Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Weaponizing a jacket potato

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

Jane M's headphones only has sound coming through one ear but it's helping her feel closer to her dad (every cloud...) Fi and Jane M also discuss affairs, mini colanders and petrol stations.Plus, Fi speaks to The Times' Fashion Director Anna Murphy about her book 'Destination Fabulous', which is out now in paperback.Our next book club pick has been announced - A Dutiful Boy by Mohsin Zaidi.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] us on Instagram! @janeandfiAssistant Producer: Eve SalusburyTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I would go in at the statutory size, at the normal size of colander first, because I think you might just find that one a little bit annoying if you get home and you just want to rinse out some peas. VoiceOver describes what's happening on your iPhone screen. VoiceOver on. Settings. So you can navigate it just by listening. Books. Contacts. Calendar. Double tap to open. Breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11.

And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. Okay. Will you be all right with just the one ear? Yeah. It is quite strange. I'm fine with it. It's just, I'm just looking forward to when I go deaf in one ear and now I know what it's going to feel like.

Now I know how my dad feels. Okay. Yeah. How is your dad? Well, I didn't go home last night, so, because I went to Brixton. So I've moved into my new home, but they're well. So they're staying in your home in Brighton and you've come up to house sit for my friend.

Okay. Yeah. But they are tomorrow going to Canberra Sands for a couple of days to a little cottage that I've booked for them. And then they're having a little road trip round the Kent Corner, going to Margate. My dad was very poorly as a child and convalesced in Broadstairs. He hasn't been back for 75 years or whatever.

God, that'll be interesting. Yeah, yeah. And they haven't been to Margate in probably forever. So that's obviously changed a bit. Yes. Well, they'll be able to do that thing because when you go to Margate, as you're wandering around, you hear the same conversation being said by everybody. Well, hasn't it changed?

Hasn't it changed? Yeah. The thing is that I think my dad and I were talking about when we stopped going on holiday in England when I was a child because we had this one holiday in Cornwall where it was so windy camping in Cornwall when I was about five. And after that, they just decided we were never going on holiday in England again.

So, you know, there's a lot of England that they haven't seen for a while because we were always in Italy instead. Well, I think we're going to need some kind of an update on how they found Margate. The Kent Corner. Yeah, I'll get Kent Corner updates as the week goes on. Excellent.

Look forward to it very much indeed. Now, we're doing the podcast today in the presence of barbara uh so barbara is uh one of my cats and uh barbara has been painted so beautifully by caroline priestley and honestly caroline i just couldn't believe it when i opened the package you've absolutely nailed her that sounds a bit weird but you know what i mean uh and just from a photograph you haven't even met her but you have captured what would you say that look is jane um definitely threatening evil defiant i say i've definitely looked at my mum that way but not since i was 15 it is a very straight look that barbara's got i love barbara to bits i don't want anyone thinking that I'm nasty to my cats at all.

But she's got a glint in her eye. And sometimes when she's, you know, just headed upstairs and done some kind of defecation activity, she'll come back downstairs with exactly that look on her face. It just says, there you go. Yeah, I did that. There you go, Mum. But honestly, Caroline, it's just beautiful.

And I will be in touch because I can't just have a picture of Barbara. I've got to have all the other ones done now. Yeah. But Barbara would be perfectly happy if you just had one of her. Oh, she'd love it. Yeah. Yeah, she would love it. Yeah.

So thank you for your emails. I do understand that it was a bank holiday weekend. It's always a bit strange, isn't it, when your podcast is done by people other than the people who you're used to doing the podcast with and all of that kind of stuff but i have to say jane we jane garvey and i could not have wished for a better uh substitute dance partner than you and all our listeners just really really love hearing from you and all of your experiences so i would just like to say thank you for being well the fantastic and it's just

demeaning isn't it to say fill in but it's just lovely to have you on board and you're here for the whole week I'm honestly honoured to be a fill-in for you and Garvey it's um a tremendous privilege I am one of those you know I'm a I'm a big fan I was a big fan of the other place um you know when I'm not talking on this podcast I I'm listening to this podcast. So, you know, I'm a listener too. That's just silly, isn't it? That's just silly. But anyway, it is absolutely lovely. And people really do want to talk about America.

Can we start with America? Can we read the whole of this email? Because there's three points and all of them are very good. Well, you do sex first. Oh, okay. Has anyone ever said that to you before? I'm not even going to answer that. I mean, yes, and recently.

So this is from a listener who says, I think I better be anonymous today. I think you better be, yes. And I do agree that that would be wise, given the first paragraph. Sex is the subtitle of the first chunky paragraph. I thought Jane made a really interesting comment about open relationships and sex today, says our listener. I thought Jane made a really interesting comment about open

relationships and sex today, says our listener. I've been married for 28 years. I adore my husband. He's my best friend. He never bores me. We laugh, we travel and we constantly enjoy each other's company. I'm well aware I got one of the good ones and have zero interest in a relationship with any other man. However, after that length of time together, sex is just boring and we often don't bother. The love is still there, but it's like eating the same flavour of ice cream forever. It might be your favourite flavour, but sometimes you want to try butter pecan for a change. I am 100% confident, says our reader, that neither of us would want to have an affair, but I do sometimes think if there was a societal acceptable service where

you could go and have sex with a stranger just for fun without conversation or any other connection once in a while would older people's sexual needs be more satisfied the service could also be good for divorced people who fancy a bit of safe sex but have zero interest in a new relationship our listener says I have several female friends who feel that way too. Well, can I just say, I think the services are out there. Yeah, they are. If you go and find them. And I think it's brave of you to put that down in an email, actually, because I think a lot of people are doing that anyway,

without kind of, I don't know, without acknowledging the reasons why they are. And I think it's just so lovely that you recognise that you've got a fantastic marriage. I don't know, without acknowledging the reasons why they are. And I think it's just so lovely that you recognise that you've got a fantastic marriage, but actually, you know, there's something that's not quite being met. I mean, I do wonder whether your husband feels the same way and whether that's a conversation that you might want to have. It is very interesting.

I interviewed the great Esther Perel quite a few times and she says in her first book Mating in Captivity she says that an affair can really help a marriage because actually it can often reignite feelings um you're looking at me like Barbara well I suppose it's the definition of an affair because I think what our listener um has said so well are just the reasons for wanting to go and have sex with somebody. Sex, absolutely. So it's just, if you're going to compare

it to ice cream, then it is just wanting to try some other flavours. It's not wanting a different kind of pudding altogether. And it's not wanting to leave your dessert. Yeah, wanting to eat the pudding in a different place, etc. And so having an affair, you see, I always think that's different

because I think that is about emotion. And I think there's somebody else involved in that. Absolutely. And that could go wrong. No, I agree. But I think there can be affairs that are purely physical, just as there can be affairs that are purely emotional, which can be also, you know, quite damaging on all sides.

But I do think, yes, I agree with our listener. I think I've certainly, and lots of people I've interviewed who have said this, that they don't want to break up their relationship. They don't want to leave it. They don't want to change it. They don't want to swap it. But, you know, some people do want a little bit of variation in their sex life, particularly if you've been married for nearly three decades.

And I think certainly women are not encouraged to admit that very often it's not something we're supposed to want totally totally a very very wise male friend of mine said to me once that the that the problem with sex between the sexes is that men are told to treat their libido like some kind of a friend when they're growing up it becomes a thing you know it is it is something that sits alongside them it gets on board them in physics it embarrasses them when they're younger do you know what i mean you know exactly what i'm talking about and i'm not going to use explicit lyrics to describe that but it's quite a visible thing to men and the libido is as something you know that you get proud they can be proud of you get to parade it around to put it on absolutely and to keep it going and to keep it fed and all of that and women are taught the exact

opposite or were i think it is changing now but i still think a woman with a libido is regarded as a rather dangerous thing 100 so good on you our listener for just putting it down in such a delightful way um and i really hope that something, you know, I hope that something happens for you. I don't, I'd be very interested if you ever did have that conversation with your husband, how that all panned out. And I suppose the perfectly happy ending, don't laugh, is if it turns out that your partner feels exactly the same way. And then you can both kind of, you know, chug on out and do your thing and come back

and it doesn't disturb anything. But, yeah, keep us posted. Yeah, and I think it would be very interesting to know, I don't know if there is a way of knowing how this listener's partner feels, but do you remember we did that piece for the magazine a few weeks ago when it was people talking about their sex lives, the reality of their sex lives.

Well, it doesn't distinguish week from week, does it, Jane? To be honest. True that. I did some of the interviews and some of the people I interviewed, you know, admitted to me that they felt incredibly sad about their lack of sex in their marriage. And, you know, one person even admitted to me

that if it weren't for the children in their relationship, that person felt that they would have left that relationship because of the lack of sex. And I think, I don't know, I think some relationships, everyone's kind of OK with it. You know, it's a kind of like, oh, it's a shame, we don't really do that anymore, but we're kind of OK with it, we're comfortable.

And I think for other people, it causes a tremendous amount of pain., oh, it's a shame we don't really do that anymore, but we're kind of okay with it, we're comfortable. And I think for other people it causes a tremendous amount of pain. And I think it's really difficult and they feel unloved and unwanted and the lack of desire, you know, really sort of chips away at them. So I think every situation is different. And we need to be accepting, don't we, of anybody's choices. Shall we move on to Democrats, which is the final paragraph? Sex and Democrats not often found in the same email. Well, I mean, the bit in the middle of the sandwich is guns, and I'm just going to park that

for a second. We might do that tomorrow. But this is thoughtful about Democrats. The argument that Democrats are overly educated and aloof is a very old go-to for Republicans. I'm not sure when being educated became a negative, but here we are. America is rejecting science and history at an astounding rate in the classroom. We have Republican governors banning the teachings of documented history, and the proven science of many issues is being reported on cable TV as false. The irony of American politics right now is that the Republican Party has been taken over by evangelical Christians who could

not be more unlike Jesus and the Democrats are trying to pass legislation to care for the less fortunate. Democrats are far from perfect but what they are working on is much more the foundations of America than the self-called patriotic Trump voters. America is a country founded on welcoming immigrants. We are a country that is founded on a separation of church and state. This election year will have a terrible outcome regardless. If Trump wins, America, as we know it, will cease to exist. And if Trump loses, we will have an uprising. These are truly scary times to be living here, in brackets, particularly if you are a woman. So I don't doubt that all of what you say is true.

And I suppose after our conversation about it yesterday, what I hadn't really thought through before in that difference between our politics and American politics is that our left is founded on the working class, isn't it? But America's left is founded on the elite, you know, Camelot and all of that, and the establishment and the power in the Democrat circle. Well, partly, yes.

I think certainly sort of second half of the 20th century, possibly, the power. But there are similar kind of movements and shifts in that, you know, the old Rust Belt, where it was, you know, manual labour, and used to vote Democrat now is overwhelmingly Republican, you know, there's similar kind of models of shifting patterns in voting that have happened. But I think you're right, that is very interesting that the sort of the power elite, the power structures, certainly in the second half of the 20th century, definitely not from the working class in america yeah and the call to the working classes

is just so so different now isn't it because as soon as you put technology into the mix and as soon as you put ai on top of technology that that that feeling of uh you know the working class strength lying in manufacturing in bodies in working hard and all of that, is so threatened, I mean permanently threatened and reduced that whatever it is you're calling out to the working class with, it's just, I don't think it's moved on enough. I don't think it's not a clever enough call. It's a dangerous call, isn't it?

Hence the Make America Great Again stuff. But I couldn't think it's not a clever enough call. It's a dangerous call, isn't it? Hence the Make America Great Again stuff. But I couldn't agree more with our listener saying that whatever happens, it's going to be a terrible outcome. I do think it's a terrifying time because I think the last four years have proven, you know, I remember watching the events of January the 6th happen and just thinking there's no way that Trump can ever run again. And yet the belief that that election was stolen has really calcified. And now he's managing to raise more funds for him. Every time he's charged with another felony.

You know, people really do believe that on his side that it was a stolen election more than they ever did four years ago. And I think no one could have seen that coming. It is bizarre, really, really bizarre. So if he doesn't win this election, the sort of victim narrative is going to be stronger and deeper and more damaging to the Democrats than ever. Yeah, it's...

God, I feel stressed even just talking and thinking about it. It makes me very anxious. Final question about American politics, and then don't worry, we will move on because we've got TV to talk about, we've got someone who's had a terrible time with a financial advisor and we've got stories about being taught by your mum at school, all to come.

But just that thing about two really really old men yeah being representative of a country uh how's that happened well um i think one of the things that we don't really get to understand about america is how um you don't have anything like the 1922 committee i think i said this to jane the other day you don't have anything like the 1922 Committee. I think I said this to Jane the other day. You don't have anything like the 1922 Committee in America where people can put in, you know, letters of no confidence in their leader. It's this incredibly centralised, you know, monolithic power in a president. You don't have, you know, civil service in the same way.

Everyone who works for the president works for a president. You don't have, you know, civil service in the same way. Everyone who works for the president works for the president. They don't work for the party, you know, or the sort of centralised structure. So someone like Joe Biden has a tremendous amount of power as president in the same, in a different way to the way that a prime minister has here. So there are very few challenges to that authority. He's not surrounded by people saying, well, you thought about what's better for the party. So I think in this particular case, part of the problem is that they don't want to cede power to other people and there's no one encouraging them to.

So they haven't allowed people to come up through the ranks. I mean, there's obviously a bigger problem in that, you know, a longer problem in that, why you don't have longer problem in that way. You don't have anyone even in their 50s or 60s, let alone in their 40s. Yeah, it just seems so bizarre because I wouldn't have said that America as a society really venerates its elderly population. No, it's quite ageist in many ways. It's much more ageist than ours in many ways.

Well, look, let's just take some deep breaths and move on. I'm going to inject a note of levity here, and it's also an egotistical one, because Glyn is amongst a couple of people who've pointed out that I've absolutely made it, because my name was an answer in this week's Round Britain quiz on Radio 4. I love this.

You know what? Die happy, mic drop, Glyn. But this is the question. And I thought when I first read it, I thought, Glyn, that you'd attached the wrong thing. So I just didn't get it at all. It took me a few reads, actually. And I still don't know the first answer.

So the question was, why might you find Billy Casper's unforgiving teacher, the creator of Atlanta, and one for whom listening was a long-term project in Yeovil Town? It's just a bizarre formation of words. It's a very strange question. I know who the creator of Atlanta was, that's Donald Glover. Yeah. Billy Casper's unforgiving teacher. I'm stumped. I'm stumped on that.

And Yeovil? No idea. No? Okay. But we know that you were yes so the listening project for a very long time yeah yeah uh so anyways well spotted glenn and thank you very much for that yeah i know but you know what my mother will be absolutely delighted by that i think it's safe to say, and I hope that this, you know, doesn't impinge on my future here at Times Radio, but my mother has not managed to leave Radio 4

to join her daughter on the afternoon show or the podcast. So, yeah, she's still back listening to that. I'm sorry about that. She'll come on board one day. Can I just talk about Sue's teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny colander? Oh, please do. So this is a lovely message from Sue who's in Ireland and has responded to my lack of colander

by telling us that she has two colanders in her life. A big one that she rarely uses, exactly Sue, and a teeny weeny one photographed for size beside her breakfast mug and teaspoon to show scale. And it is very teeny. She uses it every single morning to wash a handful of blueberries for her porridge. She doesn't know what she'd do without it, she says.

Bought it in Germany years ago. No idea if and where they would be available nowadays. She loves it. I should probably do a search for a teeny tiny colander, although I probably wouldn't use that one either, but it would be novel. I would go in at the statutory size, at the normal size of colander first,

because I think you might just find that one a little bit annoying if you get home and you just want to rinse out some peas for a decent meal. I mean, I love that, the very, very specific, tiny one for the little blueberries, but I'd just go normal size, Jane. If I, you know, if I've been no other use to you in your life at all, just that advice about colanders I'd really like you to take. I feel quite protective of your domestic fallibilities already. Yeah, but I've got a very clean outside area thanks to the power washer. So, for now.

Much love to you both and to Jane G, says Leslie. This is the briefest of brief correspondences, but I couldn't let it go past without wondering, do you or any of your other listeners have an involuntary reaction to the name Michael Parkinson? I ask because the second his name was read out in your latest podcast, I sang internally

Michael Parkinson, Lisa Goddard and Lionel Blair. I can't do the tune. Of course, maybe nobody else was a lazy-ish student in the 90s when Give Us a Clue was a daytime TV favourite. My very dear pal and flatmate Gwen and I used to sing it at any given opportunity and I'm pretty sure we sang the Going for Gold theme tune too.

Oh, I also love Going for Gold. What happy memories. Was that before or after Lunchtime Neighbours? Before, wasn't it? No, because it wasn't the news before Neighbours. Please do let us know if you can recall what came before and after. What flanked Lunchtime Neighbours?

I think going for gold might have been for the very, very lazy students who didn't move on after the first edition of Neighbours. Well, I'm going to do a seamless link and say maybe that's because they'd just eaten a jacket potato. There was some lunchtime torpor. neighbours. Well, I'm going to do a seamless link and say maybe that's because they'd just eaten a jacket potato. There we go. And there was some lunchtime torpor. So we've read very few of the jacket

many, many jacket potato emails which flooded in over the weekend. And I'd just like to read this one from Rachel from Sydney. It actually covers two topics having been to Cambridge and jacket potatoes. Rachel says your comment that everyone who'd gone to Cambridge the potatoes. Rachel says,

your comment that everyone who'd gone to Cambridge, the other Jane's comment, not me, everyone who'd gone to Cambridge bangs on about it, surprised me, says Rachel. I've got a PhD from Cambridge, but I hardly ever mention it. I would normally never volunteer this information and most of my university friends

from around the same time are the same. I only use the title doctor when booking a plane ticket. And if I'm asked why I spent time in England, I usually vaguely say to study and work. That's very modest of you, Rachel. But she also says it was also moving to Cambridge that I saw my first ever jacket potato. Another student in my shared house threw a whole giant potato unpeeled into the microwave, turned it on, then left it to slowly shrivel and die for 30 minutes, 30 minutes in a microwave. She then ate it with some melted butter on top.

I was horrified, says Rachel. It looked and smelled disgusting. And I didn't believe her when she told me this was really common and absolutely everyone eats it here. I also didn't believe her when she told me that there was a fast food chain that sold only jacket potatoes. But, after 24 years, I stand corrected.

We talked a lot about Spudulica. Jane and I. Spudulica. Thank you, Rachel. I love the way you just threaded those various seams of the show together. I'm witty, though, being a little bit concerned. 30 minutes in the microwave. You know when they just get that kind of hard pumice stone inside.

Yeah, you'd be able to use that as a weapon afterwards. Yeah, that's way too long, isn't it? Unless it was, I guess, a very powerless microwave. Well, maybe if it was back in the day, it might have been. Right, now we're going to have to steady ourselves against something firm for this email, and I chuck it out into our ether because I wonder whether anybody else has had the

same kind of experience. It's going to remain anonymous, but my sympathies are with you, dear listener. You recently were talking about pensions and wills and I just wanted to share the most extraordinary conversation my husband and I had with our new financial advisor. Without wanting to give away our identities, it's fair to say that I gave up my career to support my husband in his new business about six years ago. Long story short, the financial advisor only believes it's worth taking out critical illness and death insurance for my husband and not me. It is true that he is the one out on the tools, so to speak, but I do everything else. I'm marketing, PR, accounts, marketing pr accounts receptionist sales it and in the home

i'm literally responsible for everything we've been married well over 20 years he still can't put on the dishwasher or the washing machine without asking he has no idea how to do online banking doesn't cook clean or sort out the kids sort out insurances or holidays etc what a keeper i could go on but i'm sure he's lovely. I think you get the gist. I had to argue that, yes, I was worth some monetary amount because if I die before him, he doesn't have a clue and he would therefore need money to keep him going for months, if not years, because he wouldn't be able to work

while he tries to learn everything while sorting out my funeral and everything that goes with it when someone dies. If he, God god forbid gets a terminal illness or dies i can go out and earn money across multiple industries because of my skill set he has a much more limited choice and therefore would need the money more than i would can anyone else relate well i would be really interested to hear from people if they've had a similar experience but also i think that just says so much about the prejudice. It says so much about financial advisors as well.

I mean, how dare you suggest that one half of a couple is the only one worthy of having life insurance. But it just puts no value on domestic services, which are usually being done for free, but you would then have to pay somebody to do them that's the point because you've got a lovely wife who's doing it all you know and fair enough i mean it doesn't sound like they're unhappy at all so i don't want to plant that kind of seed in anybody's mind but i'm absolutely with you on being outraged by that and i just i really

hope that you didn't give the financial advisor any of your money i just sent him packing and you know find a better one maybe find a woman maybe find a woman so yeah um you've bought a book in today you've got a book into school today and actually we've had an email about the book from eileen uh she said that she also bought that book for her mother um forgetting that her mother was a bit straight laced this is david niveniven's book, by the way, The Moon is a Balloon. A few months later, she borrowed it. But she'd forgotten that her mother was a bit straight-laced, only to discover that her mum had crossed out every single swear word in the book.

And apparently there was a lot. So I look forward to that. Before we do the reading, can I tell you my David Niven story? Oh, God, please. It's quite long. So many, many, many years ago uh sort of between jobs i had worked at the sunday times in my first job and then i'd gone to another newspaper and then i was freelance for a while and i ended up weirdly being a sort of stunt girl for the driving section

it was very odd i drove tanks and went on the back of motorbikes and things like that um and one weekend i was dispatched to go to sussex to interview a man who would, a former RAF pilot who'd flown in the Battle of Britain, squadron leader Christopher Riddle. And he was amazing. I turned up and he'd raised a flagpole in his garden and he had his RAF squadron tie on. And we were interviewing him because of the Goodwood revival. And one of the bases that he'd taken off from was Goodwood and another air base called Tangmere nearby. So he must have been nearly 90 when I interviewed him and he's sadly since passed away, understandably.

This was about 15 years ago. But he was just full of these incredible tales about being in this squadron. So he was in this very fast squadron called 601 Squadron, all of whom had been members of Whites, the club. And it was basically, there's a story here, because I actually went and looked it up on Wikipedia, potential recruits to this squadron, which was a sort of, you know, what do you call it? Amateur squadron. Anyway, they were applied with alcohol to see if they would behave inappropriately by the son of the Duke of Westminster.

A millionaire's squadron, it was called. And apparently, rather than the rigid discipline of the regular service, they lined their uniforms with bright red silk, drove fast sports cars. The squadron car park was said to resemble a Concorde d'Elegance. Anyway, so he was in this fast squadron with David Niven. And he was telling me that they would go up a lot of the planes were their own planes by the way, I don't think

the Spitfires and the Hurricanes were their own planes but they had quite a lot of their own planes but he was telling me that they would go up and have these dogfights with the Germans over the channel in the Battle of Britain and it made them kind of a little bit aroused, like they loved the sort of adrenaline of these dogfights over the channel with the Germans.

So they'd come back down and land and then they'd want to take out girls in their sports cars, understandably, because they were, you know, feeling a little bit pleased with themselves having had a dogfight with a measuresmith. Anyway, because of the... Well, I don't doubt that. It's what lies at the heart of the Top Gun franchise

and many other movies, Jane. Exactly. But because there was a war on, petrol was rationed. So in order to be able to keep taking girls out in their sports cars, 601 Squadron bought their own petrol station. Oh, my word. Oh, my word. So I've always just had a very soft spot for David Niven and all of his millionaire aviator friends,

just buying petrol stations so they can take girls out. Well, that story doesn't surprise me, just having read some chunks of David Niven's book. millionaire aviator friends just buying petrol stations so they can take girls out well that story doesn't surprise me just having read uh some chunks of david niven's book and i mean the thing to remember with with david niven is that he never set himself up as you know writing this book you know it is no angela's ashes he's not lit the brazier of social injustice and toasted his chest nights on the flames of equality. He's just writing about a very privileged life and, you know, the weirdness that kind of goes with it.

So I've picked quite a choice little paragraph, which I'm going to do after we've heard our interview of the day. And Jane and I, just for the next three days, you're going to do Michael Parkinson tomorrow. It's basically just a little book at bedtime after you get to the end of the interview. So you will rejoin us and we'll just do a little reading

and then say goodnight. So David Niven is to come. So you can navigate it just by listening. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. Now in Destination Fabulous, the Times fashion director, Anna Murphy Murphy takes us on a journey around midlife and beyond, looking ahead to what we might expect when we hit 50 or thereabouts. It's full of useful tips about changing our wardrobes, our mindsets and our facial routines, our exercise and even our friendships to fit with the place we now find ourselves in. And I loved it, every single moment of it. Reading it felt like sitting in a very sunny, happy spot for half an hour or so every day. The book is also full of mentions of work done by other people, so psychologists, writers,

thoughtful people with degrees, poets, all of which Anna distills from what I imagine must be quite a library, detailing her own journey. Would that be right, Anna Murphy, that you've been on something of a journey yourself? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's what life is, isn't it, really? You start at the beginning and at some point you get to the end and there's certainly going to be some bumps in the roads and some twists and turns and the decades in between. And yeah, that was really the essence of kind of what I wanted to communicate in the book. I think there's this narrative out there in society that ageing is a downhill slope. Ageing is something to be feared, ageing is something to be fought

against. And actually, what if your road can kind of broaden out? What if you can have a more expansive time in your later life than you maybe had when you were younger? And actually, I think a starting point for me was realising being young is quite tough. I mean, again, we're all drilled with this idea we all want to be 20. But if you look back to what you're actually like at 20, you were probably in some ways having a fantastic time, in some ways having quite a hard time. So it's sort of about celebrating actually sort of not being 20 and a kind of toolkit from things that have come to me via being fashion director of the times, you know, fashion and beauty tips, but also, as you suggest, reading that's nothing

to do with, you know, wearing a ridiculous coloured velvet blazer. Well, I mean, you always look really fabulous. Of course you do. It'd be terrible if you just turned up in a pair of scaffolded pants and a t-shirt next week's look no you always look wonderful um but i think it's always really interesting to hear people's thought process about getting to that kind of look because you don't just chuck on what you're wearing uh you're a very very keen supporter of the bright flashes of color do you want to just talk us through today's? Well, yes, I think you'll find I'm just wearing, as discussed, a simple Kingfisher blue blazer, I'm going to call it, from me and Em, one of my favourite brands. Sunspell tank top, knitted tank.

I'm wearing some ridiculous white boots that make me think of a Noel Strickfield novel. I think she wrote a novel called White Boots. You know, why not wear white boots when you're 52? I think for me, obviously, I've always been interested in the power of clothes. It's my job to be interested in the power of clothes. But I've really come to see as I've got older, how you can change preconceptions about yourself by the way you dress. You know, if you always have something

surprising about your look, and it doesn't matter what that is, all that matters is the surprising thing that makes you happy, then actually you start to kind of bust cliches about you know what being 52 or indeed 82 is. I really like your point about youth being a place that is quite turbulent actually and I think never more so than now I wouldn't be a 20-something young woman now for all of the tea and chai. And I mean, I just have no desire to roll back the years of my life at all. I mean, apart from anything else, just that, what is being chucked at young women and men about their appearance is so troubling, actually, isn't it? They can't brush it off. is so troubling, actually, isn't it? They can't brush it off.

So hard. And I think what it's really easy to forget is that as you get older, you have points of reference. I mean, one of the most interesting ideas that I came across in my research was this neurologist, Daniel Levitan, and he talks about this idea of generalisation in the mind. And generalisation is essentially cross-referencing. So it's essentially experience. So is this thing I'm going through now, is anything that's happened to me in the past relevant to it? What do I know about this? And of course, when you are our kind of age, you have much more generalisation to draw on

than when you're young, when everything's coming at you afresh. You don't have those points of reference. And I think for me, so much about growing old well is about keeping two different seemingly oppositional things in play at once. And generalisation with also a kind of enjoyment of the moment and enjoyment of the specificity of now is a really kind of key superpower that we can have as older people. And I think we do have to set, and again, especially as women,

I think we have to set a really good example about the benefits of getting older. Because what's being chucked at our young women is a certain way of looking and a certain way of behaving. Loads of voices like ours telling them to not worry about it without actually offering them a solution to it.

And of course one of the solutions is to say you come through it and you come to a much nicer place in the world which is much more forgiving yeah again completely missing from the story i think is that feeling of kind of freedom and liberty it's not to say that there aren't complications it's not to say that there aren't duties and responsibilities that come up as you get older, maybe around your parents or whatever. But you I think you have a chance to kind of inhabit your own space in a way that it's really, really hard to do. And in fact, a conversation I had very early on in the kind of genesis of this book was with a group of friends who were in their late 20s and early 30s, all of them female. And one of them threw out the question, oh, you know, what age

could you go back to if you what age could you go back to if if if you could uh would you go back to and so these are all women who were about 20 years younger than me and they all started throwing out ages oh you know 18 22 25 and and i didn't and eventually they noticed that i hadn't given an age and so one of them said well anna you know what about you and i said well you know i wouldn't go back because back is the operative word. You know, I've worked jolly hard to be where I'm at. There's been some learning, some of it fairly unpleasant as is inevitably the case. Why would I go back, back is the operative word

and these young women were absolutely gobsmacked at the idea that I wouldn't do that and of course they are because this message is not out there and the message that is out there is, you know, do this stuff to your face. These are also women, some of whom already having so-called tweakments. You know, there's huge amounts of money being made out of making people afraid of getting older, and there's no money to be made out of making us embrace it. Yeah, very true. And actually, on that point, you do point out that it's an industry, the treatment industry, that recruits you at a very young age, on the basis

that it can sell you something every three or four months that you're going to need for the rest of your life. So the roadmap that it creates for you is never ending. And the future destination is what we just don't know, do we? Yeah, yeah i mean this is such newfangled stuff so we're only really really starting to see faces that are a few decades into having procedures whether they're smaller or larger and you know in general and the typically the women who have been doing it for decades they're outliers they're wealthy women they're well-known women the outlook's not that pretty. I mean, I would argue even from a position of vanity, you know, sure, I look in the bathroom mirror,

there's lines I don't like, but I'd rather that than I think losing control of your face, which is what very often happens when you kind of cede control essentially to someone else who's making money off you. And then the person who's looking at you does that really odd kind of addition of years doesn't it so you see someone who's had too much work on their face and you think well they're they're trying to look 50 they're probably 60 but you tend to think in your head they're 70 just because you can't work out what their natural age is so you might not win yeah if that's you know your aim anyway well there's a brilliant quote. I was once chatting to the recently departed Iris Atfel.

You know, it was such a wonderful style icon. You're well into 100 and beyond. And she said to me, you know, I never have anything done because I've got a lot of friends who ended up looking like a Picasso. And I think, you know, that's a slightly extreme way of putting it. But, you know, that is the risk. I mean, I think the know that's a slightly extreme way of putting it but you know that is the risk I mean I think the other point as well the way we um the way we see our own face and to your point especially with the rise of social media and our phones we anatomize our own face in the way we

don't anatomize other people's face you know when I see you um I think oh you know she look happy is she you know I don't think oh there's a line there that didn't used to be there so so we we just don't look at our faces in the right way and I think fundamentally we don't love our faces we're taught to see what the problems are rather than to kind of apprehend the whole which is if you're having as good a life as you can have doing your thing that's there's a potency to that. There's some very good stuff about challenging your mindset around relationships as well in your book. And the point that you made about power, I thought was absolutely brilliant. It's based on the power that lies between a sibling's relationship, which is often the first

big relationship that we have. But you make this very good point about actually really try and walk away in later life from relationships of any kind that have power at their heart. Yeah, I mean, again, this is something I wouldn't have had a clue about decades ago. And, you know, I do just want to underline, it's not as if this book means I've got everything sorted, because obviously I very much don't have. But I think, yes, that as you suggest, those early

defining relationships do tend to be about power. You know, you're the elder sibling and so you have power or you're the younger sibling and you don't. Your parents have power over you. Your teachers have power over you. I think that's why for many of us actually being young, and again, we forget this, can be quite a frustrating period. I mean, I remember just being desperate to be grown up so people could stop telling me what to do. And I could decide what I wanted to do for myself. So yeah, I think growing older is an opportunity to recalibrate when where necessary, and find in as much as one can relationships between equals. And that's certainly something that I've been able to do. And that just means a huge amount to me. What is peach luck? Oh yes I'm slightly obsessed with peach luck yes well well uh one of the more surprising things possibly about Anna Murphy Fashion Alert of the Times is

I'm a bit of a I've become somewhere along the way a bit of a hippie I'm quite open to alternative thinking and one of the areas of thinking I've been really fascinated by is Chinese medicine. And in Chinese medicine, one of the diagnostic tools is your face, essentially. So they read the face to tell you kind of what's wrong with you. And again, I think we know this ourselves. You can tell if a friend looks hungover or miserable or delighted or whatever. It's just in Chinese medicine, it's much more diagnostic in the kind of narrowest sense. So peach luck is something that is readable in the face. And peach luck is essentially something that babies are naturally born with. It's that

sort of juicy, squidgy cheekiness that little babies have. And typically, somewhere along the way, people tend to kind of lose their peach luck. But the Chinese medicine thinking is, somewhere along the way, people tend to kind of lose their peach luck. But the Chinese medicine thinking is, you can get it back by kind of, again, I'm using a slightly naff phrase, living your best life. And the example in one of the books I've got on face reading is Eleanor Roosevelt, you know, former wife of a former president of the United States, obviously. And there's a picture of her in the book when she's a kind of bit of an entity in her early 20s, looks like nobody much, really. And then there's a picture of her as a much, much older woman when she is Eleanor Roosevelt, capital E, capital R. And she has come alive, I suppose, is the best way to put it.

And what she's manifesting is peach luck. She's kind of stepped into her Eleanor Roosevelt-ness. And that is visible in her face. And I have one friend in particular who's a bit older than me. And I remember her, like everyone, she's had some things to deal with in her life. Her husband passed away and left her with two young children many years ago. And she once said to me, oh, you know, I actually look better now in my late 60s than I did when I was younger. And I sort of didn't really believe that. And then I saw a picture of a much younger woman and she's right. And what she's got, because the death of her husband prompted a kind of journey, I suppose, of self-discovery, what she's got is her peach luck. Yeah, it's one of many lovely examples that you use in the book. Can you do just 30 seconds on

the joy of a handstand, Anna Murphy? Why does a handstand mean so much to you? Have I only got 30 seconds? Well, again, you know, mad things you would never expect to get into. I mean, I think such a great piece of advice for life is not only prepare to be surprised, but set out to surprise yourself. And I was that person who gave up gym when I couldn't do a backwards roll after, you know, about five sessions when I was probably about five. And here I am, you know, many, many years later, trying and quite often failing to do a handstand. It's the perfect, in the book, I'm obsessed with balance. As I said, I'm obsessed with these keeping two oppositional things in balance and even clothes. They seem to

be a superficial thing, but I would argue they're a way you connect with the world. And handstand is the ultimate example of balance. So if you're doing a handstand properly, it's strength and flexibility in equal measure. It's also, if I'm going to really geek out, it's your sympathetic and your parasympathetic nervous systems working at the same level. And it's also just fun. So you describe it as feeling like flying. If you get it right, you feel like you're flying. That's amazing.

And what's incredible is you can be in a room of people who are decades younger than you and you can be sort of doing what they're doing. The thing I love more generally about yoga, which is how I discovered handstand, is if you just kind of keep on showing up, whatever age you're at, you again, you start a journey, you improve day by day. And there's a very inspirational character I mentioned in the book, Vanda Scaravelli. She was an Italian. She started yoga in her early 50s. She died in her 90s. And there are these remarkable pictures of her as a very old lady, standing and bending so far back that her hands

almost touch the floor, but don't. So, i.e. unbelievable strength and mobility that she only started working on in her 50s. Well, that'll be your next book, won't it? Yes. Backbending with Anna. Backbends in your 90s. Anna Murphy and Destination Fabulous is out in paperback now. Honestly, I just enjoyed every moment of reading that book. It was just really, really lovely and really optimistic

and really hopeful and also not too far up its own arse. That's the bit that we can say on the podcast that we can't say on the live radio show. So would you like now a little bit of David Niven? I can't wait for a little bit of Niven. So settle back, everybody. We joined David in the... I'm just twirling my moustache.

Please could you? In the Marcia Polo Club as a young man. I think that's somewhere on the... It's in the pink bit of the map. It'll be Palma. No, it's somewhere in the colonies. It's somewhere off in the British Empire way back when. So picture that scene.

Here we go. There was a professionally languid captain in the headquarters wing who wore a monocle. His wife was very pretty in a sort of chocolate boxy way and could have been described in polite society as a flirt. Anywhere else she would have been called a cock teaser. I had

its true nibbled her ear and snapped her garter a couple of times whilst watching polo from her car but nothing more. So I was all unsuspecting when a runner informed me that the captain wished to see me immediately in his company office. I entered and saluted. He was busy looking over some ammunition returns with the quartermaster sergeant. I fidgeted around for quite a while, but he still did not look up. Finally, head still down, he spoke.

Niven, are you very much in love with my wife? My toes tried to grip the floor through my brogues to stop me from keeling over. No, sir, not at all, sir, I murmured. Oh, sorry, I didn't murmur. No, sir, not at all, sir, I murmured. And then for no apparent reason, I added, thank you very much, sir. Well, if you're not, said the captain, putting some papers in a folder, be a good chap. Don't go telling her that you are upset, so you know. Now, quartermaster sergeant, about the range allotment of 303. I saluted the top of his head and withdrew. After that

I decided to be a good deal more selective in my nibbling and snapping. Good night everybody. Well done for getting to the end of another episode of Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. And don't forget, there is even more of us every afternoon on Times Radio.

It's Monday to Thursday, three till five. You can pop us on when you're pottering around the house or heading out in the car on the school run or running a bank. Thank you for joining us. And we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon. Don't be so silly. Running a bank? I know, ladies.

A lady listener. I know, sorry. Breakfast with, Double tap to open. Breakfast with Anna, from 10 to 11. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone.