Off Air... with Jane and Fi - What kind of tog is your summer dressing gown? (With Jo Nesbø)

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

Jane and Fi grapple with the difference between a house coat and a dressing gown and Jane shares the savage lessons she learnt from the time she stroked a bee...Plus, they’re joined by Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø to discuss the latest instalment of his Harry Hole detective series as well as anxiety induced dreams involving an old football coach.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Producer: Eve SalusburyTimes 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. I think we did one of our last half hour on the radio show today consisted of a full and frank conversation about urinary tract infections,

followed by some incredibly hardcore premiership football chat. So I think we should be quite pleased with ourselves for that. Because I'm going to say to you, I don't think many shows would have had that amount, that certain variety. No. And also, I think the conviction, which we showed in both of those interviews, to the subject matter, to absolutely getting to the heart of it all, and interspersed with some vague references about teeth, which for some reason we became obsessed with today. Real teeth, fake teeth.

And it's because, I don't think you'd mind us saying this, Fat Tony, the DJ, who is on our programme on next week, thanks, Eve, he has got the most delightful set of teeth. Glorious. It's because his drug addiction spiralled out of control to such an extent. He only had one left. He only had one tooth left. And he does, I have to say, I mean, there are memoirs and there are memoirs.

And Fat Tony, the DJ's memoir, I Don't Take Requests, that's what it's called, isn't it? Is one of those absolutely, I think, searingly honest would be one way of describing it. But I did love the endorsement on the back from Messrs John and Furnish who just say, yeah, Tony, you're a tosser, but we love you, which I think is a wonderful thing to say about a chum. And I'd like to offer that endorsement to anybody I know. He's a really interesting character, Fat Tony, because also he does say, doesn't he, that

Boy George, that he annoyed Boy George so much that Boy George basically banned him from his space, but then they became very good friends in the end. They've fallen in and out of friends quite a few times over the years. Have you ever banned anyone from your space?

Not yet. But watch this space. Oh, don't be mean. We just need to shout out to our celebrity DJ chum, we've already mentioned Fat Tony, Ian Dale. Now he doesn't work for this organisation but he's done his hip in. He has, hasn't he? And he's

had a really bad run of it because he fell off a stage, didn't he? And really, really hurt his ankle when he was on tour with a rival podcast. So we do wish him well. And I know that he absolutely hates it because he listens to this podcast when I sing. So I'm just going to sing at the end, Ian, just to let you know. Or actually, I may burst into song. Just for him?

At any given moment, yeah. Seriously, Ian, get well soon. I know he's had a hip replacement so it's not the easiest operation to get over so best of luck and let's see you soon. Do you think that's done it? Very much so. Do you have any other celebrities in your locker that you'd like to do a shout out to

today? No, I don't know anybody else who's currently in hospital having had an emergency hip replacement and thank goodness I don't by the way because it's no small fry. We started something yesterday because I was adamant that a tabard was the same as a housecoat. And I have been put right on Twitter, Jane, by many people who've sent in...

Actually, people have sent in the same picture of a group of ladies in their floral housecoats. It's quite a terrifying picture actually uh jane is jane garvey one on twitter i'm fifi glover uh you can have a look at them there but people have ended up saying the tabard is definitely the thing that you put over your head i thought a tabard could be the same as a house coat it just didn't have sleeves stay with us we get to other stuff in the podcast uh it's then left people wondering what the difference is between a house coat and a dressing gown helen in particular would like some clarification well a dressing gown is a much cozier item

although i was only having that conversation with myself this morning is it time to shift to the summer dressing gown what kind of weight what kind of tog is your summer dressing gown? My summer dressing gown is a very flimsy garment. Can you answer a door in a summer dressing gown, Jane, without revealing yourself? Well, only if I've secured it extremely tightly. You do have to be careful, don't you, because dressing gowns do have a habit of, well, maybe it's just me just falling open

when you answer the door to the delivery man. Or woman. Sorry. It's 2023. Or woman. Yes. me just falling open when you answer the door to the delivery man or woman oh sorry 2023 woman yes nobody needs to see that uh yeah okay so a dressing gown is different to a house coat which is different to a tabard end of yeah but do keep no actually don't keep your emails coming on this subject jane and fee at times dot's it. I totally forgot that. Jane and Fee at Times Dot Radio. Here's a quandary. It's from somebody we'll call Jay. We've got three honey bee hives

at the end of a fairly large garden. Sorry, that was just for fairly large. But the bees don't know which house they belong to. They're a bit like cats, they just don't have boundaries. Because it's warm, they've started swarming. And our neighbour came round and said, you should have told us you had bees. The whole point is, they're not actually our bees, not that we're aware of. What do you think?

Okay, sorry. So what do you think? I wasn't listening at all, because I was just reading the one about sex and plumbing. Well, we'll get to that in a minute. Sorry, here we go. We have 300 minutes. We used to sing for a bit. So the whole point is, it is tricky. If you've got bees, they're not yours. You're not doing anything with them. Although, can bees just be left alone to do their thing or do they need to be farmed?

Well, I think they just need to be hived, don't they? So who put in the hives? Who's looking after them? Are they just perfectly fine getting on with their busy bee work? Well, if you've got a lot of bees who are swarming around, feeding themselves and then going back to the hive, I would find that a bit disconcerting, actually. Yes, but it's not this part. They didn't know they had... No, I know. But I would still think...

If I was going to put some beehives at the bottom of the garden, I would tell the neighbours. I'd say ring the council. You won't get through, but at least it keeps you in the house on the phone to the council and away from your neighbour. So that's something. That's my earliest memory, actually, that is reaching out on a brilliant sunny afternoon in my grandparents' back garden

and stroking a particularly fat bee. Stroking a bee? Well, it turned out to be a mistake, let me tell you. Never known pain like it. It really was quite extraordinary, honestly. It's immediate. Do you think that would be the lasting message that you'd pass on to future generations?

Don't stroke a bee, kids. Yeah, absolutely. Yes, definitely. Okay. Say what you like about Jane, but she only stroked a bee once. She learnt a savage lesson. I always found it inexorably sad

to learn that bees die after they've stung you, but wasps can sting you and just zoom off and do it again. Little sobs on them. Yeah, because the bees make lovely things, don't they? I also feel really sorry for the bees of the modern world because they can't possibly be doing all of that buzzing around and working really, really hard just so I can have a really good leg wax.

What? Well, that's where the wax comes from, isn't it? And I think sometimes that's why the bee population is dying out because they're just like I don't mind making the honey, I don't mind making the candles I really don't want to do the hot wax anymore and I never wanted to be in hair removal no exactly

gosh I hadn't thought about that so this, I was just trying to work out what this referred to I like Fee's analogy about a boiler service and my sex life, a jolly good going over, but I think it sounded as if I pay for it. This is a loving relationship. Is this the woman who contacted us to say

that she just has a once a year kind of ding-dong and it satisfies all her needs? You know, the guy comes over and stays the night and they have a lovely time. She's asked me to have an extraordinarily useful and effective set of circumstances. She's got back in touch to say, he seems to care more for me than many people in my life.

From year to year, he remembers everything I said to him on the previous visit. Well, that's very impressive. We met at work and he courted me assiduously for many months. And now if I appear before him by visiting my former place of work, the effect is magical and more romantic than my husband of 37 years ever managed. I'm not a wild pleasure seeker.

I live very near where Fee grew up. Well, that says it all. That'll knock it out of you, love. And spend most of my time gardening. P.S. Collective noun for buttocks is a bravado. I love that. A bravado of buttocks. Oh, well, we've got another one on what you call a collective...

What's the expression? Collective noun. Yes, what's the collective noun for buttocks? Caroline says it's a brace of buttocks. And somebody on Twitter said it was a clench. I rather like that. Yes, this is all because... Sorry, I've just had to pick a hair out of my mouth.

That was really disgusting. It was because I was mentioning... Everything is copy. Well, it so is in the podcast world, as we know. Look, it's life. And it's being lived after a fashion. So Jude Law is playing Henry VIII in a new film. It's called Firebrand. I don't know why.

Because I think that's a really silly title for a film about Henry VIII. Firebrand. Have I got that right? Well, yes. I think just because you detailed so much of it yesterday, it should be called Ulcerous Leg. Yeah. Oh, God. Yes. Why is it called... Anyway, look, who knows. And in a particular scene, apparently, you see his great

wobbling, chunky buttockage which the film critic was imagining was very definitely prosthetics because none of us want to think about Jude Law having a big bum. Right. Hang on. Or do we? Now, actually, this is a really serious email and we're still getting emails about Parkinson's.

Thank you. I think Rory Kethlin-Jones, he spoke so brilliantly, didn't he, about the impact of Parkinson's. And thank you to everybody who's taken the time to email us on the subject. If you missed it on our fair, he was on Thursday's edition, wasn't he? Last Thursday. Last Thursday's edition, yeah. And his podcast is called Movers and Shakers. This is from Anita who says, I'm 38 and I lost my mum to a rare form of Parkinson's called PSP

when I was just 31. It brought tears to my eyes when Rory talked about how often people thought that he was drunk. There were multiple occasions where my mum had been left lying in the street after suddenly losing her balance and no one would help her up. As her daughter who couldn't be with her all the time the thought of her ever being in such a vulnerable position just broke me. I miss her terribly and after having two beautiful children including a daughter without her by my

side I so wish I could tell her I get it now. Anita, thank you. And I'm so sorry that you lost your mum when you were 31 and before you had your own children, because that must have been really tough. And it's cruel, isn't it? Parkinson's is really cruel. And the fact that people would just leave your mum to sort herself out when she fell over is extremely sad.

But thank you very much for telling us about her and the lovely relationship that you had with her. So a friend of mine from way back who had MS actually did get a T-shirt printed saying, I'm not drunk, I have multiple sclerosis, for exactly the same reason that she had very, very wobbly mobility, which when she first started to suffer from it did just make her look like she was pissed and it must be so difficult because you you know you you want to say to everybody who stares at you gives you that second

look you know this is an illness but at the same time you don't want to have to tell everybody in the street no you know what your business is but a t-shirt will do the trick. Yeah, it will. And it's just, I mean, we all make judgments, don't we? Often very, very quickly about what we think is going on and we're not always right. And I'm a fine one to talk because I do make judgments. Do you? Yeah, I do. No, I'm kind of known for it. Well, I tell you what, listeners, you've got a treat in store for you well our interview today because jane almost had a ding dong no i

didn't have a ding dong ago but let's just talk about it because it was um it's joe nesbo um hugely successful writer and i've got to be absolutely honest we don't always read all of the books that we're discussing on the program because we'd literally we wouldn't be able to come into work if we read every single page of every book. But often we do read every single word of a particular book. But this, Jo Nesbo's Killing Moon, did defeat me, partly because, if I'm honest, I'm not a massive fan of Scandi Noir.

Have you read any of his before? Yes, so I read The Snowman when I was a much, much younger woman. And that was the first book featuring Harry Hole, his detective. He's gone on to sell 55 million copies. And I think this is the 13th book in the series. And as a younger woman, I remember reading it and loving it and not hugely noticing the violence against women within it. And it is quite a meme in his books, although as you'll hear in the interview, he's very keen to point out that the violence contained in his books is often meted out to men, as well as to women. I will be

really honest, Jane, as an older woman, and as a woman with a young adult daughter, old teenager, I am far more concerned about that depiction of women, young women being harmed than I ever was, you know, 10, 15 years ago. I have a sensitivity to it that I can't get past, actually. So I find it incredibly difficult to read some authors who I really loved before because I suppose I know more about the world and I know more about what might happen and obviously nobody wants that to happen to them or people that they love and that might sound like a really kind

of selfish you know a bit like when people say that they're affected by crime you know because of my daughter and you just think well he should be affected by crime anyway so I apologize for that but it is quite a striking thing in his books and obviously we talk about that in the interview with him I was very interested and you'll hear it in a couple of moments time about the split in his readership actually I'd always assumed that it was largely men who were reading his books he says definitely not, doesn't he? Yeah. Because we've talked about this since, and I wonder, or we both wonder,

whether it's simply that women read more than men, and they do, and they are as likely to read a book by a man as they are by a woman, whereas men, when they do read, are much more likely to read a man. Anyway, complicated stuff. And he is, I mean, he probably is now Norway's most successful ever writer. I was going to...

He absolutely is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think by a country mile. And I mean, his books, you know, the crime writing genre, he's really nailed it. You know, they are fantastic stories that pull people in.

There's always an inner circle of a story. And then there's the ripple effect. There's something happening quite often of a story and then there's the ripple effect there's something happening quite often in a you know completely different area country continent you know they're really really clever books and and i love so much of what he says about actually how he writes and why he writes so he is a fascinating person to have met but yes yes, you know, we do definitely go there with violence against women. Should I read the formal queue? Yes, please. So people know a little more about it. They want their money's worth. Here we go. So Joe is a massive super selling crime writing sensation.

As I've just said, 55 million copies of his books do make him Norway's most successful author of all time. Most of those books feature Harry Hole, who is a difficult, alcoholically compromised but driven detective who often takes on cases where women are in peril and men are the cause of that. Now, Joe Nesbo is also a former football player. He was a stockbroker and is also lead singer in Didera, which is a massively successful Norwegian rock band. He, which is a massively successful Norwegian rock band. Which is a massively successful Norwegian rock band. You see, this is what happens when you do formal reading of a script. Third time lucky.

Come on, Fi. He's also lead singer in Didera, a massively successful Norwegian rock band. He is man-juice in human form. His latest book is Killing Moon. So we started by asking him what has brought Harry Hole, his protagonist, to LA, where he finds himself at the start of this novel.

He's gone there to drink himself to death. That is the plan. And so far the plan is going quite well. He's in a bar called Creatures, where the famous American writer, Charles Bukowski, also tried to drink himself to death, I think, at least according to this story. And then something happens. So he decides to try to stay alive instead. Mm. He is quite a damaged human being by this stage in his fictional life, isn't he?

For people who've never come across him before, how would you briefly describe that journey? Oh, I hate that question because I've written like 10,000 pages to explain who he is. But okay, I'll try. He's a, in many ways, he is the cliche hard-boiled detective. So you have one foot in the American hard-boiled detective novel tradition, hard drinking, womanizing, guy who hates authorities and who likes to do it his way.

On the other hand, he has one foot in the Scandinavian crime fiction tradition also. Always asking questions, you know, whether the system really works. Is there any point in punishing criminals? He, in many ways, feels more related to the criminals he are chasing than his colleagues at the police house. Yeah. When you first met him in your imagination, what was that balance between him needing to have a kind of dark side to his own

life and also needing to be the person through which the reader can always feel that good is going to come, you know, justice will be found? Actually, the reason why I chose to make him to sort of use the cliches of the hard-boiled detective, was that I had five weeks in which to write something. So I decided I'll try to write a crime novel. I had been asked by a publishing house, based on the lyrics I wrote for the band, to write something for them. So I came up with this character, Harry Hole,

who was, I took his name and his looks from a local police officer where my grandmother lived and she always said that if you're not home and in bed by eight o'clock then hole hole will come get you so i um so i imagined this kind of scary tall guy and that is Ole. And I wanted him to be the camera lens for the readers. So I didn't really put that much work into the character in my first novel, I thought. But in hindsight, it seems like I did anyway. But he has gradually throughout the series, so now 30 novels, become the become the focused center of the stories.

So he has sort of gone from being behind the camera to being in front of the camera. I loved what you said in another interview about the way that your storytelling history in your family informed your ability to write. in your family informed your ability to write. The fact that families tell the same stories over and over again is the kind of comfort of the story. It's absolutely at the heart of crime fiction, isn't it? That same template. Definitely. I think that because like with family stories,

you have this almost interactive process during, I mean, summer holidays and Christmas where the family gathers and you hear the old stories. You don't want to hear any new stories. You want to hear the old stories told in an even better way than it was told the last time. So you get to sort of analyze what makes a story work.

It's not about the punchline. It's how to get there and um so i think that that feeling that you get when you have a good storyteller that tells you you know come sit closer because i have this great story to tell you and i know exactly where we're going that's what i'm trying to achieve as a storyteller to to uh you know do what my father and my uncles and my aunts did when we had um had our family holidays do you ever shock yourself with what you managed to create on the page in terms of what happens particularly to some of the women um i don't know if i'm shocked when it's on the page. I think when I come up with the ideas, I'm sometimes scared and worried about, you know,

how come you have these thoughts, not only about female victims, but any victim. And also the criminals, the criminal minds. I think that probably scares me even more um but it's um then again i think that there's no limit or fantasies i mean there's no censorship when you're alone in bed at five o'clock in the morning and you just wake up and you had this dream and you keep working on that dream and your your guard your uh moral guard is down in a way so you allow anything to happen uh in your head do you do you ever worry that for every man who reads a book

like yours not necessarily yours where really nasty sexual crimes are committed against women. For every man who thinks that is wrong, this is fiction, you know, I can distance myself from it, there is a man who thinks that's okay, that's what happens to women. Well, I think I would be more worried if crime fiction didn't reflect what is going on in this world and violence towards women is definitely a big problem. And if crime novels, fiction, ignore that, I would be more worried.

Except that statistically, you're more likely to be a victim of murder if you're male. Yeah, that's probably true. Well, it is true. I think they had a survey of crime novels in Scandinavia some years ago when this was a hot topic. For some reason it seemed that the statistics in fiction reflected the statistics in the real world.

I don't think that's true. In fact, I'm certain that certainly in Britain, it's something like 70% of homicide victims, murder victims are male. But I wonder whether that is, and of course, they're killed by men. So I, on the whole, though not always

clearly, I just wonder whether there's just something that makes us, as women, more likely to want to read about crimes committed against other women because that is our greatest fear do you think that might be um a sort of appetite that you're feeding uh i don't know um do you know how your readers break down are they overwhelmingly male or 50 50 or what i think they are I would think that it's, in Norway, I think 80% of the readers, between 70% and 80% of the readers are women.

So I would think that there's a majority of female readers, perhaps not 80%, 20%, but still a majority. 20% but still a majority but I don't really have any ideas why anyone read my novels my novels are a universe

that I walk into it's like inviting your readers to come to where I am and to look at these moral dilemmas of the heroes and the victims and the murderers. Do you ever want to be able to have more freedom to write a very happy resolution for Harry, which would not be a happy resolution for the publishers and for your future readership.

You know, you want to just wrap it all up for him. He's a man whose wife has been murdered. You know, he struggles with himself really, doesn't he? But can we have a, you know, sail off into the sunset and he opens a small bed and breakfast somewhere outside Oslo and lives happily ever after? It's kind of hard to imagine, right? But when I wrote my third novel, I would write a

long storyline of Harry's life and his demise. And of course, I can't reveal what is going to happen, but there will be an end to the series.

And what I can promise is that when he's gone, he will not resurrect as some other heroes in crime fiction. Okay, so he dies? Well, yeah, maybe. Let's see. Okay, or he does open that B&B. I mean, that's a death for some people, isn't it? 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. Joe Nesbo is our guest this afternoon. Killing Moon is his latest novel. This killer will get inside your head. Dot, dot, dot. That's quite a literal tease, isn't it, Joe? Yeah. Dot, dot, dot. That's quite a literal tease, isn't it, Joe?

Yeah. Good one. Yes, because there's some scalping involved, isn't there? Yes, it is. Okay, right. Yeah. Do you know how to scalp people? Where do you go for your research for something like that? Who checks your search history?

Yeah. I try to talk to people, to, in this case, talk to doctors. You know, what is possible, not what is likely necessarily, but can I get away with this or that? And so they give me a go or a no-go. And sometimes I do. For this book, I actually did more research on parasites. It was a, somebody told me about this parasite

that creeps inside the mouth of a fish and attaches itself to the tongue and then squeezes the tongue until the bloodstream stops and after a couple of weeks, the tongue will fall off and then the sea lice will attach itself and become the to the tongue stop and become the new tongue of the fish actually quite well working uh tongue and i couldn't believe this when i heard it so i googled it and there was a picture of uh of the mouth of a fish and you can see the tongue had like eyes and antennas.

And I was fascinated by the sort of relationship between the parasite and the host. And so that became a theme in the novel Killing Moon. How often do readers get in touch with you to want to kind of be involved in the detail, to say, well, I think you'll find actually that that particular maggot wouldn't be able to do that particular thing? Because that can happen, can't it?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, and it has happened from time to time. But apart from checking my research research which i'm very happy that readers do i i try to stay away from from from readers and not you know discuss my books uh too much with them so what happens when you go to a literary festival i mean you you are a super saw away publishing sensation so you know we're seeing you here in London as part of a tour that you said was taking you all the way around the world you know there must be so many people who want to meet you do you find that actually quite difficult? As long as they want a signature and a picture and when I'm on stage that they ask questions but what I mean by i don't want to get involved with my readers is that

sometimes they will have wishes for what is going to happen with harry and my main characters and uh they hate when some of their favorite uh characters uh suddenly are killed in the novel and i um i sort i tend to to to please want to please my readers and people in general. So I'm afraid I will get corrupted if I get too involved with my readers. I'm not like Charles Dickens who would publish one chapter at a time and then wait for the feedback from the audience before he would write the next chapter. The state of the British Postal Service, he'd have been waiting

a long time. Yeah, but also I was going to say, if Charles Dickens existed in a time of Twitter and social media, how would he have fared? He'd have been cancelled. George says I came to Joe late, now read them all and just finished The Leopard. That one's got some stuff in it, hasn't it?

All the detail is superb. And Sarah in London simply wants to thank you for all of the hours of entertainment that you have given her on trains and the beach. And given the state of the railways in this country, that's probably quite a lot of hours. She may have read your entire back catalogue. Can I ask you something completely and utterly different?

How safe do you think the Nordic region is from Russia? Not so safe i mean um i was in the in in the army or the actually the air force in the in the 70s and then at that time late 70s and at that time during the cold war it was a big worry where i mean we in the north, we have a border towards Russia. And also, I've been asked this a lot because I wrote a synopsis for a TV series called Occupied, which was just before Russia attacked Ukraine. And it's about Russia occupying Norway in the not-too-far future. occupying Norway in a not too far future. And I think that, well, that story wasn't actually about Russia and politics. It was about being a country that's occupied to see how would our generation react

compared to our grandparents during World War II when Norway also was occupied. to our grandparents during World War II when Norway also was occupied. But it was clearly easy to imagine Russia occupying Norway by then, and it's even easier now. It's an interesting point to make, actually, just about the fact that Norway and in this country, we have a similar thing where two generations have no experience of being directly threatened by an external force I would say that Norway might be doing better as a country than we are with that it seems to have a contentment about it maybe I'm wrong maybe it

doesn't have such a polarization of politics is that because it's simply wealthier? You've had the oil, you've got high taxes, your public services are still good? And I think in many ways, maybe Norway's occupation during World War II was actually more peaceful than Britain being bombed by Germans during World War II. We didn't really have that. We were occupied in 1940, April 1940.

And after that, although there have been made at least two movies about every sabotage done in Norway during those five years, nothing much really happened in Norway for those five years. Actually, life expectancy went up during the war in Norway for those five years. Actually, life expectancy went up during the war in Norway. Good grief, you don't hear that very often. No, that's really interesting. And actually, there were more Russians that died during the war in Norway than Norwegians. That is interesting. Let's have another quick subject change, because you played football. You were a good player, played up front for molder do you remember your best ever goal

uh oh there were so many just be honest yeah yeah yeah well i had a really important one when we actually that was for the junior team when we won the national championship. What, did you do a mazy run and then chip the goalie? No, it was a header. It was a header. And in hindsight, maybe the keeper should have got his hands on it. Okay. Well, does that ever, when you mentioned waking up at five in the morning with some dark thoughts, do you ever revisit any of those open goals you missed?

with some dark thoughts. Do you ever revisit any of those open goals you missed? In my dreams, my old coach, I'm now 63 years old, but I still dream that the coach is phoning me and saying, we are having some trouble, lots of injuries. Do you still have your football shoes? That's Joe Nesbo. We'd be interested to hear all of your thoughts, especially if you are, let's be honest about it,

if you're a woman who just absolutely loves reading the more macabre stuff in his books. Like I say, as a younger woman, I just didn't mind it at all. The anxiety dreams made me smile. Actually, his being that his old football coach asks him if he's still got his football boots because there have been casualties on the team and he needs to get his arse down to the dressing room immediately.

He's 63 and one of the world's best-selling authors and he's not really sure he wants to do it. What's your anxiety dream? I've just got so many. I mean, generally speaking, it's about missing. It's usually about connected to travel arrangements. Is it? I'm either running late, I'm in the wrong place,

I don't have my passport. I mean, just guff. But really, I mean, I wake up clenching everything I've still got left that's clenchable. When I'm not having the one about having to fill airtime, which I do quite often. I don't have that one. I envy you that, sister.

So it's always the clock in the studio, which has dots going up to the hour, which tick away. Yeah, we've got dots in our studio on the clock. So it's always, we've got seven minutes to film. We still get it wrong, but fabulous. And there's nothing to go to. But my absolutely worst one, which I still get, you know, many, many years into parenting,

is that I've just had a baby and I've left it on a cruise ship. On a cruise ship? Yeah, and the ship's gone off and I'm on the jetty. That's easily done, isn't it? I've probably got a couple of nippers still bobbing around on the ocean blue somewhere. Are they having unlimited food in a rush? Probably.

Seven restaurants. Vegan. Yes, they'll be at the unlimited vegan buffet. I want to do a lovely one about a dog in a minute, but if people are looking for a TV show that isn't about murder, Maryland, because I've been... And it's got great reviews. I know it's in all the newspapers today.

It's on the ITVX. And it's Sir Anne Jones and Eve Best, I think is the other actress in it. And it actually is about the body of a woman discovered on a beach, but she hasn't been murdered. And it's just what actually turns out to be a series about siblings and about sisters in particular and about families.

So it's not what you think you're getting. So if you steered clear of it because you think it's another murder thing, it actually isn't and it's brilliant. There we go. Right. This is from Ruth, who says that she loved hearing Rory Kethlyn Jones talking about Sophie from Romania. But I wonder if anyone has mentioned fostering for rescues, asks Ruth. I've had my own two rescue collie crosses for the last 14 years. And then after losing one, I thought I'd sign up for fostering something I've wanted to do

for a while but haven't quite been brave enough I now have a beautiful shy collie girl picture below and look at that dog's face oh it's a beauty she is absolutely gorgeous um she was booked in for euthanasia as an unwanted lockdown pet god God, people are stupid, aren't they? Anyway, the process of socialising her has been tricky but rewarding, and she's looking more cheerful and confident by the day. She's had some interest from potential adopters, so may soon be off to a permanent home. I'll miss her, but I'll be very happy to have helped her. The rescue I volunteer for is in Yorkshire. It's all foster-based with no kennels. I know many rescues are desperate for new fosterers at the moment as the wave of unwanted young dogs, Covid impulse buys and cost of living victims is now hitting them and they're at full stretch.

Perhaps one of your lovely, caring listeners would consider being a doggy fosterer. It's been a very positive experience for me. There we go. Thank you so much for that, Ruth. You never know. Somebody listening might be able to do it. And I really do. That is truly a touching image of the dog that you're looking after at the moment.

Lovely. Well, it is. It's just lovely. I know I'm cynical, but I'm not going to be cynical about that. It would be very, very difficult to give the dog back if I'd done some fostering. I found it very difficult to give this dog back if I'd done some fostering. I'd find it very difficult to give this dog back, I have to say. But yes, she's absolutely lovely.

Anyway, best of luck with that, Ruth. Hope it carries on going well for you. Two things to tell you about in parish notices. We are going to start a book club. More details on that over the coming weeks. It's going to be a slightly different book club, isn't it, Jan? I hope it's not going to be more work. No, darling,

it's not. Not very much more work. We're going to take suggestions from the listeners rather than us tell the listeners what to read. And we've already got a suggestion, haven't we, which we're going to pursue. One of the French ones. Yes, one of the French ones. So that's going to happen. We hope you can join in with that.

What was the other thing I was going to tell you about? Oh, we've got an email special coming on Friday. So if you haven't had an email read out and you are thinking that it deserves an airing, we're probably thinking the same thing too. We're going to record that tomorrow and pop it out on Friday. Something to look forward to.

That's very formal. Can I say very well done. Thank you very much. Right. Janeandfee at times.radio. Good evening. Good evening. I've got to sing now to Ian. Oh yeah, go on. What would you like me to sing? Well, he's a big disco fan, isn't he? Oh, God.

First I was afraid, I was petrified. I kept thinking I can't live without you by my side. Get well soon. Well done for getting to the end of another episode of Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. And don't forget, there is even more of us every afternoon on Times Radio.

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

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