Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Walruses, they're not lookers

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

Jane and Fi come up with a new safe word, and have to use it quite a few times. They're joined by Andrea Elliott, Pulitzer prize winning author of 'Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City' If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Assistant Producer: Kate Lee Times Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Podcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Right, it's Tuesday. Welcome to Off Air with Jane and Fi. This one made me laugh. Which one is it? From Mr Leon Solent. Go on. You know, well, actually, you've got a bit of a thing, haven't you, about not wanting to give animals their true anthropomorphic status in the world? Because we had a story today about a walrus who's looking for love. What, did he wash up? He's not looking for love, as I kept saying. It's a walrus who's turned up in a part of Hampshire.

I'm not very good on coastal towns in the south of England, to be honest. I'm sure they're all lovely and I've been to a few, but I never know where any of them are. And this is a place in Hampshire I'd honestly never heard of. Not Cockshot, but Carls Pot or something. Anyway. Imagine if I said it's just up north. I don't know where it is.

I've got absolutely nothing to do with it. No, you're quite right. It's terrible when it's a little bit like people say, oh, I just can't do maths. And they wouldn't say, I've never read a book in my life. Well, actually, some people probably would. They shouldn't, though. No, they definitely shouldn't. Back on track. Yes. The walrus has washed up and locals have become rather affectionate towards him. And you don't like that. No, they're absolutely entitled to be affectionate towards the walrus has washed up and locals have become rather affectionate towards him and you don't like that no they're absolutely entitled to be affectionate towards the walrus it's just that the newspaper coverage um is constantly pretending that this beast because walruses are not attractive i mean i hate to break this to the walrus community they're not lookers and

this particular specimen is is certainly um, he's brooding and magnificent, but pretty most certainly not. And they're all calling him Thor and saying that he's washed up off the coast of Hampshire looking for love, as many a randy sailor has back in the day. Of course, it's where you grew up, so you'll be familiar with that, I'm sure. I'm not very familiar with any randy sailors. But we're in landlocked Basingstoke in Winchester. Was it Basingstoke?

Yes. Well, don't start laughing at that now. No, sorry. All those Randy sailors in Basingstoke. There's loads of them. Anyway, it's a sweet story until you actually begin to question it and then you realise that actually it's climate change

that's brought the poor creature inland to this part of Western Europe. And he's looking for food, he's not looking for love. No, fair enough. If you had to choose between the two, if you're starving, you couldn't care less about your single status. You want a tea, don't you? So this leads us on to the story of Dave the

Cat, who was stroked and petted by a couple of members of the England squad out at their fine hotel in Qatar. And they've decided that they wanted Dave to come home so I think £20,000 or something's being spent on relocating Dave. Shamelessly exaggerated it was £2,000. Well I'm going to call it £20,000 and anyway he's on his way back and Mr Lee on the Solent, it's a Hampshire connection, has sent us an email saying, how did the boys in Qatar discern that Dave wanted to emigrate?

Is his owner going crazy with worry? I think the public should be told a cub reporter is needed. And it's a very good question because they've just assumed that Dave's astray. But you'll have a greater knowledge of the cat world than I do. But my cats disappear for weeks on end and then just saunter back in with a twig, you know, sticking out of their whiskers. Happy as Larry, they've been having a bit of a bob on somewhere. Do they disappear for long?

Yes. No, my ginger cat is well known for taking a random holiday somewhere else in the neighbourhood. And you don't get concerned? Well, we did at the beginning and then we realised it was just what he did. So, you know, Dave may just have sauntered in for a bit of five-star luxury and then was going back to his owners in Qatar, but no longer because he's destined to come back here. Anyway, that's gone off on a little bit of a pet tangent, but thank you for your emails anyway.

I don't know whether Suella Braverman and Rishi Sunak know that Dave's planning to... Oh, don't start that. ...planning to come to Britain because they won't be happy. They won't be. Dave, I hope you've sorted out all the paperwork. I hope you don't stop that. I need to come to Britain because they won't be happy. They won't be. Dave? I hope you've sorted out all the paperwork. I hope you don't stop off in Albania.

Right. We've had lots of lovely emails as well. One in particular from Ruthie. Would you like to work your way through a little bit of Ruthie? I can't do justice. I think we might have to sort of ration Ruthie. We'll have rations of Ruthie throughout the week because Ruthie's story, which she referenced in an earlier email

she's rather sort of sanguine kind of way just said oh she'd left she'd left Britain for New York and life on the high seas and in show business and sort of left it there like that was a fairly routine set of circumstances and we both felt that Ruthie had a lot more to say

she certainly does well can we just have the anecdote from the Queen Mary Queen Mary II today so this is Ruthie had a lot more to say. She certainly does. Well, can we just have the anecdote from the Queen Mary, Queen Mary II today. So this is Ruthie on the high seat. Okay, so I've got to be a little bit careful about this. So if I pause, can you just find a suitable word to drop into that pause that doesn't get us into too much trouble? We'll settle for marzipan.

I think that'll be the safe word. Have you used that before? It was a bit quick with that, wasn't it? I was giving myself away again. The Queen Mary 2, says Ruthie, is a spa area reserved for sea days, the time spent travelling to the next port, which can be up to six days as you cross the Atlantic.

During the day, the spa is filled with passengers, but after hours, the singers, of which I was one, were allowed to sneak in and relax. One night, a castmate and I were heading to the steam room when we heard some unusual noises reverberating off the tiled walls. When we pushed the door open and the steam room parted, we were met by a couple old enough to be our grandparents, indulging in a little marzipan.

Fun. Horrified, we scrambled. My poor friend lurched on the slick floor, grabbed something to steady himself and landed his hand upon a set of false teeth that had been laid out on the bench, presumably to... Marzipan.

What we were. Marzipan. We never set foot in the spa again and even now I find the smell of eucalyptus makes me wince right i just i'm not sure we'll ever top that um but ruthie does have more and we'll give you more during the course of the week oh the next one involves sting let's keep you waiting keep me guessing okay is there anything else you'd like to talk about? Yeah, there's a few.

There are a few stories that have caught my eye. By the way, I'm not sure many people will be able to top Ruthie's showbiz anecdotes, but if you've ever... What are you going to say? I was going to say, come across a celebrity, and then I regretted it. So thank goodness I haven't said that. But if you have any of these stories which we can anonymise, we can use safe words, we can protect you from the authorities.

I mean, obviously, we don't want to hear about any criminal activity. Jane and Fi at times.radio. Or, as other people have done, just tell us about your life and tell us about the circumstances in which you find yourself. But this, the so-called happiest time of the year. Do-do-do, do-do-do, do-do-do. It's only happy if you can afford to put your heating on, basically, isn't it? Let's be honest.

That's very true. Anyway, what else have you got? Oh, so I've got a very nice one. Well, this is specifically for you. It's from Helen, who says, I just wanted to let you know, Jane, that the Pavlik harness is still in use our granddaughter now aged two was born with dysplasia in both hips and put into a harness at just over two weeks old her parents were amazed and coped incredibly well with all the difficulties of not

only having a newborn but with the practical issues that these harnesses create she was in the harness for about 18 weeks and is now a lively, active, running and jumping two-year-old. Oh, that's brilliant. Lovely to hear. Yes, that is good to hear. And they are peculiar, those harnesses. But I'm interested to hear that they're still in use. And they worked on my daughter too. So, I mean, not that she remembers a thing about it, of course, but it was definitely a talking point, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Do you want to do a quick clipping or shall we go straight into the big interview, Jane? The big interview.

We can go, but I just wanted to mention this about, it's in the Times today, toddler shouting for the iPad, just say no, is the story. It's all about what doctors are and research has discovered about, I have to say, the increasing, you do see it a lot, the increasing dependence that parents have on iPads to amuse their offspring. I mean, you see it everywhere.

You see it in restaurants, in pubs. I've seen kids in buggies in shops gripping their iPads while they watch something and, you know, mum or dad picks up some shopping. And it is, I mean, is it any worse? I mean, I'll be absolutely honest, I plonked my children in front of the telly. They watched hours of children's television and video,

and videos as they were back in the early 21st century. So I am a fine one to talk. I'm not in any way suggesting that I was a better parent than today's contemporary parents of young children. But it is worth saying that the NHS recommends an upper limit of two hours of screen time per day for all children. And I'm here to say that I think most children are probably looking at screens for. screens for uh well um the latest research research shows that using screens to calm children backfires in the long run as they never learn how to regulate their emotions the study i suppose is not that enormous it's only based on 422 children aged three to five

found that those who were regularly given ipads to play with displayed worse behaviour in the long run. So the bit of that that I do struggle with myself is when we're out and about in restaurants and very young kids are having a whole meal with their parents, you know, which can be kind of two hours long, and they have a screen with them all the way through, even eating, because I totally get it it's really difficult especially if you're on holiday you've got an expectation of what a nice meal out might be and you know if you're there with very small kids it's just not going to be what it used to be and I think

it can probably be quite a kind of uh maybe not the most enjoyable part of the day, feeding young kids. No, it is not. Out and about. But, but, but, but, it's just, it is just part, that is part of the family experience. So I'm not sure at what stage you then take the screen away and say, why don't you join in with the conversation? Join in with eating with us. You're only 18 months old, but why don't you join in with the conversation join in with eating with us you're only 18 months old but why don't you join in the conversation we're talking about no but what i mean is when they get to kind of eight nine ten eleven then they will never get the habit if they're very used to being able to be in their own world and not in yours that's that

is very difficult to take that away from them so There are loads of family meals which I would much rather have sat through just watching a box set myself. But that's, you know, it's not an option that's available. I mean, absolutely. You're not here to enjoy yourself, are you? And we're coming up to the happiest time of the year where absolutely you're not here to enjoy yourself. You're here to just get on with it. If I can also be really honest, I do look at those, you know,

those families and, you know, with slight envy because they're definitely having a much nicer time of it than I ever did when my kids were that tiny which was a screeching festival of goo. Yeah quite, oh god at the risk of sounding like a gentleman of advanced years in red trousers I do wonder whether sometimes

you just shouldn't go to restaurants with small children. Why not just stay at home and have fish fingers? Because that's what they want. Well, you could do that. But if you've made, you know, you've made an effort. It's your one week's holiday every year. You want to be out and about, don't you?

Don't you? I don't know. Oh, I don't know. I'm sounding like somebody. Take it all back. Okay. Well, no, don't take it back. You're just being honest.

I just want a column where I can hit out. You've already got a column. You've got a column. I want to have one of those columns where I just carve about other women and say, No, don't do that. Look at the state of her. Look at her messy life.

Goodness, I'm perfect. We've got this platform. That's enough. That is enough. Yeah, you're right. Okay, let's move on relatively seamlessly to today's big interview, which is with the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Andrea Elliott, who I must admit I hadn't heard of her until we were given the book.

Had you heard of her? No. No. But I now am very glad I have, and I'm very glad I've read this book. It's called Invisible Child, and it has a central female character, doesn't it? But it's about loads of people and actually a multigenerational family story. But the prism through which she tells the story is a young girl in New York called Dasani, who lives with her seven siblings, and the point at which Andrea meets her,

all of those brothers and sisters and mum and stepfather to Dasani are living in one room in the Auburn housing settlement, which is on the east side in Brooklyn. And it's an extraordinary story of embedded journalism for, I think, eight or nine years. And Andrea started off by telling us how she managed to persuade Dasani and her mum, really, Chanel, to take part in her reporting. The day I met them, I was standing outside their homeless shelter in Brooklyn, trying to find a way into what I thought was a really big story at the time, which was the homeless crisis that

was roiling the city and continues to this day to do so. And I was interviewing all these mothers who were chasing after their children and they were sort of outside on cigarette breaks and trying to get them to talk to me about what was happening inside that shelter. And they said, you need to talk to her. And they pointed at a woman who was walking out looking like a drill sergeant and behind her trailed the, her seven children, at least six of the seven were with them. And she had the stroller with the baby. And they just struck me as this magnetic presence, this force field that I wanted to be a part of immediately. As soon as I saw that, I thought, what is the story of this family? They were so united and so strong in the way they just hit the street. And that's actually part of it. They stuck together in that way to survive the

street. So they walked closely together. And they just immediately jumped out at me, and in particular, her oldest girl, Dasani, just everything that came out of her mouth, I wanted to write down. And was that the moment that you decided you did want to view the story through the prism of a child's eyes? Because undoubtedly, that's what makes it so compelling. I had decided that months earlier, in part as a reaction to the political climate around poverty issues and poverty reporting, which is to say that when you write about poor people, readers tend to assign blame to the people in your story, right? usually the stories are focused on adults. Children are rarely heard from, and yet we have one of the highest child poverty rates, the highest child poverty rate in the United States in the developed world, basically. And so it struck me as a very hard target, but a very

important one to get past the adults and into the lives of kids. And one child in particular felt to me like the right way, because with one person, you can go more deeply into the narrative, into the mind, into the experiences than with multiple characters. This has at least been always my experience. I can maybe I'm just very bad at multitasking, but I knew I wanted one kid. And as soon as I met her, I knew she was the kid. I had one kid. And as soon as I met her, I knew she was the kid. How did you gain the trust of her mum, Chanel, though, who, you know, throughout has had such a tough ride maternally herself. To be able to protect her own children was just such a complex thing for her. And presumably being approached by a journalist from a completely different background to her, asking to tell the story of her life and her daughter's life must have been problematic. Well, you've absolutely nailed it. That's exactly right.

She has structured her entire life, her very difficult, as you put it, maternal ride. I love that around the project of protecting her children from the intrusion of outsiders, which made her decision to let me in extraordinarily brave. It was something that moves me to this day to think about the vulnerability that was required of her and of her family, in a sense, to lower the guard and allow me to observe them so closely for so many years, when being vulnerable in their world on the street is not just something that is looked down upon, it's actually can be dangerous. Can you tell us something about the family setup? So there's Chanel and there's her partner, a man called Supreme, and he has

two children, I think of his own. And I am going to ask you the question, which I think some listeners will already be asking themselves, which is why did this couple in abject poverty without a home have so many children? You know, that's what people ask. It's a horrible thing, but it's what we ask. Absolutely, it's not a horrible thing. It's a fair question. I don't think there are any wrong questions. Here's the thing. I think we get so limited by our preconceptions of the poor and worrying about saying the wrong thing that we don't move past them. I ask those questions bluntly. This is a married couple. They each brought two children from prior relationships into the relationship. So they began as a family of four and they had another four.

So eight children, two married people in abject poverty, as you say. From the outside, people would look at this and say, make all kinds of assumptions. And usually it was directed at Chanel that she wasn't, for example, married. They would assume that, or that she was careless with her body or that she was perhaps having children in order to increase the amount of money she got from the government.

This is a typical assumption people draw. I remember going through all of these ideas with her. And to that, she said, I want to meet the woman who endures childbirth six times over for a few extra food stamps that don't even last till the end of the month. Yeah. And by the way, all those exactly that conversation has been had in this country about about poorer people, and the circumstances in which they find themselves. So it's certainly not unique to the United States. But for most of us in the UK, we are a little bit confused by the system in the States. We have our own benefits system here. There is a system of social security, there is a free healthcare,

free to everybody at the point of delivery, it has problems, but the cost of it is not something any of us ever have to worry about. Tell us more about what faces the very poor in the States and in particularly in New York. There are protections for the poor in the UK that don't exist for the United States. And so what we have here is a huge housing shortage. shortage, it's much harder to get food stamps, to get basic necessities, and even health care is not readily available for the poor. It's a very, very difficult world to be in. And this is precisely why Chanel and Supreme clung to the idea of the family that they created by design, because to them, that was the only thing you could count on. There are these systems that govern the lives of the poor, and these systems tend to punish you for the quote-unquote crime

of poverty. And the internal system that this family created of its own kind of bond, its own strength and unity was the antidote to that. And it's also why when Dasani left her home to go to a boarding school in Pennsylvania that is designed to reform children from poverty backgrounds, that that was a huge act of letting go for the parents. Because it's the only thing they ever created, in a sense, was their kids. And to let their star leave and give her over to another institution to, it's almost like you've started a sculpture as a sculptor, and it's a molten thing, and you hand it to someone else to finish. Can you also paint a picture of how the family were living in the Auburn housing shelter when you first meet them? So when I say these systems are punitive, this is a perfect example. There is a right to shelter in New York City.

But if you overstay your welcome, you wind up getting assigned, or at least at this time, this was very, very much the case, to substandard shelters. This was very, very much the case to substandard shelters. These are shelters that are run by a city with a $1 billion budget that have Dickensian conditions. And so Dasani and her nine family members, all 10 of them were crammed into one room, overrun by mice, roaches, mold, shredded mattresses. just horrific conditions that you couldn't imagine existed in the United States, much less in the richest country. I'm sorry, the richest city in the world, in New York City. They were just blocks from townhouses that were selling for millions of dollars. This was at a time when their own mayor, Michael Bloomberg, was a billionaire, and they are living in abject poverty. And it was shocking to me. It was blocked from the public. I couldn't get in for many months. I had to sneak in eventually through the back to get access to be able to expose the conditions of their shelter. And after I did some initial reporting on their lives in the New York Times, more than 400 children were moved out of that and another shelter. And so there was some change, but not enough.

We went on to ask Andrea about Dasani's extraordinary journey and whether the reader might be inclined to romanticise the whole thing a little bit too much. I think it requires tremendous innovation to survive as a poor person in the United States. There's a sense that the poor people, for example, don't want to work. They don't like to work. They're lazy. They live off the government. Look, again, ask these questions.

Dive into a book like this with those questions and see what you come away with. Because what I found in all my years with this family and others is that when you are poor like this, you are always working. It just doesn't necessarily look like work in the sort of formal way that we think of work. It might look more like bartering. It is this constant struggle to survive. And the children in this population, because they're children, are eternally kind of, at least they're wired to find hope within their own existence. And so while the conditions I just described sound horrible, to Dasani, they were just her reality. And she learned to look past them and to find places of solace, of quiet, of peace, of hope, of inspiration.

She would go to her window every morning in that dreadful room and look out at the Empire State Building. That was one of her routines because it made her think of all the possibilities out there. And yes, her resilience was extraordinary, but not necessarily surprising. I think that is just how you learn to survive as a kid like her. And what I think is most important to know about her is that while she is a magnificent person, she's somebody with so much intelligence and talent, power, athleticism. She was on the honorable when I met her. She is not atypical. I think a lot of kids have her promise.

And we always focus on the one who gets out, the one who breaks through. This is written into the American narrative of meritocracy that, you know through. And then that focuses, that would force us to look at the systems that keep them mired in their circumstances. Reading this book, Andrea, I was reminded there was a TV show on British television a couple of years ago. I think it was called Benefit Street. And it was a pretty unsparing documentary series about um a street of houses i think in the north of england which is you know a place that they were always bound to pick the north of england and a lot of people were receiving various kinds of benefits and it was fabulously successful this

documentary series but it was regarded by a lot of people as um it's not a very nice phrase but i'm going to use it anyway um, poverty porn was what people called it. So those of us fortunate enough to be middle class, in most cases, people like me are probably four generations away from grinding poverty, but it's still in the family psyche somewhere, isn't it? We're all from somewhere. We would indulge in this and we would be absolutely horrified.

But we'd also turn it off and forget all about it after it was over. Is there an element of that with people who've read your book and learned from it, perhaps, but then nothing in their lives has changed one iota? Well, I'm very happy that I have yet to hear anybody describe my book in that way. And I was, of course, nervous about the way that they see themselves, which is often as flawed or complex, but also people with dignity, people who are struggling in ways that often are not captured by a documentary series that focuses on how someone might be working the system, for example. That then transcends the kind of quote unquote poverty porn that you're talking about. You said something really interesting. You said that we're four generations from this. We all come from something. That's exactly right.

What was that series? And I haven't seen it. Benefit Street focusing on it was focusing on people currently trapped, right? Yeah, yeah. We often focus on that, right? We focus on the public safety net, and we talk about how people live off of it or how people benefit from it. Whereas in the United States, we rarely talk about the private safety net, which is five generations in. Yes. White

families to amass nearly 10 times the median net worth of Black families. And that story goes back to a lot of it, to the 1950s, to racist government policies that basically wired a whole population from joining the American dream, by being able to become homeowners, by being able to vote, by being able to get business loans and access to college. Well, I must admit, Andrea, until I read the book, I'd heard the Bob Marley song, Buffalo Soldier, any number of times. I didn't know what it meant. That was Dasani's great-grandfather, was that right? That's right. So he was a Buffalo Soldier.

Buffalo Soldiers are a proud tradition of Black infantry who were forced to serve in all Black regiments up until the 1960s, I believe it was 1950s, but he was, he joined in World War II at the peak of World War II. The army was put in an all Black regiment. This was at a time when even blood banks were segregated in the military. And he went, this was his ticket out of the South, out of the Jim Crow South, out of lynchings and the horrors of the South. He decided to go off with the army. He fought in Europe. He fought three major battles in Italy, returned with medals and had no hero's welcome though, because he was Black and he faced the same barriers that he was living in when he left. And that is the great irony of the story of the more

than one million Black infantry who served in World War II, is that they returned to a racist country after fighting Nazis and fascists abroad and were denied all the benefits that their white, many of the benefits that their white veterans, fellow white veterans received. Tell us just a little bit more about what then happens to Dasani. So one approach to poverty intervention is to separate a child from their family of origins, their community of origins, put them in a completely different space, and try to arm them with all the skills they need in order to move forward and not repeat the cycle of the generations that came before them by separating them. It's a controversial approach. It's an approach that has worked for plenty of the

children who go to Hershey. Hershey's a boarding school. Milton Hershey is a chocolate, was a chocolate magnet. And he modeled an entire town like Cadbury was modeled in fact, because of the Cadbury town in England after his name and him, and he gave his entire fortune to the school. And so 2000 children attend the school. They live kind of in this alternate universe. They leave their homes and move into homes with married couples who parent them. They have everything at their disposal, ballet classes, braces, full wardrobes, tutoring, you know, the perks of the upper middle class, I would say. And what happened to her, you're right,

she was exasperating to her teachers, but she was also an exhilarating presence because she had so much potential. When she got to Hershey, she took off and thrived. And for the first stretch, she was making huge leaps forward in terms of academics. She joined the track team. She became a cheerleader. The sky was the limit. But in her absence, because she was such an integral part of her family system, her family really suffered and eventually was broken up by the child welfare system. And when that happened, which was truly a tragedy for her, she couldn't survive the guilt she felt. It was a survivor's guilt. She just felt that she wasn't able to enjoy the privilege of her life, knowing that her siblings were suffering. And so she returned. How is your relationship with the family now?

And so she returned. How is your relationship with the family now? My relationship is close. I knew them for so long, saw them through so many phases. I would hope to stay in their lives. Obviously, it's different because I'm no longer writing about them. I was just with Dasani a few days ago. I mean, some financial good did come of the book as well for them, didn't it? Because that is complex, Andrea, isn't it?

come of the book as well for them, didn't it? Because that is complex, Andrea, isn't it? When you, you know, you win a Pulitzer Prize, you write a book, you know, that's how you make your living. Nobody's going to decry you that. But we should also mention that the family is better off because of it in real terms. So a portion of the proceeds of the book will absolutely go to the family and has gone to the family. I've given them, for example, the Pulitzer Prize money went to the family. And money, material gain is something that is tangible and important. And I felt that was absolutely the right and fair thing to do. It is their story and they should benefit from it as much as possible. And I hope to see much greater benefits coming their way. Andrea Elliott, the author of that Pulitzer Prize winning book,

Invisible Child, about the life and times of Dasani Coates. And it'd be really interesting to see what happens to Dasani in her fully adult life, wouldn't it? Yeah. You're left with no illusion about Dasani's strength, I think, in the book. So I hope she goes on to do whatever she wants to. The romantic kind of side of it is to imagine that she might go on to do extraordinary things with her life. But maybe she wants a quiet life, the life that she couldn't have as a child of, you know, one that's not afflicted by poverty and hunger and the vagaries of the social care system in America, in which case you might want to just remain very invisible to all of us. We are later in the week on Thursday, aren't we? We're talking to Barbara Kingsolver, who's a very, very successful American novelist. And she has written a book which has been very highly critically acclaimed called Demon Copperhead

and she's our guest on Thursday afternoon and she's writing about this is a fictional account of poverty in the Appalachian Mountains of the States isn't it? Yes and about the opioid addiction that has befallen many a person living in those communities. There was a really telling part, actually, in Andrea Elliott's book, where Chanel, who is Dasani's mum, talks about how she became an opioid addict. And she says, you know, I just had absolutely no idea that this stuff was going to be bad for me, because it was prescribed to me by a doctor. How could I have known that I was going to get into the most serious addiction of my life? And that's the story for everybody, really, at the start of an opioid addiction. Back in the day before, you know, we knew the true consequences of it, it was a prescription drug for pain relief. It was given in hospitals, it was given in GP surgeries, it was given after childbirth,

it was given to so many people. And if a doctor gives you a prescription, you wouldn't automatically think, here I go down a path of absolute hell, would you? No, you wouldn't. What's the name of the TV show I completely forgot? Dope Sick. Dope Sick, that's right, which I did try to watch. But was it Michael Keaton?

It was Michael Keaton, and I thought it was amazing. It's the story of the Sackler family and the part that they played in promoting OxyContin. It's a remarkable series, I think. Dope Sick is on Apple. Is it Apple TV? Oh, I don't know. I can't remember. I think it is Apple TV. Yeah. Kate's nodding, so it's Apple TV. Thank you very much for listening. We are back with an episode of Off.

I was going to say Off Sick. If only. Off the staff or off sick. We're off air and we're back tomorrow. There'll be some interesting chat live on the radio between three o'clock and five. Or you can just catch up with this old nonsense. But thank you for indulging us anyway. I'm watching through the screen.

It's not that I wasn't listening to you, obviously. I'm watching an episode of Pointless go out. And do you know what, Jane? It doesn't matter how many times I watch that programme, I still just can't really work out the basics of it. And I know that you share the confusion about this. I'll tell you why you're confused. It's not Pointless. It is Pointless.

That's not Pointless. That's Bradley Walsh. No, that's Pointless. What are you watching? Bradley Walsh. No, look, it says Pointless on the screen. You've transferred over to a parallel universe. There. There.

The man I'm seeing is the guy from... Oh, you can see a different screen because I'm looking at Bradley Walsh. You have been listening to Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Ben Mitchell. Now, you can listen to us on the free Times Radio app or you can download every episode from wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget that if you like what you heard and thought,

hey, I want to listen to this but live, then you can, Monday to Thursday, 3 till 5 on Times Radio. Embrace the live radio jeopardy. Thank you for listening, and hope you can join us off air very soon. Goodbye.