another book.

Whether there is a follow on from this one, I don't know. Because in writing it, it was as kind of interesting and revealing to me as it was, I think, or will be to the reader. will be to the reader. And so it was kind of curated in a way that I didn't kind of go so much into my life now and really nothing to do, very little to do with Trini and my time together, because that actually was, as it turned out, the least interesting part of my life. And mostly because we were on television for most of our adult life and everyone knew everything about us already. So it was just... What I love about this book is that it is quite nostalgic. It's the 60s, 70s and 80s were such a time of change

and it's kind of seen through the eyes of a girl who was ready for absolutely nothing. Well, you say that and you also say a lot of quite self-effacing things like I was only ever along for the ride. I was never driving the bus. That one stuck with me for some reason. You really have read it. I've read it, love. You really have. But your education, what was that intended to prepare you for? I mean, was it literally just marriage?

I mean, I well, I don't think it was just marriage. You don't go to school to learn to get married. But I think I went to school because that's just what you did. And I think if there was an option not to not go to school, I don't know if my parents would have bothered sending me. But I really did learn nothing there. I don't know if my parents would have bothered sending me. But I really did learn nothing there. I didn't make that many friends. I was very shy as a child, which is hard to believe now. But I was with kind of, you know, girls from similar privileged backgrounds. And we were being educated by each other, probably more than anything else to become our mothers you do say in the book as well when you've been raised with no reason to try or make an effort with nothing to strive for

where your opinion isn't important valued or encouraged it breeds a person destined to fade into the background now Suzanne I put it to you didn't. You managed to get to the foreground, I think. But you know what, that's such a damning indictment on where the kind of the upper class, the upper middle class parents saw their girl's destiny. And I mean, this isn't back in the 1940s or 50s. This is in the 80s and 90s, isn't it? I know it might well have been though. But I think, you know, that did set a little kind of rebellious spark in me, that attitude. And so for me, my rebelliousness didn't come from sex, drugs and rock and roll. There was a bit of that. It was more about, okay, watch me. I'm going to go

out, I'm going to work and I'm going to make my own money. And that's what I did. So I was doing what was not expected of me. And that gave me a huge sense of satisfaction and self-worth. I loved being part of a team. I loved working towards a common goal. You know, I worked in fashion with John Galliano and Alistair Blair, another designer. And I learned so much there. I learned about the wider world. I learned, you know, I'd spent hours with the pattern cutters and watching them cut, you know, the patterns and then the fabric and then the toile. And it was fascinating to me. And I just loved being surrounded by these people.

Your dad was not an aristocrat. He was a very wealthy man and a very successful, successful businessman. But the fact that he was not aristocratic, but aristocracy adjacent, if you like, that that seemed to cause him a certain amount of embarrassment or shame or a mixture of the two? I don't know. I mean, I did put that in my book. And it's something that has been raised and I have reflected upon. And I think my dad in one way was very comfortable in his own skin. He was hugely bright. And he was, you know, he was a wonderful man. And he, you know, he loved my sister and I as best he could with the tools he had because he was grown up in the equivalent. Well, he was brought up in the 1930s and 40s in quite a Victorian sort of Victorian background. And he I think he liked the lifestyle of the aristocracy.

You know, he loved the, you know, going shooting and all kind of socializing and everything and having socializing on tap. So the Beaver Castle where we grew up on the estate and rented a house there, you know, that was next door. And he was fundamentally the laziest man in the world. Couldn't be bothered to do anything. God bless him. I'm quite similar. And so his social life was on and my mother's was on tap

and it was easy to orchestrate. But so much of what the picture that you paint of that kind of aristocratic adjacent life, it just seems to make the people within it just be really unhappy. You know, there are these incredibly wealthy, privileged people who end up, I mean, in your peer group taking heroin, your mum succumbed to alcoholism, you know, it doesn't, I don't know, it doesn't bear witness to money making people happy

well that's for sure and I think I think more than anything it wasn't you know of course that that's a kind of sweeping generalization of course there were times when you know people were happy but I think it's like when you have your you have no expectation of you or as a boy, you have a predetermined path. Basically, what's happening is that your dreams have been taken away. And if you don't have something to dream for, you know what's left. And that is incredibly deflating on your psyche it's like you know these families who come you know from these children who come from very very wealthy families and don't need to go out and work i think it's hugely damaging i really do but this is not a misery a misery well i was about

to say because it's sounding like we need to make it clear that we join you at the start of the book when you've just been ghosted by Dolph Lundgren. I mean, can I just say it's happened to all of us, Susanna. You're not special, but that just gives everybody an indication. His name is, yeah, his name in itself is hilarious. It is funny. But you know what? We've had, it's like I was doing a book event and I was regaling the story and just saying, this is an extraordinary anecdote that reveals an ordinary truth. And the ordinary truth is that most of us, if we're honest, have had a one night stand or a quick fling.

And the guy or girl that you've had it with doesn't recognize you 10 years later. So that happened to me. It just happened to be with Dolph Lundgren. And anyway, so I asked the audience and there was this 88 year old woman sitting at the front and I said has any come on has any have any of you experienced this and this woman this old lady shot up her hand and said oh goodness yes it happened to me three years ago and um I just thought what a legend you are so she'd been ghosted I don't know whether she'd gone the whole way we don't need to go there

we probably don't but we do need to go to a few other places where are you going to go first? you did go out for a long long time with Princess Margaret's son Viscount Linley I'm trying to get my aristocrats right here and I think you were with him for five or six years Margaret's son, Viscount Linley. I'm trying to get my aristocrats right here.

And I think you were with him for, was it five or six years? It was a long time, wasn't it? Yes, six years. Six years. It was six years. And so during that period of time, you must have sort of, well, you did. You attended plenty of royal family get-togethers. Did they, I mean, we're thinking obviously about Harry and Meghan at the moment. Did they strike you as people who were trapped in a world

over which they had no control and were all as miserable as sin? Was it actually like that? No, it really was not like that. And it was, it's like when I went, so going out with David, yes, of course his mum was Princess Margaret and that was quite a thing to meet her for the first time. But she very quickly went from Princess Margaret to my boyfriend's mum and you know they they are like a family what from what I saw you know the same the same as anyone else and I didn't see them in their official roles but behind the scenes they they were just a family who, you know, maybe had a bit of an argument or laughed together or, you know, ate together, who supported each other.

So I never saw that side. And I, you know, so from my perspective, I don't know what the real story is today. Well, I'm talking about a long time ago. Yeah, yeah. is today. I'm talking about a long time ago. We're going to keep the listeners guessing about the extreme nature of the

incident that happened in the Loos in Greenwich with Princess Margaret and we will go straight there, Susanna. Prepare yourself. Prepare listeners. Prepare yourselves. Don't overdo it. After this advertising break. Now, Susanna, you're at lunch at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich

and you go to the toilet, Lou, and what happens then? So I'm caught short after a kind of, I think it was baked Alaska or something and a silk-cut cigarette and I had to go to the loo because things started moving. So I went to the loo, and it was quite a long time, and suddenly I heard the kind of click, click, click, click, click of heels and a voice saying, Susanna, what are you doing? You've been gone for so long.

And it was Princess Margaret. And the reason I'd taken my time was because i couldn't get it to flush and i said this to princess margaret i said ma'am it won't go down and she said right come out go and get a knife and i didn't question this order and off i trotted back into the dining room room where the sort of trestle tables it was in the mess room and I looked for a knife but every knife was being used so I kind of searched around I found this really rather lovely cake slice on the side silver cake slice with an ivory handle so I took that put it up my sleeve and I went back not questioning why she might need this knife just

doing it and she took it out my hand went into the cubicle put the knife in the bowl of the loo and started chopping up and chopping my poo up and then flushed the loo handed me back the knife which I then went to wash and it it was, there was no question. And that's one of the things that was one of the many things that was so wonderful about her. She didn't, she was too kind of bigger personality to worry about what people thought. I think like myself, she had been in the Girl Guides as well. Yeah, well, there you go. There you go.

And she was just practicality, personified. And she really was someone who had a grit and resourcefulness and was totally lacking in any embarrassment. I think there'll be a lot of people rethinking their use of a cake slice over the festive period. Well, especially if you come to my house, because I've still got the knife. Well, especially if you come to my house, because I've still got the knife. And also, I think just the combination of the baked Alaska and the silk cut, people might be passing on that this festive time. Could we talk a little bit seriously about your mum, who was, she suffered from bipolar disorder.

She was a heavy drinker that became alcoholism didn't it later in her life and she just seems to be a woman who's entirely trapped in her situation and as a consequence your own childhood was undoubtedly blighted by all of that wasn't it it was but you know what fee i i i mean it it was, but my mum, despite her illness, like my father, she gave me everything she possibly could. And when she was, well, I wasn't really aware consciously of her illness until kind of my mid-teens. And subconsciously, I obviously knew there was something wrong because I was her watcher. You know, I watched her all the time. And I think that's why I found it so hard to go to boarding school because I was sort of instinctively knew that she was fragile and but you know whilst it was I mean bipolar disorder is I mean I think it's

very obviously very different today but back then it's mental illness was not a disgust there was very little known about it there was very little um you know i mean she was she was a woman who never went to see a psychiatrist ever she was just given medication and it's you know has she been born for 50 years earlier she would have been sectioned um and i don't know whether i mean one of the reasons i started writing this while looking at my past life is i wanted to know if i could have avoided being an alcoholic and uh myself and i you know i looked at my mother and my mother and I don't know totally whether she was drinking to self-medicate or whether she actually had the disease. So I'm not clear about that. But and the kind of positive I take from my mother.

Well, there are many things, you know, she was an incredibly kind, unjudgmental, the sweetest person. She treated everyone the same and she was very gentle and very loving. And her being ill and not knowing how she was going to be one day from the next gave me the ability to live 100% in the present because I never knew what the next day was going to be like. So, and that's how I look at it. And I feel much more heartbroken for her than for me. You know, I had, yes, I had a privileged upbringing. Yes, there were challenges. But on the whole, you know, I still had people around me like Mrs. A, who was our housekeeper, who I adored.

And she was like a surrogate mother. And then latterly, when I got older and I thought, OK, well, I'm old enough to leave home. I'm going to get the hell out of here. I then kind of attached myself to Princess Margaret, who I also saw as the surrogate mother. So I think for my mum, it was very, very challenging. And I think it was very challenging for my father, who chose to put his head in the sand about it. But you're right, though, it's all about timing, isn't it? If she'd been born, I don't know, 30 years after she was, she'd have been offered, well, one would hope, all kinds of talking therapies and much more support. And there'd be, well, there is a much more public conversation about mental health now, isn't there? say oh have you got any regrets and I usually say no I don't but I wish that my mum was alive today

and I could have you know helped her more and and also to have asked more about her background I don't know whether you guys have ever been like that but I was never interested in my parents past or why they became the people they were or what happened to them. And that is a huge regret for me. I just wasn't interested. They were just my mum and dad. And did your mum see enough of your career to be proud of it? She wasn't really aware of it, Fi.

But my dad, you know, he, you you know i heard sort of through mutual friends that you know your dad's really proud and and then when he died um prematurely he was only 69 when he died and my sister and i were going through all his things and i found this big box underneath his bed with every press cutting every article i'd written, every time I'd appeared in a red top. I don't know where the hell he got the newspapers from. But, yeah, it was all there. So that was a kind of very sweet parting gesture. But my mum didn't, she wasn't she it didn't really click with her in the book you are

um unsparing uh and generous with your anecdotage i have to say and um but i also i am aware that when you want to be somebody's friend it is it's terrifying for that individual jake shears from scissors sisters had absolutely no option but to become your mate. It's terrifying. It is so shameful. I mean, it's really quite disgusting behaviour the way I am. But if I like someone and I think they're fabulous, it's kind of almost like I'm not interested in what I think of them them almost I'm much more interested in what they think of me which is so egotistical so I will go absolutely out of my way to charm charm them

and um yes and I did that with um Jake Shears it took me three years of stalking and turning up at concerts like some really sort of sad teenage fan. But I won in the end. Not only did I get him to like me, but I got him to like me almost best of many of the people he knows. And who's in your sights at the moment, Susanna? Well, I did think of someone actually the other day, but I can't remember who it was. The world of celebrity can rest. I've got over it. But, you know, I was, yeah, I was, I was shameless.

I was shameless. I think I can rest on my laurels now. I haven't really got the energy to do that. No, but also your address book is just insane. Yeah, it must be. It includes Elton. Does he go under E or under J? No, he goes under something very rude.

Oh, okay. Well, we definitely know. I mean, nor can we talk about the club you went to with Jake Shears. But trust me, it's a window on the world. I know, it's such a shame, isn't it? Well, I did ask. It was such a moment.

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