Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Self-care? Just get cats!

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

Sourdough starters, kombucha, mindfulness and jade vagina balls - has self care gone too far? Dr. Pooja Lakshmin thinks so. She joins Jane and Fi to help debunk the wellness industry and discuss her new book ‘Real Self-Care’. Plus, Jane and Fi discuss Rod Stewart in a high-vis and street party ice breakers...If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Producer: Eve SalusburyTimes Radio Producer: Rosie CutlerPodcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome, welcome to Wednesday and our Wednesday edition of Off Air. Why are you laughing? I don't know, really. Actually, I do know why I'm laughing. After yesterday's triumph of the football stadium in Bolton, do you remember what it was called? Tough Sheet. The Tough Sheet Stadium, which is really, I mean,

you don't have to be a fully paid up season ticket holder, sixth generation fan of Bolton Wanderers to be slightly upset that they're going to call the stadium Tough Sheet. But anyway, that was yesterday. Today, I've been really entertained by an article in the Daily Telegraph wanderers to be slightly upset that they're going to call the stadium tough sheet but anyway that was yesterday today i've been really entertained by an article in the daily telegraph um suggesting conversation tips if you're a bit nervy at your coronation street party oh lord yeah so this is all part of the package that's being sent out to people who are organising the Coronation Big Lunch, if they're having one in their street. And there are some tips to, quote, break the ice. Do you want to have a bit of advice on that?

And this is coming courtesy of the august organ that is the Telegraph. Well, it's part of the Coronation Big Lunch organiser's package. OK. Have you ever met the king? No, I've got the tips. You don't need to give any. No, I thought you just asked me to guess what the tips were.

Okay, I suppose you can. Okay, well, that was quite a good guess because one of the first questions is have you ever met a member of the royal family? Who have you met? Queen. Queen. Queen Anne

She's been dead a while, I don't think you have In our wildest imaginings that's not going to happen, Princess Anne Princess Anne, yeah I think she may have watched me perform an oboe solo, Jane No wonder she always looks so happy She's got that memory tucked away

She came to open a bit of our school. Did she? Yes, she did. Okay. What year would that be? Oh, my goodness. 81, maybe 82. Right.

A long time ago. Yeah. Oh, lovely. Have you? Well, funnily enough, I've shaken the hand of Princess Anne as well. Yeah. On a sort of line-up at a charity event. But she wasn't, I wasn't her favourite guest, I don't think.

It was something to do with a fallout that the royals had just had with the BBC and I was working there at the time. So I think it was a part of the BBC had wrongly broadcast, I think the Queen's obituary and she hadn't died at the time. But quite why Princess Anne chose to blame that on me, I do not know. But it was a very cursory handshake, I am going to say. Oh, OK. Well, maybe she was a long-time Woman's Hour listener

and was just intimidated to meet you. It's quite funny, actually, to think that they just, in their normal lives, in their normal hours when they're not all on show, they probably are watching the one show, aren't they? And listening to Radio 4. God help them if they're watching the one show. Oh, they're bound to all be fans of The Archers.

Oh, no, but I don't count that as Radio 4. I don't even count that as fiction, as you know. No, it's been heartbreaking the last couple of weeks, so you can shut up. Another question. That's what I come to work for, kids, this level of support. This is for people who are tongue-tied at a Coronation Street party. Is she still talking, Eve? Do you have a hidden talent?

I tell you what, that's going to be really useful. That's a terrible one to ask. Imagine sidling up to your husband's, not your husband's, to your neighbour's partner, somebody you've sort of vaguely been aware of for years because you occasionally see him buffing up the car but you've never actually spoken to him and you decide to take advantage of the coronation day tippling that's occurred when you know the street's just awash with bunting everyone's had a few and you go up to him and say have you got any it talents? It's not going to work.

It's not going to end well, potentially, is it? Well, you know, I'll just do one more. If you could pick up a new skill in an instant, what would it be? Sorry, that's a question you're meant to ask at a thingy. Yes, one of the ice-breaking questions as part of the Coronation Big Lunch surprise package. Wow. Okay, well, let me try that out on you. What is it? What do they phrase it as?

Pastime? If you could pick up a new skill in an instant, what would it be? Well, what would it be, Jane Garvey? Gosh, I think probably changing a duvet cover, to be honest. I'm really bad at that. So if I could just develop a new,

really slick way of doing it, that would be excellent. More than 17.2 million people that took part in the big lunch events to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee. Remember when that was? No, I don't really follow world events like you do. World events? I'm a bit like Charles Spencer in that regard. That was strange, wasn't it? No, that was in June, Fi. It was only in June. Was it? Okay. Good grief. And that was when Rod Stewart wore that jacket. Do you remember?

You must remember that. Vaguely. I chose not to watch his performance because I don't want anything to dull my ardour for Rod Stewart. I'd just like to remember him from a little bit way back, actually. When he was filling in potholes, that was the thing that did it for you. Wearing a tabard. And yes, I've always had a thing for him.

Never more so than when seeing him in a high-vis jacket filling in a pothole. Well, you see, I think that's just a bit demeaning of him. I mean, I hugely admire him for doing his potholes and also for supporting Penny, his wife, with the menopause mandate. But I actually really, really like his music. I think the Killing a Georgie Boy is one of my favourite tunes of all time. It's beautiful. Anyway, sorry, just to say, of course,

that we did discuss on the programme today, it was really good to talk to the TV journalist, Caroline Frost, who writes a lot about entertainment, not just TV. And she was just saying that she's regarding The Correlation as a kind of warm-up to Eurovision, which is the week later. So we are going to have just a week of celebrations in the UK, which is great. It's just bumper, I mean, just bunting alert.

A bumper May. All over the place. I mean, just bunting alert. A bumper may. All over the place. I was interested, though, in that question thing because you answered with your I'd like to be able to change a duvet cover. I have no supplementary question to that. So I don't think that that is a very good icebreaker.

Which is my answer. The answer was crap. What would your genuine conversational starter be? Have you lived in the street long? Well, I was just going to say. So we have a big lunch every year. Oh, regardless of Royal Events? Yep, we do every summer in July.

And it's a lovely day. And nearly everybody in the street does come out. A couple of people go away deliberately, but not many. Do some people really do that? Yes, they do do because it's not everybody's cup of tea i think one of the joys of living in a big city for some people is complete anonymity it's not you know it's not to be matey matey with all your neighbors but we ask that question of each other every year i mean i've lived in the same street now for 12 years and I ask the same question of people, you know, which one do you come out of every year?

And it does start something in terms of conversation. But I would be really, really stuffed to think of something else to ask you about your duvet changing. All right, well, that's fine. We've finally run out of things to say. It was bound to happen. And today it has happened.

We have run out of... And also, I just wanted to mention, because we were talking yesterday about religious faith and politicians. And we did ask, I think we were talking, we were talking to Stig Abel from the Times Radio Breakfast Show. And we couldn't think of a politician who'd said that they weren't a believer. Alice Thompson's column in The Times today, she says that James Callaghan was an atheist, the Labour Prime Minister, the Prime Minister before Margaret Thatcher. He was an atheist and said he was. There we are. Thank you. This one comes from Chris, who lives in Leeds, but is currently listening on holiday in Madeira. And he starts off by saying very lovely things, and thank you for that.

And he goes on to say, I'm a 47-year-old gay man who, being born in the mid-70s and growing up in the 80s and early 90s, struggled to accept my sexuality. Fortunately, now I'm very happily married to my husband, Stephen. I was disappointed with an email from your listener, Francis, yesterday, who said, I believe we should be as tolerant in believers of faith as we are of LGBTQ plus people and everyone in between, to which Jane commented, sounds reasonable to me. Chris goes on to say, I find it quite hurtful to think that people are just tolerating me. The difference for me is being gay.

The difference for me is being gay is a fact. It's who I am and who I was born. Now we're in 2023. Society has moved on. And I don't think this should just be tolerated, just accepted. People who are believers in faith make a choice in what they believe. And I agree this is something our society unfortunately has to tolerate, along with their outdated views. Well, Chris, can I just say that if Jane, when she said that, slightly offended you, she just wouldn't have meant to do that at all. It's the first part of that that she was saying sounds reasonable to me. We haven't conferred on this beforehand or rehearsed it, but I'm just standing up for Jane because she has to

be one of the most tolerant people that I know with a genuine sense of warmth and compassion, so she wouldn't have wished to offend you in any way. No, I really wouldn't, Chris. So if I did, really sorry, because if he's absolutely right, it would be the last thing I'd want to do. Good. Shall we do the sister is a sword bearer one?

Would you like to do that? Well, we can, but I just want to thank Louise for the lovely photograph she sent me of her daughter's room when she was visited in Durham during February half term a few years ago. The room just popped up in her memories feed on her phone. I find that quite, I don't like them. No, I know they are a bit odd. Anyway, the photograph is, I'm not going to go into too much detail. Suffice to say, it looks very much like a student room. It was February the 21st when they visited. There's a small Christmas tree up and general detritus just all over the

room and loads of leisure wear on an error. It all just looks rather sweet, actually. Thank you for that, Louise. Makes you feel slightly better about that floor. I keep on getting sent, it pops up in those anniversary photos, things, a photograph of my daughter when we had to go to A&E because she'd been whittling a stick and taking the top of her thumb off with it. And it's just, at the time, it was just, I can't, you know, I mean, which parent can stand seeing their kids in pain? It was just such a horrible day for her, more than it was for me. Sometimes this pops up on my screen, you know, you'd be on the tube and you'd look down and think, oh, no, I don't want to relive that memory.

There must be some kind of a function. They are really weird because I'm consistently reminded of, I'm going to say it, quite a bang average holiday I had in the Dorset area about seven or eight years ago in quite a damp house. But for some reason, that's the memory that pops up far more than any other. That's what's so weird about the thumb one what's happening all the time yeah what is really weird what's going on in there and they're so this is what's so terrifying about our lives how is this happening to us

why have we let it happen and that's before we go on to chat gpt i don't want to we don't want to go there i don't want to talk about it if I don't want to talk about it anymore. If you do know why that happens, by the way, but if you have also been spooked by the photo memory thing on your phone, let us know. Jane and Fiat, times.radio. Or maybe just send us the spooky memory. Try and get rid of it. Like kind of exorcise it by sending it to a podcast. Yeah, that'd be strange.

Right, the sword bearer one caught my eye. And then we will get to our guest this afternoon. This email comes from Kat Brown, who says, My sister is a sword-bearer and performs non-violent, thank you for adding that, purely ceremonial duties for our local town council. Yeah, we need to know much more about that. So do. Because if I have the option to apply for a job as a sword-bearer at my local town council,

I will be doing so. So we need more information, please. Kat says, this means she pops up with a sword bearer at my local town council, I will be doing so. So we need more information, please. Kat says this means she pops up with a sword quite often. Once, though, the Daily Mail reported that ancient remains in Avebury Museum were my sister's actual bones. The family's concern, as friends sent us copies of the article, led to a lot of hysterically funny phone calls

to my indignant sister. And below is the apology the paper eventually printed i just wanted to mention you were kind enough to read out my memories of ursula the bat in a cornish supermarket i do remember that yes it's been quite a career jane do you ever feel that occasionally yeah also about the time when i set fire to my mother's kitchen with my boobs on Easter Sunday. I remember that as well. I can't finish it. I have to. Life is full of hardship, says Kat.

Our landlord has applied to evict us. Oh, my goodness. No, that's terrible. But hilarity as well. And truly, it is laughing which helps me through the tough days. Oh, Kat, well, look, let's hope. Can you just let us know what happens there? That sounds horrendous.

I do hope things are reasonably stable for you now, because that does not sound any fun at all. But I did mean it about the sword bearer stuff. We do need to know a lot more. Yep. And just in case anybody is a little bit curious about how Kat could have set fire to her mother's kitchen with her boobs on Easter Sunday. It just involved one of those gas rings didn't it, moving the plate across. That's right, are those the electric hobs? Yeah you know when you lean in and they go click click click. Yeah they're actually quite dangerous those things and they can stay hot a lot longer than you think can't they? A little bit of health and safety there. Very good, very good very good but yes kat gosh i hope

things pan out all right uh would you like to introduce our guest from this afternoon jane yes well it was very interesting uh dr puja lakshmin is a woman who well she'll explain herself in the interview but she's written a book about self-care um basically debunking the whole notion of it and saying that really what you need to do is to not spend a load of money on really expensive treatments or courses or even retreats but just to put yourself at the centre of your own life and maybe just be a little bit kinder. Her book is called Real Self-Care. She wants to teach us all skills that go beyond the I don't know, the business of wellness and into a world where you can just look after yourself a bit better

and maybe, maybe get other people to stop asking for so much help from you. That's the gist of it, isn't it? Very much so. She's got a very interesting life story herself. She trained as a doctor. She is now a clinical psychologist. And she also had a bit of a bump about 10 years ago, which saw her leave her job and her marriage. We started by asking her about why she decided to join a sexual commune that was later investigated by the FBI. So I am a psychiatrist. I specialize in women's mental health. I am a psychiatrist. I specialize in women's mental health. And I'm sitting here in Austin,

Texas at age 39, where I take care of patients who are suffering from things like depression, anxiety, burnout. But about a decade ago, I was a young trainee in my late 20s. And I was completely disillusioned with my own life after I had sort of followed all the rules, but also with mainstream medicine. And I found this group. I dove in for two years. And ultimately, I left completely heartbroken that wellness, that this solution outside of me that was supposed to fix all of my problems, that it didn't work, you know, because the thing is, whether it is a group, a guru, a diet, a juice cleanse, anything that is coming from outside of you is not actually

going to be the panacea for your problems. The One Taste organization is controversial now, isn't it? Was it easy for you to leave? Did they try and kind of keep hold of you? So it was definitely a, it was a traumatic time in my life. You know, I went in as a physician though, and I still left as a physician. So I know, you know, when I left, I had family support. I could still come back to a career and I had access to psychotherapy. I was able to get on medication for my depression. Many other folks in that group didn't have that luxury. So I think my experience was sort of an outlier in that I was treated differently.

And at the same time, I think through my own psychotherapy, I've been in psychoanalysis now for about seven years, working through all of that. I think the human search for connection, that human search for belonging is universal. And so I can give myself compassion for that now. And it's part of the reason that I wrote Real Self-Care, because I think we need to have these honest conversations and also understand, especially for women, why we turn to some of these solutions. And some of these solutions just are dangerous, aren't they?

That's the problem. They can prey on you at your most vulnerable time. They can make promises which are just impossible to keep. But they sell this notion of a nirvana, a peace of mind, a state of mind with just so little actual empirical evidence behind them. And that's effectively what One Taste was doing, wasn't it? Yeah, I think that it's when I think about wellness and when I think about the wellness industry, I think you can sort of divide it into two types of experiences. There are the folks who are advertising solutions that can be dangerous. And then there's this other side of the industry that's not necessarily dangerous, but it's

manipulative because it sells you these easy, breezy, consumer oriented solutions. But it does nothing to actually take aim at the social problems that are the true root of our suffering wherever you live in the world. wherever you live in the world. So a couple of years ago, I wrote a piece for the New York Times here in the States called This is Betrayal, Not Burnout. And the whole kind of thesis of that piece was that we're selling these individual solutions to people, but exonerating these broken social structures. So you can't meditate your way out of a 40 hour work week with no childcare. Like that's not how wellness works. So I suppose, Pooja, women's lives have changed so much, if you're a privileged woman anyway, in the last 50 years or so. So Fi and I are in our 50s. I'm 58. Fi will be, I think it's 54 on Monday, if I'm not much mistaken.

And we have jobs that we enjoy, but we both also still go home and have another job in our individual households. And that's true of almost every woman who works, isn't it? Yes, absolutely. And I'm living that same thing right now. I have an eight month old. While I was writing Real Self Care, I was going through IVF treatments to get pregnant. And it's funny because as a perinatal psychiatrist, I've spent almost the past decade taking care of women who are in this double shift and trying to, I hate to use the word balance, let's just say juggle all of these different jobs. let's just say juggle all of these different jobs. And, you know, I can say now that I'm living it, that it's even harder than I knew it was. Well, it's really odd that you, so you were a perinatal psychiatrist before you became a mother. I was, I was. And it's funny with my therapist, my psychoanalyst, we've talked about how it was a safe distance for me to be the doctor taking care of the patients and to sort of see motherhood from a little bit of a distance. Because, you know,

as my parents are from India, they're immigrants, the version of I love my mom to death and the version of motherhood that was modeled for me was very much martyrdom, you know? And I was like, I don't want that. I'm not going to be happy. So it took me until I was 38 to decide that maybe I could figure out how to do it and still keep part of myself. But as you say, it works so much better if you have resources. You know, we have the money to pay for child care. I have lots of help.

I have a great, very supportive partner. And it's still really hard. So can we talk about some of the tools that you would encourage people to use in order to access proper self-care, not what you call faux self-care, which is the jingling chimes and the crystals and the orgasmic yoga or whatever it

is. What's the first thing that somebody might think of doing who's listening to this and thinking, yeah, actually, my life's in a bit of a state. I'm not feeling particularly great right now. Yeah. So the first kind of takeaway is that real self-care is an internal decision-making process that is layered through all of the decisions that you make in your life. So it's not just stepping out for 15 minutes and meditating or getting a massage. It's actually threaded through and layered through every single decision that you make in your life. And I think one of the things that's important for listeners to understand is especially if you're somebody who's feeling burnt out, if you're feeling lost, if you're like one of my patients, like a mom who kind of essentially lost a decade to having a couple kids and now is waking up and is sort of like,

who am I? How do I come back to myself? Something that's comforting to me is to remember that no one decision is going to bring you back to yourself. The process of real self-care is hundreds and hundreds of small decisions over time like that's what actually adds up to bring you back to a state of real authentic mental health right and well-being can you just give us an example of a couple of those decisions that you might be able to make right now this afternoon uk time yes uh no pressure so um know, the first is really getting clear on what your boundaries are and looking at your interpersonal relationships and asking yourself, where is guilt controlling me? I think especially for women, guilt is something that really gets in the way of how we make decisions and how we interact in our

families, in our workplace, with our friends. So I like to think of guilt as sort of a broken check engine light on your car. It's like beeping, it's going off, you see it flashing, but it doesn't actually give you any helpful information. You don't need to use guilt as your compass. Another tip that I can provide is when we're talking about self-compassion, right? Because real self-care, this whole process is about developing a new conversation with yourself. So when you struggle with self-compassion, which I totally admit, self-compassion has always been tough for me, you might notice that you have this kind of constant inner narrative that is like, you know, saying, oh gosh, Pooja, you're not doing enough. Oh gosh, Pooja, you're late. Oh, look at that

headband. Was that really the right one that you wanted to wear today? This is your omnipresent inner critic doing its stuff. Yes. You can, instead of just accepting that voice, being curious about it, stepping back and questioning and saying, huh, like, where did I learn? Where did I learn to talk to myself that way? Why do I feel like it's acceptable to speak to myself like that? And inserting a little curiosity there. You can even name your inner critic.

So this is a skill that comes from acceptance and commitment therapy. So my inner critic, I call her Angelica from the Nickelodeon TV show, Rugrats. I'm not sure if that carries over in the UK. I'm sure it probably does. Yes. And so do you actually have a conversation with Angelica in your head? Yes. Yep. You have a conversation in your head. And what that does psychologically is that reminds you that that voice is not actually you. It's something else. It's something external. It's usually coming from somewhere in your childhood, right? Maybe a school teacher, a headmaster that was particularly cruel or a family member, right? And when you have those conversations and you push back,

you challenge that critic, that's when you sort of start to learn that there could be a different narrative. There could be another way to talk to yourself. So you're right that all seeds are sown in childhood. So will you try and raise your son in a different way to how you were raised? You know, that's a great question, Fi. Um,

I wasn't expecting that. Uh, I think that I'm coming from just a, such a completely different starting place. You know, I'm second generation. I had access to resources. I've been to therapy, you know, because my parents sacrificed so much for me. And because I've been through so much therapy to be able to be grateful for that. I understand that I have the privilege of this next generation of being able to parent in a different manner. But I will say, I'm sure I'm going to make tons of mistakes. I'm sure I've already made tons, right? So it's like every generation does what they think is the next right thing. And then the next generation goes to therapy and talks about their mom.

You're listening to Off Air with Jane and Fi, and we're speaking to Dr. Pooja Lakshmin. I asked her about one phrase from her book, which had really struck me. Don't go to the hardware store for milk. What exactly does that mean? Yes, don't go to the hardware store for milk. What exactly does that mean? Yes, don't go to the hardware store for milk is a phrase that's used in psychotherapy. And basically, it means that when you're looking for reassurance, or when you're looking for validation, make sure that you're not showing up to a friend or a family member who's not capable of giving it to you. So, right, you can't get oranges at the hardware store. Your sister-in-law who is terribly

anxious and has never sought any type of help for her own anxiety is probably not going to be able to help you feel better about setting boundaries, right? She's going to only be able to engage in a way that is focused on her own anxiety. Okay. I think that is such a brilliant thing to understand, actually. And I wonder whether you think quite a lot of people, both men and women, expect too much of their work environment, of their play environment, of all the other places that we find ourselves in, where we're now expecting to get super support for people to be super interested in us. And we're finding a kind of constant disappointment and lack of support where we expect to find it? Hmm, that's a good question. You know, I would say that I think it's both and there. I think,

you know, we've seen tons of data come out about how adults are just more and more lonely and isolated now, even before the pandemic. So I think sort of that inner almost despair is deeper. And then we're looking on the outside to be validated. So perhaps our expectations are mismatched. But I do think probably the reason those expectations are mismatched has to do do think probably the reason those expectations are mismatched has to do with the fact that we've all become so much more isolated. Can we just talk, Pooja, if you don't mind, about men? Because we know that their own mental health is actually, if you look at the suicide rates, I'm sure it's true in the United States as well as the UK, they are so much higher for men and they have been for a very long time.

States as well as the UK, they are so much higher for men and they have been for a very long time. And women do at least have space to acknowledge their own suffering, whether it's a hormonal swing or a perinatal psychosis episode. I mean, not to underestimate the, it can be absolutely diabolical, that kind of episode, but at least women are allowed to talk about it if they can. It's not so easy for men, is it? No, it's not. And I'm glad that you brought that up because I think when we pit men and women and, you know, this is talking about cisgender, heterosexual men and women, when we pit those two groups against each other, it actually doesn't help anybody, you know, because men also need to be able to experience the same range of you know, whether it's their careers or their

professional life or whatever it is, and is the same world that disempowers men from being able to have the full range of emotions. So I do think that it's actually problematic to sort of pit this as a men versus women thing and that both across the whole gender spectrum, people are struggling with their mental health. Yeah, except it sometimes seems that women are more is asked of women and women ask more of themselves and that men sometimes and women perhaps should learn from men. Men are rather good at carving out time for themselves and for their own interests. Yeah, well, men are given permission for that.

You know, they're validated in that. They are taught from a young age that their time and their, like, that their leisure, that their discretionary time can be protected. Motherhood, parenthood for women, even from the very beginning, just the whole physical nature of pregnancy, the burden, not only physical, but also mental and emotional falls on the woman, right? And that's kind of the starting point there for family life. So, you know, I'm of the opinion that a lot of this discrepancy is coming from our environment and our culture and the societal norms that we're born with, which I think is good news because that means that we can change it. You know,

we can move forward in progress. And actually, there are some great statistics in your book. One is that a study of new parents in Sweden found that when fathers were given 30 days of flexible paid maternity leave, paternity leave, I suppose, there was a 26% decrease in anti-anxiety prescriptions for new mothers. So how the state holds you is very important, isn't it? Could we just ask, is there any maternity leave in the States, Pooja, at all? So it's a state-by-state basis. There is not federally mandated paid parental leave in the United States. Wow, that is incredible, isn't it?

One would hope that gets addressed at some stage, Pooja. One key message of your book is to be able to accept that things are just good enough and that's fine. We don't need to search for perfection in everything. So I wonder how you think this interview has gone. Has it been good enough?

I think it's absolutely been good enough. It's actually been wonderful. Oh, Pooja, you can come again. Thank you. And also, I warmed you because I put a little picture of my cats today, my little kittens up on Twitter, because they were reading your book with me as I was reading it this morning. And you fired back with one of your two beautiful cats too. And I do think, you know, in light of everything we've been talking about, just get cats as well is quite a powerful message for self-care.

You're a woman after my own heart. Yeah, absolutely. That was Dr. Pooja Lakshman, You're a woman after my own heart. Yeah, absolutely. That was Dr Pooja Lakshman, and her book is called Real Self-Care. It's available now. And the photograph of her cats and my cats, well, that's just up on Twitter. Yeah. We just briefly at the end of that alluded to the lack of mandatory maternity or paternity leave in the States.

I mean, it is an incredibly dire situation that we don't really talk about very much here because, but then there's something about the States, it's so different. They don't really have holidays, do they? They have two weeks usually. It's so strange. Yep, it is strange. How many weeks holiday do you get? Well, we're on about five weeks here, aren't we? Well, that's because people want to actively encourage us to be away.

Yep. Do you think there's a message in there somewhere? I think there is. I think there is. Anyway, that was Dr Pooja Lakshman. And tomorrow's guest, we're staying sort of with medical matters, but a very, very different interview tomorrow

with a woman called Avril Mansfield. She was the first woman in Britain to be made a professor of surgery. Now, she was a vascular surgeon and I think she's going to have some interesting stuff to say tomorrow. I just want to end with this. I'm back in the Telegraph.

I think I might be becoming a Telegraph reader. Do you think it's... No? It'd be unfortunate, wouldn't it? I'm going to say this, Jane. Literally, read the room. Yeah, OK. Can I just mention this?

Because you will like it. There's obviously been a long-running exchange of letters on the Telegraph letters page about sandwich fillings. There's so much trouble in the world that sometimes you've just got to acknowledge the good stuff. And this is from a lady in Suffolk called Claire. My mother provided variety in our school lunches by making us sandwiches filled with crushed Fry's chocolate cream bars.

Oh, my Lord. You weren't expecting that, were you? This ensured a queue of children desperate to trade their lunch for ours every day. Of course, what with the current shortages, Claire. Fat chance of getting a Fry's chocolate cream these days. You'll have to whistle. Anyway, there we are.

Did you ever used to put a bit of a chocolate bar inside a bap and pop it in the oven and call it a pano chocolate even though you didn't know what a pano chocolate was no i can safely say i've never done that yes it must have been a down south thing it was lovely really because you visited the continent had you so no i don't know i don't think i'd ever been to Paris, but I do have a French aunt. Ah, well, there we are. La tante Francaise. La tante. Bonsoir, Michel. Au revoir. So that's it from us at Times Radio.

Yes. Times Radio, Jane. That's where we live now. Oh, sorry. I'm going to stop looking at the telegraph letters. Yep, greetings from Times Radio, where you can join us every weekday afternoon, Monday to Thursday, three till five. Just one more conversational icebreaker.

Where's it from? Where's it from? It's reported by that newspaper, but it's provided to anyone who's doing a big lunch. Who's the kindest person you know and why? Oh, now that's a terrible question. Okay, well, just a reminder it's your birthday coming up, so

if I were you, I'd play your cards very, very carefully. That's how to start a mutiny on the street. Have a good evening. Goodbye. You have been listening to Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Ben Mitchell. Now you can listen to us on the free Times Radio app or you can download every episode from wherever you get your podcasts.

And don't forget that if you like what you heard and thought, hey, I want to listen to this but live, then you can. Monday to Thursday, three till five on Times Radio. Embrace the live radio jeopardy. Thank you for listening and hope you can join us Off 3 till 5 on Times Radio embrace the live radio jeopardy thank you for listening and hope you can join us off air very soon goodbye