Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Two slightly plump middle-aged men have entered the room (with William Boyd)

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

The co-presenter wheel keeps on spinning and today, it's landed on Fi and Young Eve. She's back from her travels. They cover faecal waterslides, gangster grannies, Tyler the Creative, and the overwhelming nature of audio description. Plus, best-selling novelist William Boyd discusses his latest book 'Cold Sunset'.You can buy tickets to the Cheltenham Literature Festival here: www.cheltenhamfestivals.org/events/jane-garvey-and-fi-glover-with-anneka-riceYou can check out our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@OffAirWithJaneAndFiOur most asked about book is called 'The Later Years' by Peter Thornton.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! @janeandfiPodcast Producers: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I know we didn't, were you recording that last whispering bit? I didn't include myself, but I wanted to get your answer. There was a little moment on air yesterday where the mics came up slightly sooner. Oh. I thought. So you just heard me saying, yeah, he really gets me the creeps now. Are you able to say you?

No, no. But some of our eagle ears. listeners picked up on that. But it's a bit difficult to tell in the new studio. I'm used to a studio where the microphone light is the biggest thing in the studio. Because you could build them like that in the days before we were being visualised. But you can't do that now. Everything has to be a little bit more surreptitious.

It's too swish. It's like our lifts in this building. They don't have any buttons. They're too clever by half, aren't they? It's all just a touchscreen. And what was ever wrong with just having? having a button in a lift to know what floor it's on, where it's coming, where it's going. Everything's being reduced to nothing.

Yes, I completely agree. And the lift thing I don't get at all, because what happens if you change your mind? Yeah. You know, sometimes I think that I want to go to floor 14, and maybe I don't. It's so true, you're completely stuck. Maybe, you know, as soon as I get in, I think, no, I'm going to stop off at 10. I wonder how eight is today, and so it goes on. So no, I don't like that.

I hope that our executive producer, Rosie, doesn't listen to this episode because she's got an absolute collie wobbles fear of lifts, hasn't she? Oh yeah, Rosie does 14 floors every morning. Yeah, that's very good, isn't it? Hannah has got a phobia about owls, and you've got a phobia about staying in the country too long. How was your holiday? It was really nice.

Was it nice? Now, don't be embarrassed. Don't be embarrassed. So you've been to Marseille. Tell us about Marseille. Marseille? Well, you would feel very at home. It is very much Hackney, Dahlston, East London on sea.

It's so trendy. I felt at odds at times. It's lots of small plate restaurants and natural wine bars and vintage shopping. And then it's just set along this really beautiful, rocky, jaggedy coastline. So then all the trendy, fashionable people are laid out on rocks in the sun all day. It seems like a lovely place to be.

Well, it was a lovely place to be, but a lovely place to live. Yeah. And what type of person is visiting Marseille? So we bumped into about five people we knew. People from Brighton. We had a big London night out with other people who happened to be there. I think it's really having a moment. It does seem to be, doesn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. We were inundated with recommendations. I couldn't do it all because so many people have been now and have lists of their favourite restaurants and the sports you need to go to. So this is such an interesting development courtesy, of the reels and the Graham and the TikTok, isn't it? That you have a kind of almost ubiquitous bucket list in places that you go to visit

because everybody has done a top 10 of things. So it's quite strange because I don't like it. I'll just be honest about it. I don't like it because for me, part of the joy of going abroad is to wander and discover. and I know that I've been to places where I've missed really amazing things because I haven't read enough guidebooks and stuff like that but that's just how I like to travel and there's something, there is something a little bit weird

about taking to heart other people's recommendations so much. We went to some places in Norway that were relatively shite actually because they'd appeared in all of the, of those you must you must you must and yeah i don't know i i actually agree with you i went to bologna with my boyfriend a couple of years ago and i researched to such a degree that i was saying like oh around the corner from here there's this cafe that did and i just knew the place inside and out without ever having to step foot in it and he just got sick of me saying these things because we just weren't discovering it together and i actually made a bit of a pact with

with myself and now I just don't bother so much. I like to take friends' recommendations, but I try not to over-research a place these days. And it's interesting because it's absolutely about then recreating a visual image you've already seen, which is a weird thing to want to do when you're travelling. Because it was a different connection if you read about something in a rough guide. You still felt that you were seeing it for the first time. But it is the fact that you're not seeing it for the first time.

You're going, oh yeah, because this is exactly what you're, what X, Y and Z have already shown me. This is where they stood in that video. Yeah, it is strange. And you're watching someone walk through the streets of a place that you're about to go to discover for yourself, so why bother watching it on your phone? Yeah.

I do find it a bit depressing. So good for you if you've put the phone down and headed off in an intrepid way yourself. Now, our listeners will be very keen to know where the next destination is going to be as we travel the world with Young Eve Salisbury. Brighton at Christmas. Okay, well that's not strictly true

because where are we off to on a little office jaunt on Saturday? Fee, my sincerest apologies. How could this have slipped your mind? Jane and Fee will be in Derbyshire on Saturday at the Queen's Reading Room Festival. You'll be in conversation with Harlan Coburn, won't you? In the Chatsworth Theatre.

And the way that this will work is if you already have tickets to the festival, then you can come along to your event for free. You just have to sign up and it will be done on a first come, first serve basis. So when you arrive to Chatsworth House on Saturday, you need to visit the book club tent and sign up to secure your spot. Excellent. And if people haven't got tickets already, is it too late for them to get tickets?

I believe they can still get tickets. Brilliant. Yeah. So if you... And there's lots on. There's so much on, there's so much on, yep. We are by no means a headline act. Harlan Coburn is a headline act, but we aren't.

But also Harlan will be talking about his kind of memoir and guide to writing. So we'll talk about some of his greatest hits, but he's talking about plot twist, isn't he? Which is a life in writing, which I'm very interested to read because actually Laura Hackett recommended Stephen King's on writing a long time ago. People love that book, do you know? It's amazing. Even if you aren't thinking of writing a book and you're never going to write a book, it's a really brilliant insight into what makes great writers tick.

And Harlan Coben is one of the world's best-selling authors. So whatever it is that makes him tick is probably worth reading about. He's also, I think if you were going to phone central casting, he is absolutely what they would send if you asked for wildly successful and sophisticated, American writer. He's very sophisticated. He is, isn't he? And he's got a very kind of calm presence.

So we'll see if we can shift him about a bit. Jane will be back for that as well. Yes, yes, yes. So you'll be reuniting on stage. On stage, darling. I mean, that's where we're happiest. Obviously. Obviously.

One o'clock on Saturday afternoon. So see you there if we are going to see you there. And can people then hear it? Are we recording it? TBC. Okay. Do you want me to just record it on my phone? Could you? Just do it as one long voice note.

Yeah, that'll be fine. That'll be fine. Right. Jane is back on Monday as well, so we will be reunited in a podcast and an afternoon show kind of way as well. And thank you for being so good-hearted about all the bumps in the road that we've had over the last six months or so. But I think everybody will agree that actually you, Eve, and Hannah and Rosie, have stepped in and stepped up and nobody notices the cracks at all anymore, so good for you. Incoming emails then the macerator song. This comes from Nicola in Norwich, long-time listener, first-time emailer. Mention of toilets and macerators.

That's the sound it makes, isn't it? When a big poos go through a macerator boom. Last week, it prompted me to finally get in touch. Our next door neighbours have a macerator on their toilet. and whenever we hear it going off, we sing poo macerator to the tune of Smooth Operator. It's actually a cover of boob separator to the same tune, which I've always sung whenever putting a seatbelt on, Nicola. You're gorgeous. Claire says, I'm with you, Fee.

I don't care for an audio guide for two reasons. One, I read more quickly than the audio guide talks. Exactly, Claire, exactly. Whilst not visiting these houses for speed, I would prefer to read a board. and then look around myself. I struggle when there's too much going on. I think youngsters call it being overstimulated. So being talked to whilst trying to absorb with my eyes feels distracting.

Also makes it difficult to point something out or pass comment to a friend. One input at a time, please. In at number two, the thought of somebody else's dirty neck and ears. Brubbing up against the lanyard and headphones then transferring onto my skin makes me feel gippy. Give me a guidebook any day. And Claire's favourite sign-off is, please hesitate to reach out. Which is fantastic, isn't it? I'm with you on both of those counts.

And do you know what? By accident, I was watching a bit of Dragon's Den last night, Eve. And I put it onto audio description instead of the normal play. So you get somebody who's, you know, telling you everything that's available on screen. It's a fantastic service. It's available on everything on the iPlayer. but the description I mean it's just absolutely perfect

and it was spot on were these two guys who were trying to flog alcohol liberated wine and they walked into the den and the audio description of them was I think it was two slightly plump white middle age men have entered the room

I don't they I'm honest it's great who's deciding that I don't know I was having a bad day I don't know. They may not have said slightly plump. There was another, I think there was another word they used for that. But it was just they're kind of like, yeah, they have, haven't they?

That's absolutely who they are. Also, the audio description is actually something that sometimes makes me feel a bit overstimulated. Yes. It's too much information all at once. Yeah, so for people who need it because the sense has kind of gone down, completely get it. But you're right, it is just too much. But the audio things that you're listening to as you go around in art gallery, I'm absolutely with our correspondent. If you're trying to look at it, and it's a bit like what we were just talking about,

I can't cope with somebody telling me what I'm looking at, because then I actually just stop looking at it. So for me... You're just listening. It doesn't work at all. And then you find yourself just holding a sort of thinking, looking pose, but you're just holding the poses. You're not really doing it.

Yes, yep. And given all of that, it's almost as if visualization of the audio world would be a problem, but obviously it's not and we're really eating it. So you've got some other emails there. Quickly. We've got a very helpful one from Julia, who suggests how you can turn off your belly fat posts and adverts on Instagram.

You can reset your algorithm, which is actually just helpful with all things. So you need to go to your profile, go to menu, and then you can navigate what you see in content preferences, click to reset suggested content but it feels like why shouldn't we just be opting in in the first place

instead of having to take these six steps to turn it off? I absolutely agree that's the thing that I find infuriating and because I had done that before but because I was off Instagram for a very long time as in six months or so

when I click back on they'd all come back so I had cleared my settings and it's a very good suggestion, Julia, and thank you for talking us through it. But then, you know, the people who are making the money, and that's what it is, isn't it? They go, oh, yeah, she's been dormant for a while.

So, yes, let's get the people who make the belly fat ads to pay a bit more extra, and then we'll get all her stuff into. Inundate you with it. The default should just be that you don't get suggested belly fat problems anyway. But you can also just flood the zone. So I've flooded the zone, and I flooded the zone before with alpacas.

I just have not seen an alpaca. Now I'm back on Instagram and that's weird because I know that I've followed loads and loads of alpaca places. But I've flooded the zone with autumn wear. I know, Eve, and I'm loving it. I had a friend's mum, actually, who would use it in the best way where we were talking about scar patches

and then she took my phone and she just said around my phone, scar patches, scar patches, scar patches, so that I would start getting adverts for it so that I could just conveniently click a link and purchase one. Scar patches. I had a mole removed and so then you kind of put these little patches on that I think helps the healing. So she will literally speak around her phone to make it give her the stuff that she needs

to buy and wants to access. So maybe that's taking back a bit of a power. Maybe it's still just really creepy. Well, I mean it is creepy, isn't it? But it's a very sensible thing to do. And we should all do that. What else would you like to say out loud around your phone? I've got some new towels.

New towels, new towels. Yeah, I'm one of got... New towels. A bit scratchy. New towels. New towels. New towels. Excellent.

Well, let's see whether we can just all learn the art of getting our own way online. Because opting out of it, we just shouldn't feel that we have to do that. Why should we miss out on the fun just because we are being... targeted as if we're stupid people. We're not stupid people. So let's just be clever about it and stay in the game. I do think that with AI as well. I don't want to hold my head in my hands. And actually Katie Prescott, who is the business technology correspondent at the Times, she has done an interview with Bill Gates. Highly recommend. And she goes there on every subject, about his Epstein links as well. It's really good. It's available on their podcast. And she was

saying yesterday that we need to be talking more when we imagine the Armageddon, created by AI, of what it's actually going to be. So obviously I said, well, what is it? You know, can you give us an example? And she said, well, just imagine if we were all completely and utterly avalanche and overwhelmed by paper clips. Were you expecting that? I wasn't expecting that, Eve. And she said, just imagine if, you know, if one AI bot or whatever it is has got the instruction that the world needs more paper clips. And then the competitive AI gets hold of that, jumps out of its sandbox. Look at my technological term there. And says, OK, well, I'm going to make even more paper clips.

And then actually all of the factories in the world only make paper clips and we're overwhelmed by paper clips. And when you hear someone, Casey Pesch has got really, really knows her stuff, putting it in those terms, I find it both humorous and bubble bursting and helpful. And I fully understand that if you were to replace the word paper clips with drones, it would be a really chilling image. But we've just got to stay in the game, endlessly having these conversations in order to them be able to hopefully influence a bit of change. but also on the self-regulation thing, just self-regulate. So, you know, AI is asking, people in AI,

whistleblowers are asking for more and more and more regulation. They want regulation, we're told. You could choose to self-regulate. You could all go, I'm not going to compete with the other one for a while, until we all calm down. There's too many egos. Massive, massive. Thank God there aren't any like that in our business.

No, not in this building. No, don't be ridiculous. Lynn in Wellington in New Zealand says Enjoy your beautiful autumn I hope the temperatures remain balm It's very nice today isn't it It is actually If the scary predictions discussed last week

A right and humanity is wiped out by 2030 It will be a sorry end for us all But more so for a select few biohackers Such a pity that will miss the Chardonfreude Of Brian Johnson's failed experiment They got you too, Brian. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying spring of the return of the Tui to sing and perform their acrobatics in a cow-wide tree.

Co-feed tree. Sorry. I know. So we're in New Zealand and we're with birds that we don't know in trees that we don't know. Sounds lovely. A toooey and a co-fee or a co-fied tree. Anyway, I've given you lots of options there, Lynn.

Lynn's sign off is this As Winston Churchill might have said Never in the field of podcasts Have so many holidays been taken by so few I'm really looking forward to the return of the full team next week For the promised six weeks Plumbing and Pipework Oh yeah

We need to sort this out and we love this Helen Cook is an architect Listening to last Wednesday's podcast 9th of September in brackets I couldn't help but laugh out loud When you've been talking about plumbing and pipe work Only for the ad break to go to an advert for tenor ladies We're so on it.

To confirm, I know a lot about drainage and plumbing. I'm an architect and have to think about routes for supply of water and how to drain it and work on very complex buildings. Quite often, we work with the mechanical engineer to design the above-ground drainage and the civil engineer to do the below-ground. But as the architect, we set out where it goes from and ensure that things are placed to ensure that they can be drained.

It's all about gravity. So you have to ensure that drains and pipework have falls, i.e. sloping pipes to get waste water away. They then go into vertical pipework, for example, a soil vent pipe for WCs to take waste into larger drains underground. I've got more. Do you want it? Please. Waste from new builds is split between foul drainage.

That's waste from WC's bathrooms and kitchens and surface water drainage, roofs hard landscaping. But the principles of using gravity and a sloping pipe are the same. surface water can be collected as wastewater and stored for reuse for toilet flushing in some developments and pipework for foul drainage is also vented to avoid build up of gases size of why are you laughing at the back I just got to imagine this one of the faecal water slide park no that's not a nice image lots of people are listening to this in order to get to sleep and you've just

You've just invented a water slide of feces. What are you? You're at a high rocks game. You read that high rock story. I saw that poor woman. There was an everyone else who had to complete. There was a high rocks competition. Was it in Beijing?

Beijing in China. And one of the women competing, she lost control of her bowels. But she carried on on the equipment. Yeah. It says, the size of pipework is determined by the volume of waste. do you expect the pipe to take? I hope that explains the exciting world of plumbing. It's an incredibly important thing to get right, too, bloody right.

And it sounds it. Yeah, it is. Apologies forever underestimating the signs behind it. And I'm really sorry, Helen, but it doesn't, all of that is fantastic, but it doesn't answer the question of whether in an old house you can put a bathroom wherever you like. That was the original question. Or whether you have to stick to the side of the house that the,

plumbing is on and I presume that's more about the foul waste pipe than it is about the other waste pipe. Get back in touch, Helen. We know you've got more. We know you've got more. This is a delightful one from Margie and it is, it's Margie with a hard G. And Margie says you mentioned Bernie Eccleston taking a gun to the airport that had been spied by our eagle-eyed colleague Jane Garvey in the newspaper. This reminded me of an incident that occurred. heard with my aging aunt a few years ago. Auntie M was 94 and lived in a care home, and I was with her. She asked me to speak on the phone on her behalf to a bank

and instruct them to move some stuff around financially. Auntie was incredibly sharp of mind, although physically failing. I was speaking on the phone to a very pleasant but seemingly inexperienced young man at the banking institution, and he advised that they would need us to present Auntie's ID to a local branch or faxed over. He said, did Auntie have a current driving licence? No, I replied. She's 94.

and hasn't driven for some years. Does she have a valid passport? No, she's 94 and hasn't travelled abroad for some years. This clearly flummocks the young man who obviously then consulted his list and asked hopefully, does she have a gun licence? Smothering my giggles, I relate this request to auntie who retorted that no, but if she did have a gun,

he might well be on her list. Oh dear. Margie also tells us about toast, the shop and the food item. When a young child my nephew used to refer to bread as raw toast, I found it very pleasing. A few years ago, I worked at a school breakfast club with particular responsibility for playwork. On a side note, my best friend couldn't believe it when I started this job. She said, A, you hate getting up early. B, playwork involves crafts and your rubbish at crafts and C, you once told me you don't like other people's children. Perfect job. Anyway, I did work there

and once whilst trying to persuade a reluctant child to eat their breakfast, I invented jigsaw toast, which involved cutting said bread offering into complicated shapes. The child loved it and devoured it. Unfortunately, it didn't have a positive effect on my popularity amongst the other breakfast club workers

as going forward. Many children insisted on it, and it took absolutely ages to do. Final thought from Margie is about Australian supermarkets. They are definitely inferior. I've recently had a friend from Brisbane come to visit, although I suspect that her primary driver for crossing the world was Marks and Spencers,

as we spent a lot of time cruising the food aisles there with sounds of adulation emitting from her, along with exclamations of, look, look, you don't know how lucky you are. Have binge watch Colin from Accounts, found it an easy way to wind up my adult children by calling it Colin in accounts. It's very true, isn't it? So in our household, the thing that makes my kids both cringe

and laugh openly at me. We were walking down a very fashionable part of Dalston back in the summer. And my partner, who works in the music business, so really knows people and stuff, saw Tyler the... Tyler the creator. Yeah, thank you. And I was relaying this. Oh, wow.

I know back to my children, but I called him Tyler the Creative. And it stuck. It could just be any Tyler in East London. stuck. Never lived it down. Now I've told all of you. Magi says I'm also watching Vigil. No idea what's going on but thankful that the music turns so obviously ominous when I need to pay particular attention. Yes, I was grateful with that as well. So I'm half trying to make my little quilt and it was good to know that I could just look up when the plinky plonky sounds came in. That was a brilliant email. So you're sticking with Vigil then?

No, I've done it all. done it all. I've done it all, yep. You haven't sold it to me. I mean, when it came, I didn't actually, on episode six, I spalled forward and just did the last 10 minutes at the end. Did it have a satisfying ending? No, because it was quite, it was just really, really obvious right from the beginning, who was going to be the kind of hand of God behind it all. And, I mean, you know, the acting was fantastic, the scenery was fantastic. I think the first two series I loved them, absolutely loved them.

But in this one, you just weren't really invested. I just couldn't really care for any of the characters. We didn't meet any of the ones who got killed for long enough to care about their deaths. It was quite it was a bit midsummer

murders in places. Oh look, she'd just been Stefan and Captcha. It was just very strange. And right at the and this is a spoiler alert, so just hum loudly to yourselves for the next 30 seconds if you haven't watched it yet.

But the idea that somebody could have discovered in the seabed in the Arctic, a biomass fuel that didn't have anything to do with fossil fuels and wouldn't harm the world and was actually the answer to everything was it was just a bit bloody unicorn, rainbow and narnia. What? Magic surrealism.

And kept it in a little file in a polystyrene box. I mean, guess what, that got smashed? You're back with us now. So, no, it... I'm sorry, it didn't work, but I just, I hope they just... They lay it to rest now.

Oh, you think? That's that. God, I would hope so. I mean, where else would you go? Because you've done the kind of hemmed in, you've done the underwater, you've done, I suppose you could go somewhere very hot. The desert.

Yeah. Let's not give them any ideas. No, but actually cold really works in TV. shows, doesn't it? But heat, I don't think it does. One of the best series of ever watch was Trapped. Did you watch Trapped? So I think that was set in Iceland and it was just that incredible sense and actually it's behind some great, great novels, including the fantastic Peter Hogue's Miss Miller's Feeling for Snow, the idea that when the ice melts, something will be revealed in the coming with an email called Love Lane Barne.

I've often nearly emailed you, apropos of horny old road. I live in Love Lane Barn, not in Malvern, but in Devon. I have certain thoughts, or try not to, about how it got its name, but I feel I need to mention it. Love Lane Barn, Horny Old Road. I hope it makes you chuckle. It certainly does.

We've had quite a lot of reports as well of cockshoot avenues. There are quite a lot of those around. And quite a lot of cockburns as well. It feels very British as well. It is very. It stays fond. I hope it doesn't have you got cream for that. You mean that.

Now, the Art Deco M&S. So Rosie and I have ended up trying to swap a lot of pictures of the doors in the Berry St Edmunds M&S. This is what it's come to, and I'm very, very much here for it. It's very on brand. We thought when we visited Berry St Edmonds that there was an Art Deco field to the M&S there. But I've been thoroughly corrected. There's an almost mosaic work above the M&S, but I absolutely agree to stand down my notion

that there is an art deco eminence. My apologies to everybody in Buryst and Edmonds. So there isn't. No. It's a very nice eminence, and it's got a kind of definitely a more old-fashioned tiled fascia, but I think we've done that thing.

You know if you saw a bunny rabbit going across the A4 somewhere just outside, Birkhamstead in this country. A girl, that's a bunny rabbit going across the A4. Does the A4 go through Berkhamstead? Anyway, it might be the A40. It might be the A40. You choose your A-roads.

But then if you go to the hills of Umbria and you see a rabbit crossing the road, stop the car. It's a rabbit. It's a rabbit. And I think that that's what happens sometimes when we leave London. We go to other places and we go,

Barry, Barry St Edmunds, the Mots and Spensers, it's our decker. Wonderful. Everything's wonderful. Everything. The Greggs. Look at the Greggs. It probably is a bit nicer than the ones. It is.

Yeah, it's nicer than the one on the Kingsland Road. But I thought you'd been discussing, I thought Eminess had done a bit of the Weatherspoons about it. All the Weatherspoons are in these beautiful, grade-listed buildings that they've bought and done up. And I was thinking about that and say what you like about the owner of Weatherspoons. Yeah. And I would say some things.

But is that as strictly positive as it sounds? What would be the downside? Well, I don't know. That's kind of what I was watching. I was like, can there be a silver lining here? Can I have a bit of faith? Well, I suppose if they weren't going to be owned by anybody, then it's good that they're being used, of course.

And I don't know, somebody would have done a PhD on this, because you can sit in some unbelievable buildings and be like, I'm just in a spoons. Yeah. It's quite peculiar. There's a really sticky carpet about it, then these huge columns and high, high ceilings. Yeah, no, that is quite strange, isn't it?

You're on to something. So I wondered if Eminus was now moving into that space. Well, McDonald's used to be in that space. And Chichester, this is incoming from Patrick. The Talk of the Art Deco, Eminus and Barry St. Edmunds, reminded me of the McDonald's in Chichester from my youth in the 1990s. I didn't really think it was odd as a child, but looking back, it now looks like some Greek revival palace.

Please see a touch photo. And it does. I mean, it looks like the end of the Parthenon. And you've got these incredible Doric pillars in front. You've got one, two, three, four, five, six. beautifully asymmetrical portico pillars and then you've got

exactly, I mean look at that Oh my gosh that is something straight out of the Athenian fifth century architectural playbook with the golden arches on top where usually the wonderful freeze of all of the gods would be

considering Chichester is quite well to do I'm amazed it ever got planning permission to open there thankfully the council came to their senses it's no longer a McDonald's, it's now a branch of new look. Oh. I don't know sending back on.

No. No. It's always wild. And Carol, who listens to the afternoon show, and I think listens to this podcast as well. She emailed the afternoon show yesterday because we did this story, Eve, about Pippa Middleton

and her husband, Mr Spencer, who have managed to get public access to an old bridal, path band rescinded because it goes across a bit of their land. And we had a local counsellor on who was really annoyed about it. He was representing the part of the village that wanted to be able to have the right to roam across the land as their ancestors had done.

There were people on both sides of that particular farm gate. But as Carol says, thanks to their own actions, I'm now aware of the precise location of the home of Pippa and her husband. and it's a very good point. Yes. Everybody now knows where they live. Their argument was about privacy and security. And the very angry people can very much go and find them and target them and stand outside and cause much more bother.

Yep. It does seem bizarre. Also, you know, do you need to segregate yourself so much? Don't you want to be a part of the community in which you live? Well, I would want to, yes. Yeah. And I wouldn't want to be up the gated drive, you know, with everybody knows. knowing that I was there, but nobody actually knowing me.

I think that's such a weird thing to do. Yeah, then you pop to the local farm shop and you're getting frosty looks left, right and centre. Yes, yep. So it, no, it is a strange one. I just wonder why they couldn't have done something on their own land that provided security from that bridal path, if that's what they wanted. Because it does seem terribly high-handed, doesn't it?

Lord of the man. Get off my land. Yeah. Shoot, go away. I'm sure they're not short of space. Yes, yep. Claire just wants to say I remember BSE, I remember the crisis being equated to Barry St Edmonds, I also live here and love it.

I was helping my nan with her care later in life and when writing some notes from a phone call, I wrote shorthand for Barry BSEC and she said to me in a worry, boys, have I got BSEC? BSE was one of those things that did terrify the bejesus out of us. And I remember thinking, gosh, millions of people are going to die

because of this strange infection. And we were reminded of it by one of our correspondents who just wanted to put into context our fears about Armageddon and AI at the moment that actually the world has always felt that there's an existential threat somewhere. So maybe AI is the latest thing that we've put into the fear and worry vacuum.

I thought it was quite a good introduction into our conversation. is a nicer thought in a weird way. As a society, we've overcome all of these threats and moved past and forward and we found a way to push on. So hopefully it doesn't always need to be a doomsday. Yep. Yeah, I obviously very much hope so. Very much hope so. And we can't all go and live in a bunker in Tasmania.

If you're listening to us in Tasmania, how do you feel about being the tech bros island destination of choice for when the world does absolutely implode because of what they've made because I think it is New Zealand and Tasmania that these bros are heading towards and they are bros, there just aren't any sisters in that mob. Yeah.

Oh God, imagine. I mean, good luck to them. And I mean, if that's what's left, I don't think I want to be around. No. But, I mean, you know, the good burgers of Tasmania, they can't possibly. Well, do you embrace it? I don't know. Maybe there's a whole kind of sub-economy that's planning for exactly that.

William Boyd is one of our greatest living novelists. His latest book is the third installment. In the life of his new spy, Gabriel Dax, a reluctant intelligence officer, his handler, Faith Green, is definitely handling him. The books are set against the backdrop of the Cold War, and so far they've taken us through the assassination of Patrice Lom. a member in the Congo, CIA involvement in Guatemala, an attempted assassination of President Kennedy in Berlin. And in this book, we find Gabriel dealing with double agents in MI6, crossing borders in Russia, and living an Odysse-style life on a Greek island for a while. William, it's always a pleasure to see you. How are you?

Very well. Thanks. It's lovely to be here for you. Thank you. Well, let's get straight into it. And please don't worry, all our listeners who are thinking, can I stay listening to one of my favourite authors of all time, or is it going to ruin the book? We are not going to ruin the book at all. You know how this works. Where is Gabriel at the start of Cold Sunset? Well, he's in Los Angeles, in fact. No spoilers, but he's been sent on what seems like an innocuous mission to meet a poet of all, an aging poet who has a secret to tell. And that secret in a way sets the whole narrative in motion because he's revealing

a mole in the Secret Service in World War II, the Bletchley Park Enigma set-up code-breaking. And this isn't a spoiler. The person he reveals is very much based on the fifth Cambridge spy John Cairncross. And everything that happens in my novel is sort of attached to the John Cairncross story, which is very interesting, in fact. And I think all spy novels post-war are haunted by those five guys from Cambridge who betrayed their country so assiduously. And this one's no exception.

Do you enjoy being able to say goodbye to all the technology of the modern world when you write these books set in this time? Because what's so telling is the fact that obviously you can't use a Google search. You can't really use some phone mask track. You know, the nature of spying is still very much leave the compromise in a certain place and somebody might find it. I mean, it's old school stuff. Yes, it's analog spying. And it's actually much more fun than writing a spy novel set today, which is all about electronic surveillance and whistleblowing, it seems to me.

Back in the 60s, if you wanted to make a phone call, you had to find a phone box. You might send somebody a postcard and say, let's meet under the station clock on Saturday. afternoon. So I'm old enough to remember the 60s vividly. They kind of coincided with my teenage years. So it's rather nice to time travel back to that period and imagine how on earth did we live without, you know, smartphones and the internet, et cetera, et cetera. So we somehow we did manage. And so it's very nice having these spies working under those conditions and reminding people what life was like, you know, 60 years ago. For people who haven't met Gabriel Dax before, can you just tell us a bit about him?

Yes, he's a young man born in 1930, troubled young man because of a childhood trauma. But he's become quite a successful travel writer. The first novel, Gabriel's Moon, he has three books to his credit and they've all done pretty well. So he's making a living as a travel writer. But he's suborned. He's sort of manipulated into doing a little job for MI6. But of course, as the snowball at the top of the mountain, it turns into an avalanche. And he becomes more and more deeply involved in this triple bluff defection,

a so-called traitor defecting to Russia. And his life is slowly but surely over the last. next three novels taken over by MI6, or this department of MI6 that I've invented called the Department of Developmental Studies, the Institute of Developmental Studies, run by this mysterious and alluring woman, Faith Green. So Gabriel is getting more and more involved, and he finds he has a kind of talent for spying as well. And by the time of the third novel, you know, he's really quite competent. And as Faith Green tells him, nobody quits in this business. and I think he realizes that his life as a travel writer will always be overshadowed by his life as a reluctant, unwilling, spy. So as you've mentioned, Gabriel has some books under his belt and through the trilogy, he's going off to see his publisher to have these sudden, often kind of light bulb moments while he's in his office as to what he's going to write next.

And I couldn't help but think, William, that actually some of the book ideas are very good and you should write them yourself. I think they'll be pinched actually. I do write the odd travel piece, but I'm not a travel writer, but I got these ideas to have to think what's Gabriel going to write next. And so I come up with these notions. And a lot of publishers have actually said to me these are very interesting ideas. So I suspect there may be Gabriel Dax-style travel books emerging. But it's a good job for a spy or a reluctant spy to have,

because it's perfect cover in a way he can go anywhere with a freedom that a proper spy or a foreign office diplomat can't go. And so he, even in this third novel, he goes to Moscow to write a chapter of his next travel book. And it's, you know, totally plausible and perfect cover. Yeah. Obviously, a great cover for a modern-day spy would be to be one of this country's best-selling novelist. I don't think so. That person would have to be intrepid and clever and not cowardly, which is I don't fit that bill.

But it would be a great cover because you could go anywhere in the world and ask lots of people, lots of questions and stuff. Yeah, I think lots of writers and journalists did that. I mean, I loosely based Gabriel on this writer called Norman Lewis, who I'm convinced was a stringer for MI6. But you know, think of Graham Green as well. well. Graham Green did work for MI6 in the war, but I think after the war, he was still reporting back, as was Ian Fleming, who was in naval intelligence in the war, but when he became managing

director of the Sunday Times, he was still working closely with the Secret Service. So, writers have often got this slightly ambivalent relationship with the security services, and because they can go where orthodox spies can't, they can be come back with very useful information. You weave your stories around facts from history and that's what makes your book so compelling because we can kind of map out a shadow of reality onto which the characters then perform their roles.

But I wonder what that does to your head as a writer. Does it make you want to revisit actually? points in time and really question whether or not we were all told the right thing about them. Yes, I mean, I am a realistic novelist and so I want the world of my fiction to seem as real as possible, such as why I introduce real people and real historical events into the stories I'm writing. And, you know, I have opinions and it's a very nice freedom to be able to explore these opinions. I'm a JFK conspiracy. theorist. I think there were two shooters in Dallas that day. Therefore, there must be a conspiracy,

but who conspired. In a novel, you can let yourself go and explore all sorts of reasons. Similarly, with what the CIA was getting up to in Central America in the 1960s was mind-boggling. So I'm sort of lifting a lid on forgotten historical facts and historical instances. but at the same time trying to weave as enticing a story as possible. Where would you see controversy at the moment in conspiracy theories? I mean, are there some that you look at and you think actually, no, I believe that? What I mean, contemporary conspiracy theories. I mean, Trump's attempted assassination.

There's a lot of billowing smoke around that. Yes, and also his decapitation of, you know, the Venezuelan president is very reminiscent of what was going on in the 1960s in Central America. I think that we're all much more skeptical now about what we're told. And we double check or we go to many sources to see if we might give this or that idea any credence. However, you know, almost anything Trump says seems to be hopelessly untrue. So there are no doubt there are masses of conspiracy theories out there. Let's not talk about reform and the donations.

I think the sensible person contemplating the news cycle really does sift through the varying stories and checks and brings their own intelligence to bear on what might be true and what might be true and what might. might be, you know, a tissue of lies or some sort of attempt to obscure the truth. Do you watch a lot of news? Well, actually, you know, I used to be a news junkie. And I would watch, you know, 24 streaming news all the time. But I have to say that since Trump became president of the United States, I cannot see or hear his voice. So I now read the news.

I don't watch it. I know exactly. It's complicated. He does tend to hog the limelight. But I just, you know, you get these antipathies to certain politicians. And you sort of, what's the point of screaming and shouting at the television set? You know, just read about it. Last time you came in, which was to talk about the second book in your trilogy featuring Gabriel Dax,

we did talk about the possibility that it would come to life on the screen. Is that still happening? Yes, it is, but it's sort of transformed. We're talking about a movie possibility, but even a 250-page novel, when you turn it into a two-hour film, you have to lose 40 or 50% of the novel. And so now we're rethinking it as a six-part TV series of Gabriel's Moon, the first novel. And I'm actually much happier about that because I've written many TV series myself. I've adapted my own book. books before and the fact that you have more room to move and the fact that you can do the book more justice in a way than you can with a movie version is much more appealing to me as a writer, even though a movie is potentially more glamorous than a TV series. But in terms of adaptations, I think it's far more satisfying. Would you be able to give us any clues as to who would play Gabriel and who would play Faith? Well, I have a wish list. We all have

wish lists when you're contemplating a film or a TV adaptation. And for me, I feel that the young English actor Josh O'Connor would make an excellent Gabriel. I probably completely stymied that opportunity now by as I mentioned it. And the director attached to the series suggested Claire Foy as Faith Green, which I thought was a really good idea, really good idea. But that's So, you know, the trouble about film and TV casting dreams is that you usually end up with somebody entirely different from the one you want, but is equally good. But in the kind of wishful fulfillment department, Josh O'Connor and Claire Foy would be a perfect couple for me. Are you remotely interested in who becomes the next James Bond? Well, only because I have a sort of bond history.

And, you know, I've worked with three of the. James Bond actors over my film writing career and got to know Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig really quite well. And I've written the James Bond continuation novel, and I've written a lot about Ian Fleming. So I have this kind of bond side to my life. So I keep an eye on the speculation. And the funny thing is that the current favourite, who is Jack Loudon, I think, of Slow Horse's fame, well, actually Jack Loudon was in a short film I wrote. So he would be the fourth Bond actor that I'd worked with, which would really be uncanny. The universe is telling us something here.

Exactly. There's so much hype about it, isn't there? And I wonder whether, I mean, the Bond franchise has moved, hasn't it? It's moved over to Amazon. I'm almost wary of ingesting too much Bond stuff myself. Yeah. And, you know, I'm not, to be honest, despite having worked with these three great actors, I'm not a great fan of the movies because.

they've moved so far away from the original Ian Fleming world. They're now a kind of action movie, quote-unquote, glamorous franchise that has to play in Shanghai and Vladivostok and Santiago de Chile. And so they become sort of generic, it seems to me, and they've lost whatever idiosyncrasies that Fleming had, who was a very idiosyncratic man. And the bond he created, which you can read about in the novels, is a total stranger to the Bond that appears in the movies.

So the gulf between the two forms is massive. And you can judge the movie on the basis of its action capacity or whether it's thrilling or not, but don't see it as part of the tradition of the James Bond world that Ian Fleming created. And he's no Gabriel Dax. Inherent in your novels is always a really astonishing sense of detail about how people look and how people eat and what people

drink, William. And actually, in this book, I really noticed that Gabriel is drinking a lot. Is he all right? Yes, he is drinking a lot, but one forgets that in the 40s, 50s and 60s people drank hugely and smoked hugely. I mean, Ian Fleming drank two bottles of vodka a day and smoked 80 cigarettes a day. And so does James Bond. Bond is a functioning alcoholic.

If you count the number of drinks he has, it's a wonderful line. I think it's in, you only live twice, which goes a paraphrase. Bond realized that the 13th large whiskey had been a mistake. And you think, hang on, that's a bottle and a half, isn't it? So I'm trying to make it as authentic 1960s as possible. My father was a doctor in Africa. But he came home from his clinics for lunch and had two pink gins. and then drank probably half a bottle of whiskey in the evening

and smoked. It was a different world. And in a way, part of the fun of recreating it and part of the fun of the time travel that's involved in writing about the 1960s is that you can remind people of what the world was like then and how different it was from the world we inhabit today. How could all of those people drink so much and still carry on? Were they just balancing it out with more vegetables?

fewer additives. I genuinely don't know. I think people were thinner. There wasn't much obesity around in the 50s and the 60s, but it was all booze as well. It wasn't beer and wine. It was spirits. Spirits.

You know, it was whiskey, gin, brandy. And I don't know. Maybe they just had stronger heads or nobody was ticking them off so they didn't feel guilty. Maybe. You've mentioned there your two. childhood and you were born in Africa and lived in Nigeria. Born in Ghana, lived there and in Nigeria. So the first sort of 20 odd years of my life were

West African. So as our look back at history tells us more things about it and certainly that pink colouring of the world in the empire, I wonder what that makes you think about your childhood. Does it change your childhood memories? Well, it does in the sense that I realize that my experience of growing up as a kid and as a youth and a young man was something that's totally vanished. The experiences I had growing up in those two countries, Ghana, Nigeria, are not replicable now. And so I look back on my childhood and my time in Africa, West Africa, with great gratitude because I had total freedom. Those countries were racially integrated, there was no racial tension at all.

As a white boy in a black African country, I could go anywhere I wanted at any time fearlessly. And so to have done that and to experience that is an extraordinary privilege. And those days have gone, alas. But I was lucky enough to live through the 50s and the 60s in African countries and experience them with a freedom that is not possible today.

So what do you think when you see greater, racism here? Well, I'm shocked by it. And I think because I grew up in an African country, I had Ghanaian friends. I went to their houses. They came to my house. I think it gave me a kind of, if I'm not being vanglorious, a sort of racism-free upbringing. So for me, it's something that I find shocking.

And that's, you know, I find intellectually shocking. But because of my experiences as a youngster and as a young man, I find it hard to comprehend that animus, that antagonism towards people of different ethnicities. It's something that I never experienced vice versa and was totally comfortable in these African countries. And, you know, again, that was a wonderful gift to me. If you were a young man now, would you set out on the same path of creativity and making your living out of writing? Well, I would, I think, because when I was 17 or 18 and you were thinking, what the hell am I going to do as a grown-up? I realise quite quickly that I couldn't hold down a proper job and that I wanted to be vaguely an artist of some kind.

And I thought of being a painter and going to art school, but I was kind of, I switched to literature. but I didn't know anybody who wrote books or who published books. I had no connections with that world. So I think that looking at my temperament and my nature, I would still want to be a layabout artist for some kind, trying to write or paint or do something in that world and not have a 9 to 5 Monday to Friday job. Are you a very competitive man?

And if Robert Harris's latest book, and we always ask you about Robert. Harris, tops yours in the bestseller list. Will there be a bit of a fight? No, well, Robert's books will always top mine in the bestseller list. He's a friend and I'm not competitive. I think particularly, you know, entering the end game of my writing career and it's, you know, I've been writing, my first novels published 45 years ago. Seems astonishing to me. And it's a long haul, a writing life. You need a lot of stamina. And I think as you write on and as you get older and as you publish more books,

it's more a feeling of solidarity with the other survivors who are still writing away and still standing. Because a lot of them have fallen by the wayside. A lot of writers can't earn a living. Their books are out of print. So when you look around at my contemporaries and my peers, my feeling is, you know, good luck to us all rather than you swine. how dare you have a bestseller number one. He says terrible things about you, really.

He doesn't at all. Now, I'm delighted because you've already told me this off-mic, that actually this isn't the last in the Gabriel Dax series. No, I think that the trilogy, having written the three books in three years, which are something I've never done before, but I actually think it looks like a cunning plan because he's sort of established now as a personage, and he has a backstory and a complicated life

and he's got a literary life as well as an espionage life. And so, like it or not, I think I've created a little franchise here and I intend to continue. I'm going to write another long novel before I write another Gabriel Dax novel, but I'm sure there will be many more Gabriel Daxes down the line. That is such, such pleasing news. William Boyd is always a pleasure.

Thank you very much indeed for coming into Times Towers today. Cold Sunset is out now. Buy it before you, by anything, by Robert Harris. It is superb. There is always a worry, isn't there, when you are reading the next episode of a book that it won't entertain quite as much as the first did. But I really, really loved it.

And the ending, which we won't talk about anymore, I had to read it about three times. I thought, oh, that's good. Oh, it has the office quite gripped. That is good. because the head of news here Toby bothers me constantly trying to get his hands on the next really a boy to poke. So he's literally been hovering on my shoulder every morning begging for when it finally arrives. So I've been able to give him a copy and he's completely enthralled.

Okay. Well, that's good. They'll keep quiet for a while. Yeah. Next week we've got a bumper week of guests for you. Louise Kennedy is in to talk about her latest novel. Ben McIntyre is in to talk about his latest book and May Musk is in to talk about her book and also about other members of her family. And I can't wait.

I've got some pre-prepared questions and I hope I'm bold enough to ask them. So yes, I'm working my way through the Musk family. Actually, I'm not. I want to stop there if that's all right, Eve. Thank you. No more musks. No more musks. So join us if you can.

If you're coming to Derbyshire, it'll be absolutely lovely to see you come and say hello. We remain Jane and Fee at times dot radio. Garver's back on Monday. Have a lovely weekend when you get to it. 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 it live, every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4 on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale. 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. Offair is produced by Eve Salisbury, and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler.