Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Tales from window cleaners to the stars (with Tim Spector)

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

Jane and Fi have had their testosterone shots and they're ready to talk cars! Someone get these guys a spin-off podcast! They also cover bath day, old men sperm and punctuality. Plus, they're joined by food scientist Tim Spector to discuss his latest book 'The Food for Life Cookbook'. Our next book club pick has been announced! 'The Trouble with Goats and Sheep' by Joanna Cannon. 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! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve Salusbury Executive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

He obviously has a large home in the vicinity of East West Kensington, according to the window cleaner we share. Who's very discreet, I should say. Well obviously not! This episode of Off Air with Jane and Fee is sponsored by Norwegian Cruise Line. Have you ever thought of taking a cruise? Well it's crossed my mind, tell me a bit more about it. Well with Norwegian Cruise Line you can travel to iconic locations across Northern Europe, the Mediterranean

and the Greek Isles, unpacking only once and exploring multiple European destinations in one holiday. They offer exclusive go local shore excursions as well as an immersive programme of on-board experiences. I can't lie, I'm intrigued by up to 21 dining options on a single ship. Well Jane, their fleet has so many unique bars, lounges and restaurants. They also have fantastic entertainment, shows, facilities on board. You wouldn't be short of things to do. Plan ahead to discover your Dream Europe 2025 cruise. It's certainly one way to beat the winter blues. Experience more at sea with Norwegian Cruise Life. For more information call 0333 222 6513.

Contact your travel agent or visit ncl.com. So during the course of this podcast you need to know that Fee is holding her Jack. I'm holding my Jack. I once had a Renault 5, a very very very old Renault 5 that I bought off my friend Jackie Monroe Hicks. Oh, how much did she charge you? Oh god, it was, I mean it was, and I'm sorry Jackie, I'm not casting aspersions on your car history but it was very very battered I think I paid 600 quid for it but the gearbox was a little bit gone and so when you're

in either second gear or third gear you had to hold the gear stick to stay in the gear. Oh hello. the gear stick to stay in the gear. So second and third are really only ever used when you're properly properly driving. It's not like it was fourth gear where you'd be on a dual carriageway or whatever and so you could just have one hand gently resting on the knob. So it was a complicated driving machine. I did manage to pass it on quite quickly. I sold it to a garage, not to another person. But it was a bit odd, actually. Do you remember the reg, just so we can put it out there? I don't think it would have lasted more than a couple of months after I passed it on. Did it have a choke?

It did. Do you remember the choke? Well, that's about the only thing I do remember about my Fiat Panda. I'm the only person on earth who bought two consecutive Fiat Pandas and both had a choke and to my shame I don't actually know what a choke is. Well the choke slightly flooded the... It fired it up didn't it? Yeah the fuel supply didn't it so it just gave a bit of a kind of woof to the fuel supply when you first started it so you get a billowing cloud of exhaust. Well yes, you can imagine what impact that had on a Fiat Panda. Just incredible. So the new sporty cars and the ultra cars which people just drive as a normal car, they have that kind of G-force setting don't they?

Just nodding. have that kind of g-force setting don't they? Why would anyone have that? I mean you can't drive above 20 miles an hour in a town, you shouldn't drive above 20 miles an hour in a town, why do you need a special g-force section? If anyone's wondering, we have both had a testosterone injection this morning and we're just seeing how it plays out. I want to read this email it's about roots because we were discussing how you'd get from North Hampton. Yes, well somebody's actually congratulated us on our geographical nows. This is from Molly who's in Northamptonshire. Dartford crossing not required use the M1 not the M40 apart from that top geographical analysis and

yes I am emailing you at nearly 4 in the morning don't bother with the magnesium ladies it really doesn't work sorry to hear that Molly and yes you can have those nights can't you they don't last forever or do they sometimes it feels like they sort of do and there won't be any more root chat and we haven't really had testosterone injections in case anyone's worried. Although some women do have them don't they? They take additional testosterone and it doesn't seem to do them any harm. Might give them a boost. Yeah I take a bit of testosterone. Oh do you?

Well there you go. You see that's why you were talking you were so good on the cast. That's why I've gone into Talk Talk. Talk Talk. The new spin-off podcast where ladies talk about motors. They were an underrated band. Doc Talk. Yeah, so they had a hit called Talk Talk, didn't they, when they were called Talk Talk. Here's Talk Talk's Talk Talk. But they were underrated. There's a great album they did, The Colour of Spring, which I think completely stands the test of time. Do you? Yeah. I saw them live a number of times. Very, quite daring, experimental, gloomy, and occasionally quite brilliant. Okay, well that's good to know. When people were talking about who is accompanying the Oasis reunion gigs at Wembley and it's

Richard Ashcroft, isn't it? I don't know, I can't say that name. Richard Ashcroft isn't it? I don't know I can't say that name. Richard Ashcroft from the Verve and Cast, Cast? I can't remember a single hit from Cast. Cast, Cast. I can't either. They were another Mancunian band I think. I think they were Liverpool. No that is I don't think so let's put Eve on it. Could you look up Cast and could we just have a couple of their top hits? She's working on it. Yeah, do you know what? We're talking on a very sad day actually because we're waking up to the news that Liam Payne from One Direction has died in Buenos Aires and he appears to have taken his own life in a hotel and there's so much conversation, Jane, isn't there, about how absolutely terrible it is for these very very young people to be whisked off from their normal

lives and put in bands and then flown around the world and to make millions for other people and all that kind of stuff and I completely agree with that I think it's a I think it's a terrible life I think if you take away someone's childhood how on earth do you expect them to function as an adult? And you do take away their childhood if they're performing on stage to millions of people all the time. But it always surprises me when something terrible like this happens that people don't learn. And by people I don't mean the kids themselves who want to be in music and want to have this lifestyle and stuff, I completely get the appeal of that. But it is all the people around them, isn't it? Because

there are very, very few child stars who end up blissfully happy and who go on to have decades of really amazing, contented, sorted life in the public eye in particular and you got to wonder whether we will ever learn because it would suggest from all of the K-pop stuff as well that we're getting worse not better. I think it would seem to be right that actually. Cast are from Liverpool, they were formed in Liverpool 1-0 to you. Walk away, walk away, walk away, walk away. Oh that's very sad isn't it? And that's a sad song and a good one. I, alright was theirs, lived the dream, sandstorm, guiding

star, I'm so lonely. I'm afraid I don't know any of those. Okay, so I'd recognise walk away from that list but I'm ashamed to say I wouldn't recognise very many of the other ones. Well look, it'd be lovely to see them again. I hope they're doing alright. I don't know, I have no solutions to the problems of you know a very very young success story but it's it's always interesting isn't it to talk to the people who did it who do seem to have got through it okay and weirdly I think Chesney Hawkes always has something quite good to say about being the one hit wonder and he managed to slightly take the mickey out of himself didn't he and you you just sense with that that he had a self-awareness

about what had happened to him which enabled him to push on through as an adult and Rick Astley I think is one of the few people completely the last laugh hasn't he yeah good for him he went and sat in a shed for three decades and then came out of the shed smiling. Well, Gary Barlow retired from everything and then came back, didn't he? He had a rough time for quite some time and then came back to be reformed, take that, had more hits, wrote some, I think, again, wrote some great songs. What about his wine? Now shares a window cleaner with me. Really? Yes, he does. But where does

he live? Is he in East West Kensington? I'm not gonna say. I didn't like to say yesterday but I share a window cleaner with Nigel Slater. We are. It's not quite up there with Gary Barlow. No hate on Nigel Slater but it's not quite up I am going to say, Mr Barlow has more windows than me. OK, so don't get any ideas about this. He obviously has a large home in the vicinity of East West Kensington. Does he? According to the window cleaner we share. OK.

Who doesn't, who's very discreet, I should say. Well, obviously not. Discreetish. If I just might point out the obvious thing there, Jane. When I'm cleaning windows. Who was that? George Formby. Oh please don't give that to people as an earworm. Quick, sing something else. I am the one and only. That'll do. Hello Jane and Fee, long time listener, first time emailer. You're very welcome. Person Anonymous, your conversation regarding celebrity police escorts reminded me of the time way back when I was about nine and chosen to be the

flag bearer for our Brownie Pack at a remembrance ceremony in our local town church. For whatever reason I was going to be late so my father, a policeman, told me to squat and hide in the foot well, no seat belts in those days, while he drove the police car with blues and twos through the heavy traffic to the back of the church. I got out and nobody was looking and joined my pack in plenty of time. I was sworn to secrecy until now." You wait years for an opportunity to spill your beans and tell your anecdote and it comes. Wonderful. I didn't realise that a police officer in the family could arrange for that sort of thing.

Well I don't think you're meant to are you? No. No. I mean obviously if you're a paramedic you're not allowed to give members of your family just a quick once over in the back of the ambulance. Oh do you know what? It would be so reassuring. I do think, I honestly do wonder, and I'd love to hear from people on this, what is the impact of having a doctor in the family? Now, because it must be, I mean first of all you must get really bothered the whole time with various relations and people who aren't that close to you constantly nagging you for tips, advice, daft questions and if you have a hypochondriac that you're closely related to, you must never get any peace at all. But isn't there a saying a little bit

like the carpenter's kitchen, which is always absolutely rubbish and the doors are falling off the cupboards and stuff because who wants to be a carpenter all day and come back and carpent into your evening? That the kids of doctors are quite often the ones who are literally just told to just put a plaster on it and go to school. You know, actually they need stitches.

They're the ones at school spreading the germs. Yes, get on with your fun. You're absolutely fine. Old Men Sperm is the title of this very welcoming email from Jen who joins us and she's an expert. She's at the University of Adelaide where she is a post-doctoral researcher, ovarian cell biology and embryology group. So she knows her onions and rather more than onions, I suspect. I'm a biomedical scientist, she says, and you keep me company when I'm in the lab or doing computer-based analysis. Ironically, I am analysing microscope images of ovarian tissue as you rightly bring up that nobody really gives men flak for having children when they're older. This

is in the light of Al Pacino's later sprog, born when he was 83, he's now 16 months old. My colleagues and I just submitted a review article about potential therapeutics to mitigate the effects of aging on human reproductive health. Spoiler there isn't really anything proven yet. I worked on the section about the ovary but I learned a lot from my colleagues about sperm. It really matters not only for the health of the baby but for the pregnancy which of course affects the mother. Aging is associated with decreased sperm quality, increased

risk of fetal abnormalities and miscarriage rates and it's thought to affect placental development. Let's not let men think like Henry VIII, men's contribution really matters too. Yeah, I'm so, so grateful to you for having written in because that's exactly what we were thinking and you just don't hear people say that often enough. It is not right that you can just go on to the end of your life in your 80s, 70s, 80s and 90s, producing the same quality of sperm as you would have done as a younger person. No, I mean, how dare you assume that you, I mean, you can, but whether or not you should is,

I guess, what we're discussing, isn't it? Yeah. And also, I mean you can, but whether or not you should is I guess what we're discussing isn't it? Yeah and also I just think you need to factor that in to the kind of celebration of men being able to procreate later on in life. I mean they can but it doesn't mean that it's going to be great. And that's the same thing that we face but we face it much much younger and then it stops. It's not a conversation that we can have at all. And then people tear their hair out and say that the birth rate's dropping. Why don't women want babies?

The more you educate the woman, the fewer children she has. That's just true the world over, isn't it? Yes. Yeah. Because it's hard going. You need support. It's going to affect every area of your life and it's a lifelong commitment. Yep, which I would hasten to add you and I both really enjoy.

Hugely. Yeah. But. Yeah. I listened on the way into work this morning to a really amazing woman talk about all of those kind of struggles and the impact of children, especially as a single mum, on a fantastic podcast called... Where is she going? Called... what's it called? Therapy Works. Yes. Who was it?

It's Jane Garvey. Oh, I like her. Yeah. No, it's... well, I got the chance to talk to psychotherapist, Julia Samuel. So it's really good, Jane. Oh, is it? Well, good. I haven't heard it.

So a friend of mine sent it to me this morning. What? Yes. And she said, she said, have a listen to this. And I thought, oh, gosh, why? Not because it's you. I just thought, oh, no, is she going to say something absolutely terrible about me? Will I be able to go to work with her today?

But it's really, it's really lovely, actually, Jane. I'd be able to go to work with her today. But it's really lovely actually, Jane. I really enjoyed listening to it. Well, thank you. I mean, Julia is, she knows what she's doing. She's amazing, isn't she? Because actually, if you were going to do the amount of time she spends talking in an hour-long podcast. Well, that's her genius. Three and a half minutes, four minutes. Exactly. I actually think I could learn from her.

Well no, you're the guest so it'd be a bit difficult if you were. Just shot up shop. Yep. Well no, it is interesting because obviously the conversation we had and we recorded it a couple of weeks ago and I can remember some of it, though not all of it and we did talk about yes, just single parenthood and it's a challenge. I'm not saying it's well it's hard is it harder than doing parenting in a couple it's just very different. Sometimes I would make the case that it can be easier because the buck stops with you that's it you get on with it and I was very fortunate to have you know the dad in the mix but just not

usually there. And some women, of course, don't or some dads don't have anyone else that they can turn to. So I want to make that clear. But it's yeah, it's interesting. And not everybody is going to agree with my take on this, because why would they? But it's out there anyway. Yeah, it's a lovely listen. I would hardly recommend it if you want a little bit of an add-on extra really to your daily session with the Garvey And they do this clever thing at the end don't they were Julia Samuels daughters who are both psychotherapists

I mean that's quite something isn't it because she is a whopping Well-known therapist and deserves all her success I actually thought it's quite brave of both her daughters to go into the same business profession. It was interesting because I was due to, and other people will understand this I think, I was due to be at her flat at 12 noon and I arrived at two minutes to 12 and the first thing she said to me was, well that's fantastic, you're one of those punctual people. And I thought, oh my God, she's already, she already she's already analyzing and to a degree I think she was because you can make a judgment about people she said to me you're one

of those people who doesn't want to waste other people's time and I hadn't really given any thought to it I am quite a punctual person sometimes I arrive late because I'm have no sense of direction and I get confused but I always start off with the best of intentions. But anyway, that was how we began our encounter with her praising me for getting there at the right time. Well, did you wait until it was exactly 12 o'clock? No, I am punctual. So you went early. So I left the house in good time to get to her apartment.

Because the late in life love interest howls with laughter. Is he not punctual? No, he's very punctual, but he really laughs because I won't go, I won't arrive anywhere earlier than the time at which I'm meant to have arrived at, because I think it's very rude. So sometimes we have sat outside in the car, literally, until it gets to 7.30. Exactly. It's kind of like, you could go in at 7.20. Nope, nope, they're expecting us at 7.30. We can't go in before. But I don't know if anybody else does that. I don't know why it's such a thing. The rules are weird. If somebody invites me somewhere at 7.30, I would get there at a quarter to eight.

Yes. But that's a social thing. If it's like a business proposition. Oh Oh yeah, no, no, I'd always try and be on time but again I wouldn't be early for anything I would wait until absolutely. But I like to be in a waiting room if I've got an appointment with 10 minutes a spare. But it's the only place that you really see magazines now. Awesome hound. Yes, sorry life. Never want to miss an edition. Right, so look that one up if you can This one. Oh now this is good about the US election because we're very interested in how everybody is feeling This comes from Ruth who is a Brit living in Philly and Philadelphia is really key, isn't it?

It is a big bang-bonging state that might actually decide the outcome. Ruth says this, terrified of this upcoming US election, the answer is a resounding yes. My family and I live in the very blue Philadelphia so we're in a bit of a bubble but then we drive out to the Pennsylvania suburbs and the Trump signs are out in force, although I do see a small amount of Trump signs in our South Philly neighborhoods too. Have people not forgotten the constant drama over the Covid years that he was in power? If he gets in this time the guard rails will be completely off. I'm not saying anything new here. Despite living in the

US for 13 years now and I do consider it my home, however coming back to the UK does sound appealing. The constant fear of the threat of guns and violence goes on and on. As Fred Trump said on your podcast, if Kamala Harris wins the election he will not concede and that will be a whole other crisis. I'm sure you've read that just today Trump will turn the military on people who oppose him. It's just madness. I don't suppose I'm making any new points but yes I've got a pit in my stomach this morning whilst walking the kids to school at the thought of another Trump presidency I work from home as a book binder and listen to your podcast most days for a bit of levity Despite some of the serious topics you cover

Well Ruth you're always welcome as a listener and as a correspondent and keep in touch with us as we you know Head towards the election and then you find yourself on the other side of the election and I do think your point about the Covid years is really hugely relevant because sometimes we forget the madness of Trump during the Covid years when he advised people to drink bleach and the scientific advisor was sitting there on a chair in the room and felt that she couldn't immediately stand up and go don't do this and then some of the bleach manufacturers had to actually buy advertising space on the tvs that evening and in the following days to say don't drink our product because it won't stop you from getting COVID. That is a man in charge of a country.

Well, the most important country, let's just be honest about it. And you and I are just tearing our hair out because there are still people who want us to believe this is a contest between two equal people. Now, Kamala Harris is not perfect because nobody is, but she is running against someone who gives every impression of being very, very disturbed. I mean, this is just, it's just absurd to pretend this is normal. And you and I both listen to another podcast, don't we, which is done by Anthony Scaramucci and Carrie Kaye. Just the opening every time just I'm so bought into it. Yeah they are let's just be honest they're very good. They're very very good and I really loved the point

that was made on the most recent one of their most recent episodes which was that actually Donald Trump does not represent America. The American dream and the sense of the American people which is about freedom and it is about being able to make your own way in the world and it's also about community it's about a sense of the people around you and he doesn't represent that he doesn't represent family he doesn't represent freedom anything but and it's so bizarre that he's managed to just put this wash across people and turn that sense of America on its head and say, you know, this is what I can do. He's not representative of it.

Let's just briefly bring in another emailer. This is Catherine. I live close to New York, the city that Trump is infamous for of course, his antics there. Known in the city as a longtime charlatan and a self-serving con man, but I do fear, she says, that many will still hold their nose and vote for him. The New York financial markets, the likes of Musk and Bezos, I don't think they can wait for his brand of deregulation and rampant capitalism and their circling like wolves. This is interesting, she says, it's left to the altruists within the community to donate generously, which they do to help our population most in need.

They love so many of them to give their money away that they hate to feel it's been taken from them. It's a totally different mindset to any European nation, one I will never understand. I think that's interesting that they are, I mean some of these you know these Republican supporters or Trump supporters are very very generous with their money but they are this fear of this the big state and big government which the British we do struggle with that fear I don't really get it, that idea that the state is out to get you and we must never give them too much power. I mean I know in Britain we like some conservative voters like the idea of small government don't they? But it's not quite because it's not linked with

the frontier and weapons and well perhaps we're just a more maybe a more well we're just a European society aren't we? But also is it something to do with our history and in our relatively recent history we have faced the threat, serious threat of invasion and we've needed to join forces with European neighbors in order to repel a proper enemy. Whereas America needs to create an enemy doesn't it? So it suits its own imagination for that enemy. It has to come from within, doesn't it? I mean, they haven't, you know, you don't hear an awful lot of American politics, politicians really discussing foreign policy. So it's

not... No, because one of the Republican politicians in that... Not looking outwards in the same way, is it? No, in the BBC's Question Time in America last week, she admitted she didn't know much about foreign policy and she got a smattering of applause. It's like, well done. Anyway, Catherine says, everyone's got to vote, all listeners, send positive vibes, please for November the 5th.

Light extinguishes the dark. Oh, she's got a good PS. I never ask a stranger, what is it that you do? I prefer to ask them how do you like to spend your time. It makes for a much more interesting and natural conversation. It's a good one. It might be worth a try if you're trapped next to a fella over the weekend who is giving it giving it large about his PhD or indeed his collection of whatever it is. Miniature steam engines. It was Prince Philip's opening gambit wasn't it? What's been keeping

you busy? Oh really? Well we looked to him for much of life advice. He was a towering giant of open conversation, well known for it. Dear Jane and Fee, I hope you're both well. I think we are. I'm emailing with a rather odd question about the Offair archive. My partner and I recently got engaged. Congratulations. Well done. However, I wondered, I've put however in the wrong place, because there was a big thing in brackets. I don't want anyone to think that it's kind of however, because we're getting married. You would like to know whether anybody remembers or we remember which episode

of Offair featured an interview with a particular poet. I'm not a poetry expert so forgive my ignorance but I believe he was an important poetry chap who posted a poem a day during lockdown and read a couple of them during the interview. The poem I'm thinking about was very short and sweet and I remember thinking somewhere deep at the back of my mind that would make a lovely wedding poem. So we think it's one of two people. So it's either William Seacart who is known as the poetry pharmacist or it's Lem Cisse and I think it's Lem because I think you would have been tickled by one of the poems that he read out about love and he posted a poem a day during the pandemic so I think it's Lem so I

think go in search of Lem Cisse and and I would just say to everybody go in search of Lem Cisse's poetry. I think he's a genius. His memoir is very good as well but William Seacart is also worth consulting. If you have an occasion, and I suppose I am thinking actually of a funeral if I'm honest, but there's some, he's got some you know really good ideas for appropriate stuff at funerals or memorials or things of that nature, so he's very well worth consulting as well. He's a bit of education for everybody, mainly me. This is from Alison.

I don't know if anybody has picked up on the observation you made from Cheltenham that we use different words for an animal grazing in a field and then the same animal when served up covered in gravy, lamb being an exception, as indeed you noted. The reason is fascinating because it preserves a very revealing historic distinction. Now the traditional words used for animals in the field are all of Germanic

origin. Did you know this? I didn't. Cow, kuh, K-U-H, sheep, shaft, S-C-H-A-F, and swine, schwein, s-c-h-w-e-i-n. The words for meat on the plate have all got their roots in Norman French. Do you see where we're going here? Is he an ex-boyfriend? Norman French? Norman French. Actually, he could easily be. I think it could be a future.

I mean, he sounds like someone who might own an antique shop somewhere in the Cotswolds. Beef, beef, buff. Mutton, mouton. Pork, pork. Now this is because it was the Anglo-Saxon underlings who were looking after the animals in the fields and their Norman overlords who were consuming the meat on the plate. Gosh, what a fantastic nugget of knowledge. Thank you for that, Alison. It was much more recently, particularly following World War II, that the shift came from mutton to lamb in our dining habits.

Poor quality mutton acquired an inferior reputation and there was a market for the better quality of meat of younger animals. Alison, thank you so much. It does make perfect sense and actually it kind of in a way harks back to our conversation about why the USA is so different. Here we are thinking about our history and we were of course invaded by the Saxons and by the Norman French. So it's not like it never happened, it's just like it was relatively speaking a long time ago but it's the fact that it continues to have an impact on the language it's just fascinating isn't it this kind of ties into it we were talking on the live radio show when is that Jenny? It's 2 till 4

Monday to Thursday on Times radio which comes with a useful free app. Well done we were talking about the genetic mutilation of animals for game hunting. We talked to a very interesting politician from South Africa about what they have tried to do in South Africa to stop this, because it's a really horrible practice of taking one species DNA and mutating it in order to create these spring box with incredible muscles on them and sheep with special curly horns and some antelope where the antlers, they're bred so the antlers are

so heavy actually the the poor animal can barely stand up with the weight of them and it's just horrible and they are being grown so they can be shot that's all they're being grown for. And that's what's so... it's crude. It's awful. It's just vile. Awful. So this comes in from Bridget Fiddler, longtime listener, goes in our top 10 names. Thanks for highlighting the appalling genetic mutilation of big cats for game hunting in South Africa. However, is it any more appalling than the life of a British chicken? They're genetically modified to grow at such an accelerated rate their legs can't support the weight of their bodies. They live short and miserable

lives for the most part sat in their own excrement which burns their skin. If people gave it more thought I don't think they'd wish this fate on any animal but this is the life of 90% or about a hundred million broiler chickens in the UK. Kind regards. Well, Bridget, I'm grateful to you for pointing that out because we've got, I think, an absurd thing going on in this country where we're excited by a four pound chicken in a supermarket and the way that those birds have been bred in order for us to only pay four pounds, I think I'm right in saying that, you know, the nutrient value in a four pound chicken isn't great either. So on any level, it is not fantastic. And

I understand that people need to be able to buy reasonably priced food, but it does come at a cost and we don't see enough of what's happening behind the scenes. I think cheap chicken is cheap for a reason and too many of us choose to ignore what that reason is. Good point. Thank you for pointing that out. Here's a moan from June. I mean I'll sum it up. I hope you don't take offense June but basically she's just sick of our discussions centering around London, the home counties and far-flung countries like Australia. June points out that she is in the north of Scotland but she has to hear constant information about the south. I'm sorry, sorry I just took a really big gulp of coffee there, I'm sorry about that too. I'm just very sorry.

Can you be less London-centred? Well we can't just, well I do as you know go to that city in the North West quite regularly. If it helps, June, I am going to Budely in Worcestershire, a beautiful town, tomorrow as part of the Budely Arts Festival. And I'm interviewing Jackie Smith. Well, that'll be good. Yeah, a former Home Secretary, as she's got quite frequently, reminds everybody. And now back in politics, she's a baroness. She's in the House of Lords. If you're a baroness are you also a dame?

No. Not necessarily. Although some people are. I don't know why I know this. It's going to be used against me. But no. So you're appointed to the House of Lords, you have to be given a title. Yes, but I get confused with those etiquette things because the Baroness is a lady. Yes, yes, gosh, Lady Smith, blimey. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the reason we're doing it, by the way, is that she was a Worcestershire MP. She's also from Worcestershire and I got to be able to choose who I was going to interview for the Beudley Festival this year

and I chose her because I thought at the time she wasn't in government, it was before the election, so I suspect she's going to have to be a bit more careful about what she says. That unfortunately is not going to help somebody out in the north of Scotland though. It doesn't, no. So I just wonder whether we should just, well, take it in turns to visit a far-flung, but you've got Scottish roots. You often mention Montrose. I know. June, we'll try harder. We will try harder. She's going to be angry about this because we're going to bring in Tim Spector in a moment.

But this is from Joe who says, Catching up whilst ironing after a six-week adventure in the motorhome. Wow. She's been travelling through Spain and France, that won't help June. I did have a chuckle at your description of a stand-up wash after that poor woman's boiler breakdown. My husband is a boiler engineer. She actually says my husband's a boiler. I mean, how many husbands? Let's assume she's only got one. He's a boiler engineer and I spend a great deal of time talking to people, having to deal with that. It always seems to happen at the most inconvenient time when it's cold. I promise you I am clean and I don't smell but as a rule at home I stand up wash every day, I call it a French wash, as I find that daily

showers dry out my skin. Also being a motor homer I'm very conscious of the amount of water we use every day. So in these days of metering and water neutrality it's interesting to note how much water as a person we use every single day. How many baths did you use to take per week as a child? Oh gosh, that's a good question. You see, I did become a bath addict quite early in life. My mum is one, was one. She doesn't have baths very much anymore, but she doesn't have a bath truth she has a shower you don't need that detail and also I think for the elderly baths can be can be troublesome can't they? I used to have a bath probably every other night but then when I got into baths it became much more regular and when I'm feeling a bit vexed about something my friend Emma and I

have this we call them two bath days, I might have to have a bath in the morning and at night. And I know I shouldn't. Yeah. Yeah, that is quite, but it's very enveloping, isn't it? Sometimes you just need to be surrounded by water. I completely understand that feeling. But I distinctly remember as kids that we had bath night. So it was an event.

Yes, it was an event. It wasn't a kind of, oh, I'm just gonna go and have a bath or a shower every day. And it's weird, and sometimes, I know we have discussed this before, sometimes I don't wash every day, Jane. And you can call me slovenly and I really hope that you've never thought, oh gosh, Vee's arrived, she's not had a bath today. But I don't think you need the level of cleaning that people are putting their skin through. Can I just say I do have a story of another friend of mine. Her daughter

went to hospital, I think, with horrible eczema, which a lot of children do get, and one of the bits of advice, and I'm paraphrasing, but one of the bits of advice the nurse, who was a great nurse by all accounts in the hospital, gave this young girl, was that baths were not helpful and that in fact, why on earth anyway, in her view view would you want to lie in your own bomb juice? Well that's a thought too. But I speak as someone who... Shall we bring in Tim Spector? Yeah let's bring in Tim Spector and then Helen I'm going to do your email off the back of it. Tim Spector is a man on a mission to change the way we eat, to move away from ultra-processed food, to lower and steady our blood sugars and to try and eat 30 different plants every week

in order to make our gut biome our friend. Tim is an epidemiologist, doctor and science writer and co-founder of Zoe, which during the pandemic tracked the health of over 2 million participants. And now through subscribing to the Zoe app and its blood sugar level tracking system, you can tap into a whole program designed to change your eating habits. And his latest book is called Food for Life. It's packed with recipes reflecting all of his research. He did look very well when he came in but he always does and I asked him if he ever scrimps on the plant power and ends up looking as tired and grey as the rest of us. I often don't look well enough it's

not because I haven't eaten enough plant fiber it's maybe something else I've done rather silly like I had no sleep or drunk too much alcohol. Oh my goodness I didn't think that you'd be allowed to admit that you did things like that. No I'm not. You're going to cut that bit out on the interview. Of course. You are really part of our fabric now because of Zoe. That's not to diminish your other accolades and experience. But is it a research project? Is it a business? What is it? All of the above really. It's a nutrition

science company that's been going now for nearly eight years that is trying to change the way people think about food through a lot of different ways and the core part of the company is a test kit that tests your blood sugar, your blood fat responses to food and your gut health through a gut microbiome test and then gives you personalised nutrition scores for your food. So from the feedback that you've had from users, is it quite a difficult thing to achieve though? Is part of the success of Zoe that you are guiding people

on a journey that they would otherwise find actually pretty hard to do on their own? Yes, I think anyone who's offering you a quick fix, a simple solution, just everything's in this bottle, is conning you basically. And that's what we've been consistently conned and lied to for the last hundred years that people have been talking about these things. And I think you have to realize that nutrition is complicated

and there are a huge range of different noise signals coming at us from everywhere telling us falsehoods that, you know, they've got the answer, that their particular pill or've got the answer that their particular pill or supplement is the cure for this or gluten is the only thing or keto diets or Eating the carnivore diet or whatever it is so simple. All you have to do is this all you have to do is cut this out It's all nonsense, but it is about guiding people through this complicated But it is about guiding people through this complicated series of choices we make every day

into something sensible that is also fighting against the food companies and outdated poor government guidelines and lots of other things that normally you'd be listening to and trusting. So we're trying to sort of drive a bit of a revolution across all these levels to people really thinking about food in a different way. And just giving people the tools to do it, whether it's the Zay program, we've got our own Daily 30, which is a pre-Bartic fiber, or I'm not allowed to call it that.

Why can't you call it that? We have these very strange rules in this country that you can't call anything a prebiotic and you can't make any health claims around fiber. So I can call it a whole food supplement made out of over 30 freeze-dried plants but I can't really tell you anything else. Catchy, yeah. We will get onto the book because it's absolutely about eating the right type of foods in just a moment, I absolutely promise.

But I'm just interested in what you say about the quick fix. Do you see the prescribing of weight loss jabs as Mpic and Wegovi as being quick fixes? I don't see them in the same light as everything I was criticizing before. as M-Pick and We Go V as being quick fixes. I don't see them in the same light as everything I was criticizing before. You know, what I was aiming at before is someone who's offering you some multivitamin that's going to cure you of something or a special two-week liquid meal that's going to make you lose weight

forever. Zempik and Wigovia are amazing drugs that are life-saving for people with severe obesity and diabetes. And they're what scientists like myself have been working for for 50 years to try and diabetes. And they're what scientists like myself have been working for for 50 years to try and find. So I don't want to diminish them. The only problem with them is when you stop taking them, you go back to where you were.

And they're not teaching people about food. So they're removing the appetite problem. But my worry is that those people will still be eating junk food, which will have other negatives. And it'd be great to see a government program that as well as introducing these or I've just read today that they're not actually introducing it there. It's so rationed. No one can get them on the NHS, you have to go privately. But if they did do it, they should be giving people educational programs

or allowing people, you know, work with Zoe or whatever it is. So at the same time, you understand more about the food that's making you sick rather than just taking away the addictive signal about it. But I'm actually generally in favour of those drugs and I don't think we should be demonising them. But not as a cosmetic tool though for people who really need them.

So would you like CERI to be available on the NHS? Absolutely, yes. That's one of the aims? Yeah, eventually we will have cheaper versions of what we're doing that are available to millions of people, I think is where we should be heading. But given my experiences with COVID and dealing with the government and the NHS, I'm not very optimistic. Right, tell me a little bit more about that. Well, we tried to offer our Zoe COVID app, which had four and a half million people on it to the NHS. And

they weren't interested in taking it because they hadn't invented it themselves. So they don't really like working with external forces or bodies. They feel threatened in a way by something that other people are doing. And I think that's... Does a change in government make any difference to that, do you think? It might make some difference, but there's a general official reluctance to do this. So it wasn't just politicians during Covid, it was the whole Department of Health, which is a very conservative body. Let's delve straight into harissa and hazelnut roasts and kale and cashew soups Tim. So these are from your amazing cookbook which is called the Food for Life cookbook. It is a hundred plus recipes created with Zoe

and the kind of USP here is you trying to get all of us to put more plants into our diet. Now I think most people know that that's what we should be doing. Some people find it very, I don't know, a slightly kind of scary prospect to eat 30 plants a week, different plants a week, which is what you advocate isn't it? Can you really make it simpler for people? Isn't 30 plants a week always going to be a little bit too high a reach for most people? If you haven't done it, it sounds a lot. But once you start, you realize it's actually

a lot simpler than that. And that's why so many people following Zoe are able to do it. And that's the thing they love about it, actually actually because a plant is not just a bowl of kale it is it's it's it could be a fruit it can be a vegetable it can be a nut it can be a seed it can be a herb a spice it can be a teaspoon of mixed spices so if you start thinking about all these things differently, it can be a different colored pepper. You can have a red pepper and a yellow pepper. They count as two different plants because chemically, those two things are different.

And what we're trying to do is actually think of plants as chemical fertilizers, and the more different chemicals you get in there, into your gut, the more healthy microbes you can produce. It's actually not as hard as it sounds for the people who don't do it and the daily 30 product I told you about that I'm not allowed to call anything is another way also of adding to that if you're running short. Yeah and I'm here to tell you actually dear listener that these recipes are fantastically simple, many of them. So even ones that contain, you've got, you call it diversity dal in here, which has got 14 plants in it.

And it is basically using lentils, ginger, chilli, curry powder, cumin seeds, garam masala, split peas. But there are only three steps to make it and in fact you can probably do it. You say preparation time 20 minutes. I think if you're a fast chopper you could probably cut that down to about 15 and it's a kind of one pot wonder. So they're not very complicated. Most yeah, they're meant for people like me who aren't, Most, yeah. They're meant for people like me who aren't, A, don't have huge amounts of time to do the cooking, and like things simple, and also don't like too much washing up.

So, you know, I think that that's why they're perfect for me. And they're all pretty flexible as well. So if you're missing one ingredient, it's not a big deal, you can substitute it. We have lots of things in there called swaps, which you don't see in many other cookbooks. If you haven't got that larks tongue, you can't carry on. Tim, I'm never without a larks tongue in my pantry. Just out of interest, what would you be replacing a larks tongue with?

I'm deviating from the subject here. There's no larks tongue recipes in here. Okay. I'm just... I'll just go for a bit of swan lip instead. Always a good fallback. Now I know that you're a big fan of protein but I was reading only in our August newspaper this morning that carbs are making a comeback and there was a lovely piece that I found quite reassuring telling me that I could still have large bowls of pasta and not feel bad about that. And sometimes I think, Tim, why can't there just be one way of advising people how to eat? Surely it can't be that complicated. How can we have got to 2024 without there being a universality of opinion? That's because everyone's an expert on food. I don't know if you've noticed, but you know,

there's not that many quantum physicists going around telling us what it's all about, but everyone's an expert on food because we all do it. And that's why social media is so full of everyone. And we also have unlimited indoctrination by the food companies. They can tell us anything they like. And they are one of the biggest lobbyists in Westminster. They making profits that are bigger than most countries in the world. So they can afford to sell any message. So at the moment, they're selling the message that protein's good for you and that we're all deficient in protein, although that's a complete lie. So they, because they can make huge profits from selling things like extracts from the dairy industry into snack bars or energy drinks for kids. All of it's completely useless because you can't

store protein. So unless you're a bodybuilder or you're on some crash diet or you're extremely elderly and infirm, you don't need that extra protein. And so this mismatch of information based on the power of all that advertising, I think, is where we have these problems. No one's pushing fiber, if you've noticed, you don't see No one's pushing fiber, if you've noticed, you don't see fiber being out there, because there isn't no great money in fiber. Fiber comes from natural plants and nobody's paying for adverts for apples. They aren't even allowed a sticker on apple to say, contains fiber which is good for you, you know, because nobody has enough money to lobby for things like apples.

So that's why I think we have this terribly confusing world out there, as well as the science being a long way behind where it was. Science only started in the Second World War on nutrition, and it was all about deficiencies and vitamins. So now we don't have vitamin deficiency and we don't have starvation. You know, we haven't yet... the science hasn't caught up and the funding for that science hasn't caught up with where we are, which is over consumption and worrying about too much and getting that balance right.

What is the most sensible thing that could be done to help families on low incomes eat better? The first thing is probably to deal with the kids, make sure that they have free school meals for all children and that from an early age they're not encouraged to go on ultra-processed milk replacements. So they're given choices very early on because generally those kids from birth are destined to only eat ultra-processed food in their lives. And that's what's making them stunted, obese, having problems at school, mental problems later on in life and eventually costing society and the NHS a fortune. So I think we need to deal there. We also need to help people learn how to cook in schools. They can't do that. We also ought to have more restrictive programs about where you can put

fast food restaurants, you know, they shouldn't be outside schools and there should be availability of decent produce in deprived areas, which there isn't at the moment. But that's a big social change thing that, you know, is outside my remit. But I think realizing that the problem is about the quality of food, not the amount of food, is something that's absolutely quarter my principles and it also shines through this book where we don't talk about calories, we're talking about food quality all the time. And can you hand on heart say that most of the recipes in this book are achievable on a low or just median income? Because the pictures look amazing, it does look very glossy, it looks like you have to have a lot of stuff in your kitchen in order to

make it. Could you do it on a budget? Most of them you can, absolutely, and there's a big section here on larder foods and my larder now contains all kinds of cheap cans of beans, you know, everything from lentils to chickpeas to butter beans and packets of grains, which are cheap cans of tomatoes. And there's several recipes that use frozen peas and frozen spinach, all of which are very cheap

and available all year round. So the vast majority of things are really cheap and of course, this is a plant-based menu so you're not paying the money for meat and in general, plants are a lot cheaper than meat and it's a lot cheaper source of protein than meat is. So I think people can learn a lot from this about cooking, not only economically but also healthily. Have you had anything to eat yet, Tim, today? I have. What have you had?

But I didn't eat till 11.30. And when was the last time that you ate yesterday? It would have been around nine o'clock, 9pm. Oh, okay, so that's quite late. So you've gone what, 13, 14 hours without eating. Do you ever worry that some people, I don't know, it kind of plays into a bit of food avoidance and a bit of difficulty if you are advocating large parts of your daily life to not have food in them? I think there are always going to be some people who are sensitive to any food advice

who are a bit too obsessed with food and so I think all these rules, you know, you shouldn't be restricting people who have that difficult attitude to food. But what I'm talking about is not about restricting food, it's just about, so it's not about fasting per se, it's just about regulating when you're eating, which means cutting out a lot of snacking, which has only crept into our diets in the last sort of 50 years. We didn't used to snack and when I was a kid we didn't take snacks to school or anything else like this and if you go to other countries like France and Spain, Italy, they don't snack

either. So it's very much a cultural thing. And I think this is what I'm trying to promote is that for people who can do it and not everyone finds it easy, let's be honest, and a lot of what we're doing with Zoe is about personalization. It's about realizing that because our microbes are different, our genes are a bit different, we're going to respond differently. So we did a study with Zoe of over 100,000 people asking them all to do intermittent fasting. It was a huge sort of citizen science project for three weeks, this 14 hours overnight as I

was doing, you know, say 9 p.m. to 11 a.m. the next day or something similar. And a third of people found it dead easy. And they reported more energy, more mood, less hungry actually, and got rid of their constipation and various other gut problems. A third of people found it a bit tricky to keep it going. They did it a bit, but they didn't really sort of, didn't really resonate with them. They could do it sometimes. And a third of people hated it. They said, I can't, being bare to start, you know, I do one day and that hated it. They said I can't be in bed to start you know I do one day and that's it. So I think they realized that we are all a bit different and that one size doesn't

always fit all but realize that when you wake up in the morning if it's at 7 a.m. and you don't feel hungry then maybe try not eating until you do feel hungry because in evolution we weren't meant to eat it when we woke up. And I learned this when I stayed with the hunter gatherer tribe in Tanzania. They don't eat in the morning and they don't have a word for breakfast.

And that, they're our ancestors 100,000 years ago. So it's got to mean something. So if it wasn't for the, you know, Mr. Calogue and others, we probably wouldn't be as obsessed with eating at the same time every day and having this idea that we can't go a few hours without eating, which is very much a British or English speaking cultural thing which you don't see in Italy and Spain where they go for long periods of time without eating. I was always brought up to consider snacking as morally dubious. No, I mean it was absolutely

something that you didn't do along with actually eating in the street. Our school we could be punished if we were spotted eating in the street and I'm you know I'm not ancient I'm 55 so that was what 40 years ago but boy have times changed I mean I think a lot of kids actually can't leave the house without something. It's the opposite now, parents will feel guilty if they're not stacking them all up with snacks to go with. Before we say goodbye to you Tim let's indulge in some of the other fantastic recipes in this book. So will you just pick a number between 99 and 210, where the body of work lies, and we will talk through one of the recipes. Go for it. 107. 107, here we go.

I hope I've seen this one. What do you mean you hope you've seen this one? You mean you haven't written everything? Good Lord. It's a Green Goddess chickpea sandwich. I've made that one recently. So this has got seven plants in it. It is largely based around avocado, kefir, lemon juice, garlic and vinegar. You pop it in a blender with a pinch of salt and pepper and you blitz it. There are only three sections to doing this. You put the chickpeas in a bowl, you

mash it all together, you bung it on two pieces of toast with the tomatoes and a pinch of salt and pepper on top. There's a lot of salt and pepper. Top with the remaining toast slices to create two sandwiches. Bob's your uncle, it looks absolutely gorgeous. Got seven plants in it and 10 to 15 grams of fibre. Looks absolutely lovely. That's a huge amount of fibre just so people know, you know, that would be over half your you know, your intake for the day. So a lot of people in this country are around only having 15, that amount of fibre in the whole day. So this is a super quick way of making a healthy sandwich basically. I like bread but it's not very good for you so you've got to make sure that

what you put on top of it is compensating for the all the sugary stuff in the bread and that's a really nice way of enhancing an avocado on toast which is the sort of it's fine but it's a bit dull now. So another way of using chickpeas in a really nice way. And since cooking with this book, I'm using my food processor all the time

to put all kinds of interesting things together, particularly these beans mixed with sauces. And you've got fermented kefir in there. So another way of working in your ferments because we should all be having at least three portions of fermented food a day to really help our immune systems. Well thank you very much for coming in may all of your alfalfa stay fresh never really know what alfalfa is but I presume it's better fresh and it's lovely to see you Tim

thank you very much. Great to be here. That was Tim Spector. I think it's probably the only time in Tim Spector's life that he has joined a conversation where most of the audience are still thinking about bum juice. So we'd love your thoughts on everything that Tim is doing. I really liked his recipe book, Jane, and when I opened it I thought, oh, maybe some of these recipes are going to be too complicated, need too many things. And they're not. No, he's very deliberately done it, so you don't have to be complicated about it, but

you can absolutely pack in all of your plants and your whatses. But if you're just adding some black pepper and some capers and some chilli flakes to the dish, you're what's this but he you know if you if you're just adding some black pepper and some capers and some chili flakes to the dish you're adding three plants in his world so and I wouldn't have thought that that counted as a kind of a quantity really myself no no no and presumably as well it's one of the case would be that you don't have to have all the ingredients you can mix some out. So he's got these swaps in so if something's a bit complicated you just swap it with something that's not. So it works and it's beautiful to look at. So there we go. Reference episode 335 Hot Crotch Snippers. Fee mentioned the TV program with Pally McGinnis and Chris Harris. Not Will, full Will, that's my bad.

Road Tripping. Helen says whilst I totally agree that TV is full of programs fronted by men telling us all about the latest in tech, wildlife or space travel, I was actually pleased to see a program where two middle-aged men talked about getting older and their well-being. There has been a lot lately about the menopause but there doesn't seem to be much of a conversation around men and their mental health as they get older and how important it is. As a middle-aged woman married to a middle-aged man I can only think that this can be a good thing but typically it has been slightly undermined by the jokey way it's been presented making it yet another one of those programs for men to laugh at

and not take seriously. It seems that men aren't able to take their own health seriously. So why would they take the issue of ours any more seriously? Helen, those are all good points to make. And I agree, it would be nice to see two men talking at length in a kind of proper way about getting old and being middle aged. I think Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer, they do have less jokey conversations, but it's our go-to place, isn't it, as women as well, to make a joke out of things that are incredibly serious. But I hear you, Helen. I think I'd just like it to be a little bit more balanced. And you know, there are cracking middle-aged women all over the place and they could be sent on expeditions and slathered in hot mud and come out the other side wiser, cleaner, more bum juicier. I can't. If anyone is planning to spend part of the weekend traveling between Northampton and Hampton Court, we wish you the very best of luck.

Tell us your ETA. Do tell us your ETA. Let us know whether in fact you did indulge in the M1 or the M40. Right, have a good couple of days. We're going to reconvene next week. Eve is sticking her hand up because we've all forgotten, we've both forgotten, there are so many of us. Parachinosis. Here we go. Hang on a sec, because I can genuinely only hang on to this jack for another 30 seconds. I've forgotten you. Can I say you've barely made a thing of it? Well done.

Can you do all of them? Oh, sorry, parish notices. Now we know how rare now the totes are becoming. So after this week, I think we've only got, did you say three left? Three left, OK. But congratulations to Emma Duke's dad, Katherine Hughes, Sally Ricard and Penny Venting. You are all going to get a fabulous, surprisingly spacious Jane & Phee tote. They're really good quality. You can cram bottles of wine and other essentials into your Jane & Phee tote.

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