Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Tragically alone in the sumptuous booth of love (with Colm Tóibín)

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

Fi is sadly unwell today so Jane is flying solo. There's more chat of dogs in buggies, Bull's Blood and some important points made on care. Plus, she's joined by best-selling author Colm Tóibín to discuss his new book 'Long Island'.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: Eve SalusburyTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The biggest issue usually is just get them out, whoever is causing most trouble. And so, certainly at the moment in Britain, I think it's pretty obvious. Just get them out. Get them out. Actually having to work today and it's outrageous. I come in here for a sit down. Welcome, welcome to Off Air. I hope that temper tantrum wasn't caught on mic there. I should say, Fi isn't with us today,

so it's just Jane sitting tragically alone apart from Eve in the Off Air sumptuous booth of love. You're very welcome to it. And we'll be here with the usual off-air, except without fee. So it's not that usual. And we want her back ASAP. Big guest though today.

And they don't come much bigger in Irish literary circles than Colm Toibin. I've been practising this and as Eve will testify. Colm Toibin. Anyway, he wrote Brooklyn, as many of you will know, and that was made into that film which everybody loves with Saoirse Ronan and lots of other people, although I did struggle to recall anyone else who was in the film apart from her because I truly do think she is a great actress.

He's written a sequel to that, Long Island, and we revisit Ennis Cawthey in Wexford and some of the other characters from the film. Nancy Sheridan, who was Ailish, played by Saoirse Ronan's best friend, and Jim Farrell, the slightly diffident young Irishman that she had an affair with, but then she leaves him and goes back to Brooklyn,

and her husband in fact the Italian American Tony so what happens in Long Island the sequel and who ends up with who well we won't do any spoilers in the conversation with Colin but it was so good to talk to him because I am an absolute fan and I loved this book and if you like Brooklyn you'll love the sequel now we did have a very serious number of conversations on our radio program yesterday, Times Radio 2 till 4, Monday to Thursday, about social care and this inspired a number of emails and they are often in these situations incredibly detailed and I just want to mention this one from a listener who says, it's my experience that most of us are just totally unrealistic about care.

My father always said he'd saved enough money to buy in care. But then my mother got dementia and a rare form of Parkinson's. He didn't want help initially. She then had a fall. We were given reablement for six weeks, but they stayed for three months. It was amazing. Four double visits a day but my father wasn't really coping as he's very deaf and the house always seemed to him to be full

of people. I lived a couple of hours away despite living there off and on for weeks at a time. I was also working part-time. My sister worked full-time. Employing a live-in carer for my father as well it became too difficult to manage all the care visits from a distance. So in 2020, my mum went into a home. I managed to keep my dad at home through lockdown, but in August of 2020, my husband was diagnosed with cancer and he died 14 months later. I'm so sorry. Then my father had a fall. He also went into care on respite, but with COVID and the difficulty he had seeing mum, he stayed in care. They're both still there. And this is the absolute kicker, paying in excess of £12,000 a month. Now, I read that out because that's just one story.

And I think our correspondent is right. We need to be realistic about this. Cost is eye-watering, she says. We sold my parents' house and then a year ago, my in-laws had to go into care as well. And the whole process started again. Most people have no idea of the cost of this process. The process itself, the admin and the paperwork are incredibly time consuming. People say we need to take care of our parents, but it really depends on whether you're working, whether you have responsibilities for grandchildren, which I guess a lot of people will have, or like me, your partner becomes seriously ill. You may even have your own health issues to deal

with. As so many people are living longer, my in-laws, for example, are 97 and 98. Lots of my friends have got parents in their 90s. You just may not live that close to them. Wow. This is quite the situation, but I suspect it's far from untypical. She ends by saying we're desperately in need of a social care policy that addresses these issues. We need an insurance policy or a cap on contributions. Social care should be like childcare. Everyone should be able to access quality care at the beginning of their lives and at the end. Well, so say all of us,

but how easy is that going to be to achieve? Now, I just need to, by the way, more stories like that, more experiences like that. We are a safe place. You can tell us just about anything. We never need to, and by the way more stories like that, more experiences like that we are a safe place, you can tell us just about anything, we never need to mention names it is of course Jane and Fee at times.radio I am going to get shoved out of this

studio for somebody much more important than me at the Times, so it's relatively brief today, but obviously in the absence of Fee, it's only me talking to myself and it's just never as much fun, is it? This is from Sue who says, I heard Jane today asking if anyone had heard of Bunty. It swelled me right back to my early days with the Four Marys. That was one of my favourite strips.

Every wonderful Monday, I could get off the school bus and pick up my comic. I would skip off home and devour its contents. I would then eventually allow my younger sister, eagerly awaiting for my cast-offs, to engross herself in the latest mini-dramas of the Marys, feeling the smugness would then wear off when I realised she'd get her revenge on a Wednesday, when it would be her turn to swoop into the bus stop newsagent to pick up her Judy mag. Who remembers them? Mind you, says Sue, I never rated Judy.

It was nowhere near as good as Bunty. And actually, I think you're right. I don't think it was a patch on Bunty. I'm sorry to say, I really don't. Just listening to your excellent podcast, when you mentioned She magazine, says Joy, I can't believe you didn't take the opportunity to remind people the name of the doctor who answered all the readers gynecological questions. It was, of course,

Dr. Delvin. It still makes me smile. Thank you very much for that. Michael says, Fee and Jane, or Fee or Jane, on the 3rd of June, you are hypothesising on dogs in pushchairs, dogs in pushchairs, which you judge to be weird. Well, it wasn't... Well, perhaps it was us. I can't remember what we judged yesterday. Look, we're here to judge. What can I say? We are, in fact, a pair of Judge Judys, to go back to our comic reference earlier. But this is because a listener had emailed to say,

is it just me, or are there more dogs in buggies these days and the answer appears to be yes but michael says is it a huge stretch to consider an older or infirm or indeed incontinent in the case of the nappy dog that is unable to continue to physically undertake the walks that they always have but at the same time enjoys being out and spending time with their owners so rather than a weirdness it's actually a kindness to a beloved family pet let's hope if we get into the same position in older age we're not left languishing at home alone while our loved ones enjoy themselves outside without a second thought that has really got me thinking. Thank you, Michael.

Now, magazines has been a bit of a talking point because of Fee's interview last week with the editor of the relaunched Loaded, which many of you had views on. Thank you for all those. But it did get Marie thinking about her life and times, and particularly about the time she spent at 19 Magazine. We read out that email yesterday, and she's got back in touch to say,

Jane, you're so right about bull's blood, the red wine. To say it was full-bodied is an understatement. I remember after one rather lively Friday afternoon session, the art editor, who was a bit worse for wear, was sick in his metal waste paper bin. It made a very distinctive pitter-patter sound, which, tellingly, Marie can still hear down the ages. I don't remember the types of cheeses we had,

but I do remember the ham. It was mortadella. It was the first time I'd ever seen it. I was rather more familiar with the delights of corned beef, says Marie. Anyway, that began my career in fashion, and I worked at the magazine for eight years. I left to do my freelance styling for a couple of years, anyway that began my career in fashion and i worked at the magazine for eight years i left

to do my freelance styling for a couple of years then met my husband who was a clothes designer and we set up our clothing company old town 34 years later we're still hard at it i hate the fact that we're now in the home straight it's been a hard graft but a brilliant working life thanks again says marie for a great show, we're starting to read out more of those because we find them just generally life-enhancing. And Marie, lovely of you to get back in touch. Really appreciate that. And best of luck to you and your husband

and your clothing company, Old Town. There's another reference there. Right, Nella, heard you mention iPlayer D-Day-related programmes and I can really recommend you watch the Antiques Roadshow special. Not only did Fifi Labrousse do a brilliant job of presenting and speaking French, but there was a wonderful interview with a female radio operator from the day. I watched it with my 25-year-old son and he hardly looked at his phone throughout. That was a first. Then I watched it again with my husband as it was so informative. Sorry I missed your show in Sheffield. I'm hoping there's another one in

the future which I'll travel to wherever it is. Nella is in West Yorkshire. So Nella, what your excuse was for avoiding us in Sheffield last Friday? I don't know. But listen, I'm sure it was a good one. Right, let's bring in Colm Tobin because he is just one of the great living Irish writers. And it was such a thrill for me to interview the man responsible for Brooklyn and now for its sequel, Long Island. Now fans of the novel Brooklyn, or indeed anyone who saw the film, which is fabulous, will know that we left Eilish in the USA, married to her Italian-American husband Tony, and left best friend Nancy Sheridan and old flame Jim Farrell to get on with their lives

back home in Ireland. So did Colm always know he would return to these much-loved characters? It was never in my mind. I mean, I think when you finish a novel, you have a duty to write as much as you need to write and leave it there. In other words, the whole construction of a novel is really not the construction of a novel, you have a duty to write as much as you need to write and leave it there. In other words, the whole construction of a novel is really not the construction of a novel so it's open to sequels. It's the construction of a single entity that the reader has a right to be when I'm sitting down with this. This has an arc or a shape or a structure or an aura that somehow gives you completion. And I think if you don't feel that as you're reading, you think, well, hold on a minute, why don't I wait until the sequel appears and I'll read both together? So no, I never did. And I feel a bit guilty and sheepish about it.

Were readers pestering you to revisit the characters from Brooklyn? No, no, really. It might have been mentioned once or twice, but it's been mentioned with every book that I've written. And so if I'd written 10 novels before this, so I would really be blue in the face writing sequels if I was, you know, paying attention to people pestering me. No one's ever pestered me really about anything much. And so, no, it was done entirely on my own. In other words, it was no publisher. I had no commission for it or anything like that. I simply started it because I got an idea for the opening. And if I hadn't got that idea, I wouldn't have written it. In other words, that it depends on the first two and a half pages where something in their lives momentous happens. And therefore the rest of the novel is dealing with that big event. It's dramatic and the novel takes its bearings not from the previous novel as much as from this action at the very beginning of this new novel, Long Island. OK, so what new joiners need to know is that we left Eilish living in Brooklyn about actually I think she'd moved to Long Island, hadn't she? In New York with her Italian American husband, Tony, and back home in Enniscorthyy her best friend Nancy and Jim Farrell continued to

live their lives. Jim Farrell was a man that Eilish had had a brief relationship with when she returned to Enniscorthy because her elder sister had died. I hope that brings everybody on board. I couldn't improve on that. Well thank. That's fantastic. I like you even more than I thought I would. So what we need to emphasise is that time has moved on, although it's 1976, I think, in the book Long Island. Life in Enniscorthy hasn't changed all that much. I think cheese toasties are on the horizon and sort of small-town Irish snobbishness and judgment still abound.

Is that an accurate upsum? Yeah, there are tiny changes in the book that really represent much larger ones. For example, in the 50s, it wouldn't have been possible for a pub like Jim Farrell's to attract both old timers and new professionals, as it were. You know, an old pub like that would just be considered old fashioned. But now old pubs like that are considered fashionable. And that's a big change, oddly enough, in the sort of way a small town works. The people go to Dublin sometimes for shopping, which, again, is two hours away. People normally wouldn't have done that before.

So there are a few tiny things that signal much bigger things. But the church, the Catholic church, still in 1976, it would seem, was wielding enormous influence. Yeah, but not over the characters. In other words, Jim, for example, one of the characters, and another character is Nancy. They don't seem to think much about sin when they're having sex or that it isn't as though the church tells Eilish Eilish doesn't just goes to the church

it's almost like a fashion show you know that her mother they put on a big parade in the church but they don't listen to the sermon and it isn't just though the priest calls round and tells them what to do the church is just at the very centre of things

the building but it's more a building and an institution than it is a set of rules. So I think that's also changed since the 50s. There's no sense of anyone listening to a priest about anything much. In fact, in this one, the priest organises weddings in Rome. You know, people want to go on their holidays and get married. He organises that for them, which is a sign of weakness. Tell us a little bit more about the incredibly suffocating world that Eilish found herself in in New York, because she was living in, well, I got the sense it was a kind of

cul-de-sac of houses, completely dominated by her Italian-American family. I mean, it sounds bloody awful, to be honest. Yeah, some of it's awful and some of it's fine. In other words, when they do their Sunday lunches, she feels excluded. She feels like a ghost. They're all Italian-Americans. And she's the only, it isn't that she's the only one who's not Italian-American. With her brother-in-law, her gay brother-in-law, Frank, she's the only one who's seriously interested in current affairs, in reading. And her daughter has become like that. So in her own house in this enclave, you know, it is her realm.

That in other words, she seems very happily married. Her relationship with children is really very good. The children are just great. But it is the sense of the four houses that are built by the family where the parents are in one

and each of the sons has their families in the other. So yeah, they're all there together. Sometimes it's suffocating, but other times Eilis has her own world. She lives in a, you know, it isn't as though she's permanently under the thumb of this mother-in-law. And the mother-in-law in other ways, you know, is quite, you know, she's wonderful with the grandchildren. She's kind in many ways. It's just when a crisis arises, the mother-in-law simply has a different view to Eilis and sees no

way that they, that she will, she will not budge the mother-in-law. has a different view to Eilish and sees no way that she will not budge the mother-in-law. And oddly enough, for once, Eilish won't budge either. Would it have been unusual back in the mid-70s for any daughter-in-law to have taken on the so-called head of the family at a family occasion and simply told him, I don't agree with what you say about the Vietnam War? You know, I think in a lot of houses,

it would have been perfectly normal for a woman to have spoken, to have given her views. You know, it's not as though she was breaking a big taboo in the society, but in this world, the father almost, he barely speaks in the novel and yet he's the one that nobody will defy. And she just, without thinking, just says, well, no, I wouldn't like my son in a uniform in the Vietnam War, which seems to the reader now an absolutely normal view.

But of course, he just simply doesn't see that because he's an American patriot. He's not a Republican. I mean, he's not a mad figure in any way. But nonetheless, a lot of older people took that view in 1976 that to appear in an American uniform was an act of loyalty, was an act of that people should be proud of. But it would seem to me as a reader that actually Eilish's life back home in Ireland was no less suffocating. Her mother is a formidable character. And you write a lot about mothers and about relationships between children and their mothers.

Why do you think you were so good at writing these characters? Well, I think in Long Island, the father, I mean the grandfather, Eilish's father-in-law, is mainly silent. His power almost comes from his silence. He's there. But the mother-in-law moves between the. His power almost comes from his silence. He's there. But the mother-in-law moves between the houses. She has all sorts of views. So you can get her speech. You can get her tones. You can get the various ways in which she's being extremely

friendly, extremely open, extremely easy, and then exactly the opposite. And you can get the same in Ireland, where Eilidh's mother turns out to be really nasty to her when she comes home and then becomes very kind to her granddaughter when her granddaughter comes home. So that you're dealing with, I think, figures whose own powerlessness makes its way into the world in using speech. And therefore you can work with that speech. But yeah, it adds a sort of flavour to the book. But that is, I think, something of a universal truth, isn't it? That mothers and fathers will cut more than additional slack to their grandchildren. They might be pretty hard.

But watching her being charming to the granddaughter, it's a bit sickening considering she's been so mean just before, just a day before she was being so mean. So that transformation is a bit sickening considering she's been so mean just before, just a day before she was being so mean. So that transformation is a bit sickening. But also, I happen to be a mother. I'm also still a daughter. And the idea that I would have a child who moved to the other side of the world and I didn't see her for 20 years,

I have some sympathy with Eilish's mother there. And that's a set of circumstances that so many Irish mothers had to contend with. Yeah, it was a huge issue. It was really from, I suppose, the 1840s onwards when people went to America from Ireland, they tended never to come home. And then later years when travel became cheaper,

they would come home only in retirement but everyone belonging to them was gone more or less you would find people certainly in those years in the 70s and 80s wandering into Enniscorthy wondering where everybody was um they would have one cousin left or something but all of their old all of their own generation had more or less gone so yeah it was, I mean, the 20-year gap, it's unusual for Ailish even to come home so early in her time in America. So it's, yeah, it's a very sad business, that.

You are very good on the fact that many relationships, notably in this book, the relationship between Nancy and Jim, it's not all swinging from the chandeliers and lightning bolts and seething passion. It's a pair of people in relatively early middle age who've just sort of decided to get together because there wasn't much else on the horizon. And that's, to be honest, is a brutal, brutal reality, isn't it? Yeah, I find in America, I collect new words,

words often that everybody else knows, but it took me ages to find out. And one of them is the word transactional, that a relationship that's transactional, meaning that they both see that their assets together might make sense. And that, yeah, they're both in middle age and they're both alone. And why not? But it's not, yeah, it's not teenage passion. We're not going to get disco ballads out of it.

But it is what happens in middle age. And I sort of wanted to work with that idea that just how lowly Jim is. He's in his mid-40s and he's unmarried and he works very hard in his pub. And what could we do with him? And Nancy, who did run a shop, is now running a chip shop. And that is gruelling. It's also, and it cannot be overlooked, it's quite smelly. And her daughters have started to make judgments about, frankly, the whiff.

Yeah, daughters are getting all snobbish because the mother has made some money. The chip shop, oddly enough, has become lucrative, as chip shops did in those years. And so, yeah, the smell of burning oil, the smell of oil is going right up through the house. They live above the chip shop. The daughters say it's getting into their shoes, but it getting into their clothes into their into the pores of their skin and what i wanted to do in this novel also was to make sure that if characters had a job that i would describe the job in some detail so nancy runs a chip shop it's not nothing it's terrible work because in in a score they certainly was where people went when the pubs closed so if all these drunken men arriving

looking for fish and chips and onion rings and all sorts of burgers and things. And, you know, it's like it's one o'clock in the morning and all you want to do is go to bed and another order has come in and another fellow has arrived drunken. And so it's not a great job and you can see why she wants to stop it.

Also, Jim working in a bar and owning a bar is a big deal because he has to be there on a Saturday night. That's his big night. So it means when everyone else in their 20s, when he's in his 20s and going to dances, he's not. And so I just thought that that idea of what characters do for a living

is actually an important matter. Tony, Eilish's husband, is a plumber. That's important in the book. Eilish has a funny job working in a garage. She sources spare parts for cars from depots. And again, I did work, I did, I thought a lot about the job. So And again, I did work, I did, I thought a lot about the job. So the jobs, they don't define the characters, but they certainly

define how circumscribed they are in various ways. Did you anticipate that the ending of this book, and I won't give it away, would be an ending for these characters? Or, I mean, I have to say there's plenty of potential. Is there still a literary itch to be scratched about the fates of Eilish and Nancy and Jim? That's a really good question. Honestly, honestly, I never put a thought into the idea that there would be another book.

In other words, as I saw it, that ending of this novel, Long Island, is pretty conclusive. It doesn't tell you, spell out in clear newspaper sentences, what exactly was going to happen over the next weeks or years, but it's pretty clear for what's gone on. And I didn't want to make it any more clear simply because I wanted to leave the reader not with a sort of clanging, informative sentences written by the author telling you what happened to the characters.

Remember, the characters, it's from their perspective, not from mine. So I can't go further than give you what one of their perspectives is. And therefore, as far as I was concerned, it is a complete ending. Yes. As a reader, I'm just angry with all of them for what it's worth. But anyway, perhaps I shouldn't. Oh, yeah. But I mean, the thing is that if I start making characters that you're going to be pleased with, that's not all that would be.

You're quite right. I want to make it quite clear to listeners that there's also a lot of humour in this book. And anyone who has any Irish heritage knows anything about Ireland. The depiction of the wedding. And I think it's the sisters of the groom who get up and sing that old dirge, the old bog road. I mean, this is 1976. I think there's another example of modernity and some older system in collusion or in cahoots or indeed in conflict that, yeah, the sisters,

they've made their own clothes, it seems, for the wedding. And their hairdos are very old fashioned. And they come and, yeah, three sisters go up and without using harmony and without any accompaniment, they sing the old bog road.

You can just imagine in an Irish town what that would have looked like. It would have looked, you know, the snobberies are not just about class. They're about who's from the town and who's from the country. And certainly in those years, people from the country tended to be old fashioned.

They could have a lot more money, but their manners, their habits, the songs they sang. And what the mother, one of the sisters says in the end was, we'll have to learn new songs. Yes, quite. Okay. You have up until very recently been the

Chancellor of Liverpool University and I mean, did you accept that role or were you chosen for it because of all the links between Ireland and Liverpool? Oh, I suppose that the links were very important that the way Liverpool

faces Ireland and Ireland faces Liverpool. But I mean, I never actually, I never sat down with them and asked why, but I suppose that would obviously, I think, have been one of the reasons. And what did you find about the students, find out about the students

when you were in that position? Did they, because a lot of people are hard on today's 18 year olds and slightly beyond but they are an interesting generation aren't they more than interesting

Could everybody get a life on this business of young people and demanding that they conform to some set of ideals because

Liverpool it was really an eye opener to be there at graduation and stand on the stage as I did. I stood on the stage in my big robe for some of the days and I handed out the degrees to various people who were coming to get the degrees. Now, you should have seen them because these were young people who, for example, had become dentists, doctors, accountants, had studied literature, had studied science, had studied languages.

They had all got through this actually quite a gruelling process to graduate from Liverpool. I mean, you have to do exams, you really have to deliver on time. You have to be a deliverer to be up on that stage getting your degree. And it was wonderful to watch their families in the audience accepting as normal that their children in the north of England would be getting these sort of qualifications. It wasn't gasp of surprise from people who themselves may have never been to university, watching their children getting degrees. It was considered a natural process, a strange part of the great success story, which is modern England. Now, I was in various places reading about Brexit, reading about the various ways in which England, especially the north of England,

was in decline. On the other hand, what I was witnessing on those days was an... Like, it wasn't just that it was a big achievement to get the degrees. There was a sense of confidence. And there was a sense of diversity. There was a sense of various people who eat different sorts of food

coming together in this place to study and create a new society. And if anyone has any doubts about young people being smarter than they are, you must remember these people studied harder than you did, achieved more than you did. And if you have anyone having any views about the habits of 18 year olds and 20 year olds, just come to those graduations and just see this, because it is a remarkable example of a sort of England that's not being written about and that's not being described anywhere and that people should be immensely proud of. This is where their taxpayers' money have gone into the creation of a set of ideals which actually are summed up by a university. I'm really glad you said that. That's something that we need to celebrate.

And perhaps we just don't do that often enough now. We don't allow ourselves to in this country. What about Ireland's prospects? So is a united Ireland likely to happen, do you think, in your lifetime? This word in my lifetime has become the cliche. Oh, sorry. From about 70 onwards,

every Irish politician, everyone always says, I'd like to see, they always say it in this dull, sort of dreamy, sort of old man tone. I would like to see a united Ireland in my lifetime.

In my lifetime is shorthand for never. It's just simple. There's a simple solution to this. That if you're driving from Belfast to Dublin, you think you're nearer than you are as you're driving south because it's miles in the north and it's kilometers in the south. So we're starting in the Republic to think in kilometers. In the north, they think in miles.

I mean, that is the strangest idea on this tiny island to have two ways of measuring distance. Now, I'm not proposing a compromise. Everyone's always suggesting a compromise, because how do you get a compromise between kilometres and miles? But I think maybe we should go back to miles, or they should come down to kilometres. We've got to have a meeting about this. But if we can't agree, first of all, on a number of very small things, miles, kilometres

being one. For example, why are there two arts councils in a country where the artists don't recognise the border? Since the artists, the painters, the poets don't recognise the border. People come from Dublin to Belfast, go up to Derry. It doesn't matter what side of the border you're on, whether you're reading a Michael Longley poem or you're writing a Michael Longley poem.

It doesn't really matter what side of the border you're on. So why are there two arts councils? I mean, Why? And so you just start with very small things. And if you can't do those, how can you do the big constitutional thing? So is that a no? It's just, it seems a dreamy, mystical idea of a United Ireland. It's mystical and it's dreamy. And all of us know when nations, nation states get involved in being mystical and dreamy, nothing good comes of it. I'm not suggesting fascism or anything like that. I'm just suggesting a sort of an inanity around language where people talk about United Ireland without having the slightest clue what that means. For example, are people in Northern Ireland really going to abandon the NHS? Are they going to abandon the BBC?

Is the BBC going to close in Belfast? Is that what they're talking about, like a takeover from the Republic of the North? Yeah, to be honest. That's serious. Yeah. The more you go into detail, the more complicated the picture appears. So, right, let's park that. But it's been an absolute delight to talk to you.

And we just now want to move to our politics section of the interview, if that's all right. I know I'm not expecting you to answer in a British way necessarily or give British answers to this because you probably wouldn't have any interest in the British general election beyond the kind of, you know, token level of interest that you may or may not take. What is your earliest political memory? I think I was born in 1955. So I certainly worked on the 1964 general election, putting posters or putting little pamphlets into envelopes. That was my job. And then maybe my sister would, my older sister would write the address on them. This was for the Fianna Fáil party, which has remained one of the ruling parties of the Republic of Ireland. My father was involved in it and certainly I was involved in it.

But I have some memory of an earlier election, perhaps in 1961. So I would have been six or seven, but I was brought up in politics. And, you know, the whole idea of setting up envelopes or knocking on doors or coming up with slogans or, you know, yeah, I've done all that. And the first election that you actually voted in? Oh, I suppose it would have been, let me elections, perhaps. Yeah, maybe the 1979, but the first elections at the European Parliament. And the biggest issue for you when you consider who or what to vote for?

The biggest issue usually is just get them out, whoever is causing most trouble. And often you get to like a government, but generally the good thing is to see if a government could be who's annoying you in any way should be removed. And so certainly at the moment in Britain, I think it's pretty obvious.

Listen, we're trying to pretend. Think about policy, think about all the other problems you have made, just get them out. Get them out. Get them out. Yes, all right. Well, you get them out. Get them out. Get them out. Yes, all right. Well, you can say that.

I can't. Let's say, I know you work a lot in America. So let's say you have a vote in the American presidential election. Who would you vote for? I'd vote for Joe Biden. That's pretty simple. I'd vote for Joe Biden. And I think anyone who's talking about, oh, Joe Biden is not good on this, he's not good on that, just stop it. Give it up. This is a crisis. Vote for Joe Biden. And I think anyone who's talking about, oh, Joe Biden is not good

on this, he's not good on that, just stop it. Give it up. This is a crisis. Vote for Joe Biden. Have an argument with him later. Argue after, vote now, because this is a crisis. If you don't vote for Joe Biden, it is in fact a vote for Donald Trump. You may not be directly voting for him, but an indirect vote for him equals a vote for him. Vote Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Joe Biden. You could not be any clearer. Thank you so much for your time. Vote Joe Biden. Colm Toybein, who very definitely told us there some of his political views. I hope no one was offended. Normally we aim at a degree of balance.

But in fairness, when it comes to Trump or Biden, it's not it's just not anything approaching a tough one. I'm really sorry. And he obviously was very much of the view that there was only one way to go in the United States in November. And yes, he also had views on our election in the UK too, which rumbles ever on and incredibly won't be over for another, what is it, four and a half weeks? We'll just have to grin and bear it. But listen, it's a democracy and we need to embrace it.

I loved actually what colin said there about students and about how life enhancing it can be to attend a graduation ceremony and just to see uh the hugely impressive young people who have actually properly worked hard for their degrees and i was just so chuffed that he obviously had such fond memories of being at the university of liverpool so i can say that today because Fee's not here to carp about it. So that's fantastic. Right. Thank you very much for your company. And we very much hope Fee will be back tomorrow. Keep the emails coming on any topic you want, but particularly actually social care. And there was a degree of controversy on the programme when I said yesterday,

the radio programme that is, that it tends to be women who do the fair share or more than their fair share. I still think that's true. But look, I appreciate there are loads of brilliant men out there doing far more than what you might call their fair share. Anyway, keep your thoughts coming. Jane and Fi at times.radio. Well done for getting to the end of another episode of Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. And don't forget, there is even more of us every afternoon on Times Radio. It's Monday to Thursday, three till five.

You can pop us on when you're pottering around the house or heading out in the car on the school run or running a bank. Thank you for joining us and we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon. Don't be so silly. Running a bank? I know, ladies. A lady listener. I'm sorry.