Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Two fillings and a smear test

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

Jane and Fi reflect on owning your success, trapped wind from both ends, and delve into more family holiday horrors. They're also joined by music journalist Ian Winwood, author of Bodies: Life and Death in Music. Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfiIf you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail].  Assistant Producers: Megan McElroyTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello everybody. I like this email from Helen entitled I've had to switch you off again. Your snide remarks about the length of Rishi Sunak's trousers, who's interested? Well, can I just say that we said at the top of the them. I said we're not going to talk about Rishi Sunak's trousers anymore. I think we might have been one of the few programmes that didn't talk about it. So, Helen, you're not listening closely. So, I'm sorry, and also because Helen got annoyed

because I'd let our guest today, Ian Winwood, describe a drug dealer as a gentleman, but, Helen, he didn't mean a gentleman as in what a lovely man with perfect manners and a handkerchief in his top pocket. He was just saying that gentleman because he didn't want to give his name. So he wasn't kind of gilding a lily.

He wasn't bigging him up. No. So I'm sorry, Helen. You've had a very, very difficult time with us this afternoon. And God knows we have those days ourselves. So why not come back tomorrow? You can't hear me. Very sweet of you, though.

Why not come back tomorrow? She turned on. Anyway, to those of you, to the three of you who are still listening, welcome along. No, don't say that. So nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Because we've had our Rage Our Figures out. We've had our ratings, that's right. So that is the way

that we work out how many people are listening to this. Everyone gets very excited. We've whooped. And we should just own it, sister. Yeah, well, we should say, shouldn't we, just thank you to anybody who's bothered to listen either to the live show or to download the podcast. We honestly do appreciate it because we were.

We were a bit dubious about whether this was the right thing to do to come over here. Not dubious because we didn't like the place, but dubious about whether we would be able to deliver. So we've made a reasonable start. Much to do. But we're delighted. So thank you all for making the effort to listen. I think it's an overwhelming triumph, Jane. Yes, that's what a man would say.

Let's stick with that. Let's own it. So thank you for all of the millions of downloads of Off Air with Jane and Fi, available on all good platforms. Thank you. Meanwhile, let's get back. Let's dig into some more of your horrific family holidays. Let's get back to that very, very rich theme of when life goes tits up.

And that's what we specialise in here. So the family holiday thing, I mean, we may be here for a very long time because let's face it, Jane, nobody's really ever had a good intergenerational family holiday experience. Doesn't sound like it, no. You've got the fantastic one of the person who runs a hotel? Yes. That's such a brilliant, brilliant, different side of the story. Shall we start with that one?

Yeah. OK. This is from, we won't mention the name. My husband and I run a small hotel in a popular spot in Scotland and our team always greet the arrival of a large family group with some trepidation. Most trips begin with a... now you're Scottish, you've origins, what does this mean? Most trips begin with a... I haven't got the piece... Oh sorry. Sorry, most things begin with a... A stramash.

Just carry on. I think that means like a hoolie about who's sleeping where. Most trips begin with a stramash about room allocations, who's going on which floor, who gets the sea view. Parents are often missed to find that their children have plumped for a ground floor room when they can manage the stairs perfectly well. Thank you very much. At breakfast time, crosswords are exchanged as

usually the young drift in long after the agreed time. Nobody can ever keep straight who ordered what, so invariably somebody tucks into Grandpa's poached egg and bacon while he's bamboozled to find a kipper coming in his direction. We all dread the question of who's paying for what. This summer, a man we nicknamed the Shafted Uncle shuffled along to reception to say he'd just pay for his room,

only for his sister to appear and pointedly state we talked about this, strong-arming him into paying his quarter of a bill for six rooms. Initially we all felt sorry for the uncle, seemingly subbing his entire family, but as time wore on we sensed that maybe Shafted Uncle had been the freeloading uncle until this point in the trip and his parents, siblings and in-laws had all finally had enough. Just this week, a screen-absorbed teen called his mother an ass because she asked him to go up to his room and finish packing. Last month, the mother asked us to tell her son that their taxi was waiting

as he'd be annoyed with her if she did so The one that most sticks in recent memory though is the father who made no effort to hide his fury at being dragged to Scotland for the wedding of his daughter's dreams The only thing worse than a family holiday a destination wedding Love the podcast says our anonymous Scottish-based hotelier. You see, that's the thing you've got to bear in mind. Hoteliers are watching, they're listening,

they're taking it all in, they see you. And they've got that really delicious, very static smile playing on their face, haven't they? All the time while it's going in and everybody on the front desk is thinking, I'm going to email Jane and Fee with this later. Dear Jane and Fee, I listened to the email regarding the annual in-law holiday and I saw my future hurtling towards me like a giant iceberg. My mother-in-law has many and varied strengths.

The ability to see situations from any perspectives other than her own is not one of them. She's the master of the rhetorical question and I love these. Yeah. I thought we'd go to Port Merion tomorrow. Would you like that? There is only one right answer to that question. When shall we set off?

About 11? Again, only one right answer. By 11am, my husband and I have usually been up for five hours with our three and two-year-olds and we'll be thinking about starting lunch and naps, etc. My mother-in-law, on the other hand, likes a leisurely start to the day, usually appearing at about 10am. My brother and sister-in-law, who have no children at this point,

comment that when they have children, they'll have to fit in with them. As I seethe with rage, my husband, a Yorkshireman, quietly reminds me that the holiday was free, so I simmer down. Well, I'll keep it on a gentle boil, actually. That would drive me absolutely bonkers. But I think we can all recognise somebody in those passive, aggressive questions. We so can. We so can.

And I do love the idea of a currently child-free person assuming that their unborn child will somehow fit in with them. It won't happen, but good luck with that. Although I think there is quite a big difference between older siblings, younger siblings, when they have their kids. You know, I think a lot of the work's been done by the older sibling.

Yeah, you're probably right. Tell me about it. Isn't that always the, oh, you're not the older sibling? No, I'm the younger sibling. And I think there's a kind of impact actually that the grandchildren the first grandchildren have on grandparents that the other grandchildren uh don't get which can be sad or really heartening depending on yes swings and roundabouts yes yeah uh my eldest child was the first grandchild on both sides of the family and boy boy, did I feel the pressure.

Anonymous says your piece about family holidays has brought back uncomfortable memories of a heated discussion a couple of years ago at a family meal where other members of our extended family were getting swept up with the idea of a big family week in the sun. I was quite reluctant. So was my husband. Emotive and manipulative language, such as your parents aren't getting any younger, and they were actually there at the table, and but the kids want to go, the idea had been floated with our young and impressionable teenagers beforehand. Our reluctance stemmed principally from our dislike of hot beach holidays,

which would also be too expensive for us in high season, plus knowledge that we just wouldn't enjoy spending so much extended time with family. We love them dearly, but find spending more than a few days together grating due to different outlooks on life and just wanting to do different things. The holiday didn't happen, but we have since been made to feel like party poopers by some members of the family for not agreeing to a holiday away together. Well, I'm sorry to hear that because holidays shouldn't need to be said this. They are meant to be enjoyable, although oddly, they can actually be incredibly stressful. I think particularly when children are young and when they all have, because children seem to just love, they love routine, actually. You get very few maverick kiddies on the whole.

They like to know that the day is going to unfold much as it always does, in my experience. I know very much so. And they just have a very, they just need things at the same time every day. If your kid has got used to, you know, having a couple of slices of ham and cheese at 11 o'clock it won't be because they're being difficult you know that they suddenly have an absolute epi at being served

a you know pano chocolat at 12 it's just because they're really used to it and their little bodies need it we should mention this is an important email from s who just says my children are both autistic and they really struggle with breaks in routine, noise, eating in big groups and a million other things. I'm always worried when I get together with family or people with neurotypical children that they'll judge what probably looks like lax parenting to them. I don't make my kids eat at the table or eat what we're eating or I don't and I don't make them speak to anybody in these situations. I will let them hide in their rooms with an iPad. I'm lucky in that so far family have always been supportive once they realised why we do this.

The wider world is much less supportive. There's a lot of, but if you don't make them, how will they ever learn? That drives me crazy because it's always my kids who have to learn and never the rest of the world may be learning to be more accommodating. I'm also fairly sure that if, as adults, they never want to go to a party or throw lavish dinners, nobody is going to force them to. Fair enough.

Can I move on to a couple of other things? And we could save that one in particular, the Atuta Leer email, I think we should save to read out almost in its entirety tomorrow. But I think it might be too much if we detailed all of the terrible things that have happened to this poor correspondent driving around France. She's made the mistake of going abroad. She has. You don't want to do that.

As I look out the window... No, actually, yes, you're doing the right thing. With a husband and some friends. I'm not sure they're friends by the end of the holiday, but we'll get to that tomorrow. It's brilliant. This one comes from Nicola, who's very much enjoying Deadlock. Do give it a go if you haven't yet tried it.

But ends her email saying, by the way, back to the sex question. We have talked quite a lot about sex, so the question in particular would be the point we raised with Anna Richardson about whether or not people who aren't having huge amounts of really exciting and fulfilling sex might feel a little bit left out of the world at the moment. And Nicholas says, here's something that wasn't discussed at the time, two menopausal ladies in a 27 year loving relationship. We're eight years apart. So we're going through it at different stages and obviously when we both met neither one

of us had thought about the impact of this in our 50s how wrong we were love to all the pets and that I haven't had talked about nearly enough so if you are in a gay relationship with a slightly younger woman. I mean, there's a possibility... Or a slightly older one. Well, one is going to be older, one is going to be younger. You might have 20 years of the menopause to go through. Oh, my God.

I mean, that's something you really do need to factor in. I hope it's going OK. So one might be through it, the other might be in the foothills, but we're annoying our correspondent who's turned off because she was sick of hearing about the Perry menopause. Don't worry about her. She's gone. I know, but I still care. No, she's gone.

Kind regards come from Jo. Dear Jane and Fia, quick one. Are you going to see Barbie? Will you wear pink? Well, I went to see Barbie last night with my daughter. We didn't wear pink, but we both really properly, properly loved it. Jane's going to see it at the weekend, so we'll have a bigger conversation about it then. But just two tiny things.

The use of beach as a verb. So Ken beaches. What, like a whale? No, he just... Because, you know, in Barbieland, there's always a beach scene. Yes. Obviously, you couldn't actually dive into the water

because it wasn't real. Or because Ken's holding a surfboard, isn't he? Exactly, all of those things. So Ken has interpreted that as just beaching it's not that he is a lifeguard or that he is a surfer he's just beaching that's all he does and then the other thing that made us properly laugh out loud is when when Ken says when I discovered that the patriarchy wasn't just about horses I was bored by it but it's full of stonkingly good lines. The most amazing cast. And it's just so daft in places.

I think you'll really, really love it. Okay, well, I am looking forward to it. I'm really sorry, Jane, because I have not. I know you haven't watched it. No, because if I can be honest, I had two fillings and a smear test today and I didn't have time to get across Greg Wallace's Miracle Meat. I still would have squeezed Wallace's Miracle Meat. I still would have squeezed in

some Miracle Meat. I'm surprised and a little upset, so please do it tomorrow. Oh, okay, right. I will. Actually, I've just been biffed. I had a sofa date to watch the final episode of Hijack tonight, but I've just been biffed, so I'll watch

him tonight. It's only 23 minutes, as I keep saying. Do you think he wished it was longer? Pam's watched it. Thank you, Pam. At least you're on message. Perhaps you should come and do the podcast with me. Don't start being mean.

No. I'm gratified to receive this from Anne. Now, she says you're often touching on themes around women of a certain age and on caring responsibilities. So I wanted to recommend a book for your next read-along which covers these themes and it's A Hunger by Ross Raisin. I'd also love to know if your listeners think that a man has written well about a woman. I'm certain that there aren't any follet-type boobs in this and particularly about a woman in this set of circumstances. I do feel,

says Anne, I should also own that Ross is my husband, who incidentally has never ever, to my knowledge, done a burp. So Ross and I have got something in common there. Even though it's the other end, I wonder if he and Jane would get on well. What did you bond over? Trapped wind? I don't really burp either. So I think Ross and I probably do have a shared issue of trapped wind. But what I wanted to say was that I haven't read his book, A Hunger, but I have read one of his other books, which I absolutely love, Dan. So can you pass it on to Ross that his book about

football, it's about a relationship between two footballers. It's rather a bold book, actually. And I think it should be, I think it would make a brilliant film it's called A Natural I'm always amazed that it hasn't been filmed great book so please pass that on to Ross I'm very interested in the notion of men who write really spot-on female characters and vice versa I think sometimes it's easy to find the female characters in male writing a little bit stereotypical. But of course, we don't know whether or not the same boot fits if you're a man reading a male character written by a woman. I'd like a discussion about that, please, Jane. Should we have a lively discussion? Let's have a lively discussion.

We can't have one now because I can't think what to say. No, I think you might. Let's give it a bit of a live discussion. We can't have one now because I can't think what to say. OK. No, I think you might. Which, well... Well, let's give it a bit of a thunk. And you're right, we should come back to it when we've definitely got more ammunition. But I think Anne Tyler, from my perspective, writes a really, really beautiful male character

and I think Elizabeth Strout writes really brilliant male characters. I think they both write brilliantly about relationships, full stop. I just think they happen to be heterosexual relationships they write about. Well, they do, but one of Elizabeth Strout's books is just called O'William, isn't it? And it's a follow-on from the books that she's written about Olive. And I find that a beautiful, beautiful rendition. Because he's died, hasn't he? Of the male spirit. But of course I'm not a bloke. So maybe if you read that, you think

that there are elements of it that are stereotypical and don't really work. But it's a really interesting conversation to have. And as ever, Jane, our listeners will know more about it than us. Yes. Oh, you're certainly right there as far as I'm concerned. It was like being back in one of my seminars at university there. Just for a second, I just, the lecturer the lecturer whatever it was turned to look at you just thought I've got nothing got nothing in my locker at all here just nothing so I just gawped. Do you know I did think that the other day when we were talking about the book club book and Valerie Perrin we were talking about reading you know whether or not we recognised enough of the French spirit in order to really enjoy the book. And we were talking about American writing.

And I think I asked you what the last book was that you'd read, you know, that was really cracking by an American. Of course, we both read Barbara Kingsolver, the winner of the Women's Prize. Neither of us could bring that to mind. I hadn't read it. Had you not? Well, I'd read Demon Copperhead, so I apologise

because I didn't manage to bring that right up to my frontal lobe. So our guest today is the music journalist Ian Woodward, author of Bodies, Life and Death in Music. Now this is an extraordinary book so Ian has been a music journalist for a very long time. He used to write a lot for the NME, for The Guardian, for Kerrang! in particular. And a couple of things happened to him in his life that really knocked him off course. But in his capacity as a music journalist, he had been really drawn to talking about the rock and roll lifestyle. And at times he had really indulged in some of the bad stuff in rock and roll lifestyles.

So it's a book that looks quite forensically sometimes about the damage that is done to these beautifully creative people in plain sight. Yes, well, it's almost as though there's nothing that they're, well, in fact, their minders cease to mind them. That would seem to be. And I think Ian makes a good point in the course of the interview, when he said that obviously managers are hired by the act, and they can be disposed of. So they aren't really, they're not around all that long. And they don't risk their position by criticising the hedonistic lifestyle of the person who's bankrolling their entire existence. And what Ian's talking about is a very, very well-told story, isn't it,

of the kind of depravity at the edges of a rock and roll life. But I think what's really different about his book is that we're now looking at it from a completely different perspective where we are understanding the difficulties of mental illness, when we're understanding addiction, just so many more things are better understood now than they were in the 70s, 80s and 90s. But so many people have been lost along the way. So Ian came in this afternoon and we started by asking him to start at the beginning. What drew him to music as a young boy? It was my first obsession, really.

And I remember when I was... I mean, I always liked music and me and my mum always liked music and we'd drive around in the car when I was a child listening to the radio and to Elvis Costello and ABBA and whatever it might be. But I remember when I was 10 years old, listening to it again in the car with my mum and hearing a Motorhead song that had gate crashed the top

well not just the top 40 but the top 10 it went in at number 6 and it was like the section in The Wizard of Oz where it goes from black and white to colour it was as if my life, just the sheer and I listened to that song last night so this is an ongoing thing and I just could not believe the the transformative power of it and from that point on

it was it was my thing and it's really remained my thing um I guess the second part of the answer is that when I was 14 that's when I decided I'd like I never really wanted to be a musician but I thought I can I'm quite good at English maybe I can write about it and I was started to discover music magazines so it's been a long time it's been a long time coming yeah to be honest your mum was always hugely supportive wasn't she recklessly so you might say oh no I thought I thought in a rather lovely way actually because she just said yeah if you can do it then you're gonna do it oh she did she did to that yeah when I was a teenager I used to have a job um sorting out paper rounds for the paper

boys and girls which involved me starting work at about five o'clock but my mum would still allow me to travel to London my teenage years were were spent in Buckinghamshire, which isn't that close to London. And she'd pick me up at the train station at Milton Keynes sort of at half past midnight when I'd been to see some sketchy punk band in some life-threatening environment. And I'm not quite sure. And she was incredibly supportive, and I really owe it all to her.

It's just as well social services didn't get involved I think because it was it was it was a liberal approach to parenting for which I remain very grateful yeah so let's make a leap from that kind of magical allure of music into the very very dark excesses of it because the book is as much about your own journey through music and what it did to your mental health as it is about people in bands who might have suffered too. Can you take us to the very worst of places where perhaps you thought, not entirely sure I'm going to make it through?

Do you mean when you say, can I take you, do you mean take you now? Yes, can you describe it? Yeah, I mean I mean it was it was the even after the book's been out a little while now and I still find it quite difficult to describe and and the idea of writing just a memoir it just struck me as being too easy and the idea of writing a book about the music industry struck me as a bit dry so I thought I'd put the two together which sort of makes me laugh now because it was so beyond my technical capabilities that I really did become a better writer while writing the book because it took just forever to

get right to be honest um the book the personal aspect of the book hinges on something that happened. I had a really bad day and my father had a particularly bad day. And the personal aspect of the book hinges on that moment. But already before then, and that happened in 2011, already before then I was showing signs of a mixture of somewhere between sometimes just bad character and and foolish decisions and weakness really but also at other times problems that were stronger than me neuro issues of neurodiversity that I don't think I could reasonably be expected to combat unaided. Yeah. But what becomes so clear in the book is that you were experiencing ways of dealing with all of that that were very similar to some of the ways

that the musicians that you were talking to were dealing with their stuff, which was booze, it was drugs, and it was bad behaviour. Yeah, very much so. And I make the point that the music industry makes its practitioners ill. I think I provide a pretty compelling case as to why that might be.

But I don't work in the music industry. I work in the publishing industry. So it's not quite correct to say that that happened to me. But what it did do, Fi, is it gave me so many places to hide. And it was only when my behaviour had become so self-destructive and so ridiculously foolish that even the industry itself, those who knew me within it, started to panic. And you know you're really giving it some welly when that starts to happen,

when you become an outlier in an industry that is, you know you're really giving it some welly when that starts to happen when you become an outlier in an industry that that is you know famous and indeed celebrates that kind of behavior so yeah it gave me it was great camouflage great and terrible camouflage for me and who were you going to see and who was in your kind of circle place us in the musical context do you mean in terms of the band so yeah well so i i wrote i mean i now write for for broadsheet newspapers but at the time and i wrote for and they were sort of going back 20 years now most of the action a lot of the action not most of it a lot of the action takes place this century but sort of not most of it a lot of the action takes place this century but sort of from the beginning of this century up until about 2015 the music journalist aspect of it and it was a different

world people ask me if I think things are getting better or worse and it's difficult to answer that question because the jobs change so much it used to be that I'd go on the road for a couple of days with Green Day so I wrote for a magazine called Kerrang!, which is about, which covers loud music, anything that's loud. So I'd go on the road with Green Day or I'd interview, spend a couple of days with Muse. I'm using the more famous examples here. Or go to New York and interview the Beastie Boys or the White Stripes at the studio. New York and interview the Beastie Boys or the White Stripes at the studio and I would and it was in those situations that I would see and hear things that didn't necessarily make the pieces that I was writing but lodged in my head of of just sort of how destructive the world could be

to so many of the people because they were just being worked to such a ridiculous degree. And that doesn't happen anymore. I've done three interviews this week and all of them have taken place on Zoom, which allows me no avenues to kind of see the cracks. I'm not sure I could, you know, my... Certainly from the pandemic onwards, the way that music journalism is practised,

I don't think a book... I don't think I certainly could write a book like I have because I just don't see that stuff anymore, if that makes any sense. It makes perfect sense. I mean, when you're talking about having, you know, seen people who were just quite unwell and really being facilitated by,

whether it's the label or the manager or the PR or whoever it is around them um did you ever see somebody stepping in and saying actually this is just rubbish you know we need to just get a grip of somebody did you do which is an intervention no and the question is I'm not sure who would have done that because the structures are just so weird. So you're a performer, Fi, in a successful band and I'm your manager, but you can sack me. So I have to be careful what I say to you because I don't want to upset you. And the chain of command is just so very, very confused. There's a story in the book of a of a of a young musician and this is

troubles me because it's he's very young he's sort of early 20s who um who who was placed in a psychiatric care institution after becoming convinced that uh that the church was involved in in in culling large sections of society and he attempted to burn down a church and was arrested and placed in psychiatric care. And he suspected and the group's manager suspected that the group's record company would use that as a selling point. And I could pretend to be horrified by this,

but if I went to an editor and said, this is what happens, that's an angle. So I think we all, and by we, I mean myself included, the book notwithstanding, but certainly I've written about death and destruction as a compelling subject. I hope I've done so responsibly. But I've written about death and destruction for years and years and years. My ears will prick up at it and editors ears will

prick up at it. And perhaps at the furthest logical conclusion, the reader's ears and eyes will pick up on it too. Yeah. So do you ever look back on some of the stuff that you wrote and think actually I was part of that celebration of something that was actually just disturbing? I'm not sure I did. I'm not sure I could swear to it in a court of law, but I've always written about it sort of without shying away, but I don't think I've ever been quite gullible enough to pretend to myself or to whoever

might be reading the pieces and I don't know who they are so I'm the reader that this is way this is great fun because the the the human toll is is is clearly too high yeah so I'm not sure I did that to be honest I could well be proved wrong, but I like to tell myself that I didn't fall for that at any point. One of the things that's remarkable about the book, Ian, is just the detail that you go into about the kind of things that you've seen and the people that you hung out with.

And I'm not picking on Primal Scream here at all because there are numerous examples in the book, but I was reading a bit about your experiences with Primal scream and and basically that was a band who did you get to know them better or got more respect from them because you also really knew their drug dealer and i knew i knew yeah i actually lived with the drug dealer for for a short period of time who also happened to be their road manager had been their road manager in the past. I've anonymised his name. I'm not anonymised.

What's the word I'm looking for? I've changed his name. You've changed it, yeah. Changed. And I was on a coach with them. They'd been up all night. For anyone, your listeners that don't know, Primal Scream are a famously hedonistic band.

I mean, how they're still trucking i do i honestly do not know um and um and i was on a coach with them and it's the worst possible situation because you plunked on a coach with a band and you've got sort of try and get them talking and they did flown in from glasgow and they'd been up all night and they just were not interested at all. And it was like, this is going to be really hard work. So I let them know that I knew this gentleman. But I only had that story from his point of view. He could have been making it up and they just sort of came to life.

And one of the reasons for this purpose of this book is this porous line between the music industry, certainly the concert industry and the touring industry, and what we might euphemistically call the black economy. And this guy, this guy was trouble. There's no doubt about it. And in the end, he took his own life. But by the time that I knew him, he was dealing kilograms of cocaine.

I mean, I went to the toilet one night in the house that we lived in and there was a kilogram of cocaine on top of the washing machine. So this was serious stuff, you know. I mean, that's sort of at the fringes. I'm not sure every band carries on like that and every every tour manager is also knows how to ship large quantities of cocaine but that certainly happened that was certainly true and they they loved him we're talking to the music journalist ian woodward and i asked him if he thinks that artists are now better protected from excesses, or is that something we just tell ourselves to make us feel better?

I would be surprised if that were the case. I mean, I refer the Right Honourable Lady to the answer I gave some moments ago, which is I don't, I'm not allowed the kind of access that I had for much of the time that I write about in bodies. I don't get to go on the road with bands anymore, a record company. that I write about in bodies. I don't get to go on the road with bands anymore, a record company. Sure, but if you see someone like Lewis Capaldi, who's one of the most recent young stars,

to just say, I just can't do it for a while. I'm not going to be able to perform. I think what we witnessed at Glastonbury was really, it was very moving, but it was also a bit distressing. Very much so. And I think the audiences, I think, are becoming great. By and large, you don't get that, well, that's not working. I, you know, whatever it may be, do a job that you don't perhaps like. And you imagine that Lewis Capaldi is a life of luxury.

That we seem to have left that behind. So the audiences have become increasingly literate because if if if a band or an artist reaches the point where you or i know their name or you know the quote unquote general public knows their name they've already gone through hardships that i don't think you could be expected to understand they've always already slept on floors being ripped off being ignored being rejected possibly being abused, especially for female performers, being humiliated. So they're already tough, for want of a better word. So if they then get to the point where you or I know their name and they say, I want to take some time out,

I need to take some time out for my health, mental or physical, believe them. The elephant in the room fee is that um they're not being paid properly for their recorded music the the the scandal of of streaming royalties is well known it doesn't need me to to repeat it but that's the elephant in the room that many people are on the road continually because they are they are required to be to keep them and their organizations afloat yeah of the artists that you've interviewed over the years you must have experienced quite a lot of personal grief you know we might mourn the death of kirk cabane in a

very different way possibly to you know music journalists like yourselves who were more involved in the scene and do you think often that if those kind of people had lived now they could have been helped and would have been okay or is that just too naive a presumption i don't know i naive is an unkind word um i think it's perhaps an unrealistic ambition. We like to think that the scene changed after the death of Kurt Cobain, and it sort of does for a while, but is there really that much difference between Kurt Cobain and Amy? What are the circumstances of Kurt Cobain and the circumstances of Amy Winehouse? I know one was suicide and one wasn't,

but that sort of media frenzy. I just think that these are very very powerful forces and i'm not sure what the answer would would be really and what about that magnetism of the industry full stop there is a certain type of creative person who is drawn to the affirmation of the audience of of the darkness sometimes as well. I mean, there just isn't, there isn't any kind of legislation or regulation for that. No, and it's difficult to imagine what it might be.

But I spoke, one of the voices in the book, I can never remember, psychologist, psychiatrist, and her name is Dr. Charlie Howard, and she was fabulous. But she said something that I quote in the book that has been rattling around my head ever since she said it, which is that the creative mind is a vulnerable mind. Ian Winwood was our guest this afternoon, and the book is called Bodies, Life and Death in Music.

It did come out a couple of years ago, but there is a new edition in paperback which contains a final additional chapter talking about the death of Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins. Yeah. That was very sad, wasn't it? Gosh, he was so gifted, that drummer. I mean, I wasn't a massive Foo Fighters fan,

but they were quite regular at Glastonbury, weren't they, the Foo Fighters? And you always were quite drawn to watching the drummer because he just seemed to be so astonishingly adept yeah and just beautiful yeah it's really it's very very sad but you're right it's a it's a self-destructive old world it would seem so we've had some interesting guests this week haven't yesterday was uh Sir Nicholas Mostyn who was a very recently retired High Court judge. Monday, we talked to TV presenter Anna Richardson, all about, God, all about everything. That was a very frank interview. So if you missed that, make sure you hear it. And tomorrow, the young feminist activist and writer Gina Martin. And she was the person responsible for making upskirting a crime.

So she's got lots to talk about. It'll be interesting to see what she thinks of the whole mate thing, which is a recent initiative on London public transport by the mayor. Although I know increasingly people are saying mayor. Mayor? Do you get that? The London mayor. No, I say London mayor. Well, I do because we're both right. Of course. But some people say mayor. Mayor. They must stop just stop okay jane and fee at time stop radio is our email address we love hearing from you tomorrow as well on the podcast we will decide what the book club book is and uh we will set a date by which you must have read it and had really important thoughts must have read read it. Must, Jane. Don't do a Garvey skim read.

Must have read it. Must have read it. I'm writing it down. Hopefully you won't find it so boring that you stop halfway through this time. Oh, God. Would you have a very nice time? We'll speak to you tomorrow.

Good night. we'll speak to you tomorrow goodnight 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 don't get that. A lady listener. I know, sorry.