Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Some very saucy snails coming towards you... (with Tina Brown)

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

Today, Jane and Fi are asking some big questions: Can you take your bra off with one hand? What size is one size fits all? Could you be a silent, intimate waxer? Plus, Jane speaks with Tina Brown, journalist and author, ahead of hosting the Truth Tellers Summit. You can book your tickets to see Jane and Fi live at the new Crossed Wires festival here: https://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/book/instance/663601 If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfi Assistant Producer: Hannah Quinn Times Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I've watched a guinea pig litter emerge. Have you? Yes, it was magical. Was it? Yeah, it was tiny. But apparently sort of effortless? Oh no, I really felt for mum. You felt for her?

Yes. The key thing with the tote bag is to let the lovely listeners know that not everybody who writes in with a recommendation for a friend who then writes in to say, I've had it recommended by a friend is going to get a tote bag. So tell a friend get a tote is our slogan. So if you'd like a tote bag, then you tell a mate about this podcast, someone who hasn't listened to it before.

They listen to it and get on board. They say, I was recommended by, let's just say Melanie, shall we? Melanie recommended that you listen to our fair. I'm absolutely loving it. Please can we both have a tote bag? And then our detective, executive producer, puts these two things together and sends you both a tote bag. But the thing to remember is that not everybody who does this

is going to get a tote bag, so you've got to move at speed. We're not made of tote bags. We're not, no. We've got a limited supply. It's a limited edition, actually, isn't it? Yeah, well, it's very limited and it's an edition. And it's currently cluttering up the office. So get a wiggle on. Get involved.

Just tell a mate. Tell somebody who hasn't listened before. I mean, to be honest, we're not going to come round to your house and make you show us your phone and other devices to make sure that you weren't listening first. There are elements here where you could cheat. That person emails us and then you've got to say who it was who started it all and then we send you both a tote bag.

Does that make it any clearer or just worse? I liked tell a friend get a tote. Yeah. As a slogan, it's brilliant. It's turned out to be a little more complex than I might have imagined. But they are rather good bags. I just want to say that they are quality.

It's not rubbish. And I've got a lot of those tote bags. I think we all have now. Since we stopped using plastic bags of any kind, we've all moved on to just gathering thousands of these reusable bags, all of which we tend to leave in the house and then have to get a bag from the shop. There is that.

You acquire more, and on we go. So there will be an international bag mountain eventually won't there people will be shinning up it with crampons well somebody will set up a really fantastic uh digital enterprise won't they to recycle tote bags and they'll leave out vowels exactly um but i will say that these are a good size. You could fit quite a chunky amount of shopping in this off-air tote bag. I could fit my fattest cat in the tote bag. Well, I think that's the best possible illustration. And it wouldn't strain at the seams.

Okay, well, there we are. I think that tells everybody that if Pinky Ponks is it. No, he died. I'm so sorry. Oh, he died. That one died. So who is the fat one? It's very triggering.

The fat one is Cool Cat. So he's weighing in at seven kilograms. If he could fit into the bag, then we're good to go. It's something, I mean, just imagine, you'd make yourself the chat of your local street, wouldn't you, as you set forth, sally forth to get some vital provisions with your off-air tote casually over your shoulder will you use no do you think that that is absolutely

modern life eating itself if you leave the house with your own tote with my silly face i think i could i could use it if i turned it inside out. I've got our previous employer's tote bag, which I used turned inside out. I just think I'm not advertising their wares as I go about my business. But I'm happy to use the bag. Okay. Do you know what the one that I display with immense pride

when I saunter out is? Do you remember we got sent some Ian Botham wine? And I've got the Ian Botham wine tote bag. Yep. And I love that. It's just quite funny. Because it's not really on brand. To be frank.

Probably for mints in his cricket box. Oh, no, toad. Oh, no, sorry. No, toad. That's horrible. That's horrible. So, yes, tell a friend, get a tote, and we'll see how it goes.

If you need some kind of clarification we'll probably try and explain it better tomorrow you ever go tomorrow we'll get an academic in to explain explain how it's going to work could i just start by saying thank you to julia who we spoke to on the program yesterday when we were talking about birth trauma and we were just slightly up against it for time because we've got very busy on and off our studios here at Times Towers. So Julia has sent in an email because she really wanted to just tell the end part of her story and it is really important as she says, there may be women who've recently gone through my trauma and I need them to know that I've come out the other side with the right support and they can

too. I had five years under the biofeedback clinic at St Mark's Hospital, quite a lot of bowel trauma therapy. I made friends with an amazing tool called Quo Fora and have had endless amounts of love, support and understanding from my friends and family and also at work, without which life would have been even tougher. I've been open with people so I don't have to hide. I was diagnosed as a pre-diabetic a year ago and was quite poorly with other things too but having had two parents die of Alzheimer's this was the trigger to make me get my body back as I knew that to have the healthiest brain for as long as possible I needed the healthiest body. I can now power walk 5k in under 40 minutes that is at speed.

I've lost two stone and I feel more alive than I have for 20 years and for the first time since my daughter's birth 28 years ago. I don't mind what I look like, but it's the feeling good that has surprised me so much. And what needs to change is that the services I ended up fighting for after six years of trauma post-birth should be offered as a direct result of a traumatic birth. If that had happened,

I may have felt how I do now 12 years ago. I've attached a picture of my gorgeous son, who is totally worth every ounce of trauma and pain. And I would go through it all again to have him in my life. So Julie, it was a pleasure to talk to you. And thank you for following that up on the email. And you're absolutely right your son is gorgeous you're gorgeous too may i say that you've both got absolutely splendid teeth and that is the sign of great parenting it's a lovely photo and um and you know he just looks like an absolute darling so well done you uh more of those then jane and fee at times what is our address times dot radio thank you that's great and we are going to talk to we have a gp who comes onto the So it's then Jane and Fee at Times... What is her address? Times.radio. Thank you. We are going to talk to... We have a GP who comes on to the Times radio show

every Tuesday afternoon, and today it's Ellie Cannon. And we are going to talk to her. As we talk now, it's lunchtime, but we'll do the show this afternoon, and Ellie is going to talk... Actually, we're going to ask her whether or not, or how often she gets women coming to her with birth trauma. Because I imagine there are plenty of women who put it off

because they've got so many other things to do and the baby is probably uppermost in their mind and they have other priorities. And then maybe years later they get round to thinking about what they've been through and what their body is possibly still going through. Well, I think that's one of the points of worry identified in the inquiry wasn't it that actually the follow-up for traumatic birth injuries is really very limited

and you might not realise especially if you've had these huge tears so a third degree or a fourth degree tear that can really affect your continence that sometimes doesn't show for a couple of years and obviously the older you get and the weaker all of your muscles and those walls get inside you the more likely that you are to have those problems so yeah we'll talk to ellie and it's it's a conversation that we will carry on having we might not dedicate quite as much time on the podcast to it, but if you do want to email us about it, we'll certainly read the emails and try and put some into our email specials.

Yeah, because the last thing we want to do is stop, is make women think, oh, if I get pregnant and I really want to, that's going to happen to me, because it almost certainly won't. But I think it's really good that people are just made aware that it might or it might happen to someone that you care about so um it's and there's no shame involved here because i think let's be honest continence or

lack of it it's just so it's so important it's such an important part of the human experience if you're worried about incontinence you don't go to places you don't do things you might be reluctant to have form relationships or friendships or whatever it might be it's it's really really important yeah um and it's got to be discussed it's got absolutely got to be acknowledged very much so uh right let's let's move on with a slight change of mood to things you can do with your bra. And actually, we are back to giving birth here, but in the animal kingdom or queendom. This is from Christy in Essex.

Further to the listener with a newborn who was able to use her maternity bra to lead the dog home, which I thought was very clever. It reminded me of a couple of years ago when, as a student, I was doing a stint lambing a large flock of sheep in Aberdeenshire. I was doing a stint lambing a large flock of sheep in Aberdeenshire. I was checking up on the flock in the field when I noticed a ewe really having trouble squeezing her large lamb out. Have you ever seen that happen? What, a large lamb being squeezed out? Or just a lamb being born? No, I've watched a guinea pig litter emerge.

Have you? Yes, it was magical. Was it? They were tiny. But apparently sort of effortless? Oh, no, I really felt for her. I don't. You felt for her?

Yes. So she was doing some work? Oh, she was doing some work and she was really squealing. Oh, Lord. Anyway, large lambs. Yes. I was fortunate enough to come up behind her, says, reminisces Christy, and hold her down i knew i

couldn't let her go or i'd never catch her again so i actually ended up lying on top of her i rolled my sleeve up and after a bit of investigation realized that her lamb had one leg back instead of in the normal forward position beside the head it was a really tight fit and I knew that I needed a cord of some kind to attach to the foot of the leg which was back and my bra came to the rescue. The lamb was safely delivered followed by its twin a few minutes later. Wonderful memory there from Christy in Essex. I just want to know she carried on lying on top of the lamb whilst taking her bra off. That's very handy. That's quite a manoeuvre I probably wouldn't have been able to do myself.

And I wonder, this may have been in the days before the socials, but you've got to say that would have been a powerful TikTok contribution, wouldn't it? Hugely so, yeah. I'm lying on top of a lamb in labour, but I'm going to take my bra off with the hand I... Presumably both hands were free, were they? Anyway, it might require a follow-up, that, Christy. It's not a question I thought that I'd be asking

at the beginning of my journalistic career, but can you take your bra off with one hand? I would find that challenging. Gosh, who knows what crisis we may be, at some point in our lives thrust into that may require exactly that is it worth practicing no i'm just i'm just sticking my hand up no it's not i don't think i very much well we'll try later and we'll report back this one comes in it's entitled the lovely arabella good afternoon lovely jane and fee

i am the lovely arabella's mom I can't tell you how giddy I was when I heard you reading out her email. Your podcast is another way that Bella and I share our lives and opinions, even though we are at five years of living apart now. When she wrote to you, she had just bought a ticket to your Sheffield show to celebrate her birthday.

But I was rostered to work, so she was being a wonderful young woman and taking herself. However, the silver lining to me breaking my foot, thank you, one-size-fits-all spa flip-flops, we are now attending together. I imagine spa etiquette could entertain us for a few days, the foot fracture aside.

I also struggle with the one-size-dressing gowns, which make me look like a small child against my willowy pals. Why do I agree to these things anyway looking forward to the show and you're going to be buying arabella's g and t so that lets you two off the hook well thank you that's very kind of you natalie i i do love the idea of chucking in the one size fits all spa flip-flops and the two big spa kimono style dressing gown uh into our hive conversation because those those flip-flops you know the ones i mean they're just like great big barges i don't know a woman tiny teeny tiny

what size are your feet mine are three they're 36 they're absolutely weenie yeah but there isn't you know even even the kiddie sizes are way too big But it is absolutely daft that you're given those in a spa. And the dressing gowns are always built for, I don't know, sumo wrestler proportions. They're huge! One size fits all. We should say, we need to acknowledge, that will be a size. So what size is that?

It is one size fits all. It just doesn't. It's not your size that is that is for sure um and yeah the the funny flip-flops no they don't work for me either i'm a size five thanks for asking which i would say sometimes life gifts you something having a size five female feet is actually really good you can get any kind of shoe you want in that size oh now you see i would i would say that having a tiny, tiny foot size... Do you not pay VAT? Don't pay VAT because I often buy kid shoes.

And also there are always those tiny ones or huge ones left in a sale. They're always there. Life's always just that little bit nicer to you than it is to me. Oh, don't be ridiculous, woman. Would you like me to start alphabetically with reasons why that's not true um obviously because i was gifted scouse heritage and there's just no there's no greater greater gift on earth um waxing uh advice here from another fiona i i've i must admit this is not everybody in the livable area just wake up in the morning and just go weird

terrific yeah pretty much. The great thing about it is you don't have to live there to carry on feeling it. So many people don't. This is from a Fiona who says she was saddened to hear that another listener who'd had... Do you remember this? She had her first Hollywood wax and then said never again.

Oh, at the age of 60. Yeah, as she found it so painful. Well, this Fiona is a 55-year-old waxing therapist specialising in intimate waxing. She's lived and worked in Dubai for 15 years in a completely different industry, came back to the UK five years ago, not knowing how I was going to spend the rest of my working life.

An office job wouldn't give me the flexibility I needed for travelling between Lancashire and Nottinghamshire when I wanted for family reasons. So after many years of having waxing treatments, some good and some bad, I decided to train in male and female intimate waxing as I knew there was a great demand for these services. I'm so blessed to be able to work from my salon at home even though friends and family think it's hilarious that I'll wax anything and I love my clients and what I do. All of my clients are surprised that the treatment doesn't hurt as much as they expected on their first ever wax and so they come back for regular waxing. We chat and laugh so much about everything and anything even though most people on their first

visit apologise for hair thickness or length and even apologize for their underwear but I soon put them at ease. The first wax will always be the worst as the hair is strong and at its thickest but regular waxing weakens the hair and the follicle and that means future waxing treatments in the same area will be much less painful now the hair grows back less coarse and usually more sparse that's interesting because i always thought that the maybe it was just a myth that the more you shaved or waxed it kind of stimulated the more prodigious the growth yeah but that would appear to contradict what our expert is saying here well what a fantastic career leap to have made uh if you're really really enjoying that now because it's one of those things isn't it that uh

i'm not i'm sure not everybody who trains as a beauty therapist or intimate waxing therapist does then enjoy the the eight hours a day of waxing of Well, I've often thought it would be quite a challenging job, actually, Jane. Yes, I suppose I would also make that assumption, perhaps a lazy one, although it would be unlike me to be lazy. I think I'd just really struggle, well, I'd struggle with lots of elements of it, but I'd struggle with that moment where you know that you're going to, that somebody's going to be in pain, but you've just got to go through and do it i'm not sure i'll be very good at the you know one two three off we go yeah i give it a whirl would you would you enjoy inflicting pain on people's nether regions

i do think um it's it's a i'm gonna say fiona i'm really glad like like fee that you're enjoying what you do but it does seem to be one of the odder callings but look it works with the rest of her life and she can do it

from home so how great is that you know we were talking yesterday about hairdressers and chatting or not chatting presumably waxers

will offer the silent waxing treatment will they do you think presumably so you just get the noise of the yeah exactly is that the noise of the Yeah

Exactly Is that the noise? And nothing else I don't know Anyway, other views on waxing are of course welcomed As this, like the Conservative and Labour parties Is a very, very, very broad church It is indeed

What's the broadest church you've ever been in? Winchester Cathedral It's got a massive nave. Has it? Yes. I bet it's not as big as Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral. Obviously, there you go. Yeah.

And it won't be. Anyway. Morag is a Scottish mither, listening to the chat about what we call our parents. Faeðr and mither are old Scottish names for parents. It might be mither. I'm sorry, Morag, forgive my lack of knowledge about that. I'm sitting in the car at the moment and can't check it.

But if I remember correctly, Father is used extensively in the novel Sunset Song, a fabulous book. So it probably is Mither, Father and Mither. We've had quite a few people saying that the mummy thing is a bit icky. But actually, if you've got stuck with it then at what point do you change you know if you go into adult life calling your parents mummy and daddy yeah do you suddenly wake up when you're 46 and think i need to put that behind me now maybe it's 62 i'm grown up enough uh yes that is a weird one when would you suddenly make the change

would you make it would you make a formal announcement? Put something, an announcement in the Times, possibly. Yeah, that would be weird. It is a bit of a strange one. For some reason I keep thinking about, is it the Mitford sisters? Didn't they call their parents something peculiar? I mean, they were pretty much all pretty peculiar themselves. But I, with the exception of at least one,

I think one was all right, wasn't she? She'd become the Duchess of Devonshire. I think just about, yeah. But I'm sure they called their parents... Anyway, look, this is... I'm disappearing down a niche, you know, very dusty crevice indeed there. So we do both know somebody, an ex-colleague of ours,

whose father was known just as the Beast. And, yeah, I think there is quite a thing in, you know, very, very aristocratic families to really indulge in that kind of nickname and stuff. I'm thinking that quite often you'll read about somebody who's known as I don't know. I can't think of something funny now. The Colonel? Or something like that. Or the Beast.

It's just quite strange. I don't know who this person is by the way but it's not a compliment is it? I think it was. I think it was an affectionate name for a man who was just kind of huge and huge daring and ran up mountains and that type of stuff lord then cluttered up the place she's off everyone she's off again now we did talk yesterday relatively briefly about britain's eurovision performance and I think this email does probably win

email of the day, what do you think? Yes. You know the one I'm going to do? Yes. Yesterday's... It's great. Yesterday's Eurovision UK performance discussion prompted me to email for the first time.

Watching Eurovision, it is becoming usual now to see scantily clad garments, scantily clad people, garments being shared. Well, don't forget, of course, Anonymous, that Eurovision garments being removed thing was started by our very own Bucks Fizz, wasn't it?

Good song, that one, in 1981. So we started that. Anyway, and this year's lack of pants, with more buttocks on display than ever, we actually found quite amusing. So sexy, raunchy dancing in the right context can be acceptable on prime time tv but i'm not prudish or homophobic my brother is gay i've got gay friends but our anonymous correspondent says we did feel the staging of simulated gay sex in a grubby shower room that was the uk entry it was a bit sleazy it somehow somehow, it just didn't sit right

with me. And I'm open-minded, but I had trouble reasoning about it all. Maybe I'm too old and it's a generational thing, as I remember Lulu winning it in the 60s. No, if he looks blank, I don't remember. However, similar views were shared on my family WhatsApp and with my brother and his younger gay friends as well. Perhaps the thinking was that the rather mediocre British song needed a more dramatic push the boundaries, never been done before staging, to carry the whole thing off. But null point from the public vote proved it hadn't really worked. Now that's true, isn't it? However, this is where we get to the plus side. It prompted my husband to clean the bathroom and descale the shower head on sunday morning i know you both love a cleaning product so i'd recommend a few sprays of viacal for shiny sparkling chrome excuse any grammatical errors

as typing this during the dawn chorus i have downloaded the merlin app okay thank you very much and i hope the merlin app is giving you huge twitching pleasure but that is brilliant that that rather well more than rather that extraordinarily sexual british performance prompted your husband to do the right thing the next day and sort out the shower head yeah a job i've been putting off for weeks by the way well i think you know an awful lot of people looked at that dance routine and just thought oh look at the grouting it's terrible very inherent mold there it won't work out well uh pamela joins us from auckland in new zealand and says good day ladies i was crushing up eggshells to keep slugs and snails off my

plants and wincing when i suddenly realized i might have been getting something wrong all my zealand and says g'day ladies i was crushing up eggshells to keep slugs and snails off my plants and wincing when i suddenly realized i might have been getting something wrong all my life like walking on eggshells i always thought it meant you had to be cautious in case you broke them but is it really because walking on already broken ones would be very painful which is slightly different english eh aren't you glad to be a native speaker? Well, Pamela, it's a really good point. It is. And I'd always thought, exactly as you had done, that it meant you were treading across something that was so fragile you might break them. But you're so spot on that that is a very, very nasty surface, the cracking of eggshells.

And you do, you put them on your plants, don't you? Do you? To stop the slugs and snails from crawling across oh because they won't well you see i've been operating my snail rescue service yes all week by putting over the last couple of weeks chucking them into the next door garden no no no i don't do that i encourage mittens to mittens is dead you see i've done it because i was rude about your dead cat dora doesn't She only does toilet in her own garden, which is annoying. Yeah, I sometimes get a shovel and just throw it over the fence when everybody else is out. No, but Mitten's was a legend.

She'd always go next door. That's great. But, oh, I see. I didn't know that. Anyway, so I lift the snails up and I put them back onto the earthy bit and away from the artificial grass. But I'm doing my own garden a disservice by doing that. Well, I guess.

But, I mean, if your plants are surviving and whatever, I wouldn't worry. Well, there's a lovely bit of rain. Wasn't there overnight? It was a bit sodden this morning. Yeah. Because our summer lasted, oh, about two days. No, it's coming

back is it coming back yes but just not for a couple of weeks just last couple of emails from me this one is about competent male children and it comes from ailsa it says regarding your discussion of bringing up male children to be competent around the home i've got a son and a daughter and live in italy my son is 28 and many of his friends still live at home rent free and with meals cleaning and washing duly provided by their mamas who all work while training to be a commercial airline pilot my son was sometimes at home and sometimes training in both spain and the uk he worked in restaurants to earn a bit extra and learned more about cooking there than he'd shown interest in knowing at home ditto household chores while he would deal with his own laundry and ironing

and other chores only when prompted, once living away from home, he's now based in Spain, he turned into a very tidy, house-conscious person and does 90% of the cooking for himself and his girlfriend, who's also a pilot. Italy is a wonderful country, but the cultural role of the mother of sons often remains one of near slavery despite the fact that most women work as hard as the men. Of course this is gradually changing and not always the case but in over 30 years of living here that has been my experience. Traditional roles in the home and workplace are still very strong. For example in my city there are no male teachers below middle school despite a thriving and excellent

early childhood education program it's just not a male choice for a profession. Elsa that's very interesting stuff and sometimes I think we fight very shy of indulging in a stereotype don't we because it can be really offensive but actually I think there are real lessons to be learned in some of the European countries at the moment, where they're only divided by a thousand miles or so, but you couldn't be at opposite ends of the spectrum of equality. You know, if you think about all of the statistics that come out of the northern European countries about proper gender equality and parental responsibility equality, and then, you know, you travel to France,

which has tried to actually enshrine in law, the fact that men need to get a little bit more involved. And the statistics in Italy, I know, are quite revealing. I don't know, it's weird. Don't you find it weird? I remember doing a feature years and years ago about Italy, the land that feminism forgot. And I think it does have a little bit of work to do, she says grandly. And also, is there... Perhaps we'll have listeners in Italy who can back up the idea that women, are they really still running around after...

After their sons. Luigi and Alberto. Yeah, I'd love to hear more. Yeah, and is that something that wouldn't happen in this country? Doesn't happen in France? I don't know. I mean, I'm probably... Yeah, I don't feel qualified to comment. Does that mean these great hulking Italian lads stay at home until they're 50? Yep. I don't know.

They've got a lady in charge now. Maybe things will change. Well, she's just been talking about women, actually. And this is Maloney, isn't it? In fact, it was in The Times today on Message message mandy's making a bit of a comeback and um she was saying that she thinks that women um have this mindset that until they become mothers they're not interested in working alongside other women they compete with other women because they've given up on the notion of competing with men but then when they become mothers they're prepared to work with other women for the greater good okay interesting slightly because i couldn't quite make out what she meant by that but we'll have listeners in italy who can

tell us what they make of her what they think of that theory and indeed my interpretation of it which is almost certainly wrong yeah i think there is something in that though i think that the the real sense of a sisterly collective can sometimes uh it is sometimes felt in motherhood in a in a really different way than you might have experienced it before yeah well you people can let us know what they think yeah but i'm always wary saying that because i don't really want to put women who haven't had children in some kind of a bucket marked half full at all. Can I just say thank you to Pauline, who's listening in Melbourne, who has sent in a book club suggestion. It is for the Manon Bradshaw series by Susie Steiner, which is really punchy, witty crime fiction.

And it is a fantastic recommendation. I'm just mentioning that because I really, really love her books myself. really punchy, witty crime fiction, and it is a fantastic recommendation. I'm just mentioning that because I really, really love her books myself, and also to just stimulate other book club suggestions, because we probably need those in by the end of this week, so we can make a choice maybe next week and then give you a nice six weeks or so in order to read your summer holiday book club book number six? Seven, I think.

Seven. It might be seven. Anyway, we need something, I suppose, that is summer appropriate. Yes, but I think what we really, I completely agree, but I mean, I wouldn't mind being on a sun lounger and reading something that was set in a windy, chilly place. But I think what would be really lovely, especially because we did a fact book last time,

is to do fiction that you don't want to get up off the sun lounger because you're so involved in the story. I think that would be a kind choice for this time of year. A nice family saga, maybe with some figures who aren't called the Beast. Yes, maybe. If you can, go there. Just a quick one from Laura in Sydney, where it's cold and raining.

Move to Britain, where neither of those two things ever apply. Laura said, oh, dear, Greek salad in the canteen today. Not sure whether it had come directly from Greece or whether it had been made somewhere in the London area. Well, was it a feta complete? Very good.

Well, it was speedy. There's no denying it. Laura says, I liked your reminder of Eviva España. And you were pondering... Eviva España. It was so jaunty. And you were pondering as to the best evocation

of the French spirit. Well, for some reason, a huge blast from the past came immediately to mind, Chanson d'Amour by Manhattan Transfer. Do you remember that one? Chanson d'Amour. And then they went... You were instantly...

You were in France. You were transported to the Riviera. You were three quarters of the way down a giant baguette. There were some very saucy snails coming towards you, sizzling in butter. And this is a final one from me. How interesting that Alexa's voice is female due to our propensity to take instructions,

barked or otherwise. You also pointed out that sat-navs can be male. Well, of course they can, as they're giving instructions to us. Turn left, turn right, return to route, you silly cow. You missed the turning. Lynn from Wales. I don't think you're on the right sat-nav. You need to retune that.

Lynn goes on to say, it's a bit like having one of my ex-husbands in the car, although thankfully he doesn't comment on my excessive weight, in brackets, size 12, or my unt my excessive weight in brackets size 12 or my untidy hair in brackets natural curly blonde so small mercies uh then you should just download something else but that may be chortle yes that's very fun thank you very much and do keep them coming and we'll get back to explaining the tote bag mechanism in tomorrow's edition and possibly for many other future editions.

But do you think we'll have to say terms and conditions apply? We're heading in that direction. But just to reiterate what I said earlier, it's a very sturdy bag. OK, so you're not wasting your time trying to get hold of one of these things. It will serve its time. And in fact, you'll soon be looking at it, probably in about 12, 15 months' time, thinking, who the hell are they? And turning the bag inside out.

Now, Tina Brown is our guest this afternoon. Fantastically well-connected, spectacularly well-informed. She is a true journalism figure. She loves journalism. Former editor of Tatler and Vanity Fair, author of best-selling books like The Palace Papers and wife of the late Sir Harold Evans, editor of the Sunday Times. Tina is in the UK to co-host Truth Tellers. This is the

Sir Harry Evans Investigative Journalism Summit. It is in London tomorrow. You can attend in real life or online. Tina says this is a dangerous time. I believe that journalism is in serious peril. And what I'm very concerned about is there's almost a kind of attitude outside the profession itself that sort of journalism is this kind of replaceable service in some ways. It's kind of a luxury, it will be very nice to have it. But hey, we have all these social media things and everybody's got a voice now. And isn't it great that everybody can just say what they want everywhere? And it's not realized. I don't think people realize just what the world looks like without journalism. In fact, you've only got to look around and see in front of us what it looks like without journalism.

In places like Russia, in places like Hong Kong, where suddenly it went from being a free society to being one where, you know, the owner of a newspaper can be locked up and, you know, put in prison. It's a scary world without journalists as watchdogs and, you know, defenders of freedom. So it is a crisis. I do feel it, yes. And you see the amount of outlets that are closing every day, every week. And it's become actually really quite frightening to think of a world without journalism. I know you feel passionately about this. I care as well. We're pretty much the same generation. I don't know whether my children care particularly. And that is also a worry. I mean, they probably do get a tremendous amount of their news from sources that, frankly, I wouldn't trust. What do we do about that?

I think that's the problem, is that I think that the time that they wake up, it'll be too late. That's the issue. They may well not care at the moment, but they will come to care as society becomes increasingly chaotic, increasingly dangerous, increasingly violent, and increasingly devoid of accountability. I mean, you know, we're going into an election in both countries in which so often, I mean, we know nothing about any of the local candidates, for instance, because local news has become a kind of a desert. I think actually, William Hague wrote a good piece in the Times recently about that and said, you know, how in his day when he was running as a candidate, I mean, you were held accountable. You said something that wasn't true and you were corrected or you made false claims about, you know, your record and somebody, you know, wrote about it.

So it doesn't happen now. So people just don't really know anything much about their local candidates, except what someone else has said on social media that's completely unchecked. So I think it's a real hazard. on social media that's completely unchecked. So I think it's a real hazard. You are based in the States, aren't you? Yes. Presumably, well, I'm going to imagine that as we speak,

as we record this chat, this conversation, Stormy Daniels is giving evidence in the Trump trial. And you sort of, you laugh in a kind of, what can we do about this type of situation? But these are, this is a hellish set of circumstances that we couldn't have imagined happening 20 or 30 years ago, could we? Not really. I mean, this is part of this sort of, it's remarkable what we can all get used to

and how you sort of define downwards what you're used to. That's the issue. I mean, one of the problems with Trump coverage, and it is a real problem, you know, how do you cover somebody who tells lies every time he opens his mouth, honestly? And yet, how do you not come off as just simply this kind of shrill, like finger pointing sort of character of the press? And yet, it just goes on and uncorrected and spews into the world without any real accountability. It's become a real problem that is actually quite a haunting one for American editors and newsmakers. They actually don't quite know what to do about how to cover Trump.

There's just so much of it now that is fallacious and no kind of standard of what is really accuracy, which is really why I started the Truth Teller Summit, which is in my husband's name, Sir Harold Evans, who was the legendary editor of the Sunday Times. And it's not about celebrating his golden era, because his era was remarkable. He had so many world scoops. It was such an important newspaper that everybody read.

But really to try to say, we don't have to keep celebrating the old vanished era. That's not what we want. We simply want to be able to have journalists supported to tell their stories in any form they can. It doesn't have to be print. But you don't want to find that when a newspaper folds, what you get instead is a kind of tepid, pathetic little sort of digital site with three people on it, which is sort of the way we're going right now when news platforms all over the place close, you know, every week. Just briefly back to Trump, because I don't want to waste too much time talking about him. It's hard, isn't it, when even those of us who despise him and pretty much hate everything he

stands for still, and I hate to to say this still enjoy some of the showbiz element of his buffoonery i mean heaven help us but even people who hate him find him faintly entertaining i mean do you go along with that well i mean i think unfortunately um the other side is a lot to blame as well because because they have been so kind of puritanical, humorless and sort of condescending about Trump that they absolutely refuse to understand his appeal, which is which is wide and deep, as we know. to be steamrolled again, because they will not understand why people find him attractive. And they find him attractive because they think that he is direct, that he does break through the sort of wokeness, political correctness, whatever you want to call it, which people just hate. Many people just hate. They feel that he's the antidote to that. And they've come to sort of hate liberals so much because of that, that they turn more and more towards Trump.

And that is, of course, something that the sort of so-called serious media doesn't really like to discuss. There's now a completely separate, much more in America than in the UK, where there is a plural press. You've still got, for all of its shrinking, you still do have in the UK a lot of newspapers really even if they're smaller than they were that is not true and they're centralized you know it's the whole country national newspapers you don't have that in the US at all so essentially the kind of quote serious press just talks to itself really yeah and everybody else is on uh you know all of these different social media sites Fox News whatever they choose but they're not really looking at those stories at all. So it's really about silos and pods, essentially, in the US, which I don't think is as big a crisis in the UK. So in brief, you're quite prepared for another

Trump victory? Right now, I see a Trump victory. I do. Yes, I do. Because I think that two things. One is that the Gaza demonstrations have spread so much. And of course, images of uproar and social discord fuels the Trump vote. in which those scenes of huge amounts of immigrants coming in fuels the Trump lobby too. So at the moment, I do see a Trump victory. And actually, at the summit next week, at the Truth Teller Summit, we're going to have a very good discussion about Trump 2.0 and how the media is going to handle it. We've actually got one of the leading Hispanic anchors coming in for it. Jorge Ramos. He's a great legend in the US. He's the leading Latino anchor. And he was famously ejected from a Trump press conference in 2015. He's coming in and Kara Swisher, who's the very sort of counterintuitive tech journalist who will talk about, you know, really what social media has done to politics. Jeff Zucker, who recently tried to buy the Telegraph and was rejected,

but was running CNN all the way through the first Trump administration, you know, is going to be joining us along with Emily Maitlis, who will give the UK side. So I think that's going to be a very lively discussion, actually, at the summit about, you know, this big question, very lively discussion actually at the summit about, you know, this big question, which is how should the media now address Trump too, essentially? Yeah, because he's the joke. He's a joke who keeps on giving and might go on to win again. So let's move on to more edifying matters. Can we talk about double standards? I mean, you've been a woman in the media for a long time. You've risen to such a high level. You've had some fantastically important jobs. You've been hugely influential, but you've been judged in a way that a man wouldn't be judged. Has that ever really got you down?

It certainly got old. Let's put it that way. It always used to kind of irritate me when I won, you know, sort of magazine and journalism prizes, for instance, when I was editor of the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, that the sort of the citation sort of made me sound like one of the Rockettes. What did it say? Well, it would say things like, Tina Brown, the spirited, feisty, you know, buzzy editor of what, you know, you're thinking, wait a minute, you know, the issue you're talking about, we had like a 20,000 word report about, you know, El Salvador's gorillas, and I'm feisty and buzzy and like doing my high kicks, you know, at Link, at Radio City. That's, that was the kind of stuff that, you, you know, it's, it's a sort of subtle

infuriating thing that happens to sort of women all the time. And it's, you forget how annoying it is until you sort of look back on it. But when I do look back on it, sometimes I realized just how frustrating it really was. I was just charging ahead. But yeah, it was annoying. Let's put it that way. But not annoying enough to stop me in my tracks. Let's put it that way. And thank goodness for that. But it's the kind of it's the linguistic equivalent very much kept out of the sort of the business side of my own magazines you know it was like nobody knows more than the editor essentially or a successful editor any about why it's successful like what why the audience likes it what the readers think and I was constantly kind of excluded very often from those kind of conversations where the sort of the management who were all men would sort of talk about you know strategy for the magazines and this and I wasn't sort of involved and I remember thinking you know why not I mean

I obviously know more than they do because I've been the one sitting here doing it you know and making it successful and yet somehow it was like get on with your your your your pretty work and and we'll do the boy stuff so yeah there were those things but um that can't still happen to you now surely well i mean now i've sort of moved way beyond that and uh yeah i've i sort of run my own life so i don't i'm not accountable to any uh management as such you know so that's the great joy of being your own boss isn't it is that you um that you don't have to deal with that but i think it was very much a thing and i you know i'm not even sure that it isn't still a bit true you you know, that the men tend to often,

as we know, talk over women in meetings. I hear that again and again. My daughter, age 33, often complains about being talked over on Zooms by the men on the Zoom. But, you know, look, I also feel that the best way to defeat all that is just to win. You know, you just have to be successful. And that is the answer to all of it. Can we just talk as well, because you have you have spoken about this yourself about the double standards applied in all aspects of Britain's national life and particularly the genuine suffering of the women in our royal family. I mean, it happens to politicians, too. But you've written about the royal family. And in fact, you were in my ear for a long time while I listened to your most recent book about the royal family and in fact you were in my ear for a long time

while I listened to your most recent book about the royals which was absolutely riveting. Thank you. But there is there's no question that there is a real double standard there and to marry into the British royal family is a it's such a dangerous thing to do your heart goes out to anyone who does that. It is a miserable assignment to be a royal woman, absolutely miserable. I mean, when you look back on some of the things that have been said about these, you know, the women who join, I mean, the way that the Duchess of York, you know, the Duchess of Pork and the constant, the constant fat shaming of Sarah, you know, the unbelievable ageism directed at Camilla all the way through that relationship where she was called like an old bag. You know, it was stunning, really.

And then, of course, with Megan, same, you know, endless kind of references to her, you know, ethnicity and her, you know. her, you know, and Kate, recently, I mean, what she's had to go through as just simply wanting some private life, you know, for, you know, her get to get over this, this medical crisis that she's had. I mean, it was unbelievable, really, how sort of the volume of the sort of attacks on how she how she was supposed to belong to the public and wasn't allowed to have any private control of her own destiny. It was quite aggravating and quite appalling. Yeah, but Tina, just on behalf of the cynics listening, some people will be saying, well, yes, but some of that treatment was meted out by the very newspapers

you would choose to celebrate. The press has been responsible for some pretty dastardly behaviour down the years, with reference in particular to those women. Well, yes, it has. I mean, I can't, I'm listening, I'm not going to sit here and say that every member of the press is a sort of shining knight in armour. I mean, there's journalists and there's journalists, you know, I mean, there have been, as we saw in the phone hacking trial, absolutely disgraceful behaviour on the part of the press, terrible violations of privacy. And, you know, that is not the kind of journalism we celebrate at the Truth Teller Summit. You know, what we celebrate at the summit is real serious, rigorous inquiry that has been proven out with fact-based reporting. out with fact-based reporting. So yeah, I mean, there's no doubt that, you know, the way that the royals have been written about has been appalling. I have tried in my books to get it right, you know,

I really have. And it's not easy reporting on the royal family because there's not a lot of help that you get, but you do have a responsibility to try at least and get confirmation. And it's really remarkable when you do a royal book like that just to discover how many things that you read are just completely made up you know when you start to drill down and try to find a corroborating force for some of these stories it's like you realize it was just made up out of whole cloth so but you know there are also people who do try very hard to get it to get it right I mean you know yeah yeah but you cannot when you wrote that most recent

book you cannot have obviously not foreseen what has happened and Catherine's illness is it's a real obviously a personal blow to her and we do wish her well, but it's pretty much a disaster for the royal family, isn't it? The fact that she isn't able to be a conspicuous presence is, it's really tough on the brand, I mean, to be really crude about it. It's a disaster. But, you know, I feel it's very, I think the whole of the last few months has been very, very sad because here's Prince, you know, who's King Charles, who waited, you know, all of this time, decades and decades and decades to play this role. And finally, it's his. And within, you know, a year, he's suddenly a cancer victim. So that to me was a heartbreaking development because he so deserves this, this period. I mean, you know, even five years to be sort of the king he always wanted to be,

and he's showing to be extremely good at it as well. And then of course, Catherine, it, you know, the monarchy hangs by a thread and that thread is Catherine, because she is the most beloved of the next generation. And with the departure of Harry and the whole kind of Sussex clown show, of Harry and the whole kind of Sussex clown show, you know, the Waleses are it. And the idea that she might somehow be off the playing field, you know, is unthinkable, really. So it's a huge, it's a huge, sad, sad development. No doubt about it. I know that they have their critics and you just called it the clown show that the Sussex brand, but actually they're a bit missed now, aren't they? Shouldn't they have tried harder to keep them on side and frankly, keep them on this side of the Atlantic?

Well, I think they're terribly missed. I mean, I think that is the great irony of the whole Sussex story. I mean, all they had to do was wait a year or two and everything would have been theirs. I think that, yes, I think they were a great foil to the Waleses in the same way that sort of Margaret and her sort of ventures and misadventures was a great foil for the Queen. They were a great foil for the Waleses. They were young and they were, you know, the diversity and all the rest of it that they brought to it was extremely positive and modern. And I think they are greatly missed. But it's, unfortunately, you know, it seems to have got to such a pass that reeling them back in is a massive effort of diplomacy and forgiveness that I can understand is pretty hard, certainly for William

to do, given all of the things that he's had to shoulder since Harry departed. for William to do, given all of the things that he's had to shoulder since Harry departed. So is there any chance that, let's say, Trump does get re-elected, that you will come back to the UK? This, Tina, is where you belong. Well, I love coming to the UK. No, that's not good enough. Will you come and live here? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, part of me, of course, being a journalist and being an observer all my life is like, I can't help but think watching it all unfold is going to be pretty interesting. Let's face it. But that's the problem. To go back to Trump briefly, that's what I was trying to say earlier. He might be a complete insert expletive, but he's entertaining. So we buy into this nonsense, don't we? We're part of the problem. I think there's a standing up to it. I mean, hopefully the press, again, can play the major role because, frankly, everybody else is going to be off.

I mean, he will he will decimate the judiciary. He will. You know, he may he may he may also make it very, very difficult for journalists with lawsuits and so on. I mean, you know, you can, as we know, very punitive lawsuits can really mess you up as a journalist. I mean, there isn't the funds to pay it and they can hang you up and tie you up and, you know, waste your time and all the rest of it. I think there's a great deal of nervousness, actually. I'm beginning to find amongst many of Trump's loudest critics, a real nervousness about what will happen to them if he gets in, because he is extremely vindictive. And there's a worry, will I, you know, will I be tax audited? Will I be hounded in ways that, you know, I can't imagine at the moment, but, you know,

will that happen to me? Am I going to be safe under Trump? Which is a new feeling that's begun, I would say, as in the last month or so you know the polls don't really much improve for Joe Biden and it's obviously going to be such an incredibly tight race and one that even if Biden wins by you know a hair Trump this time will not concede that is the big threat that he will just not concede this time so it's's a huge worry. And we'll be talking about it all at my summit next week. And that's a hugely depressing note to end on, not the summit, but what you've just said. So people can watch online, can't they? Yes, they can. They can watch it on Reuters. It'll be live streamed on Reuters, Truth Tellers Summit, the Harry Evans Investigative Journalism Summit,

and they can also find it on Tortoise Media. That is Tina Brown with some, well, thought-provoking stuff about what may happen. We don't want to be too doom-laden. What may happen should Donald Trump win the American presidential election? Full coverage here on Times Radio, the election station. But that's likely to be, that's November, and we'll presumably have had ours by then. Dear God. Well, we might not, though. I hope we have. We might not, because it can stretch as far as January 2025.

Yeah, but surely it won't. Okay, well, thoughts and prayers. I'm going to stick a tote bag over my head, I think. Right, okay. Jane and Fi at Timestop Radio, if you'd like to get involved in any of our nonsense. And tomorrow on the podcast, you'll be able to hear the dulcet tones of Elizabeth Hurley.

Wow. Yeah. I tell you what, I've always said this, variety is the spice of our podcast life. It is, yeah. I bet they know each other. Do you think Liz and Tina Brown, they will do? I'm sure they will have been at the same parties.

Yeah. The ones where we haven't been. Exactly. Right, home time. You did it. Elite listener status for you for getting through another half hour or so of our whimsical ramblings.

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