Off Air... with Jane and Fi - The Undercover Janes (with Lindsey Hilsum)

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

Jane and Jane look back on their time as subversive vegetarians and look forward to all the spicy margs they'll treat themselves to later in life. Plus, Jane G speaks to Channel 4's Lindsey Hilsum about her new book 'I Brought the War with Me' which is out now. 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! @janeandfi Assistant Producer: Hannah Quinn Podcast Producer: Eve Salusbury Executive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm totally Greek yogurt and honey with nuts, the Peter B. Handful of nuts in a dollop of Greek yogurt way. And a couple of lunges. And a couple... Well, no. LAUGHS The Times Tech podcast, sponsored by ServiceNow. A podcast presented from San Francisco and from London. Each week, a fresh interview of pioneers in tech

from the brightest startups to the tech giants. That's the Times Tech podcast, where Danny in the Valley, Each week, a fresh interview with pioneers in tech from the brightest startups to the tech giants. That's the Times Tech podcast, where Danny in the Valley, that's Silicon Valley, meets me, Katie, in the city, the city of London. Exploring how tech is changing life and business in this new world of artificial intelligence. The Times Tech podcast with Katie Prescott and Danny Fortson. Follow us now wherever you get your podcasts. It's day two of more Kerins and Garvey. I think I once described it as the second best estate agents in an Irish small Irish town near you. Yeah and I think we were also we had a brief moment as a lady detective agency in the West

of Ireland too didn't we? I think which one of us do you think would be best at the undercover stuff? Well not neither of us. Actually no neither of us. I don't think we have to take a junior for that. I think you're right. I think I wouldn't be suited to any job that involved discretion, lying low and not chit chatting about what it was I was up to. I think the problem is we find out something really good and we want to tell everyone.

Yeah, well that reminds me. I won't mention where I was exactly, but I was at a function relatively recently. That was discreet. Thank you. I sat next to someone and this is a generalisation, but it's a generalisation because it's true. We had two hours of this bloke's career before he realised I'd asked him a lot of questions and he did say do you do work? Jane, I've had three year relationships like that.

But Jane, what is it? Why don't they get the memo that in order to have a conversation with someone, I mean I interview people for a living, I don't want to do it on a social night, I want to have just a conversation. Yeah, I mean I think there's two, I'm going to give you a two part answer. One of them is physiological basically, that's why they like talking about themselves. And the second one is I do think when you do it for a living as we do, I think you are just very good at it and you naturally just start putting people at ease by asking questions. And I think unfortunately a lot of people just enjoy that. So they don't think, oh this is very one sided, I'll just ask things.

I think people just aren't as good at asking questions and we are obviously exceptional at it. Oh yes. I mean I should say that I do ask a lot of questions when I'm out because I'm really curious about people. Slash nosy. And a bit of nosy, which is why I wouldn't be the world's worst detective but I couldn't do undercover, you're absolutely right, neither of us could, we own that. We'll just be a very indiscreet detective agency.

We'd enjoy finding out about shit but we wouldn't really solve anything at all. In fact we might cause more problems than we solve. But why is it that most women, after you've asked them maybe three or four questions, will then throw something back at you? Not always, but usually. And more often than not, men will soak up the interest and the attention. And it will be quite some time into the event before. I mean, I was at a dinner once

where I was literally the guest speaker and a bloke next to me talked all about his career running the flange department at ACME, tools dot whatever it was. I mean, perfectly reasonable line of work and good luck to him. It was honest business. And in the end, he did say, and why are you why are you here and I said well because I'm the guest speaker

that shut him up momentarily. Did he not realize he was sitting next to Lee Jane Garvey? What does that mean? And I don't think I was Lee Jane Garvey. But going back to your question about I do think women are possibly socialized more to take an interest in other people. We are taught to oil the wheels of social discourse. Definitely. Without question. I think men and boys and youths can get away with being the strong silent ones. If we don't say anything, people accuse us of being shy.

That's an old trope, isn't it? That's weird. Oh, she's shy. Or rude. know that's that's your oh she's rude or mouthy I'll see if you speak too much yeah exactly that's what I'm saying so is it fine line should we just sit in silence for a bit while we contemplate this have a moment that's long enough that's boring wasn't it now yesterday I want to thank the emailer who said thank you for your transparency Jane when you attempted to explain why Matt Lucas was missing from the podcast. Yes. Well he wasn't there was he? So just one of those. You get them every now and again Jane don't

you? It happens. Yeah. A celebrity encounter. Are you over it? Well, you've heard the expression a house on fire. Yeah, a celebrity encounter. Are you over it? Well, you've heard the expression of house on fire. Yeah. Well, we didn't have to call the fire brigade. No, there were no discernible flames coming off the 14th floor from where I was sitting yesterday afternoon. It seems fine. An email you read out towards the end of yesterday's podcast, which was

really beautiful and I think definitely touched me and it sounds like touched a lot of our listeners too. We've had a lot of feedback on it including this incredibly lovely email from Sally. Sally I hope you don't mind that I've mentioned your name you didn't say to keep it anonymous and I want to say thank you. What's lovely about this is that Sally gets it doesn't she? Sally really really gets it. She says dear Jane and Fee and the extra Jane, I listen to the podcast when I'm preparing dinner. It makes me laugh and smile and sometimes cry. And this evening I cried. Those keyches, that birthday. My son too is autistic with a severe learning disability and various other problems, though it's not as a result of a genetic condition.

And frankly, our son was able to come out of nappy's age 12. So it's not such a difficult scenario. Like you're listening, we it's not such a difficult scenario. Like your listener, we started our family in our 30s and we wouldn't change a thing. And again, like your listener, our son has shown us a different way of living. But she says the learning curve is enormous. The battle for services and support is enormous. And the fear of the future is enormous. And it continues to be so.

Sally says we decided that when our son was 25 we would seriously start to look at a lifetime home for him, thinking that by the time he was 30 we would be looking at a settled future. She says nine years down the line, following ombudsman involvement and huge stress, aged 34 our son finally left the family home to move a short drive away into a single person supported living property. Thank god it's close, I can't tell you the number of times we've had to drive over to pitch him with advice and support. He has two staff to support him whenever he leaves the house and one-to-one in the house.

It's still a daily challenge, says Sally, because of the constant worry that our son isn't as happy as he could be. Our listener who wrote in yesterday said her son lays his head in her lap. Sally says my son loves to hear me singing his name in lullabies. Frankly it's bloody heartbreaking when you know this isn't happening and I'm sorry if this is such a downer by the way. I've just been chatting with a friend of a similar situation and it's shit. However, there is one thing that has made our lives easier admin-wise, she says, and that's to have become his deputy. You can't have a lasting power of attorney or an enduring power of attorney as he hasn't got the required mental capacity.

But there are two types of deputies, says Sally. I think this is really interesting and hopefully useful. I haven't heard of this. No, I think this is really hopeful and kind of hopefully helpful for people. She says the two types of deputy are property and finance and health and well-being. Don't rely on being his appointee, become a deputy. It gives you the power you need and make sure you have a joint deputy from day one, your daughter, your son, your best friend or someone else who you trust implicitly. It costs more if you do it through a solicitor. I did it on my own, says Sally, but it's

a right messing about and because I'm not the brightest with admin I found it tricky I fully sympathize there but I got there says Sally she says do it sooner rather than later love the show she says keeps me sane or does it also sympathize with that Sally. Sally thank you so much for listening and responding to that email we had yesterday and also for for such practical advice, which hopefully will also, there's a link here actually, www.gov.uk slash become-deputy if you want to have a little look at Sally's advice and perhaps whether it could be helpful for you and your family situation.

It's just about offering that extra layer of reassurance and I totally get that. I think Sally makes the point that a lot of people in that situation do where you are, when you become the parent of somebody who has got additional needs, you begin a lifelong battle to get them the care they deserve and that is a job in itself on top of everything else you have to do. You may have other children as well. Absolutely. And it's just the worry isn't going to end realistically. And I'm really glad that Sally has a friend who she can unburden herself to, who's also going through something similar. And I also, yes, we really want to thank the original emailer who spoke about her own difficulty

so beautifully. And there was something very touching about the fact that she was up so early in the morning making quiches for this event for her son's 18th. And it also really made me think about some of the crap that people witter on about when it comes to their kids. I know. You know, talking about which GCSEs they got all... Yeah, they're getting a 7 or an 8. Yeah, I mean, please get a sense of proportion and just own your good fortune and theirs.

Absolutely. So, yeah, thank you so much for that, Sally. Really a beautiful email again, on what is a very difficult subject, but it really it's so close to home for lots of people who listen to this as I know as their kind of place of safety at the end of the day or the beginning of a day, in the case of the original emailer already in the kitchen. If you can make your own pastry by the way, I'm just so impressed by that. Something that's eluded me all my life. Same. Same? Yeah. I wish I'd got my grandmother to teach me before she died. She made the most amazing pastry I've ever had. She was famous for it. I just didn't think about it.

Just ate her pastry, said thanks very much. Well, I think Hannah... Don't think about learning. It's choking on a crumb there. She's got to go out. She feels very strongly about pastry. No, she clearly does. No, I'm with you with grandmothers and pastry. Both of mine made brilliant pastry.

My mum's still around, so I should ask her really, but because she likes to keep my dad fit, he is 91. Limited pastry. She doesn't make pastry anymore. This is the bizarre thing about my parents. I go there and they, I mean it does make me laugh. My sister and I take them on. They've got low fat products in the house. And you just think, you know, at 90 and 91, what's the issue? Shift to full fat. You've beaten the odds. You're not going to fur up your arteries now. Or if you are, then,

you know. Enjoy it. Yes, exactly. I want to be sitting in bed in my lovely fur bed jacket eating violet creams. Oh, me too. I'm smoking a fag and drinking a martini. Not so much smoking a fag. I'll draw the line, Jane. Even then, I'll draw the line. I will definitely have some spicy margaritas if I get the chance. This is from Gemma who says, and we've had lots of good suggestions about nightmares

because I know they can be truly horrible by the way, don't underestimate them at all. Gemma says, I've experienced recurring nightmares since my childhood. It does tend to be worse during periods of heightened stress or anxiety. Now one thing that has really helped me when I'm in the midst of it is to write down or draw scenes from the nightmare. It doesn't stop them, but I do think it helps to neutralise the content a bit and make them less intense.

So Gemma, thank you for that. Hannah's back with us. You've recovered. You had a cinnamon swirl. I would never pick a cinnamon swirl so I think you've got yourself to blame there. No I wouldn't Hannah. I'm here to give you, I know I'm sort of Hannah's health guru and I wouldn't start the day with a cinnamon swirl. No would you? No, pan a raisin maybe. If I was going pastry. Yes but I don't go pastry early. Not anymore. I'm totally Greek yogurt and honey with nuts.

The Peter B. Handful of nuts in a dollop of Greek yogurt way. And a couple of lunges. Well, no. I squat down to pick up my wonder-bakes from the store cupboard. That's got chocolate bits in it. That is a squat though, nonetheless? Yes, it is.

Go on, no, you go on. Okay, speaking of health. Yes. I grew up in Sydney, says Sue, and Devon was and remains, as far as I know from my latest visits to Australia, a staple sandwich meat. This was the meat that was described yesterday.

How was it? Reclaimed meat? No. Recovered. Recovered meat. Neither of them are good. Recovered, reclaimed. Sue says it's actually pretty delicious, if slightly gross, in the manner of a frankfurter. My mum would make a loaf's worth of sandwiches for our lunch boxes, says Sue, with various fillings on a Sunday, and freeze them, and we'd take out our choice each morning.

I can assure you they were perfectly defrosted by school lunchtime. A bit chilly though, no? A bit soggy? And speaking of sausages, Australian sausages, she says, are usually made from beef scraps and they are pretty disgusting. I hated them but they were the cheapest meat dish in the 70s and 80s when I was growing up. My dad, says Sue, used to talk of the sausage years. My sisters and I were all at our independent senior school at the same time for a couple of years. I'm not sure whether that's he was eating sausages at home or they were eating them when they came home. Sue, could you clarify please in a second? I need to follow up email about the sausage years. She says we all survived,

which is good to hear. And I was lucky and delighted to discover the delicious wonders of the British pork sausage when I arrived on these shores 30 years ago. Thank you for the props on the sausages, Sue. Update on the sausage years, please, by return of post. This really did hit a, struck a chord, hit a raw nerve with our Australian audience because Kate says that original reference to Devon sandwiches, it brought it all back to me, eaten on the wooden benches of the grandly named amphitheatre at the Wurunga Bush School with kookaburras singing in the background.

Very similar to North East Derbyshire. Very much. The Mersey Riviera as well. Donna's in Sydney, she says you'll be hard pressed to find anybody who grew up in Australia and didn't eat Devon sandwiches usually with tomato sauce or just rolled up on a plate of cold cuts or on the side of a meal. Cold cuts annoys me. You just haven't made any effort with a cold collation or whatever they were called. It's just you're just bunging stuff out the fridge and onto the plate aren't you? It's not that's not a meal. I mean it's served in our house seven nights out of seven, but even I know it's not really a meal.

It's been rebranded as Girl Dinner. Girl Dinner? Girl Dinner. Yeah, Hannah's nodding because she knows about Girl Dinner. So, you know, maybe a bit of cold meat, a bit, like a few cubes of cheese, a bit of hummus maybe and olives and a cracker. Girl Dinner. Yeah, I used to... Low effort, maximum flavour. Yeah, but I used to just have a bowl of Alpen. Also good. I mean, more roughage than Girl Dinner. So definitely better. Tim Spector would approve.

Not sure he'd approve so much of cold cuts. No, to my horror, I don't think Alpen is quite as healthy as you think it is. I mean, it's got a wonderful picture of a Swiss mountain on it. How could it be unhealthy? Made in Switzerland as it surely is. Yeah, quite. Donna in Sydney says her personal favourite was to have Devon rolled up with mashed potato inside. Wow. Oh I like that. I love a carbon carb. Different states have different names for it she says. It's

called Fritz in South Australia and Pelloni in Western Australia. Oh is that what Pelloni is? I have heard of Pelloni. Yeah. I'm assuming this is the British, it's what we in Britain call luncheon meat. I think it is. And that really makes me laugh because luncheon is such a posh term and why that was given to a kind of recovered meat product, I don't know. To give it more gravitas obviously. To elevate it. To elevate it.

Yeah, well it worked. I used to eat quite a lot of cold black pudding as a child. Which I really like. It's derbyshire for you. Yeah I know. I mean we had a cooker. It wasn't that bad. But we obviously didn't use it for the black pudding.

Pudding is one of those products I will eat twice a year in my full English, which I treat myself to in a hotel, but I don't crave it the rest of the time. I spent 20 years as a vegetarian. The only thing I craved was black pudding. That's a very... I know, that's the sort of savage I am. It's the oddest confession from a recovering vegetarian. I did seven years... Fully recovered by the way.

You did 20 years, I did seven years as a vegetarian. What broke you? A trip to Florida. Oh God, where the meat is known to be so good! Well, it was just the fact that you couldn't get anything vegetarian. Oh yeah, no that's true. It was the 1990s and they weren't big on, well, vegetarian alternatives. They're still not.

Are they not? No. No, it's hard. Yeah, okay. I broke mine in Argentina. Did you? Yeah, it was my birthday and I thought, I'll have a steak and a bottle of Malbec. Yeah, well...

And everyone sort of looked at me askance, but I thought, well in Rome. And did you enjoy it? So much. Yeah. Oh, I remembered what I'd been missing. And then I sort of thought I'd come back and maybe eat meat once or twice a year. I started ripping animals limb from limb as soon as I got back. Did you?

Yeah. Cave woman. Absolutely. God. You couldn't run away from me fast enough. Every vegetarian who's ever, ever listened to this is now going to be horrified. But I'm interested in why so many of us tried vegetarianism and then did go back. I think it's just another way to be awkward. I was 11 and I just really... Oh, you were 11.

It was another thing to be awkward about. You know, big old feminists, very ranted about the fluffy animals, anything I could do to be awkward. Yeah, that's sort of the spirit in which I became a vegetarian. I left it much later than you, but it was just to wind people up and actually kudos to my mum who just kind of went with it, but she'd serve a roast dinner and just leave off the meat for me. Yeah, exactly.

And I used to sit there and watch everybody else chowing down and think. My mum would sometimes very kindly put a vegetable samosa in the oven for me at the same time. It goes really well with a roast. I was allowed an individual not roast at Christmas. Yeah there was me and my Doc Martens with my socialist worker and my vegetarianism. Now you work at the Times and you eat lots of red meat. We all grow up. I'm still a subversive inside Jane. Oh no darling.

Well, I can completely relate to that. We all are. This is from, I don't think I'll mention your name, but that doesn't mean in any way that I'm embarrassed for you because of what you said, because this is something I suspect has happened to so many women. I listened to other feedbacks about heavy bleeding, she says. I just wanted to tell you something that genuinely I haven't told anyone. It's something I suffered from for some years, including severe anemia.

It was so bad some days I wasn't sure if I could leave the house, as it would just randomly happen to different degrees. In my early thirties, I once went out for a small hike near Uckfield which is in Sussex. That's right, it was a lovely sunny day and I had the most diabolical episode of bleeding. It was the worst I've ever had. I honestly thought I was gonna die. Being out for the day I was covered in blood. If anyone had seen me they'd have thought I'd been attacked. I was covered in it from waist down, through my shorts and all over my legs so I ended up having to wash in a nearby river.

I wrapped myself up in a hoodie, dried my clothes as best I could in the sun and sat there for hours dreading somebody coming past. My usual safety net of extra pads etc were used so I had to stuff what I could down my slightly dampened stained shorts and make my way penguin back to my car a few miles away. Honestly it was horrendous. I had finally had enough. Look I get that. I mean I've that is really grim and poor you. Now she says the bit I haven't mentioned is me going to my GP regularly about all this. To be told it was normal, just deal with it.

I was also trying to get pregnant, but I was told it would be better for me and my wife to get a cat. I'll never forget that day going home crying my eyes out. Well, here's the good bit. Five years later, fibroids removed after two operations, fertility treatment for 18 months and I've had my lovely daughter who's the light of my life. Hopefully she won't ever have to put up with this kind of shit. Though our listener says she does really love cats. Well that's not a negative.

It's beside the point. Congratulations. Well congratulations. That's a very happy ending. Brilliant. I'm delighted to hear it. I'm sorry I had to go through all of that. That sounds absolutely horrendous. It is horrendous and that whole business of being dismissed by a GP, and they're not always men by the way either, is just horrendous and I'm so sorry you had that. We've run a lot of pieces in the magazine, in the Times magazine, which is my day job in case you are new to my stand-in shifts here. We've done a lot of pieces about women with really severe endometriosis and adenomyosis which I didn't know an awful lot about until we started. Just explain the difference. That is to do with the endometrial lining. Going everywhere in the body.

Yeah, going everywhere. Endometriosis is when it's... In the womb. In the womb and I think adenomyosis is when it migrates. But it's been very difficult to get a diagnosis and so many women have been undiagnosed for years and years and they're just told it's just painful periods and it's really not. It's so extreme. And I think, thank goodness, honestly, I would happily have a piece in the Times every single week until all doctors feel like they're actually, you know, across this and all women feel like they're heard.

Yeah. Well, keep trying because I know you do care about this stuff and because it impacts just on the quality of your everyday life. If you're worried that you might start bleeding really heavily, you are going to overthink everything you do. Yeah. And it's just just outrageous and no man would ever put up with it. No, they really wouldn't. And I know that's obvious, but I just thought I'd say it. Our guest today is Lindsay Hillsom of Channel 4, who is just brilliant.

She's a fantastic foreign affairs reporter. She's been all over the world, seeing some really tough stuff. We'll just do a couple more emails. And I really wanted to say to Chloe, who wants a tote bag and we'll get you a tote bag Chloe, but I really want to send lots of love to you and I know Jane will as well. She says, my dad died very suddenly last week, he was 60. He was healthy, fun loving, lived every day to the full. He was just so kind and generous, the kind of person

that would stop and talk to everyone, even if it really embarrassed me as a teenager. It was just not his time to go. I'm 30, have just qualified as a solicitor, my brother is 26, my mum was younger than him and a few days away from joining him in retirement. They had so many plans. Oh Chloe Chloe, this is so unjust and wrong. And I'm so sorry for you and for your mum as well. She said, I was on the other side of the world traveling when I got the call from my mum. I am now at home. The initial shock has settled.

And now I just feel engulfed by a heavy somberness. We're fortunate to have so many friends and family around us, but sometimes it all just feels too much. We've had a revolving door of visitors, hundreds of cars, home-cooked meals, so many flowers that I wept when we ran out of vessels to put them in. I find myself going into older sister mode, doing the laundry and the hoovering as a way to cope. I would love to hear from other listeners who've suffered the loss of a dad at a relatively young age in a similar and sudden way. What has helped them? How did

they find joy and peace? And is there any advice they could share? Well Chloe we have a really caring group of people who take part in off-air and will send us emails. So I'm you know I'm very lucky to have my dad still still around and I can't imagine how tough this is for all of you. So I'm very lucky to have my dad still around and I can't imagine how tough this is for all of you. So I'm sure we will get lots of advice on that. Yeah, I'm sending you so much love, Chloe. That's a really, really tough thing. I have friends who lost dads at similar ages and we're also on the other side of the world because those are the years when you sort of assume that they're going to be. Well you have every right I think to expect that you'll be okay. You do and I lived in America during my 30s because I thought that was a

time when I could sort of get away with it. Yeah. You know and I think that's that's probably how most people feel I think in their 20s and 30s and I'm just yeah I'm telling you huge love Chloe I'm so glad to hear you've got lots of people around you offering love and support. Keep vacuuming. It is a very soothing thing to do. And yeah, huge love from us. I get why people send flowers, but sometimes sending flowers is quite an easy thing to do. But that's sounding like I'm being critical about people sending flowers when I actually love getting flowers, but having too many flowers at that time.

And not enough vases. And not when you haven't got enough vases. Which is actually, that's really annoying. Yes, it might take you. Maybe send a vase with the flowers is what I would suggest. You could do that. Yeah. Or you could just not send flowers and do something else.

Yeah, absolutely. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is to how you should best react. Just tell people you love them and you're there for them. Yeah, I guess that's true. Do you have one more? Anything slightly... I do. This is from Rachel who says, Dear Jane and Fee, love listening to you every day and you brighten up my work afternoon, but she wants to get in touch with something that really bugged her. I was watching BBC Question Time, says Rachel this evening, another staple

diet and I was rather perturbed by the fact that while stating that QT will be transmitted from America next week, although she says, I question why, who will the audience be, that Fiona Bruce stated that us Brits are not the only ones who enjoy QT as it's popular in the States. Rachel asked, and I think this is a very good question, do they pay a licence fee? Because even as I watch on iPlayer, have to come have to click to confirm that I'm a license payer and is this bigging up their US popularity as a show? I think I've got an answer to this actually because I watched the BBC when

I was in America. Is that on BBC America? No, so you just register for a BBC account. For free? I didn't pay a license fee. Well it may be that you owe money now, Jane. So you just register for a BBC account for free. I didn't pay any. I didn't pay a license. Maybe that you owe money now, Jane. I will make sure I pay back every penny. Like the good believer in public service broadcaster than I am. But I do think it is a question. There is a loophole there. You do have to register in order to just actually to listen to BBC sales,

which obviously you shouldn't be listening to either. You should just listen to Time's Radio all day. But we need you just to test it out. I think you have to register with your email address, but I don't think you have to pay a licence fee. It will say something like you look like you're in another place, but you can access it. But maybe they're doing something special, maybe it's a pay-per-view for Fiona. I did read something about this, but nowhere near enough to sound informed on the subject. That's never stopped us before Jane. It absolutely hasn't but I certainly will try and make a date

to watch that program because I gather, no I just I was about to say something as though I knew about it and I really don't know enough. Okay we'll reconvene. Fifi LaBruce will carry the day. We'll reconvene. B.C. LaBruce will carry the day. She definitely will. Speaking of research, I did, I forgot to bring my notes up, but I did spend at least 12 minutes yesterday afternoon researching camel hair duvets, which we discussed. Oh, well done, thank you.

No problem. They're about 225 pounds on average from a selection of stores. None of the mainstream ones actually, not your Ikea, not your Denial. I did find a John Lewis duvet for £9,500. Sorry what? Yeah, it was £9,500.

What did you get for that? I don't know. I mean hopefully somebody changes the duvet cover for you for £9,500. God, if I didn't get a decent night's keep under that. No, under £9,500. You're fuming. That's the one I'm definitely going to bring up tomorrow just to tell you exactly what's in it. Nine and a half grand. My bed's not worth nine and a half grand. Certainly not worth nine and a half quid.

You can pay absurd amounts of money for mattresses, can't you? Yeah, I never have. No, I haven't either. But bed frames are relatively cheap compared to the mattress. It's a bit like a printer. You buy a printer, it's 40 quid. And then the ink, nine grand as well. Ink, printers are the neediest thing I've ever met. They're worse than toddlers. They just shout for ink twice a day, sometimes three times a day. I just don't use my printer anymore. We fell out some time ago and I no longer talk to it.

So that's that. I just rely on, I actually sometimes ask friends to print things for me. But you know that we have printers here in the building, quite a lot of them. Yeah, I ask colleagues to print here. Okay. I don't have the rights. Me neither actually on this floor. Don't you? I've got rights on other floors. I think this is a bit niche. It's a bit inside baseball isn't it? Boast to us about your own printer rights. Jane and Fee at Times.Radio. Our guest today is the absolutely wonderful, she's one of the people I really do admire in journalism, Channel 4's Lindsay Hillsome. I came wet and late and very flustered. It's because of that up and down bit, you know, where you have to come to the building,

you have to go up the stairs and so on and it was pouring with rain and oh god, anyway. No look, honestly, if it wasn't for producers and camera people and so on, I'd turn the wrong way out of my hotel room any morning. Would you? Oh god, yes. Okay, I think that will come for a lot of people. I was going to say in a generalized way, women, but I think it will come for a lot of people. How do you become a war reporter? Because your book is about war reporting. It's about a lot of other things as well.

I must admit, as a young woman, I was offered the opportunity to go on one of those courses at the BBC, which would have allowed me to then go to a war zone. And I always just said, no, I don't want to do it. And I still I'm really glad I haven't done it. Right. I don't regret that. But obviously, I depend on people like you who are willing to do it. Why were you willing to do it? Well, like most things that happen in life, it happened by accident. You know, I certainly didn't set off thinking that's what I'm going to do. In fact, I started my career in development. I worked for Oxfam and then I worked for for UNICEF. And then I realized I was actually quite useless as an aid worker because I wasn't a doctor, I wasn't a nurse, I didn't know about agriculture. I had absolutely zero useful skills. And all I could really do was read

and write and ask questions. And I could do it in a couple of languages. And so I sort of glided over into doing journalism. And then I was living in East Africa, I was living in Kenya and I was you know I was very, I was going to change the world. One of my less successful projects I think we can agree, I was going to make it a better place and I was going to do that by reporting on things that people didn't report on like serious development programs and so on. In the end, the countries near where I lived, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, were all at war and so I ended up reporting on wars and I found yes, sometimes it was scary and but sometimes you make the most amazing people, you make the most amazing people you make the most

extraordinary people because it's a cliche but you do see the best of people as well as the worst of people in extreme circumstances. Now I first spoke to you on a spring morning in the 1990s when I was working for a news station and a plane had crashed in Africa in a part of Africa I was barely aware of and then the most incredible and terrible events occurred as a result of that. Can you just take us back to what happened in Rwanda? Yeah, so this was Rwanda, so this was 1994 and in fact my journalistic career had taken a bit of a nosedive and I had found myself without work.

So I had gone back into the aid business and I was working for UNICEF, the UN Children's Fund in Rwanda, and I arrived there in February 1994. And it was pretty obvious things were not great. I mean, there was supposed to be a peace treaty,, you would hear gunfire at night and there was a hotel where I stayed in at one point and that somebody threw a grenade in and killed a politician who was in the bar. So you know all of that and then I remember very clearly I was at dinner at somebody's house when we heard the plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi come down. We just heard a crash

and we ran out of the garden and saw a glow on the horizon. And I went back to my house and this was before mobile phones, it's before the internet and so on. I didn't know what was going on and the phone was ringing and it was a friend actually from the World Service in London calling me and telling me what the plane was had crashed and I thought, oh, I better go, you know, I'm a journalist in the end, I better go to the airport. And I rang the BBC stringer, Nesta Sarashaga, and I said, I'm going to go to the airport. And he said,

don't go to the airport, Lindsay, the roadblocks are up. And the roadblocks were where they were taking people, Tutsis, that particular ethnic group. Who were the minority? Who were the minority and slaughtering them. Who were? The Hutus, which was the majority ethnic group. As a revenge? It was more complicated than that. It was a long rivalry over many years, but it was political. It was the Hutu elite who had decided that the way that they were going to keep control of the country was to get the Hutus to kill their Tutsi neighbors and they put

messages out on the radio and that was what they did and it was the most terrifying week of my life because it's a very different thing to fly into a war zone and for massacres it was a genocide just to start happening all around you. It was very terrifying. But yeah, I reported as best I could. I look back on it. I don't think my reporting was particularly good, but it was what I did. I did the best I could.

I think you were the only person there. I was the only foreign correspondent there. Not to undermine what you did, but I know that was why I spoke to you at the time. Yeah, absolutely. And the book is an incredible, I think it's a really good idea, and I'm assuming this was your idea, to combine war poetry with your experiences of war zones. And the chapter about, well there are various references to Rwanda, but there's a chapter about a boy, a man, conceived through rape, which really just, it's so poignant and desperately, desperately sad. Would you mind just talking a little

bit more about that? Sure. I mean, I've always carried a book of poetry with me wherever I go. That's just since I was a kid. And when I travel, I find that it does, you know, it helps. I see some pretty grim things. And poetry provides some sort of solace, but it's also, I mean, you know, people turn to poetry, don't they, when they're bereaved or divorced or, you know, those kinds of things.

But it's also, I think it gives you a sort of connection because you feel that somebody else, the poet has felt these things as well, but it also gives you a distance because somebody else's words take off where yours run out. And I certainly feel as a journalist that my words run out, the journalistic language that we have, you know, who, what, when, where, why, we tell the story, we try and be clear, we say when, you know, what the politicians say isn't true. And we are conveying emotion, the emotion of the people we come across, but poetry takes it to that other level.

And that's why I've always found poetry very important to me. So yeah, I mean, this was quite a long time after the genocide. After the genocide in 94, I kept going back and I got to know people quite well. But then I think it was 20 years afterwards, I went back and I got to know people quite well, but then I think it was 20 years afterwards I went back and I came across this village where there were all these women who had been raped and had given birth and To begin with they hated their children and who you know who would blame them for hating their children and

The men who had raped them the Hutus were at the other end of the village. And these women, they were so sad and they were so poor. And the girls who had been born of rape, they tended to be quite shy and not really able to talk and so on. And there was a boy called Olivier. And Olivier, he was kind of sullen and he was kind of angry and he was trying to make sense of it all. He was 19 years old and his mother had used to beat him a lot but then she had... She said so, didn't she? She said so, she was very honest and then she had, she'd come to terms with it and she'd realized he was, she said he was the only only family he's the only family I have and he was trying to make sense of it his own head you know should he blame

his father you know should he hate his father he would sometimes see his father he knew who his father was but he had no connection with him and you know in the end Olivier and his his mother Epiphan they had found a way of living, they had found a way of living together. They had found a way of being. And for a long time after I met them and I wrote about them, I did a TV story about them and so on, you know, he would try and contact me on Facebook and he was working with a therapist and the therapist said to me, don't respond because she said you can't solve his problems and it's true, I couldn't solve his problems.

And so I didn't. And then I felt bad for not responding, all of that stuff. But then in some time later, must have been four or five years later, he did get a message to me where he said that he had managed to go to university and that he was studying and that he hoped that he would be able to earn a living and he would be able to support his mother. and that he hoped that he would be able to earn a living and he would be able to support his mother. And I thought that was just incredibly touching because I cannot think of anybody who had a worse start in life. No, I don't imagine that you could think of anybody. It's so touching. I do urge people to look at this book. I think it'll, well, if you're not moved by it, that there's frankly something wrong with you. But I want to say something, is that that not all of the book

is gloomy I mean that's one of the saddest stories. It is and that's why I've picked it if I'm if I'm honest but um you say you can't help everybody and in some ways you certainly shouldn't or couldn't even attempt to nor should you maintain contact with people that you come across but you do in one episode and I think it's in a one of the breakaway Russian republics, you say you've given money to help a small child, actually, who was called Bezlan. He was called Bezlan, yeah. You see, guilt stalks you when you work in these places, you go to these places, and this was in the war with Chechnya and people were getting injured in Chechnya and they were coming across the border into Ingushetia and

I came across this lad, I mean he was about 13 I think and in a hospital and he'd been shot in the stomach and the Russians hadn't let him out of Chechnya for a long time and so by the time he got to the hospital with his mother he was in a very bad way, he couldn't absorb food and it was all very very bad and her doctor said there wasn't much she could do but you know he did need these medicines they were cost 40 dollars okay 40 dollars but you know it didn't look good and I wrote an article for the Observer and I always remember the first lines I wrote, Bestlan Ittaryev is going to die. And then I wrote the article. Then I felt so bad because I felt like I had condemned him to death

by saying that he was going to die and I just felt awful. Anyway, it haunted me. A couple of months later I went back and we got, we were passing the hospital and I said to the rest of the team, would you mind awfully if, you know, we just drop in? Because I just needed to know what happened. So we got out of the car and as I was walking across the hospital, this woman in a flowery headscarf comes rushing up to me and throws her arms

around me, it's the boy's mother, the $40 medicine had worked. And there he was in the hospital. He hadn't died. He was, he was getting better. Ah, God, was after all. He hadn't died. He was getting better. Ah, God, was that the best $40 ever spent? I think it was. Yeah, well, it sounds like it. What you do in the book is you write about your own experience and then you combine it with an appropriate poem, which may have been of the time, or in fact sometimes is of another time altogether, but is absolutely relevant and right.

And that is at the heart of this because as you say journalism is sort of relatively temporary but poetry as you say we turn to it throughout our lives for all sorts of reasons and it lives forever. Absolutely and also because I think one of the important things is of course every story I write is very specific, it's of a place and a time, but the poetry makes it universal. And so, you know, for example, love, love in a time of war, your emotions become very intense in wartime. And so people fall in love, you know, with huge passion. And you know, sex is much better under the bombs.

I wouldn't know anything about that myself, obviously, but that's what I'm told. I'm not a good enough journalist to have asked you that follow-up question anyway, so don't worry. And so one of the stories I write is about my friends Ward and Hamza. So Ward is a filmmaker, Hamza is a doctor.

They met in Aleppo in the time of the Civil War there and they both protested against the dictator Bashar al-Assad and they ended up living in rebel-held territory and their act of rebellion was to fall in love, get married and have a baby and that's what they. And they have ended up in exile here. But they're a very tight-knit family. They have two daughters now. And I twinned their experience with a poem about friends living through the war in Lebanon. That's pretty relevant at the moment, isn't it? So the war in Lebanon in the 1970s and 80s about students you know clustering on the steps of the university, listening to the radio, hearing the tracer fire and how

in all the years since they had since they separated and traveled nothing would bind them together quite like that experience. Can we end with a poem by, I want you to read this, and I know you say you find this poem difficult to read, but this is a poem by Siegfried Sassoon, who most people associate with the First World War. But you have put this poem in connection actually to a story from Aleppo, haven't you? Yes, that's right. About a broken building and what you can see inside it. Yeah. So a lot of the poems, one of the things I wanted to do with this book was show that

war poetry is more than, you know, the great war soldier poets like Leopold Brook and Sassoon and so on. And there's a lot of poems in this book by women and, you know, contemporary poets from Ukraine and so on. But this one I have to admit is one of my favorites. I was in Aleppo and there was like a building site and people who'd been displaced were living in this building site in this building which hadn't got the walls yet. It was like an apartment block with no walls.

It was like a doll's house you could see straight in. And there was a family. They had two little girls, Kowther and Thouara, and they were living in this open area with their family. And they were so sweet, and one was seven and one was ten, and they'd been taken out of school. And the little one wanted to show me how she could count up to Arabic, up to a hundred in Arabic, and the older one, that she could count up to ten in English. And I knew that the chances of them ever getting back to school were quite small. And their father, who had been a cobbler, a shoemaker,

he'd done everything to protect them but he couldn't, he couldn't protect them. And he couldn't even put a window in, he couldn't put a window in because it was open to the elements. And it made me think of one of my favourite poems, The Child at the Window by Siegfried Sassoon. When Siegfried Sassoon is writing it's 1939 and he knows another war, World War II is coming, and he looks up and sees his son George, who I think is four at the time. So this is The Child at the Window. Remember this when childhood's far away, the sunlight of a showery first spring day, you from your housetop window laughing down, and I returned with whipcracks from a ride on the great lawn below you playing the clown.

Time blots our gladness out. Let this with love abide. The brave March day, and you, not four years old, up in your nursery world, all heaven for me. Remember this, the happiness I hold, in far off springs I shall not live to see, the world one map of wasting war unrolled, and you unconscious of it, setting my spirit free. For you must learn, beyond bewildering years, how little things beloved and held are best. The windows of the world are blurred with tears and troubles come like cloud banks from the West. Remember this, some afternoon in spring, when your own child looks down and makes your sad

heart sing. I can scarcely get through that. I don't even have children and I can't get through it. You did really well. It's such a beautiful... And I think now, you know, the world one map of wasting war unrolled. That's what it feels like at the moment, doesn't it? I was going to end really by asking you, has it... I mean, it's tempting to think it's never been worse, but perhaps I'm just being, I'm just uninformed.

Well, I think you have to look back at, you know, there was, you know, our grandparents or great grandparents may have lived through the First World War and the Russian Revolution, and if they were Russian and Stalin as well. So I think, you know, there've been some pretty terrible times. But look, with the war in Ukraine, and then what's happening in the Middle East and I'm going to Beirut on Thursday, yeah, it doesn't look great at the moment and one just has to hope that people pull back from the brink. Lindsay Hilsum, her book is called I Brought the War with Me. I haven't been to a war zone. Have you ever been to a war zone. Have you ever been to a war zone?

Yep. Which, which were? I went to Ukraine in the summer. Oh yes, of course. And what did it, was it as you imagined it would be? No, it was very much not as I imagined. I was in Kyiv and it was before things intensified again. I mean, there was still, there was still air raid sirens multiple times a night and they were Drones being shot down by their MSR defense system, but it was a really interesting Experience because it was the middle of summer at 37 degrees

People were out in pavement cafes people were living their lives quite defiantly and it really did feel like you could be in Any kind of amazing? cosmopolitan Central European city which was not what I'd expected at all. It was fascinating actually. And it made me wonder what it felt like in London during the Blitz, in Paris during the occupation, you know, in all these cities that have sort of got on with their lives,

even during a war for many years. There is that always, we're told that spirit of defiance. And what is it they would say about lipstick sales? They go up in wartime don't they? Yeah. People just think, nah, I'm not going to let this get to me. There is a new, I think it's Steve McQueen has done a film called Blitz. I'm going to see it tomorrow. Oh, you really?

At the premiere at the London Film Festival tomorrow night. Paul Weller is in it, which really intrigues me. And Saoirse Ronan. And Saoirse Ronan, it's quite a cast. I absolutely love her. Yeah. Okay, I really want to talk to you about what that's like. I shall tell you on Thursday.

Thank you. 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 till 4 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.