Off Air... with Jane and Fi - We're not impressed by your thunderous sounds!

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Morning campers! After finding out that this is how many of you start your day, Fi calls a register of early risers. With Jane off this week, producer Hannah steps in to talk about men oversharing online about the fit of their underwear, heavenly feet, and owl phobias.Our book club pick is a collection of short stories! 'Interpreter of Maladies' is by Jhumpa Lahiri. You 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: Hannah Quinn and Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Are we on? Yes, ready when you are. Brilliant. The voice that you can hear on the other microphone is that of Hannah Quinn. Are you too young to remember Dr Quinn Medicine Woman? Oh, I am sadly. I wonder if I'm related. Dr Quinn Medicine Woman starred Jane Seymour,

and she rode around, I'm going to say, would it be kind of the end of the 1800s into the 9,000, into the 1900s. I'm thinking it was the Wild West and she was a medicine woman with a bag and she just looked wonderful. She always was on horseback and obviously she saved lives.

And she's the only other Quinn, I know. I'm going to pull her up. Yeah, pull her up. Jane seemed, she was very, very beautiful. She was a Bond girl as well. And that's all I know about Dr. Quinn, medicine woman actually. out of Little House on the Prairie

and Dr. Quinn Medicine I would have chosen her. She's absolutely lovely. Now many, many, many of you listen to offer in the morning and I don't know why I find that surprising but I suppose it's just I think we're really, really

bred in this country to do a news program in the morning or a great big whopper of a music show and so the idea that you would choose your own podcast and choose your own listening in the morning is joyful and fantastic. I'm not bold enough to do it, Anna, are you? It's making me think we need to rethink the live show, to be honest, Finn. Start with all the important topic. Men's underwear.

Really get into it. Yeah, I would love to start our afternoon show 2 till 4 in the afternoon. While corporate Cathy's away and more on that in a moment, I'll do the corporate Cathy, 2 till 4 in the afternoon, available free on the Times Radio, app full of useful stuff and an awful lot of stuff that's not useful but it might be useful to somebody

but we're still very much in that mode of put the top story first, aren't we? On the afternoon show but I have been pushing for a while to just put a non-top story at 2 o'clock because I think by the time you get to 2 o'clock you've just had it. Yeah, let's do it but we don't want to start with men's pants

we're going to come to men's pants in a moment but many of you are listening in the morning and that's absolutely lovely. I'm going to give you a great big roll pool So a very good morning to Linda, who's in New Zealand. Matt is in Hong Kong. Kate is in Devon. Christina is somewhere.

I'd like to do my makeup whilst tearing about your rhinos, flaky feet and off. Good for you. Connie is in Aberdeenshire. Sue joins us from Sidmouth. We definitely needed some music for this, didn't we? Plum is in the north in Edinburgh. She says, don't get me started on that.

Isabel is an a jaunt to the Marie de Bouganuf. So I'm presuming that you're somewhere in France. And actually, gosh, we need to talk about what's happening in France and in Spain. Hopefully we will get to that in this episode. But I promise that we'll talk about it across the week if we don't. Lou joins us from, oh my goodness, Lou is a private chef in a high-end swanky villa in the north of Corfu. And she lives in Corfu Town.

and leaves for work just before seven passing by a well-known German supermarket to shop for breakfast, croissant and bread. They open about 7am, being Greek, 7 o'clock opening time is not always on the dot of 7, and Lou finds herself loaded up with shopping, heading to work. The drive takes anywhere between 30 and 50 minutes

depending on whether or not there's an empty road or she gets caught behind a slow bus cement mixer or water lorry. Your show also links my lovely friend Harriet and I, who's back in London, and we talk most days for about an hour, another subject you touched on, what does anyone talk about daily for so long? You did ask.

Well, very good morning to you, and we will pass on your kind invitation for Jane to visit Corfu. I'm sure she will get around to that. Aishan joins us from Istanbul. She tried to come to the barbican last year, but in fact it was only your daughter who came very kind of her to do that. Rebecca joins us from Sydney, and a final one is Lindy, who joins us from Christchurch in New.

New Zealand. Right, we're all present and correct. The register has been called. Off we go. Jane is up in Liverpool and possibly for the whole of this week because her father needs a change in background facilities. So Jane and Alison are being very lovely daughters and they're making sure that that change in facilities goes well. So I will be here all week. Hannah will be here all week. You look terrified. I am. Do you know what? I'm literally, I'm looking through these emails now and I have to give you both a lot of credit because I just sit here and press the buttons, well, you've got all of this to manage and it's actually a lot to think about. Well, manage is doing some very, very good work in that sentence, isn't it, Anna?

Because we don't really manage them at all, but it's kind of you to say that. It is always a huge inbox on the Monday. It is. So it's much bigger than other days during the week. And we do read every single one of them. And do you find it a bit weird then when you come to the podcast and you read through all of the emails to work out on what basis some get read out and some don't. Yeah. Yeah. We don't understand it either. No, I know. I know. Because the pod,

it just kind of takes on its own narrative, doesn't it? And you go from one place to another. It was funny the other day on the live show, we were doing a pod trail. And I was having to think of things, you know, like topics we've been discussing recently. It's just such a wide variety. It's a very wide variety. But also, don't you find that you can't remember them? No, I know. They're so important. They're so important in our our lives at the time. We get very, very caught up with them. And then quite often if Jade and I are doing that trail live on it, we'll look at the other one and go, what are we talking about? And the other one, and she goes, oh my God, I don't know what it is. Because it's the way that women talk, we're like

basking sharks, haven't we? We just, we're ingest absolutely everything. And I always think as well that the way that women taught, we give a lot of time to each other when we're talking about stuff. And then in order for us to actually stay sane, we have to dump some of that, don't we? You've got to let it go. It's good to let it go. So you can be fresh for the next onslaught. And there always is. And your topics are just completely fantastic. I have given Hannah, because she's young and she can take it, some of your emails about male pants. And we will get to those in just a moment. Especially the photographs of men's pants. Brilliant. Yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. Sandals ladies and having an NWPM.

This one comes in from Rachel who says, I keep wondering whether I should continue to email or stay as a passive and avid consumer. I've come off social media, amazing, don't miss it. So I don't really know how these things work anymore. I like your podcast so much. I've listened since I discovered you in the pandemic. I'm going to carry on regardless.

Here goes three things. Well, we're very, very glad, Rachel, that you've leapt aboard on the, email bandwagon. You requested pictures of attractive, comfy sandals a while ago. See attached my very comfy heavenly feet, and that's the brand name. They've got a chunky soul, perfect for people with a history of,

is it plantar fasciitis? I hope I've got that right. Plantificitis. Oh, brilliant. I think maybe. Yeah. I mean, one of my friends at school had it. I had to carry her D.AV.

Rucksack because of a plantafiitis. I wasn't very happy about it, actually. I think that's illegal. I know, yeah, I was carrying two. And I think there should have been other precar. That's not against her. I understand it. It's not nice to have, but, you know,

that they should have found another person to carry the backpack. Very much. Well, she shouldn't have been on the expedition. What level had you achieved? Was it the gold? It was the bronze, and I had to stop there. I had to stop there. No more of that.

Okay, well, I'm sure that Prince Philip wouldn't judge you. Or would he, Hannah? Oh, gosh. We will never know. Adjustable straps over the toes. which do a great job of hiding a bunyan and Rachel qualifies on both counts. She has admitted that herself.

And they do look very nice indeed actually so we're always happy to pass on a good recommendation. They are cheaper than fit flops, also a great brand for the same foot issues but quite expensive. Heavenly feet are much more affordable. Now, on topic number two, you asked about whether or not we should say ladies or women,

I prefer women, but I have to admit it feels odd sometimes and sometimes it feels a little offensive. But isn't that curious? Why should that be? It must be some sort of entrenched patriarchy, yet to be expelled from my feminist self. But ladies sounds patronising. So what is going on there? I agree.

I agree. I think it's because if we were to say gentlemen, that would be a level up, whereas ladies and women feel synonymous. Yeah. So it's strange, isn't it? It is. But men are just men.

And gentlemen's an extra thing you're adding on. Whereas ladies and women kind of interchangeable. Ladies. Yeah, it is, it is just, it catches, doesn't it? Yeah. But then the one that really, really catches for me is female. Oh, God, yeah, that's awful. Yeah, which is odd because sometimes it really works when it's male.

You know, it's quite a good, you know, when you just say, oh, that's a very, that's a very male trait, that's a male thing to do. You know, he was, the suspect was male. When you say all those things, it sounds completely normal. Sometimes when you say female in those circumstances, it just, I don't know what it is. It's either comical. And in fact, the character Martin in Friday Night Dinner

always used to refer to women as females. Females. And it is quite an Australian thing as well as we've learned. So yeah, I don't really understand that either, Rachel. But let's carry on talking about it. And this also, on having a Northwest Prime Minister, I'm finding I really need to moderate my excitement. I'm from Oldham originally in Greater Manchester.

I grew up when Manchester was a bit rubbish. But on more recent trips, since Andy Burnham became mayor, it's been brilliant. It's vibrant, it's creative, it's open-minded, forward thinking, full of people of all ages appreciating lots of things, not just the buses, which are fab. So I'm finding my pride as a northerner is growing. It never quite left me.

But the were days in my early years as a student in the Midlands when I had to change how I talked because people didn't understand me. It was frustrating. Sarah Cox and Peter Kay helped crack that particular nut. So now we hear all sorts of accents everywhere, which is fabulous. There is still a very London-centric vibe in politics.

You are unsure about all of this claiming geographic identity. But I think it's possibly something that isn't an issue when you're in the in-crow, or to put it differently, when you're in the same place as those who yield the power. It is a bit like being a woman in a moment, man's world, being a northerner and a southerner's world, as far as British politics is concerned, you're always other, and the north has been forgotten for so long. And Rachel goes on to say,

who's in Royal Lemington Spa these days, I'm just pleased to hear a politician talk about hope. Three great points to make, I mean, that's a stunning entrance, isn't it, into the email inbox? And I take your point, actually, about the othering, because it definitely, definitely, has been the case, hasn't it, that the north is the other and it has been for a long time because Westminster has always been thuddingly self-important and the place where all of the decisions and the budgets have been made and distributed from. So I suppose the only tiny thing that I would say as a southerner is actually the point that we talked about before that actually sometimes there just isn't a geographic.

identity that you can take hold of, really. But that's not to say that all of your points aren't far, far more valid. And I, too, am very pleased to hear a politician talk about hope. And I don't want to jump on the, you know, the £2 bus fare bandwagon of already condemning Andy Burnham, because it is really nice, Hannah, to hear somebody mention hope. And there do seem to already be lots of people who just go, Oh, God, it's actually rubbish to hear someone talk about hope. You just think, God, have we got to the point where somebody says,

this is what I'd like to do, give people more hope? We immediately go, well, that's rubbish and that's not going to work, and nothing ever will. You know, you've lost your ability to feel something really important if you're condemning that. So a little bit of breathing space, please. It's a strange place that we're in, isn't it? Because he's kind of the unknown now. We're so used to the way that Kiyostham were operated. I don't think many people know how to.

take him in and then yeah there's positivity and negativity I just hope people don't get fed up of hearing him speak about the north because it is important and I can understand why they would but yeah as a northerner as you might be able to hear yeah it's definitely true the accent thing I remember one of my first days here I called someone up to bid them and they said repeat after me I can't understand you will you come on Jane Garvey and Fieglovers show and he wanted me to repeat back to him in a different accent because he couldn't understand me. Whoa. I know. I was like, you clearly understand

me enough, though, to tell me how I should be speaking. So I remember being really taken aback because I don't think about how people view me on a day-to-day basis, but then when someone says that, it's like, well, every person I speak to his is a northern accent, so what if they're

making those kind of judgments? Yeah. We just all need to be nice to each other, don't we? Well, we do, Hannah, but also I'm very sorry that you had that experience, actually. because it's completely undermining, isn't it? It is othering you. It is saying that you're the one that's different. You need to join our gang in order to go forward

and you don't need to at all. No, and we wouldn't have wanted to speak to him on the radio anyway if he's going to be saying things like that. We definitely don't. We definitely don't. I thought that's for the best. And also I completely agree with you in Andy Burnham being different. He is doing things very differently.

Yeah. And I think if we all remember when King, Stalma arrived, you know, with this massive, massive mandate and political majority behind him and the first thing that he did was to say it's going to get worse. And you do think, okay, so just from very kind of human nature, if you're going on a first date with somebody, you just shouldn't be saying. So I'm going to be really horrendous. Our relationships are really going to stay. It's going to be very, very hard work. I want to keep your expectations low. you're really going to have to dig in

there are going to be lots of things that you don't like about me and that I don't like about you but further down on the horizon maybe we'll get to hold hands I mean you'd just swipe wouldn't you you wouldn't come back for date number two it was just a wrong mentality so the hope thing I like I just want to

attach myself to that for a little bit vibe me Andy and hopefully it will come to something let's have an Andy Burnham summer and then in the winter if it goes wrong we can deal with it then that's a very good word for us it, yeah, and the summers don't always last, do they? Exactly.

Okay, we love hearing your accent. Can you just tell people a little bit, fill people in who might have been joining the podcast, and you'll not be paying attention before, Hannah. What has your journey to us here at Times Radio been? Where has it taken you? Who are you? Who am I?

So, my name's Hannah. I'm a radio producer at Times Radio with Jane Fee. I am from Huddersfield, originally. I moved to Newcastle when I was 18 to go to uni, studied journalism, and then I actually decided I wanted to get into radio after doing something with the BBC. No, it's all right, we can say that bravely.

It's right. The BBC. The BBC. I was a guest editor on Radio 4 when they opened it up for anyone to apply. I applied with one of my friends. She just lost her dad. I had lost my dad a few years ago,

and then another friend who was also going through grief. We all had different cultural backgrounds. So we kind of did this thing on how we deal with brief, how we deal with grief in Britain. And it was just amazing. And I remember watching one of the producers' work, and I just saw she's amazing. This is so fun.

I want to be part of this. Applied for the apprenticeship, got brought straight in with Jane and Fee, under lots of wings of Rosie and Eve looking after me. And we won't let you go now. No. did a brief stint on the late show with Carol Walker, which is amazing, and now I'm back. And it's just lovely.

You give me so much responsibility for my experience. Yeah, but you are absolutely terrific. Absolutely terrific at your job. And I love the way that you sailed through the guest editor thing, because actually by chance, I saw the other day a function thingy, one of the producers that you're referring to there, who had been in charge of the three of you, and she just couldn't have sung your praise as well. So it is a mutual fan club there. So this is Hannah Quinn.

She is Hanna Quinn. She is Radio Woman on Janefee in the afternoons. And you and I will probably be chatting through this week. So it's lovely for the listeners to know a little bit more about you. Do you know what? I think people will inevitably want to hear more about dealing with grief because your experience is so pertinent. And I think especially talking about how grief,

affects young lives is something we do so badly Hannah, isn't it? Which is why you wanted to bring it to greater attention. Yeah, absolutely no preparation is given to children for grief, yet we're all going to deal with it and no one can predict when. And that's changed recently actually, which was really nice. They brought it into the learning curriculum

and I know schools can't be required to solve all issues but I do think it's a start. We shell to people so much from it but it's coming whether you like it or not. And yeah, I'm very actually grateful for my experience of grief, which I think is a bit of a backwards way for some people to see it. And people are usually quite shocked by that. But it's equipped me with so many life skills.

And I'm so grateful for where my life is now that I wouldn't change it, which sounds strange, but you can't change it anyway. So at least looking at it that way gives me some kind of comfort. Well, it's a, yeah, I mean, it's an incredibly admirable. thing to be able to do, but do you still find that people want to move off the topic as soon as it might come up in conversation, particularly because you lost a parent at a very young age. People don't really know what to say when you lose a parent when they're very old. And inevitably, you know, lots of people do end up saying the wrong thing.

But I think we're even more unrehearsed when it's grief in a young person. I don't know, I think there's no right thing to say but there are wrong things to say if that makes sense. Total sense. Yeah. Can I ask what some of the awful things are?

What's a wrong thing that somebody said? I remember one of my friends, I think she just didn't know what she said. Oh, well, you know, at least you weren't younger. Oh. You can remember him. I was like, no, I don't think there's any good time really. And also, you know, at least you weren't older, you might have, you might have been more attached.

I was quite attached to him as well. Just trying to like, justify it in different ways. And I remember someone told me to smile at his funeral. I thought, oh, you can go. You can go away. But yeah, I think just listening, just listening and admitting, even if you don't know what to say, I don't know what to say, I'm so sorry. Sometimes I think sorry is a bit silly as well Because it's like well you didn't do it

But then if we get rid of that There's literally nothing to say at all Is it? Well especially for British people Yeah we've we've learned how to say sorry Probably not with enough sincerity Yeah Well all interesting stuff And do you mind hearing from other people

I love having conversations about it Not that it's the nicest topic But I just think the more we speak about it the better You see this is why Hannah's amazing. Hannah is absolutely amazing and we're never, ever, ever going to let you move off the programme. I never want to.

Now, you know how it works on the podcast, so we're going to make a massive leap. Shall we talk about men's pants? Let's talk about men's pants. So this was a email that came in, I think originally it was from Caroline, wasn't it, who wanted a bit of help in choosing some pants for her newly shaped partner

who had just gone through the normal challenge of life, which is just to get older and maybe a little bit less pert. So lots of people have sent messages in. Do you want to do? Is it from Andy, the one with the pictures? So let me see this is what you don't hear. You don't hear Jane and Fee fumbling around for things.

Oh, I know, but that's only, I think Eve just takes a lot of our fumbles out, especially. There's a whole dustbin full of us fumbling around for things, Hannah. I actually don't have one from Andy, but I have one from Gerard. Oh, yeah, no, that's the one I'm thinking. about that.

Yeah. Okay. So his subject is brilliant because it just says in capital letters, men's knickers, and in brackets, now that I have your attention. So he knows how to get through to us.

He says, Hi, Fee, Jane Eve, please pass on to your listener looking for knickers for her husband. These bamboo tech briefs changed my life. It's a separate tech brand. I'm 48 and I remember my female friends sagging off briefs in my 20s.

As I've got an older with zero regard for what other people think, prioritising my own comfort these were a great find i'm six foot to you with a decent build so that's good he's got decent build confident i think men our age should shun trunks and boycott boxes there's no need for all that clumsy and flattering uncomfortable material especially under jeans the bamboo fabric on these confident briefs is light yet firm i would be delighted if these um stuck which they won't because they're so breathable. P.S. He sent a message to us on Insta, but meta flagged it as a random message, so we never got through. But yeah, the images are quite brilliant because I don't know how

they managed to fill them like that. How would you describe them for you? You'll have better adjectives of me. That's the very odd thing. So I clicked on this link that's been sent in very kindly by Gerard. And I mean, I was a little bit taken aback because they're just pictures of the pants, but they have been kind of inflated in the front area to show just how... Shapely? Yes, and snug a fit they would be. So they actually just look

incredibly disturbing. I mean, they do. They look like a pack of monsters coming to get you. I did read some of the comments as well. Oh, no. Just out of sheer curiosity. It's not going to be often that I'm, you know, searching out men's knickers on any well-known platform.

So the comments are just brilliant. Can I say that quite a few of the gentlemen who contact us on the podcast, you can tell that they're emails from men because there is a tendency sometimes to over-explain. And in the comments section for these pants, there is a tendency to over-share about how you found the pants. Some very, very in-depth reviews about exactly how tight some parts of it were, which bits were best protected and all of that.

and I honestly don't know because I've never looked at the reviews for female knickers whether women are doing the same level of discussion about them. I don't know. And also, I mean, we don't have to inflate our pants in pictures in order to show them at their very best. And I'm just trying to think when you buy bras are they kind of inflated to show how they'd look

if they had real bosoms inside them and I suppose they are. So look, we're equal on that front. But there's just, there is just something a bit, there's just something a bit scary about them. Yeah, no. Have you been to see The Odyssey? I haven't yet, but I really, really want to do.

There's a very strange type of helmet being worn by, I think it's meant to be either Menelaus or Agamemnon in the film, which is a great big, one of those black helmets, a great big nose visor, massive kind of shields around the cheeks. Those pants remind me of those. I'll bear them in mind when I go to watch it. People will wonder why I'm laughing.

If you want to do a cheap version of The Odyssey at home, just put the men's trunks on your head. It's very, very loud, the Odyssey. I mean, really super woofingly loud. We didn't go and see it in an IMAX cinema. We just went to a pretty normal cinema, probably with Dolby surround sound, because they all seem to have that these days.

You could feel it coming up through your vertebrae. Sometimes it was so... I mean, in the fight scenes and the war scenes, it's pretty visceral stuff. I thought it was the most fantastic romp through three hours of Greek mythology. Not everybody in our party thought it was worthy of three hours. And actually, I think you could concertina about 40 minutes of the middle bit and it'd still be all right. But it is quite wonderful stuff. I think it would be...

I mean, it's an amazing cast, isn't it? It's an incredible cast. Yeah. Really incredible. It's sometimes quite funny because quite a lot of the soldiers who have a couple of lines in them, nobody in the main part.

They do appear to come from neutral Z. So they'll be saying things to Odysseus, which, I mean, it's just funny. It's just funny. Go for the axioms alone. Okay, I'm excited. I've heard that Odysseus is a bit serious. some people commenting that he might have been a bit more playful

in Homer's original but I don't know I'm not a classics, you did classics, isn't you? I did do classics, yeah, but I wouldn't know the detail well enough to make that kind of observation. I think he was definitely, I always read him as being a little bit more floundering actually and a little bit more, yeah, a bit, just a bit more foolish, kind of openly foolish. and I think what we came to the conclusion

that that was the point of the poem to show the flaws of man and it's often the point, isn't it, in all Greek tragedy, to show that man is deeply flawed and it's really only the gods who control your life. I thought there were some fantastic points very well made in Christopher Nolan's Odysseus, which aren't there in the original,

this thing of Zeus's Lord that if you cross Zeus's law, which is about hospitality and the basic premise of treat others how you'd like to be treated yourself, then terrible peril will come your way eventually. And it is quite a kind of thudding political message all the way through. The people coming from across the sea, he makes a big deal about that.

And so if you want to interpret it with your eyes on the modern political horizon, I think Christopher Loner would be delighted if you did. So there's all of that going down. I wonder what will be able to take from Elon. musks rewrite. Have you seen that? I mean, I don't mean to make

extra work for you in this because I know that you'll have to put explicit lyrics on it but you can cock off. It's just not, just... You've got a lot of things on your plate there, Elon. Why don't you concentrate on those? Oh, really.

The irony last night was we went to see the movie. The cinema was in the basement of the building that also hosts Deep Mind, Google's deep mind, which is obviously in control of large parts of AI as we project ourselves into the technological future, the air conditioning in the building was broken

and they couldn't fix it. And I don't think that's a very good sign, Anna. Okay, that's not a good start, is it? No, it's not. Mail toilet etiquette, we don't want to hear you pee. Now, I promise that not the entire podcast will be taken up with men's problems, but we have slightly asked for this one.

It comes in from Denzel, who says, following your recent discussions about urinales, may I make a plea to my fellow men about another unspoken and perhaps important rule of toilet etiquette, please, guys, be aware of the sound produced when urinating from a great height directly into the water at the bottom of a toilet bowl. It can be surprisingly loud, even in the right circumstances, thunderous.

This came to my attention a few years ago during an evening dinner party at a friend's house where the guest's bathroom was directly, above the dining room. At one point a male guest excused himself to visit the bathroom. Unfortunately, his relieving himself coincided exactly with one of those total pauses in conversation. The resulting thunderous sound, and we all know how efficiently water transmit sound, filled the silence and left everybody utterly speechless, staring intently into their Caesar salads. The sound was made worse by two factors. First, the man was very tall,

so his stream was falling from a considerable height. Secondly, he'd obviously had a lot to drink, so the thunderous drilling sound seemed to go on for an extraordinarily long time. Eventually our hostess decided enough was enough and bravely opened up a new conversation when the guy eventually returned to the table. We all made a conscious effort not to look at him. Well, I mean, it's just as well he didn't do it number two.

I don't want to speak out of turn here. Go on, Anna. But I don't understand why we don't all just sit down There's nothing saying but just because you can, you need to stand up. I agree. Give yourself a break. Yes. And then you make less mess.

You make less noise. Yeah, I completely agree. It is totally, totally your choice, gentleman. You know, urinal, you don't have a choice about it. But yeah, if there's a... In a toilet. Sit down toilet. You're not proving anything.

No. We're not impressed. No, we're not. We're not. And I think we've talked about it before. it's the reason why I just do not want a bedroom with an on-sweet bathroom. I just, I mean, everybody seems to hanker after these things, but I don't want middle of the night peeing noises to wait me up at all.

Slip of the tongue, do you think we dare do this? It's the natural direction that we seem to be going in, isn't it? Okay, okay, right. Maddie is from Seaford, Australia, talking about names and coincidences. My parents were named Joan and Kevin. I married a man whose parents were called Joan and Kevin. And the priest who married us 32 years ago was also called Kevin. It's just a lot of Kevin. Which brings me to one of my father's finest moments when he made a legendary slip of the tongue at my wedding, no pun intended. Oh dear. When he gave his father of

the bride's speech, he stood up to say, I'd like to welcome Brian and thank him. But instead he said, I'd like to wag Brian. This glorious moment was captured on video, forever preserved. A bridal table in shock, my newly minted husband with eyebrows raised and staring into space like a rabbit in the headlights, me with my head in my hands,

and the best man and bridesmaid desperately trying to keep straight faces while the room went from tittering to roaring with laughter. Well, Maddie, I mean, that is a memorable moment. I hope that it wasn't a portent of terrible things to come. And, I mean, the poor guy did. That is a dreadful, dreadful, dreadful. The word slip-ups are just the best, though, aren't they? They're just one way to, I can't not laugh at that,

and I don't know at what point. I think I need my frontal lobe to fully develop before I don't find things like that funny. Oh, no, I laughed out loud at that one when I was reading it this morning. Yes, yeah, and also it's just the complete inappropriateness of the occasion as well, isn't it? Everything about it is just absolutely glorious. wrong. This one is about house location coincidence. Now, loads of these are really, really spooky. This one's in from Heidi, who says, on a skiing holiday last year, my friend and I were chatting with a

couple at dinner. We started off with the general locations we came from, then narrowed it down to a town, a village, a street, then a house. The man had sold his family house to my friend's daughter and son-in-law. He remembered details about them and photos were shown to confirm this bizarre coincidence. Isn't that just, I mean, of all of the places and all of the world, all of the bars, everything that is just weird. Spooky. I can't remember what else I've farmed out to you because you'd read it better than I would, Hannah. You gave one to me from Jane, just a quickie. My ex-husband was called Mark, and now I live with Spencer.

Other favoured shops are also available. I love that. That's nice. Aldi and Liddle next. Yes, that is nice. This one is from Fiona, who says, I was thrilled that my great great. Granny, Fanny Botting, gave you so much pleasure, so to speak. I thought you might like to learn more about her. Now, this is amazing. So Jane and I just got the giggles about Fanny Botting. I think as Jane said,

that we don't do it anymore. And, well, I mean, I don't know what Jane Garvey does in her spare time. Anybody's business. In her late 20s, she had two children out of wedlock. I refuse to say illegitimate. Well, we refuse to say it as well, Fiona. The 1871 census has her living and working in a pub in Surrey. She then left the children temporarily with her parents near Redhill and went to work in South London, where at the age of 35, she met and married 21-year-old David. They went on to have four more children,

one of whom was my grandmother, and she died at the early age of 59, raise a glass to great Granny Fanny. And Fiona's P.S. is, I'm with Fee on the Royal Family, when people say, but think of the money they bring in, I remind them that the most popular tourist attraction in Europe is Versailles. And look what happened there.

I didn't realize it was the most popular tourist attraction in Europe. Yeah. So more than Disneyland, Paris. I wonder if that's official. More than the Alhambra. Gosh, I mean, more than all the stuff in the Vatican, the things in the Vatican. Yeah, lots of things of the Vatican.

So that is quite a statistic. How fabulous to know a little bit more about great-granny, fanny botting. And also that's, it is quite a familiar story having to, I bet she went, I bet she had to leave children to go and find work somewhere else. And I know that in my family, that is definitely the case as well. And to have two children out of wedlock in those days, I mean, that is quite something as well. isn't it? That really is quite something.

So I'm glad that she met David and that they went on to have more kids. That's a lot of stuff going on in your family, Fiona. And it's really lovely of you to tell us a bit more. And also, I'm sorry if it was at all offensive to her, I'm laughing at your great granny's name. But I hope it was okay. No, I'm sure it's nice.

Yeah, well, you know, I know. You're not, you know, you know, you know, no. This is from Andy. Do you think we've been over-dominated by men? Do you have one from a woman? I have one from a woman that's also granny related. So maybe that's a nice segue. It's from Eva.

The recent topic of insomnia reminded me of a chat I had with a friend two weeks ago. When speaking of phobias, she opened up that she was once afraid to sleep because her grandmother died in her sleep. As a teenager, her mother at her wits end, I can only imagine, brought her to an energy healer who revealed that the reason she couldn't sleep

was because her grandmother had gone to bed and woken up dead in their family home. Further probing revealed this event happened before she was two However having such a deeply hidden impact It was only then as a teenager She was associating sleep with death I wonder if this could be of any help to your listeners Who may have also developed a phobia of sleep

I mean To be honest I just saw Granny and read that And I don't really know what to make of it now Well sometimes You know when you hear about people who've been paid for their healing or their, you know, helping purposes and the advice that they end up giving, it's just like, oh God, I bet you, you know, wanted a refund and to not have known that. So many people would have died in their sleep.

The idea that anybody who had been around somebody or in a house where somebody had died in their sleep would somehow be infected by that, I think is very dubious, a bit worrying and a little bit charlatan-y. I mean, I'm sure it's worrying. I'm sure it's frightening, and I'm sure if you're impressionable of any age, it's not a nice thing to contemplate. But dear God, let's not make people's insomnia worse with the fact that, you know, when they finally do get to sleep, they might not wake up, Anna.

I wonder what this energy healer would make of my owl phobia. Oh, my God, quickly tell us to... Actually, no, not even quickly. Tell us about your owl phobia. So my owl phobia is also granny-related, so I don't know if that says anything but when I was younger, when I was about three years old I think

I was in Huddersfield Town Centre and there was a man with his birds of prey which you often see, don't you? You see people travelling with birds of prey and doing talks on them and my grandma said, oh look Hannah, you like Winnie the Pooh, let's go look at the owls

and so I naively followed her Does your grandmother do an impression of you? God, I try to think the impression I'm glad doesn't me actually. But we got stationed in front of them and I said, oh, no, Grandma, I'm not sure I do like these owls. Yeah, yeah you do, they're beautiful. Look at those owls!

I felt her hands clawing into my shoulders and we stayed there for what felt like ours and I've never been able to look at one since. How close did the owl get to you and how small were you at the time? I think I was a similar size to the owl at the time. It was a big owl and I'd say, a couple of metres.

I wasn't right in front of it, but yeah, I've never been able to look at one since on photo, on film, in person, absolute phobia. And people say to me, oh, well, I'm scared of spiders, but I can look at a photo of one. That's not a phobia. That's just being scared of it.

I have a phobia. Like, I'll be in the newsroom and an owl will come up on one of the hundreds of TVs that we have, and I fall to the floor with my head in my hands. It's debilitating. Oh, Dana, I'm really sorry Because...

Oh, thanks to Grandma. And also, owls are... They're more prevalent in our culture than perhaps you would think. They're in a lot of movies, aren't they? They are, they're in a lot of films. My boyfriend's grandma has them all over Al. Oh, that's very unfortunate.

I have to get me with my head down. Does she know that you've got a phobia? Yeah, she does now. She has loads in the garden. James has to go around and put towels over all of them when I sit outside. It's not good. Oh, how do.

I know. Oh dear. What about people who just look like owls? You see, I think that's what it is. I think actually that's what a bit of it is. I think that owls actually have quite human faces. They've got both their eyes on the front of the face.

It's a very similar set up, and they look quite angry. And I know so many people love owls and their wives of this and the other eye. No, not for me. No, just not. No. Okay.

Right. I'm very sorry. Don't send an owl pictures. Don't attach an owl to an email. I mean, the owl emoji is quite, often in use. I can deal with the owl emoji, but yeah, I just would be keen to hear what the energy healer would say to me about that. I don't know, but I think you'd be 75 quid before anything happened at all. And that's, I mean, that's her energy, his energy. Yep, exactly.

Well, let's ask if other people have an owl phobia. Do you know if it is a thing and if it has a special name? It is a thing, but I can't Google it because then photos of owls come up, But I know there is a word for it, and I'm sure that someone out there will be able to tell us. And would you ever want to go and try and unfobia-irise yourself? I would. I would. I just don't, I don't think it's possible. I think I'm too far gone. Okay, right. Okay, well, I won't mention. I won't mention them. We are Jane and Fee at Times dot Radio for this week, all weeks, and forevermore, we hope. We've got so many very, very thoughtful emails actually

And as I've said a couple of times before, we get a very, very big inbox over the weekend. So if you haven't heard us start a new thread, read out your email, please don't worry because we will try and get to them all throughout the week. And in particular, actually, we had a really lovely one from Barbara. A couple of weeks ago, Barbara.

And I've hung on to it because Jane wanted to talk about it too. It's about dealing with hair loss. It was very, very thoughtful. And I think our listeners would have an awful lot to say about it. So keep listening for that. Please don't think that, you know, we've chucked it in a bin anywhere. We will talk to you again tomorrow. We don't have a guest in this edition of the podcast on a Monday.

It is emails only. But throughout the rest of the week, we've got some cracking guests coming up. And we will put our book club review on pause until Jane's back. But you've basically only got a week to go. I think you've only got a week to go. think you've only got a week to go. So if you haven't already managed to get hold of a copy of Jumper Lahiri's, the interpreter of maladies, now is your opportunity and do start sending your thoughts in. Have a very happy Monday, wherever you are. Goodbye. Goodbye, Hara Quinn.

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'll We do do it live every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4 on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale. And 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.