Off Air... with Jane and Fi - We're totally in 'Twixt-mas'

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

Back to the laundry room to survive Chrimbo Limbo? You can squeeze in with Jane and Fi as they relive the best bits of 2023.They're joined by Dolly Alderton, Claire Balding, David Tennant and Clive Myrie!Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfiAssistant Producer: Kate LeeTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hello, welcome along.

It is 2024. No, it's not. Hello, welcome along. It's Christmas. Well, it says New Year at the top of this sheet. I just can't do this. I feel like the snow globe has been shaken, Jane. I can't see the view.

Don't worry. I don't know what it is yet. What are we doing? This is a podcast to see you through until the new year when everything will be, relatively speaking, back to normal. Okay, so we're just in Twixmas now, are we? Yeah, we're totally in Twixmas, which I used to really hate as a kid. I remember just, what's the point of these days? Now, as a grown woman, I think it's going to be lovely.

So I hope that they've delivered for you these Twixmas days. Because, let's face it, there's no obligation to have a good time. And it's often on those days that you find, curiously, you are having a good time. When do you ever feel obligated to have a good time? Well, I do think Christmas Day does put a certain amount of pressure on you. My voice won't find it. Christmas Day. We've picked four of our favourite interviews from the last year on Off Air, and we're going to give you the highlight reel.

I just like saying sizzle reel, so I'm just going to say, here's our sizzle reel. And now a New Year quiz. Come on, Kate. I love Kate's quizzes. It's not really slick, is it, this? No, no, it's good, it's good, it's good. Doing my best. What was the name of Prince Harry's memoir

published in January? Spare. Correct. Who won the Women's Six Nations? England. England. Yes. Where was King Charles' coronation held?

Westminster Abbey. Yes. Which country became the 31st to join NATO in April? Ukraine. No. No, it's applied, but it hasn't got its thing. Oh, Finland. Yes. Who won the Men's Premier League this year? Oh, I think it was Manchester City again. It was. Whose set was cut short at Glastonbury? Oh, Dua Lipa. No? She wasn't at Glastonbury. Oh, hang on, we'll get there. Lana Del Rey. Yes. Which music artist shaved off his hair in November? Oh, I don't know. Harold Styles.

Harry Styles? Yes. I went all funny because I thought... Harold? I call him Harold. It's my little joke. And which epidemic was thought to be being brought over to the UK from Paris in September? Bedbugs.

Oh, bedbugs. Thank goodness we never found any of them here. Yeah. Do you know, I think we need to update that story, don't we? Because we weren't invaded in the way that we were for about 48 hours, leading the news with the arrival of bedbugs. Yeah. So still time.

Right. Thank you very much for that quiz, Kate. I like Kate's quizzes enormously. The winner gets to pick which interview we play first. Who was the winner? Me. So it's David Tennant. None other than the actor David Tennant.

Well, post-drama school, it was a tour of a Brecht play, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Uy. Oh, yes. And we toured round in a little van and did one-night stands all over Scotland with 784, Scottish People's Theatre. That was my first post-drama school gig. I had done one job at drama school, an episode of a children's drama, sort of pre-drama school, sorry,

an episode of a children's drama called The Secret of Croftmoor. Oh, what was that about? There was a family who lived on a, mother and son who lived on a croft somewhere in the highlands and their city folk family came to visit and I was the slightly cynical, sneery cousin. You really want the plot of this? I'm really going into it. No, not the whole thing. But I mean, do you remember thinking at the time, this is me now? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I was 16 and I had decided that this is what I wanted to do with my life. And my parents gave up trying to put up any resistance. And instead, my dad went, well, let's be practical about this.

And he took some photographs of me in the back garden and sent them into Scottish television. And by, of course, at the time, this just felt like this is what happened but by some, I now know how unlikely this is, they landed on the desk of a producer director called Haldane Duncan who happened to be looking for a teenage boy to do this. Don't those

sliding doors moments worry you? I know, yeah Because what if it hadn't been the right day? Well quite, I mean there's no reason why it should have been. And by chance, I got that. And then that same year, I went to drama school. And that was it, yeah. So, but lots of people go to drama school

and then drive around doing Brecht productions. By the way, I love the way I pretended I knew what that Brecht play was. You did, yeah. Well, did I? I was very convinced. Did I, though, David? Then fine.

We'll leave it in, because it made me sound highly intelligent. It really did. I'm sure you know all about your Bertolt Brecht. Yeah, I've certainly seen one or two. It's a parable about the rise of Hitler. That's right, yeah. You knew that.

I think it's coming back to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, there must have been loads of people at your drama school who just have never made a living out of acting. It's a tough it is tough industry yes that's certainly true and yes and that was my aspiration really i just wanted to make it because everyone tells you you won't make a living at it i didn't know we didn't

know actors there weren't precedents in our life growing up but but the received wisdom is actors don't make a living it's not a it's not a proper job it's not a proper job. It's not a career. You wouldn't live happily ever after. So all I wanted was to prove them wrong, I suppose. I just wanted to be able to live off it. So touring around a van doing a break play was absolutely, that was all I needed to do. And now there are articles saying things like, with headlines like,

why is David Tennant always on my television? I mean, one of the reasons is you're rather good at acting, so maybe that is one of the reasons why you're always on our telly. But the stuff you've done

with Michael Sheen has, in fact, we interviewed Ruth Jones last week. Oh, yes. And Ruth is obviously the Welsh connection to Michael. Uh-huh. And we were talking about Staged,

and I'm afraid, this is the show that you do. Indeed. With Michael Sheen. Which started during lockdown, yeah. Which started during, yeah. And I'm afraid I described it as insufferable. Not because I didn't find it funny, but because your actorial personas.

Oh, are very insufferable, yes. Yes, exactly. We invite you to laugh at us, though, rather than be infuriated by us i hope yes do you think you are the more thespian of the two of you or do you think michael out thespian you in real life in real life please oh he's much more of a thespian than i am definitely i mean he's not here to defend himself so i I can get away with that. How does that manifest itself? I don't really know.

I don't know that I can entirely back my argument up. I just feel like I should slag him off as he's not here. I don't know. I mean, I think both of us are relatively normal, actually. And we're both sort of... I think that's probably why we get on. I think there's... I don't know that either of us are wildly, well, it depends how one is defining the word thespian. I feel like that word comes with a certain pejorative assumptions about it

that aren't necessarily positive. Okay, you might be right, so we'll move on. You actually had trouble getting into the building because there were some schoolchildren coming in at the same time. Now, if they had caught a glimpse of you i suspect there would have been mayhem uh so there was a slight delay is is this the doctor who problem which does linger and you're about that there are new episodes featuring you which are about to be shown yes in the in the winter that's right yes um i know it's a huge part of your life, but it can be. The whole Doctor Who thing, it's quite a responsibility being involved in it. It casts a long shadow, for sure.

But the positives definitely outweigh the negatives. It takes on a slightly different shape, your life, when you're associated with something like that. It's an absolute privilege, but it does mean you lose a level of anonymity for sure and i remember doctor who back in the 70s when it let's be honest it did look as though it was made on a budget of about 17 pounds 90 yes yes i mean things have changed haven't things have changed although our expectations have changed i mean as a kid i was i i thought that was the greatest

television there had ever been i mean it was it was, I was, I thought that was the greatest television there had ever been. I mean, it was, it was, it was a brilliant show. I mean, yes, it was probably a little bit, the budget was a bit smaller than it is now. But that was partly to do with the nature of television at the time. And, but it didn't get in the way of it being magical stuff. I'm trying to work out who your doctor would have been. It was Tom Baker into Peter Davison. That was my era.

Right, and they were both well, who was the most popular of those two with the Doctor Who-ites? I can't remember. Well, Tom Baker did it for seven years. Oh, it must be him, surely. And the long scarf tends to be quite a sort of an iconic reference

even now, but Peter's time on it was just as popular in terms of viewing figures and all that it was that's when it was really at its zenith so if you had to choose between i don't know a time traveling individual or one of your more gritty roles uh broad church i suppose is another one that people obviously will know right what would you pick oh i don't make me do that. It's lovely to have that variety. What a treat. You know, they're such different flavours

and to be able to tell those different types of stories to different types of audiences or even the same audiences, it's a real privilege. It's not, you know. Well, you're also coming up in the new Julie Cooper. Yes. Is it Rivals? Rivals, yes.

Rivals, not Riders. It's Rivals. It's the second novel. Yeah. I mean, I had definitely, perhaps I'm more familiar with Julie's works than Bertolt. Than Brecht. If I'm honest.

I've definitely read this. And you are the, from memory, the very rather seedy, am I right, head of a local TV company? Yes, Tony Battingham, Lord Battingham, in fact. He's a, I suppose he's the villain of the piece in some ways. Yes, he's pretty unscrupulous, at times rather Machiavellian, eaten up with a little bit of sort of class envy.

eaten up with a little bit of sort of class envy and they're all in the courts walls behaving despicably. Yes, I must admit, I can't be the only person who can't wait for this. Do you get any, what do the tabloids call them, romp scenes? It's a Jilly Cooper adaptation. Everyone's romping furiously. But what's great, because it's now. Hang on,

you haven't answered the question. Have you got some romping scenes? What do you mean? Do I, have I been dealing with an intimacy coordinator? Your fans will want to know. I don't think there's a character

who doesn't in this story. Okay. So it's, but, you know, these books, well, I mean,

she's still working. She's about to publish a new novel called Tackle about a football team. This is about football, isn't it? Yeah. But this was written, you know, back in the mid-80s. So it's now a period piece. You know, it's akin to doing a sort of Dickens or something. You have to approach it with that level of recreating the moment that it was in,

which, of course, brings to life all the the the sort of politics with with the you know the actual politics and also the sort of sexual politics of the time we now see that with this objectivity which which is makes it a fascinating thing to be to be doing i've thought of it that way so it's it's still set in the 80s oh absolutely oh absolutely yeah so the intimacy uh coaches mean, back when you started, they were, well, they just did not. No, it's an addition to our industry. And is it the right thing to have done?

Oh, of course it is. Of course it is. Yeah. I mean, it's an industry that's finding, I think we have a fantastic one on our show. She is the right balance of respectfulness and sense of humour, which is, because it's a tricky, weird thing to do, isn't it? You're having to recreate something that, you know,

is the most intimate of moments. That's a very private, personal thing. And you're having to make it safe and you're having to make sure everyone is respected. And at the same time, you're having to make it look real and make it look a bit sexy and a bit whatever the scene needs to be. Perhaps violent, perhaps violent, perhaps it's about abuse.

There are all sorts of reasons for telling those parts of that story. But to have someone whose job it is to make sure everyone's safe, everyone's covered, and that means, you know, from every aspect of production, nobody is

is everyone feels comfortable with something that is a bit uncomfortable and that's really important so you never get over the oddness no of course you don't of course you don't i mean you're having to sort of be in states of undress in front of uh i mean they're not necessarily strangers but they're the crew you're working with every day, but that in itself is rather odd. How many people are in these rooms apart from... Well, with a scene like that, you'll try and have a closed set, which means it will be a bare minimum of crew and the monitors that are often linked up throughout

wherever the production base is will be closed down to just the absolute essential crew. So hopefully you'll get it down to a sort of handful. Again, just to make it a little bit less awkward and embarrassing and difficult and so that nobody feels like their work is being abused for the wrong reasons. You're 52. I couldn't believe that actually, David. I'm going to just say that. It's very true, unfortunately it's incontrovertible

Yeah, but how do you do it? People will want to know whether you exfoliate whether there's a moisture Well, I'm actually deadly serious here I don't know that I do anything particularly Is it in your jeans? I mean, listen I'm in the middle of a press tour at the moment.

So there's somebody outside painting my face and making me look much healthier than I really am. So it's all smoke and mirrors, isn't it? I don't know. How do you do it? I'm 75. Oh, you are never 75. I am. I know, it's amazing.

That's nonsense. I know, it's incredible. I've never smoked and I have a very, very clean living lifestyle. You are not 75. No, no, I'm not, David. Right, okay. Stop it. We'll leave it there.

Thank you very much. How old are you? 59. Oh, dear. You should have... Gosh, he's not... No, nobody did. David Tennant, he's a bit of a star, isn't he, Dave? oh dear you should have oh gosh he's like no nobody did

David Tennant he's a bit of a star isn't he Dave you enjoyed that didn't you well the man's got a twinkle lovely hair

well I think actually you got your twinkle out for him didn't you well I mean it has to get it gets an annual airing who's going to be

the beneficiary in 2024 I tell you what David Dimbleby was the recipient of your twinkle back in the day now let's have a little bit of claire balding claire balding loves dogs in her new book she investigates our national obsession with the animals from dogs who can smell cancer who can help dementia who round up sheep like no human or drone ever can, to those who bring absolute joy to family life. Now, one third of British households have at least one dog,

and there are 13 million dogs across our islands. But she started with our favourite dog, well, my favourite dog anyway, because it is the glory of 2023 that Nancy has been included in a book. You've missed out the most important dog that is in this book. What? Which? Nancy. Nancy the greyhound. And Dora gets her mention, Jane. I know, and she's taken the news really calmly. Has she?

Yeah, well, she hasn't actually attacked a visitor to the house now. We're getting on for three weeks. There we go. She's mellowing. Like you, she's mellowing. Oh, well, I wouldn't get that far. Dora is my tabby. I should say, get on with the interview. No, no. Fee's trying to interview you, Claire.

No, but where did Dora come from? She came from, well, the Rescue Centre Animal Sanctuary in Basingstoke. Yes. During lockdown. Why? Because you posed for a photograph with her for the cover of Hampshire Life. And I sent you a photo and said, you have to have this kitten.

She's really sweet. And then you've changed her. And now she's vicious. Dora is so not sweet. So there was one terrible incident. I haven't been round to Jane's house very much. Six years. I'm only allowed,

they're kind of on day release once a decade. But I bent down to stroke Dora. That was a mistake. Yes. And she just, she clasped all of her claws around my hand to the point at which I kind of had to throw her off, you know, as if it was an Olympic sport. So I, both of you have a copy of this book,

because of Nancy being in it. Jane actually bought one, actually paid her own money and bought it at the book launch. Not it not cheap no um no because that was being sold at full price in an independent bookshop oh yes sorry yes indeed anyway um to I guess I would think just look at the index see if she gets a mention see that she does read that bit and in the bit about you both I do make the point which I stand oh unless they edited this out for fear of legal action I basically make the point, which I stand, oh, unless they edited this out for fear of legal action, I basically make the point that Fee is a dog and Jane is a cat. No, that's still in there. Is it? Good.

And you'll be hearing from my people. So, yes, you came to interview Nancy because she's a rescue greyhound and you've got a chapter about the joy of the rescue dog. And I have to say that um for my children because nancy is very much a family pet uh even though i think she's just mine uh it has it has made their life that that they and a dog that they love uh included in a book it's just it's proved to be quite a kind of magical thing for them oh wow so wow. So I just say an enormous thank you to that. I mean, obviously, it doesn't matter.

I'm on the radio every day, Claire, and doing numerous other things. The fact that the pet dog and a meal that we cooked for you and Alice is in a book, that seems to outshine absolutely everything. I think Brian and Barbara got a mention as well. They did, they're my kittens. Yeah, yeah.

Look, let's talk about lots of other things that are in the book, but thank you for mentioning our part in it. First, I also want to point out that I have come bearing gifts today, a little Chardonnay from Argentina, because earlier today I was doing the wine podcast. How much earlier, Claire? A couple of hours ago. I've sobered up a lot.

I was doing the wine podcast. Was it called the Wine Times? Was it called the Wine Times? Is it called? Yeah, with Will Lyons. Yes, and Annika Rice. Yeah. So I've come from there and they said, would I like to take the rest of any of the bottles?

And I said, yes, because I knew you would enjoy it. I knew Jane wouldn't because she needs fizz. Makes that very clear when she's at a party that doesn't have any. Yep. So enough about your book launch. Right, carry on with the interview sorry uh so look let's talk about isle of dogs uh so the opening to the book um is quite something actually claire would you like me to just read you well you to remind you of it yes do you but also there's a

there's a section that i can't read and i went when i went when we were doing the audio book i i had to go back and you know because it's really sad and i was struggling with it a bit don't read that okay okay well i think i know what you're referring to and we might come on to that a little bit later but the book opens like this i was so lucky to grow up surrounded by dogs the very first being i truly connected with as a kindred spirit was not my mother but but her dog, Candy the Boxer. Candy was the one I looked to for reassurance and support, and she was the one who helped me transition from crawling to walking by allowing me to grab her rolls of excess skin and haul myself to my feet.

She was the one who comforted me if I was crying. She was my playmate, and until my little brother was born, my one and only companion. Gosh. I mean, that's quite something, isn't it? The dog was the thing. Is it? Yes.

To me, that's completely normal. Is it? Yeah, I think I probably thought she was my mother because that's the face I connected with. But mum had a, you know, she was, I think she agrees with that completely. And it's amazing how many people come up to me and say, gosh, your childhood, I tell my children, you know,

read the first book I wrote, which is called My Animals and Other Family, which kind of charts this rather feral childhood. And lots of parents use it as a, you know, way of showing their children that it's perfectly fine to be ignored. But for a tiny... Until you're 21 and then ignored a bit more. How long have we got today, Claire? But you actually thought that you were a dog for a while in your childhood.

I did, yeah. I thought it was a good thing to be. I think it's fine to be a dog, don't you? Yes, I've always... Well, I thought I was a cat. You see, that's the weird thing. What kind of cat? I was very much a cat person. I don't think I was really very breed specific about it. No, but I mean, personality wise, what kind of cat? Oh, you know,

warm, cuddly, fluffy, lovely one. Not like an exploring cat or an investigative cat or a cat that could leap from roof to roof, you know? Oh, I see what you mean. No, I think the kind of curl up and, you know, be heavily petted by a kind human kind of cat and i think i just absolutely adored the symmetry of a cat's face and actually my mum said that i wouldn't go to sleep without a little postcard of a cat that my granny had sent me and it was posted on my cot and i couldn't go to sleep unless i was looking at a cat isn't that weird no i think that's just lovely yeah anyway look this this interview is going off in quite strange directions I'm quite enjoying Jane's face

that's more than you ever knew about her exactly learning a great deal about you both yeah so do you want to talk about Archie or is that oh no no no no I just don't want to talk about the end of Archie's life but no the the sort of purpose behind the book was give me giving myself an excuse to hang out with other people's dogs so off we go around the country I drag Alice with me for some of it and um and actually she writes the last chapter um to give her point of view because I've you know sort of I've mocked her throughout um for her excessive negativity so she has to put her point of view but yeah I just wanted to sort of see where we are with dogs in in the country right now the sort of things they do for us and it is extraordinary I mean you come across dogs that do

all sorts and you were talking about it earlier on the program but you know dogs are an extraordinary bonus to our lives. But also, if we train them properly, there are all sorts of things they can do that are really massively positive. So what was the thing that you came across that most surprised you? Well, the theory from some historians is that the domestication of dogs, of them actually living in our homes, becoming part of the family, didn't really happen until Victorian times but yesterday at Stratford Literary Festival I spent my train journey back with a medieval historian who was terrific and he said oh no there's loads of evidence that in the middle ages dogs were part of the family and not only sort of buried with

knights and you know you quite often see those marble tombs and a dog will be, you know, part of it. Part of it, exactly. But also that they were really regarded as another child. So I think it goes back way further. I went to, there was a Neolithic tomb on mainland Orkney that I went and explored called Coene Hill. And that had a central chamber for the humans and then chambers around for the dogs. Now that's 5,000 years old so it's not a modern thing that they've been part of the home but I think that sort of the popularisation and the fashion of having dogs in your house definitely was rubber stamped by Queen Victoria who had an amazing array of dogs. I mean all sorts of weird and wonderful breeds.

She had Canadian Eskimo dogs, Bedouin dogs, truffle dogs. She had the first Pekingese in this country because off her subjects were going and conquering the world and coming back with trophies. I mean, not conquering it, but, you know, making the empire. Coming back with trophies and they would bring dogs because they knew she liked her dogs. So Luti, the Pekingese, was taken from the summer palace in Peking looted from there from the

imperial family and given that dogs have been part of our lives for such a long time it is extraordinary isn't it that we seem to only be just discovering their true potential in terms of medicine so I was really struck by the chapter in your book about the dogs who can detect cancer the way that we're using dogs to sniff out possibly Alzheimer's as well and there are also those connections that dogs can make with dementia sufferers and people who are on the autistic spectrum yeah so combination of things really um first of all the medical detection dogs and those are the ones claire guest is amazing she'd be cracking interview for you um but she set up this organization understanding what dogs could smell i mean they've got you know a million times more

olfactory receptors than we have and they can sense all sorts of things in us and they can sort of smell a change in our in our makeup and they can be trained to smell specific cancers or the latest thing that they're investigating at the moment is early signs of Parkinson's and that's a really hard thing to for medicine to detect but separately from that Dogs for Good is a charity I went to visit and spend time with and watch puppies being trained. And they are looking at how they can train dogs to help children with autism and really help parents. Because if the parents can sort of give instructions, as it were, through the dog, they can actually create a really effective team, as it were, between child and dog and make things more manageable. You know, it's not going to cure anything, but it's going to make things more manageable.

And the other thing is with people suffering from dementia, they're looking into what dogs can do. In terms of if an alarm goes off, taking medication to somebody, and I know from my dad, he'd never shout at the dogs waking him up let's say but he'd get pretty cross with any human who tried so um my parents used to when we were kids they'd always send the dogs to wake us up simple things because you have a different response yeah to the dogs you know providing something for you or telling you to do something than you would to a person.

Why are some breeds better at learning those kind of things than others? Well, to be perfectly frank, some breeds are fabulously intelligent. The poodle in particular, massively brilliant and trainable and instructable. The Labrador is very food driven and therefore can be very easily taught things and wants to please. Most dogs actually do want to do a job. They're quite keen to learn something, learn a skill. And the thing I've really learned through this is the difference between exercise and stimulation and how much dogs actually want and need stimulation as well as exercise. So dogs that are scent dogs, they want to be sniffing things out and you can play games with them to to do this i went to a brilliant ex-police officer runs a thing

called sandy scent school and off i went to worcester cricket ground to see these dogs being trained to detect you know to find things that were hidden in the stands and they're just pets but but they really enjoy doing it and it's made a big difference and enhanced their their lives what's the thickest breed of dog well is it a greyhound no no do you know the greyhound is the oldest domesticated dog well i learned that from your book and the only one mentioned in the king james bible yeah and shakespeare and chaucer and actually i think they are they're not so you know, they are good at what they're good at. And I don't, you know, Nancy, for example,

she knows when she's had enough after about seven and a half minutes. I've had enough now, can I go home? Can I just ask a quick question about, you implied, perhaps you didn't mean this, but dogs, can they get bored of a particular walk? So if you take your dog day in, day out to your local park or down to the river whatever it might be are they actually saying do you know what i've done this no i think

they because they sniff different things and different things happen no i don't think they get bored of a route and actually they learn a route pretty quickly okay archie definitely knew the route he wanted to go um and they can and they know when they've turned for home as well but no i think it's just different things. Exercises, obviously, is running about and socialising with other dogs. That's all important. Stimulation is go and fetch and retrieve

or find something. Hide things, find them. It's that. So when your dog begs for the ball to be thrown and you feel you've done it 27 times already, are you being really cruel if you just say, no more and hide the ball? Well, at some point you probably want to say and that's enough okay but you know this is all hypothetical you could read a book to them instead different kind of

intellectual stimulation are you thinking about getting a dog i've always been thinking but i mean i've i just got to be completely honest it won't fit it's not fair on any dog at the moment and that's kind of where you are isn't it well exactly and i do think that is a really responsible decision i think a lot of people think gosh a dog would really make our lives but hang on what are you doing for that dog's life and that's why charities rescue charities like battersea or the dogs trust actually make it incredibly difficult for you to adopt a dog. Exactly. And one of the points I make and one of the things I feel really strongly is anybody who thinks they can click a button today and get a dog delivered tomorrow, frankly, shouldn't be having one because that is not how it works.

And if you do that, you are fueling an illegal and really irresponsible market. And you might think you're doing a good thing, but you're not. That is not a great way. Any good breeder or any good rescue centre is going to ask you a hundred questions about where you live, how you live, who's looking after the dog, how often is it ever being left on its own, if so, what are you going to do about that, and often make you wait. I mean, you can wait a year for a puppy, for example, from a good breed.

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Breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. You are listening to the Desperate Times, so I may as well download that podcast again. Podcast. It's off air with Jane and Fi to see you through until 2024. It does make me laugh when everyone says,

oh, I'll be so glad to see the back of last year. Wasn't it terrible? Let's hope for better things. You think, what are the chances? No, but that's the whole point, isn't it? We have to, we just have to do that. Do we have to just pretend? No, we just have to do that every year.

We always have to do that because otherwise we wouldn't bother. Let's take a little trip back through time to hear from one of our cracking guests in 2023, the one and only Dolly Alderton. Now she was in to talk about her latest novel which is called Good Materials

and one of the... Just Material. Just Material. One of the characters in her book visits a psychic so we asked Dolly if she'd ever been to see one. Twice a year. Really?

Yeah. Well, just come to me. I'm sure I'm cheaper. I'm no good, but I wouldn't charge you. You do it out of the Times building. Don't, for God's sake, don't mention it. It's tax deductible work. As your psychic told you things that have then come true.

Yes. and here's the interesting thing about psychics that i've found all the stuff that comes true is always really small things about you're gonna move to this road or you're gonna buy a new coat or something that like these really there are huge problems with your electrical works in your flat and then when that moment happens you go oh my god, my God. Wow, that's so cool. And that's the extent of it. Because then all the other huge love stuff, none of that's been quite on the money. And if we're being honest, that is really why people go to psychics.

Like, it's mainly single women in their 30s. And it's probably not actually about your electrical safety. It's not. I'm not that bothered about the electrical safety. Well, don't say that because if something terrible happened to you regarding your electrical works. Well, no, she did. She predicted that I had some electrical works. And then three days later, my builder rang me and said, there's been this huge problem with the electrics.

Well, that is quite sad. It is. That's why. Actually, alumni of the podcast, Elizabeth Day, we were in Indonesia together on holiday and we booked an Indonesian sous-serve medicine woman. We're like, wow, you're not going to get any more accurate than this. And I think it was the worst reading that both of us had had. And the main take home that I got that she couldn't get off

and I kept trying to steer her off, but she was so fix fixated on it was that my dad needs to open a hardware shop um that I need to buy for him that is not what I was expecting you to say how does how does your dad feel about this you know I didn't even pitch it to him I didn't even what would it be called um I'm not sure we did I mean I was she really wanted to say on that she seemed to think it would not only fix any problem in my family life but in my life dolly fixtures dolly fixtures very there that's brilliant dolly take it right i will i'm done for the day goodbye when you're a writer you can obviously write your own ending. And I think with Jen, the ending, which we won't talk about everything that she chooses, it seems to me that you wanted to send a pretty powerful message with that.

Once you had written it, did you find that actually you had managed to kind of shift something in yourself by writing her heading off as she does yeah I do I think I think women choosing unconventional paths whether that's not having children having children on their own having children later in life not having a partner meeting your partner in you know later life I think it's it's something that we're also admiring of and it's something that so many of us aspire to but it's very brave to do it's still a very brave thing to do I really do take my hat off to women who who divert against the pack and choose to do that I think you have to have a huge amount of inner strength and self-knowledge. And do you still feel that

pressure within your generation you don't have to talk about yourself personally, but just amongst your contemporaries that that path for women, it is a deviation from it if you choose not to have children. Yes. There isn't a clear path now available to you as an independent, what are you, Jen? Why? No, millennial. Yeah, millenn no millennial yeah millennial whatever most annoying but you still feel that you know there's a kind of walking womb element to being a young woman here's what I think I think so I'm 35 so I'm in like prime time age of this stuff this is the year where everyone tells you you've got this amount of time left which I don't actually think is true but it does come from all angles I think it is really I think you can forge your own path and you can do it by keeping the

noise out but I think you have to be so blinkered because everywhere I turn now whether it's like I've just went and got my eyebrows dyed for the first time thank you both for noticing and from at the appointment at the appointment obviously and i understand why one of the first things she said was do you have children this is something that is like so in the atmosphere at a certain age everywhere and it's really hard not to be wobbled and feel like you've messed up if you've not done this thing that everyone seems to assume that you've done or wants for you so i think you can forge that path you. You just either have to have a community of like-minded women around you or you've just got to be really, really strong.

The truth is a bloke going to have his hair done just doesn't get that question. No, totally. He might be losing his hair, but he's not going to be asked. By the way, when I get my eyebrows done, I'm also asked if I want my moustache doing as well, which I always find. I mean, obviously not dying brown. No look we're all just tending to. No the worst

thing that I was asked was when I first got my eyebrows plucked when I was in the very vulnerable late teens. The woman looked at my face and said do you want the beard also? Yeah. Oh shut up. Up the sisterhood. Right. But to go all the way back to where we started

uh is that akin to uh you know a young man being asked whether he wants to have his head shaved because actually it's thinning or have his ear hairs plucked out or his nose hair plucked out is it just because we don't hear men talking about that, that, you know, we think all of that kind of cosmetic pain is on us? Yeah, I mean, something that I found really interesting when I was interviewing the men for research for the book is I had assumed wrongly that this idea of this need for physical transformation in the wake of rejection was a feminine pursuit. of rejection was the feminine pursuit. This is something that culturally we've been told in that moment in Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow when she finds her boyfriend in bed

with another woman and she gets the very famous crop, not unlike your crop actually, Fi, and she suddenly has this huge... There are many similarities between me and Gwyneth Paltrow, Dolly. I've met both of them and Gwyneth's my favourite but I like Fi. Anyway, back to your story dolly yeah but they i i was so interested that all of them said yes they embarked on a maker but this is not just

something that we have absorbed from rom-coms and women's magazines that men really feel it too that the way that they try and raise a sense of their own self-esteem or their own sense of worthiness for love is that they hit the gym, they, you know, manifest in different ways. They only eat protein, they lift weights. And that was something that I wanted, that vulnerability and that uncertainty, that self-doubt and self-flagellation. I really wanted to communicate to Andy that this is definitely something that men go through as well. Where do you think Jen should find herself when she's 55? Oh, that's such a good question. Where would I want her to be? I think that I would want her

to be living in a way that fully aligns with her desires and her heart and mind. And I hope that she's been able to rid of all the expectations that her very traditional family had for her and her friends had for her and society had for her and I think maybe that would involve a partner living life alongside someone or maybe it wouldn't but I have hope that she will find happiness. But the terrible truth is that Andy the averagely successful comedian will just marry a woman 25 years younger than him and go on to have six or seven kids if that's what he wants yeah no justice is there yeah but he might make that woman very happy or he might not i think i think it is a really interesting thing to look at i was watching a documentary about egg freezing the other day and the head of the clinic, when the interviewer said, what would you say is the one

thing that a man could do that we could ask of men to just like try and address this biological inequality? She said, I think men shouldn't be allowed to have children with women younger than them. Terrific. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. That would change the world. It would change a lot, wouldn't it? Wouldn't it, Jess? There's only one Dolly. Dolly Alderton. Always good to have her on. And good material is a cracking read. And now it is Clive Myrie time.

Now, no year is complete without a little bit of Clive Myrie. He came to see us in Times Towers to talk about his book. It's a memoir and it's called Everything is Everything. He mentions his great uncle who fought in the First World War in the book and that's where we're going to start this piece of the interview because he didn't really know anything about him until very recently. I had no idea. So how did you find out?

William Runners, talking to my dad. Talking to my dad, having the kind of conversation about our life our history the miry legacy that i never had with him before and knowing i wanted to write the book um and he's in his 90s now he's 94 um we would be having these great conversations about stuff, about life. And I wanted him to paint a picture of what life was like for him in Jamaica before he came to Britain. You know, trying to get out of him an explanation as to his sadness about living in Britain and his level of unfulfillment as a worker, as an immigrant.

And all this stuff started coming out. And I was talking about my Uncle Rennie and my Uncle Cecil, Uncle Cecil being my dad's brother, and talking about his wartime experience. And he said, yeah, you've got know, my, there was a great, you've got a great uncle who was in World War I. I said, why? He said, yeah, and he walked with a limp because he was injured.

And he was a detective in Jamaica as well. And I instantly thought of Death in Paradise. I said, really? And he said, yeah, William Runners was his name, William Runners. And he was a big local sort of figure in the community in this area called Green Hills in western Jamaica. And he fought in World War I. But they wouldn't give him a gun, my dad said.

They wouldn't give him a gun. And they didn't trust him. Didn't trust him. They did give them guns, but they were old-fashioned, effectively musket-type things. So there was a level of self defence that they could employ in dealing with the enemy but by and large

they were at the mercy of the Germans because they weren't given the equipment and I thought this is incredible so I put it in the book and your dad Norris he's a very interesting character because he has a truly ambivalent relationship with Britain, doesn't he? He does, he does.

It's very nuanced, but it's really interesting. I mean, just tell us a bit about that. Yeah, I mean, he was a very carefree, good-looking guy in Jamaica. You know, loved the sunshine, loved the heat, loved the carefree life that he had. And his own boss, he was a shoemaker, love the sunshine, love the heat, love the carefree life that he had. And he was his own boss. His own boss. He was a shoemaker, cobbler.

And of course, he comes to freezing cold Britain where there's racism and bigotry, but also an alien environment, an industrial landscape. So imagine coming from, you know, the beautiful sort of blue of the sky and the sort of sandy beach and the greens and the purples and yellows, the vibrancy of the Caribbean, and you come into grey Lancashire. That was a discombobulation. That was a shock.

And then also the realisation that he couldn't really be carefree or as carefree as he was before. He couldn't be the happy-go-lucky guy. He was now having to bring up a family in an environment that he didn't really like. He was somebody else's employee. He had to follow rules. And he's never really acclimatised and got used to all of that.

And in fact, I said to him just a couple of nights ago, I said, you know, he was congratulating me on the book and he was saying, you've got everything in it you wanted. And I said, yes. And I said, I do chronicle your unhappiness. And he said, yeah, well, it was hard. It was tough for me. So, yeah.

It's good in a way that you're still able to have these conversations. Yes. Because they're not comfortable conversations, are they? No, they're not. And they're actually, they're conversations that we're having now because we're getting on so much better than we ever did. Not that we were sort of having arguments or stuff, but we just never were in the kind of environmental situation

where it would foster that freedom of expression and discussion and conversation because he was quite a distant father when we were growing up. Now, in the book you say that actually neither of your parents could really... Your mum is Lynn, by the way. Yeah. Couldn't point to absolute examples of racism they'd been put through. Well, they didn't want to. They didn't want to.

But your mum had been a teacher and her qualifications were not deemed to be good enough when she got here. Yes. And that must have really rankled. Yes, it did rankle. It did rankle. It's, you know, Andrea Levy writes about it brilliantly in Small Island, you know.

You've got Hortense, my mum, you know, teaching in Jamaica, feeling that they have a status in society. And being a teacher was such a big thing in the Caribbean because, of course, you know, education for the colonized, the black people, was very basic during colonialism. And as a result, you know, a black teacher was seen as a big deal. And so there was a status there that my mum had, and all of a sudden that status was taken away from her in moving to the United Kingdom. So that was difficult. But they were also told that they were equal citizens. That was the

point of the British Nationality Act of 48. And it was an experiment that had not been done, and a situation that had not been established since the Roman Empire, that an empire said every single member of that empire is equal, you're all citizens. And that was why you had the Windrush, Empire Windrush, come over. Well, you know, until I read this book, and I should have known this, and I didn't, and I'm just going to admit it, I hadn't realised that so many British people had left Britain after the war, that in fact, Britain turned to the Caribbean because of our other people actually becoming immigrants themselves and going abroad. It's a dirty little secret.

Well, is it? Is that how you see it? I mean, I was amazed that I didn't know. I do see it that way because what I think most people believe they know is that there were shortages of manpower because of the war. I knew that, but I didn't know why. Yeah, exactly. War brides. And some people might have been killed. Guys who would have been on building sites

and whatever reconstructed Britain, they were killed in Germany or wherever. Okay. Does that take out enough people of the population to cause a serious manpower shortage? No. What causes the manpower shortage is two million Brits going to Canada or Australia

or New Zealand. And you cannot blame them. That's one thing I hope I get across in the book, that they did not want to hang around Russian book Britain. Who would? You know, Coventry was bombed to bits. The East End was completely flattened. You know, it was, there was, there was starvation, there was hunger. It was difficult. Yes, Britain won the war, but know it was there was there was starvation there was hunger it was difficult yes britain won the war but really it was on its knees owed america a whole ton of money that through the lendlease program that it was tony blair who was the prime minister who paid that off so that's how poor and knackered and broken broken britain was and it was churchill who said don't leave we need you guys we don't want you to become 10-pound bombs,

although they didn't exist then. But he was making the point that you need to stay behind and rebuild the country. But Britain was knackered and those people were knackered. And so they left. So there was a shortage. But the key thing here is that the Nationality Act, under that, making everyone in the empire citizens,

equal citizens, the British didn't think black people would come. They thought it would be Aussies and Canadians and Kiwis who would come. And then when it turned out the Empire Windrush was full of black people, 11 Labour MPs had a late-night meeting with Clement Ackley to try to turn the ship around because they were convinced that Britain's character would change. And it has.

It's become multicultural Britain as a result. And I think that's a good change, but some people don't agree. Well, the fact that your parents were reluctant to acknowledge or didn't feel able to acknowledge the racism they'd been made to put up with, how do they feel about you being really quite upfront about your experience of it? They understand it.

They understand why I felt it was important to put that in because there is this understanding, I think, or belief among some people. And in fact, it's been made clear to me in one interview that I've already done that people might be shocked that my family have been caught up in the Windrush scandal. That was your half-brothers? That was my two half-brothers, Lionel and Peter. That, you know, Clive Myrie, for some reason, he's caught

up in this. Like, it's something that only happens to poor people, or people who aren't famous, or people who haven't achieved anything, or, do you know what I mean? And I wanted to get across that actually, racism happens to everybody. Trevor McDonald's family, if they came over in 1948 under that act, and in the years after 48, his folks would have been in the same situation. Lenny Henry, Moira Stewart, I don't know.

Name a black person. If they came over under the 48 Act, they could have been caught up in the Windrush scandal. And that was the point. And I wanted to get that across and also get across the fact that, yeah, I might have achieved a few things in life, but that does not stop people using the N-word in correspondence and emails and tweets and whatever.

It does not stop it at all. Let's just sort of talk a little bit about that because that shouldn't be happening. And I suppose I might have thought that since you started talking about it in public, that it might have stopped, but it still hasn't. But that's interesting why you think that might have happened. Maybe because I'm a lily-livered pinko who hopes that people will reform or just not behave in that way. No, you can't legislate for individuals. What you can do is try to get rid of the structural disadvantages and the

structural inbuilt racism that exists. And I think as a society, Britain is on its way to trying to sort of deal with a lot of that, no question. But individuals, yeah, there's always going to be a loon out there. Always going to, for whatever reason, you cannot legislate for someone feeling a certain way about another individual. And, you know, I don't know how it's education is what's going to help people like that. But those people used to wind me up. Now I just have unbridled pity because they're just sad losers.

Do you reply to people? I do sometimes, yeah. I do sometimes. What do you say? Well, said do sometimes yeah i do i do sometimes i well so so one guy one guy got in touch i did a a profile there was a profile of me in the times and he got in touch and he said you know my country has changed and it's disgraceful you know i sort of walk around parts of london and it's it's just. And I see these black people out smoking dope and, you know, you just, and people like you, you know,

you should never have been allowed in here. Never have been allowed. First of all, I was born here. And I made that clear to this chap. I was told I couldn't swear on air. I was told I couldn't swear. So I made that clear. And the implication was always from some of these people

that you were given the opportunity. You've been given everything that you have. Not that you weren't, not that I earned it. Not that I worked my balls off for the last 30 years as a journalist, you know, on occasion getting shot at or whatever. No, none of that. No, yeah, you know, you've been given everything and you're turning against this country.

How can you say you're ashamed of Britain because of the Windrush scandal? I am ashamed of Britain because of the Windrush scandal. No question about it. And I made that clear to him. And I also spelt out the fine print within the 1948 Nationality Act that meant that we were all citizens. And as a result, we didn't just wander over here.

We were invited over here to help rebuild this country. And I made the point that I made to you, Jane, that 2 million white Britons left. So if we hadn't come over, or my folks had not come over, Coventry wouldn't have been rebuilt, the NHS would be short of staff, as it is now, British Rail wouldn't be running etc etc etc and then i said thank you very much goodbye that was the wonderful clive myrie always nice to see him and he's had a busy old year hasn't he he has um i think he's great i think um he is a proper if he's going to talk anchor men talk live that's what i say yeah proper bloke. Also incredibly stylish.

He always has. Really well dressed. Yeah, it doesn't matter what he's wearing, he manages to carry it with style. I do like the rather slim silk scarf that he affects because not many men can get away with that. I can't think of another man who could, but somehow on Clive it works. Yes, Clive Myrie, I'd like more of him in 2024.

Well, that's the message that we're all taking into the new year. Thank you very much indeed for listening. It's lovely to have your company on offer. It really wouldn't work without you. So we hope you can join us in 2024 and we'll give it some welly. We'll see where we go with the year. And we're full of hope and promise, Jane, aren't we? Yes. yes.

Thank you. It's hard to see how 2024 can be any worse than 2023, but let's see. No, no. Travel and hope. We're bringing the shutters down on another episode of the internationally acclaimed podcast Off Air with Jane Garvey and V Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe.

But don't forget that you can get another two hours of us every Monday to Thursday afternoon here on Times Radio. We start at 3pm and you can listen for free on your smart speaker. Just shout Play Times Radio at it. You can also get us on DAB Radio in the car

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Thank you for joining us. And we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon. Thank you. I'm Breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone.