Off Air... with Jane and Fi - The oohs and the yahs (with Robert Peston)

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

Fi has hopes of making her fortunes in the adult pesto industry, while Jane is discussing being woken up by 'the noise of shenanigans', surviving sixth months on a submarine, and unsuccessfully teaching boys to use a urinal.They're joined by Robert Peston, Political Editor at ITV, to hear about his new book 'The Crash'.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] us on Instagram! @janeandfiAssistant Producer: Kate LeeTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Are we good to go? We're good to go, yeah. Well, this one is entitled... Let's just go straight in. We said we'd be really quick tonight because I've got to go to the Cobblers and you're going up north. Right.

It's entitled The Ooyahs. Yeah, you read it. Hi, both. I was listening to yesterday's podcast where Jane was regaling us with the tale of her sleepless night in a plymouth hotel and fee was recounting her noisy night after checking into a hotel where they rent rooms by the hour i thought i'd share my experience of being kept awake in a similar fashion by a young dutch couple who we named the ooh yars i was backpacking around

the world with my good friend Roz in 1990. This is from Wendy, by the way. We spent some time in Bali, where we rented a bamboo hut and enjoyed the then limited cuisine, which included every meal featuring bananas, from banana pancakes to fritters to porridge to smoothies and occasionally just good old plain bananas. The huts we stayed in at the guest house were a sort of terraced affair,

with a thin bamboo wall separating us from our neighbours. Every night, thankfully it was only three, we were awakened at about 4am with the sound of OO-YA in a high-pitched voice, followed by OO-YA in a deep masculine one. These two retorts kept going for about 15 minutes with differing levels and lengths of the oohs and the yars and most amusing was when there was an ooh followed by a very long pause before the

yarr. I see, I'm out of practice. We might as well have been in the same room as the noises. It allowed us to imagine exactly what was happening. I've just retired from nearly 40 years of teaching in quite challenging comprehensive schools and I'm loving being able to listen to you two on a more regular basis.

Yep, leave teaching behind. Just listen to podcasts. Wendy, that's fantastic. Ooh! Oh, I shall never think of the Dutch in any other way again. No, I'll never think of the Dutch in the same way again. Sorry, it's been a long week. Do you never think of the Dutch in the same way again.

Sorry, it's been a long week. Do you ever think of the Dutch? Yes, I do. Very frequently. I'm always meeting people who say, have you been to the Soho House in Amsterdam? No, I haven't! Right, April says,

I am to Maidstone as Jane is to Plymouth. I had a very similar experience to your Plymouth and St Petersburg nocturnal disturbances. I can't believe that sex has happened in Maidstone. My God. Well, on a short break in Maidstone a couple of years ago, we were awoken not once but twice by extremely noisy sex from the room next to ours. The difference between my experience and yours is that we had a 21-month-old and a three-month-old with us, the latter of whom I was still breastfeeding. Sleep being an extremely short supply for all of us at that time and having been terribly British

and politely ignored the deafening noises during their first round, I wasted no time when things got going for a second time in hammering my fists on the wall and yelling in no uncertain terms that they need to shut the insert expletive here up relations ceased but i just lay awake seething for hours afterwards i'm sorry to hear that april i mean it can't be easy can it you're trying to breastfeed a three-month-old and the noise of shenanigans shenanigans it's just not good is it it? It's not, no. I did wonder, I was thinking about your naval base experiences in Plymouth there. And do you think that that might have had something to do with it? You know, if you're coming in off the ships,

it's been a long time since you've seen your wonderful partner. Maybe it's just a city of love. Is that where I just went from? I should have just spent time at sea. It's not too late. You could be the intrepid investigative explorer on one of our submarines. Well, yes, because we were talking about it. Because I am fascinated by this, this British submarine that has just come back to the surface after, to me, an astonishing six months below

decks, is it? No, below the water. Below the water. Six months. I find myself feeling quite unwell, actually, whenever you say that. I mean, you know, you go, so you go down in March, you know, what are you doing on

August the 13th? You know, how do you mark the passage of time when you're in such a confined space? It properly gives me the giggles. If anyone listening has even the slightest idea of what it's like to be a submariner or what it's like to be the partner of a submariner and not be able to make contact with them, have any kind of contact with them for six months. I know this is an unusually long period of time

that they were under the sea, but it just seems quite remarkable to me. It does. To be honest, even if you just saw my whole length underwater, I'll take an anecdote from that. This one comes from Eleanor Sykes, who says, Dear Fian Jane, this is apropos of your podcast yesterday where you commented about what it must be like for teachers

when children start in reception and those who may not be fully continent. Well, that is definitely an issue and it's more of an issue when you have to teach little boys how to use the urinals. I taught reception for many years and every September would entail me trooping into the boys' loo with 15 or so four-year-old boys and pretending I had a willy to show them how to use the urinal, how to point it correctly and so on.

It was more or less successful, but I remember well the year when I found a huge poo sitting in the urinal instead. Cue more lessons. Oh, Anna, darling. Do you know what? We ask a lot of our teachers. We really do.

We really do. And pretending to have a willy and trying to teach four-year-old boys how to pee straight well i mean kudos to you i hope you get an mbe at the very least and i'm sorry about the poo thing thank you for being in touch with us i suppose you have to be absolutely explicit don't you this is this is what you use to do a wee but yeah i think the urinal thing's very interesting though because so few people apart from actually your ex-husband have a urinal in their in their house please don't

please i know but don't revisit that okay but most people don't have urinals at home so how is your school age boy you know suddenly meant to know and and also i don't think i'd be alone in this i've got a son and a daughter it was always me taking my son as a tiny toddler to the loo and the ladies yeah so i'm not sure that he had seen very many urinals before he went to school so you might not know exactly what it is that you do uh well you wouldn't would you know in fairness no i have to say this is niche but fascinating. Jane and Fee at Times.Radio. Wish you hadn't mentioned that bloody urinal. Anyway,

Anna says, I'm writing in response to something you mentioned earlier in the week about seeing all the Year 7s on their way to school. My daughter started Year 7 last week and it just occurred to me what a tough stage in any girl's life it is to have such a huge upheaval. Talking to my mum about it, we said we couldn't believe anybody thought it was a good idea

to make 11-year-olds leave everything they know, overwhelm them with new systems, knowledge and expectations and in many cases do this whilst leaving lots or all of their friends. There has to be a better way, surely, says Anna. Well, it's not just girls, is it? I mean, I did see a couple of really sweet young boys making their way to their new secondary schools as well earlier this week when I was out and about early. Do you know, I can still remember the terror of my first week at secondary school because like most people at primary school, we just stayed in the same classroom. And I don't have a very good sense of direction. And I'm sort of my I just get very easily confused by logistics as you know and I just kept going to the wrong place I couldn't understand this business of moving around the school for lessons and I still think about it and obviously it's been a

while now since I started secondary school I'm more or less over it yeah so I think that's maybe why I just look at these these kids and I just feel oh god I hope you're okay it does get easier doesn't it? Yeah. Some of them are just still so tiny as well. Year seven is that weird one where you'll have, you know, weenie, weenie little people. And then you'll have some who've already shot up to about, you know, nearly six foot tall. And they're all bumbling along together, aren't they? You know, quite slowly with the slightly painful new shoes on this week.

And you do, you just want to hold them very close and wish them all the best of luck. This one came in from Rob actually earlier on during the week. So I hope you're still listening, Rob. I'm one of those, as you say, rare chaps who listen regularly to your chat slash conversation slash wittering. Delete is applicable. A bit rude. And enjoy it.

Well, most of it anyway. I was caught by your anecdote. I can't say whose it was because you're a bit like Ant and Dec. And enjoy it. Well, most of it anyway. I was caught by your anecdote. I can't say whose it was because you're a bit like Ant and Dec. We're not. We're so very, very different. And subsequent chat about the lost child. I'm an ex-teacher 14 years before the mast. What does that mean?

We're serving before the mast. It's like it's a naval term. Yes, I think. I should know, of course. You have been in the watery intelligence Intelligence Service, haven't you? You know a lot about it. Served alongside Paddy Ashton. You're very across Plymouth late at night.

This is all adding up to something, isn't it? Well, you know about my visit to that place in Cheltenham, isn't it? I have heard tell of that, yeah. Anyway, I'm sorry, I didn't know that term. So, Rob is 14 years before the mast, ex-cub leader, a father of two and a grandfather of four. But things would have to be pretty bad before I approached a child I didn't know.

Such is the zeitgeist now that almost any male approaching a child in the street or anywhere else is in danger of having his motives questioned. A uniform, police, scoutmaster or nurse may be some protection, but otherwise many chaps would feel like me and avoid the situation. I was a little surprised you didn't bring this factor into your chat. Well, thank you for bringing it into the chat yourself, Rob. And I suppose, do you know what?

I really hadn't thought enough about that, actually. And I know that the advice that I've given to my kids, I mean, they're older now but when they were younger was absolutely that if they were distressed or felt in danger they should head to I always used to say find a woman with a buggy you know because I just kind of would say that that's the safest person who's going to be in your zone. And I know that my advice has always been don't head for the single man. So you're right to say that, Rob.

You are right, I'm afraid to say it. Yeah, and you are so the right person who would be able to help a kid out in trouble. And I wonder whether we ever get to a time in society where this email would make no sense. It would be nice to think that we will. It would be really nice. Let's just brief mention to Zoe.

Hello, Zoe, in Fort Worth. I could listen to Clive Myrie all day long, she says. What a voice. Jane briefly mentioned the novel The Dutch House by Anne Patchett. That audiobook is read by Tom Hanks and it is the most perfect pairing of text and voice I have experienced in all my audio book listening. Sounds like a recommendation, doesn't it?

Thank you for that, Irene. Oh, Zoe, rather. Zoe Irene is her full name. Thank you for listening all the way over there in Fort Worth. And actually, it must be remarkable because it's come up with quite a few other listeners too. Henrietta wanted to say it's Tom Hanks doing the Dutch house. So it's obviously stuck with people. And Henrietta's with me on the pesto.

Both my son and I overdosed on pesto when he was a baby, and neither of us can stomach it. He's now 15. I think there's a gap in the market for adult pesto, and it's literally called that. It has to taste different, not quite as sweet and oily. Adult pesto. All right, market it.

Go away. Make your fortune. I want to hear from Robert Peston. Nearly Robert Pesto, but not. Right, take it away, girlfriend. He's got a beautiful voice. He's ITV's political editor, formerly of the Financial Times, also been a big old noise at the BBC as well,

business editor and economic editor. Somehow, we don't know how, he's found time to come up with another of his pacey thrillers. This one is called The Crash. It's 10 years on from his first book, The Whistleblower. And essentially, it is about a maverick, very well-connected journo called Gil Peck, who darts all over London, talking to all his top contacts on one of those Brompton bikes. Fee and I are pretty much of the view that this could basically be Robert Peston himself, but who knows? Anyway, here is Robert Peston.

Lovely to see you. Very nice to see you. Thank you very much for coming on the programme. Now, The Crash is set a decade after your first novel, The Whistleblower, but the central character is still the same. It's Gil Peck, but he's moved out of the dirty world of newspapers and into broadcasting. And how is he finding it? He's having an exciting time in the sense that there's quite a big story that he's chasing.

He's slightly obsessed with getting scoops and he's quite obsessed with the business of being a journalist and so the collapse or you know what he thinks is a period in which banks are going to collapse we're all gonna pay a big price for their recklessness well you know I imagine like all of us at the time he was sort of felt this was all a bit sad for the UK, but it kept him very busy and he likes being busy. Now, at the time of the financial crash in 2007, just remind everybody what your role was. Yeah, I thought I assumed you'd ask or remind people. I mean, weirdly, I was also a leading broadcaster trying to get

scoops about the crash. Right. So obviously that, Vee and I have already discussed the fact that we are bound to ask you, is Gil Peck a not so heavily disguised Robert Peston? question no uh but there are lots of things about gil peck that i have experienced and there are certain of his character trays that are my character trays but no it's not a sort of um disguised uh autobiography uh it is um a bit of fun actually. I mean, I can't remember, I think I might have talked to you about The Whistleblower when it came out, which, as you say, was sort of part one. And I just sort of

took the view, since I've come to sort of fiction writing and thriller writing late in life, that it would be probably sensible to minimise at least some of the risks of, you know, going into an area that was sort of relatively new to me. And I just therefore thought, why not write about worlds that I know intimately? Yeah. And I thought that way, I could at least make it feel authentic.

Sure. Yeah. But I guess the problem with that is that, yes, you do know this world intimately, but frankly, the rest of us don't. And there's a there's a level of detail and there's an intricacy to some of that detail. It needs explaining, doesn't it, in plain English, which is one of the problems you have when you write a book like this, I guess. I suppose so. I mean, I've been quite I mean, I mean, if you hated it, cause, uh, you know, bits of it were, uh, about bits of the city that you didn't find very interesting and you didn't, you weren't, you know, you, you, you, you weren't, um, intrigued to sort of learn more than I can only apologize to you. Um, I mean, what I tried to do was, um, you know, as I say,

it's got to be compelling and it's compelling. It's got to be compelling in two ways. One it's got to be entertaining and fast-paced, it's got to be compelling. And it's got to be compelling in two ways. One, it's got to be entertaining and fast-paced, and there's got to be lots of action and mystery and all the rest of it. And I hope there's that in this book. But equally, it can't be stupid. No, I didn't dislike it at all, Robert. I thought it was a proper page-turner, to be honest.

But can we just get on to the fact that your character, Gil, he's kind of put off the story by his employers because or at least there's an attempt by the banks, frankly, to steer him away from doing the story. So did that happen to you? How much pressure were you under at the time of the crash to, frankly, keep your trap shut? So there were sort of there are a couple of aspects of this. I mean, one is, about nine months before everything went bad, I was a little bit frustrated because I went to see, there was a particular senior editor at the BBC, and I went to see and I just said, look, I think, you know, we are going to have a crash and it is going to be not only bad for the city, but because of the central role that all these institutions play in our lives, it's going to lead to recession, going to damage us. And this individual said, well, you know, when's it going to happen?

And I said, well, the problem crashes is um you can see the direction of travel that you're going in that they're going to happen at some point but uh you know forecasting with precision when it'll happen well you know that's more art it's more art it's not a science and this particular I just said oh well look I mean you know it can therefore you know it can hold this story uh so that was that but but but then actually you know because can therefore you know it can hold the story uh so that was that but but but then actually you know because the bbc um was a place that was incredibly interested in exploring i think quite challenging things they then did let me do some broadcasting on the crash actually happened after i did the northern rock story then that's when the heat

got turned up and it got turned up very considerably. People sort of wrongly blamed me that, you know, they blamed the messenger. They blamed me for the run at Northern Rock after I disclosed that it had run out of money and gone, you know, capping out the Bank of England for support. And at that point, yeah, I mean, you know. Powerful people in the city, senior bankers uh head of the trading association the british bankers association you know ministers regulators uh they rang up the bbc spoke to the director general spoke to the director of news said close peston down this is all too dangerous british people this is all all too difficult and scary for British people. This is, you know, they actually use the analogy of a time of war. And, you know, they said there should be the equivalent of a denoted. So I shouldn't be allowed to tell the world

how much trouble our banks were in. I have to say, Mark Thompson, who was director general at the time and Helen Bowden, who was director of news, were both actually, you know, really sort of tough and told these people that, you know, the work that we were doing was very much in the public interest. People had to know what was going on and told them all to hop off. And, you know, there's been quite a lot of talk recently that BBC maybe doesn't have enough backbone. It certainly had backbone then. And I'm forever grateful to both Helen and Mark for letting me do my job. Can you just explain what a denotice is? Because not everybody will know that term. So a denotice is a notice that at a time particularly of war, you know, essentially is issued to media organisations to basically stop them reporting on information that could be damaging to the security of the UK.

And, you know, there was genuinely an active debate at the time because the stakes were very high economically about trying to persuade, as I say, people like me not to tell British people quite the sort of scale of the reckless things that the bankers had done. What does come across in the book certainly Gil Peck's world is one of well it's actually it's a kind of cabal of people who were all at Oxford together and have all risen to prominent positions at sort of around the same time and they're absolutely hideous pretty much all of them. And there are some quite debauched parties that you describe. This is a very, very depressing view of Britain.

I mean, Robert, is this still how Britain is run? I mean, yeah, I mean, look, obviously when you write a book of this sort, you make it probably a little bit more extreme than the reality but yeah i mean you know this place was run is run uh by people who certainly went to the same university in some cases as we know uh in recent times went to one school in particular. And it is, you know, the elite in this country is a genuine elite. And yeah, they do all know each other. And I think some of the morality, I mean, you know, in both books, there's a lot of very dodgy morality. And I'm afraid that does describe

quite a lot of how powerful people behave. And do you consider yourself part of that? powerful people behave and do you consider yourself part of that i mean this is a incredibly difficult question i mean my i've never considered myself part of some uh uh elite in the sense of of of somebody who sort of you know wants to run things i have always considered myself to be somebody who shines a light on the world tries to explain the world um to uh you know the the people who either you know watch my broadcast or when i do newspapers read my newspaper articles you know i've got i've got a new podcast which i might as well promote this is a new podcast look i can't deny that having been to oxford myself look that can you know that that you know it opens doors um you know i know i know all sorts of you know partly through having gone to that university all sorts of people who i probably wouldn't have met if i'd gone a different route um and you know

i went to a north london comprehensive did i think i mean some some you know when i was i mean weirdly when i was 10 or 11 partly because i was obsessed with history and the master of bali was a particular historian that i admired pretty much the age of 10 or 11 despite the fact i went to this north london comprehensive i was pretty sure i wanted to go to bali college oxford and that's where I ended up but I I didn't go there thinking that I was going to meet all these people who would end up running the country no but it did sort of slightly turn out that way and the weird thing about the Oxbridge thing is that even if I mean there were some some of my contemporaries um obviously ended up in positions of some importance but just weirdly just you know

it is a it is and i'm afraid all you know you get the same thing in france you get the same thing in america um there is just it's a part of the inequalities and the unfairnesses of this world is you know you end up at a particular university and it sort of introduces you to a network of people that you know undoubtedly are pretty helpful uh in terms of whatever whatever you end up doing it does seem to work that way yeah i mean you you actually mentioned it you know it's just another one of those awful unfairness yeah um in an interview with the times actually with andrew billen a couple of ago, you actually said that Rishi Sunak was better informed about financial matters than his predecessors. He's obviously got a lot of experience. He worked for Goldman Sachs, didn't he?

And he might be working for them again. And for a hedge fund, yeah. But, I mean, is there any evidence at all that his, clearly, his profound knowledge of the subject is actually benefiting us as a country? of the subject is actually benefiting us as a country? Well, I think this is not a very profound thought that, you know, a prime minister who does the work and reads the documents and, you know, thinks more deeply about, you know, whatever the issue is. I think that's a better thing rather than a worse thing.

And he definitely does the work. I mean, you know, my job is to be impartial. And, you know, we can all have views about the effectiveness. I mean, you can have ideological views about whether his policies are good or bad. And then you can have views about whether they're effective or not. And, you know, I think we could argue at the moment that his policy on um reducing the number of people risking their lives coming across in small boats is not working very well i mean to be frank since large numbers are still coming across in small boats and we've got this sort of massive problem of a lot of stateless people here growing by the day, not able to work, somewhat sort of stranded.

You could argue this is a very, very bad phenomenon. And so you can, you know, I'm very happy to judge policies on the basis of whether they work or not, but I can tell you that, you know, whether it's a good or bad policy, and as I say, it's definitely not working very well at the moment. But I mean, also, we're at a strange place when we when you decide that because Mr. Sunak puts in the work,

he's perhaps perhaps a little bit better than some of his immediate predecessors, because it's the least I expect. I mean, I want them to they've pursued positions of power. The least they can do when they get there is put the hours in, surely. Yeah, I mean, you know, you would say you would think that, wouldn't you? But, you know, we've lived through a time when you couldn't necessarily take that for granted. Robert Peston, who's got a new novel out, it's called The Crash. He is, of course, ITN's political editor. So, Robert, do you think it is inevitable that Labour will win the next election? Oh, nothing is remotely ever inevitable in this particular period of our history.

It is astonishing how fast public opinion can shift. And it's also astonishing how people are acting in ways that we thought they wouldn't do. So it's definitely not inevitable. But it is also incredibly difficult for a government to win an election having been in office and overseen both chaos, some would say of its own making, and we're thinking obviously of this trust's mini budget um and uh having um had a prime minister who held uh illegal parties in downing street and uh having right now a period of economic stagnation, high inflation, squeezes in living standards

that are leaving millions of people in pretty rum, old, difficult states. So, and then, you know, you've had opinion polls that have shown Labour have significantly ahead, 15, 16 percentage points now for a good year or so. So, I mean know as i say i it's um very likely that label will win the general election but you know if i were kirsten armor um you know i wouldn't be engaging in hubris no and um he's up against it in the

sense that there's a limit to what he can actually say isn't there which is why he's not saying a great deal uh we don't actually know what too many of their policies are going to be because it's he's doing that thing about what is it carrying the ming vase across a across a sitting room or something yeah i mean i do think that um he could probably uh you know and maybe maybe is now beginning to do this, he could probably show us a bit more about what he stands for, what he's going to do. that Rishi Sunak has adopted and taken some risks in terms of talking about closer cooperation with the EU and actually ending this position of making it completely impossible for any asylum seeker across the Channel to apply for asylum.

So, you know, he is taking some risks and maybe that'll continue. So maybe we will know a little bit more about who he is and what they stand for. We've got about a year to go um things like the triple lock which are of huge interest actually um what on earth can any government do about that that doesn't just put off potential voters i mean the problem with with with um sort of rational debate about so much of this stuff is you know we you know all parties want to win elections and older people tend to be the people who vote, as you know. And one of the reasons I'm absolutely certain that the government will, you know, all the, you know,

Conservative Party and Rishi Sunak will put the renewal of the triple lock into their manifesto is R rishi sunak needs votes uh he doesn't want to alienate older people i mean i i think there are sort of two things though to say about the triple lock which slightly pull in in different directions um one is um, yes, it has been very expensive and will become even more expensive at a time when there's, you know, public finances are frankly in a mess and quite a serious mess. I think it's the IFS has calculated that the triple block could add something like 45 billion pounds to public spending by 2050. So that's in real terms. That's a lot of money on the other. And it's also true relative to younger people. Older people have done very well out of government policy over the last uh sort of 13 14 15 years uh pension has gone up about 14 in real terms while benefits for people of working age fallen

nine percent in in in real terms so you but on the other hand it's not that long ago i mean you know you you may remember that in the 80s and 90s, pensioner poverty was a very, very serious problem in this country. And it's a good thing that pensioner poverty has been eradicated. I think the challenge is not to force, you know, the goal can't be to, you know, allow pensioners to fall back into poverty. The goal has got to be how do you lift working age people out of poverty? That's got to be the ambition. The goal has got to be how do you lift working age people out of poverty? That's got to be the ambition. So, Robert, you've worked in these two huge fields of importance in terms of policies. You've worked across finance and you've worked across politics itself.

But for most of us, what money boils down to is just how much we can hang on to, how much we can earn in our lifetime. So if somebody gave you £10,000, what would you do with it at the moment given all of that exquisite wisdom um can i just ask you a question is this ten is this ten thousand it's your own money robert yeah i'm not saying i'm going to give you ten thousand pounds let's just be clear about that but i mean i'm no. But I mean, I'm just saying, because it always depends on whether this is £10,000 that you can sort of lock away and not worry about. Well, I suppose I'm asking you to look across the world

at everything that's happening. Look at all of the uncertainty. Where would you put it? I'd put it into some aspect of artificial intelligence. I mean, I'm very, very excited about what is undoubtedly a big industrial revolution that we're just starting.

It's going to transform the world of work. And it could actually do something about the biggest problem that many Western countries have. In fact, we've got yet another book coming out in a few weeks, which is called Bust, which is looking at essentially big problems that the UK and other Western countries are facing in terms of our living standards and public services and just, you know, the mess we're in. Also the political crises many of us, many countries are in,

including the UK. And, you know, artificial intelligence is both exciting and scary. It does offer the potential to give us greater growth, but it could also lead to very significant job losses. It could also allow proliferates. It could allow very bad people to create chemical weapons and various weapons of mass destruction from their garages. So it has to be regulated very well.

We're a long way from seeing that kind of regulation so you know it's you know it's it's a really big social and nomadic change that we're that we're starting with and if you're just looking for something to you know if you're genuinely saying where would you put your money you would put your money into some aspect of all of this that's going to benefit from from right well thank you for that that's a tip i'll write down just very briefly um you did come out uh with a very supportive statement about hugh edwards at the time of his suspension i know you work very closely with his wife how is he is he all right um do you know what he's a friend she's a friend i'm really that's that's their private life i'm not going to get into any other other than to say you know you've got to stand by your friends and i do stand by them that was robert

peston and he's still um very much a big noise in journalism looking forward i'm sure to the next 12 months which are likely to be pretty hectic in his world pretty hectic in our world too afy because the link lady because next week we're doing a book club podcast and i am hugely enjoying oh no i can't really say that because it's a gives too much away i am reading uh the latest book we're doing my sister the serial killer actually it's my sister comma the serial killer i noticed by oinka oinka braithwaite uh but we need your intervention. It's voice notes, emails and DMs, please, on the gram before the 22nd of September. September of that month. Well, Mrs. See you in Devon.

It's at Jane and Fee, if you'd like to put any of those missives up. And the whole point of Book Club is it's a book chosen by you to be discussed by you and just vaguely manhandled by us so we will look forward to all of your thoughts we've got a bumper week coming up next week what's going to be your highlight? Well I'm really enjoying Rory Ketland-Jones' book about his mum

because she worked as a secretary at the BBC and then worked her way up but she was disregarded she was treated a bit like crap by idiotic... Actually, you know what, V? It's all too familiar in lots of ways. But she was a woman working at the BBC in the 40s and 50s and it just wasn't easy.

And she was a single mum to Rory and his older brother, half-brother, and times were a bit tough. So it's really interesting. Yeah, looking forward to meeting him again. Michel Roux's on the programme too. The comedian London Hughes, one of our favourites as well. And Trini Woodall is here with us next week too. So it really is top layer of the chocolate box next week,

and we hope you can join us. Enjoy your weekend. I hope you all get some sleep. Ooh, yaw! We're bringing the shutters down on another episode of the internationally acclaimed podcast Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. But don't forget that you can get another two hours of us every Monday to Thursday afternoon here on Times Radio.

We start at 3 p.m. and you can listen for free on your smart speaker. Just shout Play Times Radio at it. You can also get us on DAB Radio in the car or on the Times Radio app whilst you're out and about being extremely busy. And you can follow all our tosh behind the mic and elsewhere on our Instagram account. Just go onto Insta and search for Jane and Fee and give us a follow. So in other words, we're everywhere, aren't we, Jane? Thank you for joining us.

And we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon.