Off Air... with Jane and Fi - You shouldn't be hopping in your adult life!

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

Fi's experienced something traumatic and she needs to get it off her chest. Once that's done, there's more Morris dancing chat, Deliveroo shaming and Jane's making lots of edit demands... Plus, they're joined by businesswoman and philanthropist Martha Lane-Fox about her 'Mountain Mission'. You can donate to Martha's mission here: https://www.givewheel.com/fundraising/2189/3-peaks-challenge/ You can book your tickets to see Jane and Fi live at the new Crossed Wires festival here: https://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/book/instance/663601Our next book club pick has been announced - A Dutiful Boy by Mohsin Zaidi.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] us on Instagram! @janeandfiAssistant Producer: Eve SalusburyTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When you hop on the merry-go-round of hypocrisy and it spins you in my direction... I will not order breakfast. I'm going to keep tabs on your Deliveroo account. Well, somebody needs to, certainly. Right. Thank you, Eve. Can I just get the prawns off my chest? I know you've had a traumatising experience. We do need to hear about it.

Well, it was just a bit weird, Jane, so I was coming in on the 1105 from Dalston Junction. Not Kingsland, Junction. We have two tube stations. That's all right, train fans. Which is a lovely little trundle through the urban landscape yes all the way down to canary wharf and and i had my headphones on i was listening to some music very very loud what were you listening to let's just enter your world oh okay so i've got a playlist on the go at the

moment that veers from harry styles to the manic streetachers and then it had a bit of Sam Fender in and if there's anybody that Sam Fender is speaking to with his tales of hardship on the North East Coast... Is it you? Is it you, darling? It's a middle-aged woman in her rather plush vegan boots hoofing it to her full-time job in a well-renumerated radio station. But anyway, I love his music, so I was listening to that.

And just this very, very weird smell wafted across from a woman who was sitting opposite me. She was eating a bag. Age? 27, 28. I mean, a beautiful complexion, obviously very well-nourished, well-fed, whatever woman. And she was eating a bag of defrosted prawns.

Okay, now that can't be allowed to happen. On the tube at five past 11, James. That is not a mid-morning snack, is it? It's not, but it's because of all of the protein fandango, isn't it? Because I do quite often see people just eating turkey slices from a pack. Oh, dear. Yep. In days of yore, we would have just had a bag of hula hoops

and thanked our lucky stars. Yes, we really would. I didn't realise that prawns are having a moment. Well, I think they're very low-fat, high-protein, aren't they? Oh. Yeah, so they are having a moment, but they should not be having a moment eaten out of a bag. Do they actively smell?

Oh, my word. I know there's all those stories of when couples break up. It's a really good idea, although we're not endorsing it, to stitch king prawn into a curtain. Yeah, because when it goes off, it's just so rancid. I mean, I'm just putting it out there. Yeah, so there's also the thing that fresh fish isn't meant to smell of fish, is it? That's how you tell if fish is fresh.

But fish does smell. Sorry, if a fish smells of fish, don't eat it. If it smells too fishy, it's off. Fresh fish shouldn't smell too fishy. Oh, hence the expression that something's fishy. Yeah. Okay. But these did whiff of prawns.

There was no doubt about it. I hope she's all right. Oh, I'm sure she's fine. I mean, what have we got to? We've got to 12.30, so she's probably knee-deep in a bowl of ramen with some kimchi and only the egg yolk on the side or is it the egg white

I always get those two things something like that but anyway she looked absolutely beautiful and lovely and all hail to her just don't do it in public just have that little snack before you get on the tube don't do it in a closed environment

it's just really unpleasant I agree with you but I've got to say that sometimes if I have a theatre or an evening event and I'm coming straight from work or going straight from work, I do sometimes have to eat on the tube. I just have to occasionally have a light tortilla wrap

or something like that. Well, I'm very surprised, Jane. No, it's horrible and I don't like myself when I do it. Yeah, and I mean, we've already had one tale that has absolutely repulsed me with the idea of you slovenly just wending your way home down the streets of East West Kensington shoving a hamburger in your gob.

I'm shoving it in. A little bit pressed, I'm shoving it in. It was horrible. It was horrible and I owned up to it that's all i'm saying about that i still stick to the fact that the next day i deserved a hangover and i didn't have one so that is brilliant yeah so there you go but can i just ask you why given that you're forgiving of these eating in public public vulgarities why you find it so distressing for people to have a deliveroo delivered to their

house first thing in the morning for breakfast i do because you've got right on cop on about that that is absolutely my suburban sue coming out there when i see people getting i become my mother or grandmother grandmothers and just think surely you could at least make your own breakfast i can't actually that's the little voice I've got shrieking in my head. I don't like the voice. I just like to admit it. How long do you think it will be before you give in to the voice? What?

And go up to somebody who's getting her gales delivered? No, just go and deliver yourself. Oh, no, I wouldn't get loads of takeaways delivered, but not at breakfast time. We've got standards. Television doesn't go on until 7pm during the week. It doesn't. To remind you of this,

when you hop on the merry-go-round of hypocrisy and it spins you in my direction, I'm going to keep tabs on your Deliveroo account. Well, somebody needs to, certainly. Actually, don't even think about it. Deliverer account. Well, somebody needs to, certainly. I mean, actually, it's not been... Don't even think about it. I don't want to. Sometimes I dislike the amount of takeaway food delivered to our house. It's not usually me who's responsible.

By the way, I wouldn't pick one of those ramen meals. The kids love them, but I find them so challenging to eat because I've got such poor motor skills that the whole assembly of the noodle-age and the other bits and bobs in the bowl, to me, it's more of an assault course than a treat. I just can't be bothered. I'm in full agreement with you.

Oh, right, that's a relief. And because you seem to need a much wider variety of cutlery than is ever offered to you. You know how long it takes me to eat a salad from here? You know when you go to Wagamama and they give you that very odd spoon? It's a ladle. I am paper, it says. The ladle one that you have to kind of knock back.

Oh, that I've got to do. I can't work that one at all. And then I want to fork for the noodles and then I probably would drink it from the bowl. But then it does tend to run down your face, doesn't it? Unless you do the slurping. I can't do slurping. I don't think a lady would i don't think either of our mothers would want us to slurp so we won't be doing that this is a podcast i don't know if anyone's still

awake uh we have got a really interesting guest today who is it phoebe it's martha lane fox we're going to talk to her about got loads of things about sitting in the house of lords at the moment which is a busy old place she's also chancellor of the open university she is i think she describes herself as a tech dinosaur she was one of the first in with lastminute.com so she's got lots of thoughts about tech and she sold it at just the right time she did she's been a director of twitter but she's also she had a terrible car accident in morocco uh god i, well over a decade ago now, and she broke 26 bones in her body, including her pelvis. She had a stroke.

But she doesn't really talk about it or draw attention to it at all. And she is now doing an amazing fundraising thing, actually raising money for three charities that she's patron of, where she's walking up the the uk's three highest peaks so that is ben nevis scaffold pike and snowden yeah scarfield pike it's it's rare for me to go for a short day and for you to go for a long is it it is scarfield pike scarfield pike yeah. So we're going to talk to you about all of those things in 12 minutes. Well, good luck with that. And actually, just on a serious note, there is a story in the news today

and we are going to be discussing this in our health news with Dr Rachel Ward on the Times Radio show. So if you are able to, you can always spool back and listen to it on the Times Radio app. It'll be at about quarter past three in today,uesday's edition of the live radio show on times radio um but this is this study from the lancet calling for bold policy actions to promote better lifestyles and reduce the incidence of breast cancer it is the most common form of cancer in the world i didn't know that actually one in four cases though of breast cancer in the uk are preventable apparently with thousands of women developing the disease every

year due to low breastfeeding rates or too much alcohol the study says now that is i think just that sentence is quite triggering isn't it i think it's probably not a it's probably not good enough to be honest i think it's really, really difficult. And with all of those things, you need to balance it out with other factors, don't you, which that paragraph alone doesn't do. And you also condemn an awful lot of women to a high state of anxiety

who either haven't had children, have chosen not to have children, can't have children or didn't breastfeed. And also just, you know, half of France would be dead if that was an actual fact. So we need to dig a bit deeper, don't we? Well, we do. And there's just one email we've already had on this subject from Alex

who just says, I'm just spitting with rage at this article. So now I'm responsible for my own breast cancer along with millions of other women because I didn't breastfeed long enough. The article goes on to say the chance of breast cancer is reduced by a measly 4% for every 12 months. Yes, a whole 12 months a woman breastfeeds. I looked up the UK figures. 68% of women breastfeed. Only 48% continue beyond six to eight weeks. Thanks to whichever man compiled these facts.

Thanks for letting me rant, says Alex. The Fee's right, there's more to this story and we hope to discuss it in more detail a little bit later on the radio show today. Do you remember that Dr Ellie Gannon told us last week, though, that prostate cancer is reduced by having lots of sex. But I don't think that you... I don't know, would it make men feel the same way?

If you're not very sexy, it's on you that you've got prostate cancer. I don't think it would ever be said. Please go and have more sex. Please breastfeed your babies more to save your bosoms. In defence of journalism, this is an article written by, and she's great, Eleanor Haywood, who's a brilliant Times journalist. And the point of a first line or a first couple of lines in a newspaper story or article is to keep you reading.

And those first two lines would keep me reading that article. So I don't want to criticise the author of the article. But I do think it's an interesting way of approaching the subject. Yes, and I don't want to dispute the facts either. But all I'm saying is just that there could be many other balancing factors involved in breast cancer. And that presumably is true, but it's the way that you express it.

So, you know, you're not kind of saying it's on you if you've got cancer, which clearly it's already made one person feel that it would be their fault so definitely it just needs unpicking doesn't it it does we have had so many emails about morris dancing now we didn't realize that there were so many female troops of morris dancers and ironically because this all came from jane and i say that morris dancing just just gives us the ick.

It's just a personal thing. I find it a bit creepy. I thought it was very funny on the WhatsApp group today. You just said you shouldn't hop in adult life. You shouldn't. There is a lot of hopping involved. So much hopping and jangling. One-legged behaviour.

So it just makes us feel a bit queasy, which turns out to be something that is shared by quite a lot of people too but the irony is that loads and loads of people have sent us more pictures stop now in order to get across the point that the lady morris dancer is very much a thing too so this one comes in from marie who says if you want to see male and female Morris dancers in all of their splendour this is where it's at, the Potty Festival in Sheringham in North Norfolk I've heard of some people

who are scared of clowns, I feel the same way about Morris dancers, I find them a bit sinister although it comes across as hey nonny no and benign I'm not so sure a friend of ours was a part time female Morris dancer they would regularly turn up at rural pubs and annoy the hell out of customers who just wanted a quiet drink.

She said most of it was good fun. There didn't seem to be quite a bit of competitive stick bashing and the women were the worst. If you had the knock with one of the dancers, it provided the perfect opportunity to lay into them under the guise of it being part of the routine. Over the last few years, the traditional Morris dancer seemed to have been overshadowed by a new crowd

who got off-piste in the clothing department. The look is more steampunk, lots of purple taffeta and lace. The odd basque has crept in. Top hats with feathers and mirrored sunglasses. You know the sort of thing, or maybe you don't. It's a look which doesn't really travel well and it's still sinister and somebody showed us a photograph polly a center photograph of the thing that did it for her which is as part of the morris dancing troupe there's a guy who put

a horse's head on yeah that's that's where i check out and in a park near near the centre of Winchester. Oh, near the centre of Winchester. Hello, Winchester. Last September, they passed the troop, or is it a group, or is it a gang, or is it a herd, says Polly, not sure of the appropriate noun, one of whom was dressed, as I believe tradition dictates, in a horse's head and proceeded to greet the children. I've been unable to shake the experience since.

See photo below, which I made my five-year-old take because I was too busy hiding behind a bush. So, Polly, we're with you on that. But lots of people are really enjoying the female Morris dancing. No, no, we've got more on this, but do you like clowns? Because I don't. No. No, I don't like clowns.

Who likes clowns? No. Somebody somewhere must like them. I don't really like magicians Who likes clowns? Oh, somebody somewhere must like them. I don't really like magicians either. Oh, don't mind. I find it very hard to be caught up in what you know is a ploy. A ploy for money. Yes, that's why you're going to vote Conservative at the next election.

Does that work? Am I? Sorry, what? what's just happened? I've been caught up in a ploy. Scrub that, Eve. I don't know what I'm talking about. Okay, I like this from Mary. You want to just wind up the battery?

What's happened? I had an early start today. Scrub all that. This is Mary, the Morris dancer. Yes. So I think that indicates, I could be wrong, and I'm no detective, but I think that means she's a Morris dancer. What do you think? I think so, Jane.

Okay. Mary says, and I love this, she says, my eldest child is actually called Morris. Although this is sheer coincidence, as Morris dancing only became part of my life in the last year. Well, you think it only became part of your life. Ah, yes. Well, you think it only became part of your life. I think you knew all along that it was your destiny.

Anyway, Mary says she's part of a border Morris troupe which uses sticks and whooping. Well, that's all right then. Rather than the bells and hankies. That is Cotswold, Morris. Did you know the difference? No. Ah, border versus Cotswold.

Mary's part of a troupe that dress mainly in black tatters, a sort of shaggy shirt with black top hats. We practice every Thursday during the darker months and then spend the summer attending festivals all over the place. I'm the youngest of the group at the age of 37. The oldest is 70 plus. And I love the fact that I get to spend time with people of all ages and all walks of life.

We practice and perform with a full band, sometimes as many as 15 players, made up of fiddles, melodiums, whistles, guitars, drums and a French horn. There's no oboe in the band at present, so feel free to dust off your instrument and come along, Fi. Bow! Yeah, OK. I love it, says Mary, although my partner's slightly less keen as he's on child duty when i'm prancing around at whichever local festival we're performing at especially as my

youngest is terrified of me when i'm dressed in my morris dancing get up uh she says as well and i like this that oh no that's from another email so i'll do that in a minute hang on a sec i am going absolutely mad today so cut that out as well. Especially as my youngest is terrified of me when I'm dressed in my Morris dancing getup. Well, I'm sorry, but that says everything. It kind of does, Mary. We wish you the very best in your Morris dancing career.

And by the way, what a wonderful thing. I wish I'd thought of this when I was both married and had small children. Why in God's name didn't I take up Morris dancing then? Just say, I'm out the door. I've got a Morris dancing rehearsal. I've regretted not having a deep and sincere love of test cricket.

Yes, so you could just disappear for five days. Oh, it's at Lord's. So I'll see you a week on Thursday. Yeah, Mr Trick there. Oh, dear. Yep. Now, look, this is from very lovely Arabella, who's having a competition with her mother

to see who can get the most emails read out. Is this about Morris dancing? No, it's not. Did you want to carry on with the Morris dancing? I just want to do just one more. Just one more. Hang on in there, Arabella. This is a slightly rocky trip we're on today, everybody.

But don't worry, we'll get to Harbour soon. No, just wait till I've got my freedom pass. Then we really will be going all over the place uh this is from sarah who says my mum was a morris dancer when i was growing up she was in an all-female side called the black annies named after a famous lester witch yes if only it was near halloween we could make more of this who i believe were quite an anomaly when they started being all women but they are still going i would also encourage you to look up boss morris an all female and trendy morris side who've performed with wet leg well that is cool yeah they were with the wet leg at the brit awards for border morris i would look up beltane border morris

who i always found really exciting to watch. However you're right that many sides are men only and there are definitely still patriarchal elements who resist change but that's particularly short-sighted as many Morris sides are dying off as their members age and retire. There are other problematic elements within border such as some traditions of disguise but nowadays that just looks like blackface. Again, many sides are thankfully moving away from this and modernising a bit with the times. And Sarah adds a PS, I just booked a solo ticket for your show in Sheffield.

Looking forward to seeing you live. Sarah, well, brilliant. Thank you so much for doing that. That's at the Crossed Wires Podcast Festival, May the 31st. You can come with a friend. You can come on your tod. We don't mind, but we'll be there at the Crucible Theatre

7.30 on the 31st of May. 7.15. 7.15 on the 31st of May. Lovely. We'll have a big name guest and then in the second half we always do questions from the audience, which is just fantastic. And I would say really have no fear about coming

on your own because there's always a sense of sharer's table. Have you ever been to a lady's spa at the weekend? There's always a sharer's table. It's where the best people are. Is that where you congregate if you've come? On your own? Yeah.

Yep. And I think sometimes you look across a crowded dining room filled with people who are eating substantial amounts of salad bar while dressed in a white fluffy robe. And the people who've come, you know, with a mate or whatever are looking enviously as the cackle of laughter rises from the chair at the table. Also, we understand as well that many of you

don't want to tell anyone that you listen to a fair. It can be embarrassing. That's right, we get it. That's fine. So look, back to Arabella, who's in this competition with her mum and she's hoping she can secure her first win. So look, back to Arabella, who's in this competition with her mum, and she is hoping she can secure her first win. So she has done that. She is coming on her own and basically says, this is a long-winded email to ask you if you'd both like to join me for a G&T.

Well, we will definitely be available for mingling afterwards, so hopefully we will meet in person. And thank you as well for everything in your email actually your story of uh your your progress through an undergraduate degree and then uh completing a master's afterwards uh was with reference to the jeff norcott interview which was a while back about whether or not it was worth going to university. And Arabella is the proud owner of over £100,000 in student debt now. How much? £100,000.

The whole experience has left me feeling quite disappointed and really quite concerned that this amount of teaching is seen as acceptable for a healthcare profession she is hoping to head into or already is in occupational therapy. I mean, it just seems absolutely extraordinary to be saddled with that amount of student debt. And I know that occupational therapy and all of those therapy, therapeutic professions are in desperate need of people at the moment. So be something that you could do to actually alleviate that debt because who would want to take on, you know, that amount of debt?

I know we're meant to call it something different, aren't we? Martin Lewis, the money-saving God is always saying, look at it just as a kind of extra tax you're paying. But it still looks frightening when you write it down. So, yes, let's try and meet in person. And as Jane said, it would be lovely to see you at the Crucible. We'll both be wearing waistcoats we'll be puffing the top of a queue we will be dusting it with chalk and off we go

I'm actually associated with a I went on a school trip to the Crucible to see a play in the 1980s I'll be able to find out what it was but I think it might have been um a Brecht play it probably would have been yeah um because it was a phenomenal I mean it's got been a Brecht play. It probably would have been. Yeah, because it was a phenomenon. I mean, it's got such a good reputation, the theatre, and I'm afraid we won't do much to enhance its reputation by appearing. Or will we? Well, I mean, everyone diversifies.

Yeah, that's true. I don't know whether anyone is interested in emailing this podcast about, yes, I'm going to get on to the guest in a minute. Honestly, Eve's face, she seems to think that people want a sort of less is more version of off-air, as we both know, Fi. People want more and more, not less. After a while, I just don't look at her. Exactly. You've got a pre-record.

I know I have. But I just wonder whether anyone shares my view that Liz Truss's mind-boggling lack of self-awareness, it actually makes me feel embarrassed on behalf of the sisterhood. And I'm wondering whether I'm being harder on her than I would be on a male politician who'd cocked up so magnificently. Is it because she's female that I'm just so mortified by her? I don't know.

No, I don't know either. And I sometimes, I mean, everyone has their own opinion in what they're saying, but I don't view her through the prism of gender at all. Don't you? No, I don't know either. And I sometimes, I mean, everyone has their own opinion in what they're seeing, but I don't view her through the prism of gender at all. Don't you? No, I don't. I want to stop doing it, but I wish, lots of male politicians have got no self-awareness at all. Well, Kwasi Kwarteng, her partner in crime, was similar. You know, he really says the same things about this extraordinary kind of, you know, blame that both of them have on organizations that seem to have served the country well in previous administrations somehow suddenly brought them down

yeah i haven't brought anyone else down sorry she's just on my mind because uh she's got this book that's come out this week so she's doing lots and lots of interviews and i've tried very hard to listen to quite a few of them well we were saying earlier that actually there is something akin to when you tell a child off and they're lying and they refuse to say, you know, I did it myself and, you know, it's Robert's fault

or it was Amanda's fault or I didn't do it. I wasn't there. I didn't do nothing. No, and it's a similar kind of tone, actually. And it is embarrassing to watch. Becky says, I'm from the Wirral

and I'm with Jane on the the central park argument it is based on birkenhead park that's what everyone living within a five mile radius of birkenhead has told me since i was a child and i am not going to google it i'm going to believe it's true thank you becky well it's that kind of i wanted to say small-minded but i won't it is that kind of loyalty for a small community that makes the Liverpool diaspora as potent as it is now Martha Lane Fox is an entrepreneur philanthropist and was for a while the youngest female member of the House of Lords she is Baroness Lane Fox of Soho now we're going to talk to her about her attempt to walk to the summit of the three highest peaks in the UK in a moment, something she's doing to raise money for four charities, and which is remarkable because 20 years ago she was in a car crash in Morocco,

broke 26 bones, was in hospital for two years, survived a stroke, and has had 47 operations since then. Welcome to the programme, Martha. Thank you. I did hear you, because you're on the panel, aren't you, on The Breakfast Show on Times Radio, because you write for the Sunday Times and, you know, you're the big brain. And I did hear you say, in a kind of self-deprecating way, when all of that was mentioned by Stig and Asma, and they were talking to you about your walking challenge. You said something like, oh, you know, get out the tiny violins for me.

And I did just think, well, actually, you can kind of go with a cello on all of that. I mean, that is just a, that's a lot to have happened to a body. Do you simply not want people to frame you in that way, hence sweep it aside like that? I think that I have survived the last 20 years by using denial to extreme effect. And, you know, I'm sure psychoanalysts would unpick that and say I can probably be more something or other if I had not done that. But it's worked for me.

So I've tried not to put myself always in the category of disabled person, person walks with two sticks, person that's in and out of hospital. And I think it's also because I feel as though I did have this immense luck in my life. You know, not everybody gets to start a dot-com success story and make quite a lot of money and all of the things that went with that, yes, then followed quickly by something horrifying. But I don't, you hold all those things true as a person. And I don't want to feel as though I'm coming out here going, feel sorry for me, something happened 20 years ago. Sure. So in a sense, why do something that then does draw attention to the fact that it's 20 years since that happened to you? You sound like Chris, my partner,

who's like, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? You just want to have a party on the top of a mountain. That might be true. I'm doing it because it's still a thing it dominates a lot of my daily life and just even in 2022 I had a lot of problems with my hip that then led to a bone infection that had to sepsis I nearly lost my leg it goes on right and so that is part of my life and it is part of who I am and at 20 years I thought how can I channel it for me not for everybody else but for me into something that felt positive so something very scary which this is and also trying to raise a lot of money felt like those things. How are you going to do it? Well I'm going to do it slowly I'm going to do it I'm starting with Snowdon on Saturday I've never

been to Snowdon I think the last time I went to the Brecon Beacons I was 11 when we went on those outward bound holidays and I remember seeing my teacher Mrs Pond in her nightie that was the most I've never been to Snowdon. I think the last time I went to the Brecon Beacons, I was 11 when we went on those outward-bound holidays. And I remember seeing my teacher, Mrs Pond, in her nightie. That was the most exciting thing that happened. Are you over it now? Just. Only just, Jane, as you can tell. It's obviously lingered. Only just.

Poor lady. Poor lady. So starting with Snowdon, then we're going to Scaffold Pike and then Snowdon in September. I've been training quite hard, doing lots more kind of stepping up things than I would normally do. The up bit I'm not so worried about, actually, it's the down bit, because down is harder generally and a bit more tricky with my balance and stuff. So I don't know,

but I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. And who's doing it with you? Some friends and family. And I have subjected my poor close friends to quite a lot over the last 20 years and I sent an email going, I'm going to do this. You don't have to come with me. But 10 years ago, I walked Adrian's wall and it was the 10-year anniversary. Quite a lot of people came with me

and it was amazing. And so a lot showed up, especially family. So I'm really lucky. I have about 30 people walking with me. So you are doing it for all of those reasons, but really to raise money as well for charities, three of which you are patron of. So do you want to just run us quickly through the charities?

I do. They're all related to things that have made my story, I guess, different. If you have what happened to me generally and you are poor, you die. Simple as that. And that's quite sobering. And if not, you're probably in a wheelchair. And I think about all the points in the chain where the resources that I had changed the moment completely so for example you know I was in an incredible hospital with John Radcliffe in Oxford one of the major trauma units in the country they put me back together I was in intensive care for a long time I was there

for a couple of months but they couldn't quite cope with me even my mum and dad had to put an extra pair of eyes in the room because there was so much happening all the time. So the first charity I'm supporting called Day One Trauma just become patron. They work in major trauma units in hospitals, mainly in the north of England right now. And they give you an ambassador. So either as the patient or as the family of the patient,

it's somebody that will help you. And it's somebody that's been through a major trauma themselves. So that can be somebody that can do something like help you work the benefit system if you're going to be in hospital for ages and ages through to you've got 47 different experts telling you need to prioritize your care in these ways how do you work through that so they're brilliant it's the first one second one is um called i am the code they help girls in refugee camps learn to code i went to northern kenya to see them recently they're amazing obviously my life changed completely because of digital technologies so i feel very strongly about that the third one is ability net they are kind of the country's leading technology company that

helps disabled people use technology which uh is obviously transformational if you're stuck at home you know i can't carry shopping bags i walk with two sticks so i rely on heavily on internet commerce services um and then the final one i'm not patron of, but my aunt volunteers there, and my kids are particularly keen to work for this charity. It's called Horatio's Garden. They help people in spinal units get outside by building beautiful gardens. Sorry, that was a bit long. Horatio's mum's been on the programme talking about Horatio's Garden before,

and very impactful, the charity is too. So you're doing the first one, Snowdon, this weekend, and then the second one? Scaffold Pike, a couple of weekends after that, which is the anniversary accident, and then Snowdon, I'm giving myself a bit of a gap. And I've got to that point now where I have this kind of low-level unease all the time and I keep thinking, why am I feeling a little bit anxious?

And I think it's probably that. It might be. Yes, it might be. And also everyone keeps saying to me, oh, well, you know, it is much tougher than you think, these clans. I'm like, this isn't helpful at this point. Is there a point, I mean, is Snowdon the easiest? Apparently.

Have you done it, Jane? No, I've often thought of that. Actually, listening to you talk about it makes me wonder why I haven't made an attempt. Well, exactly. I mean, it is fantastic. It's not too late, Jane. No, it's so beautiful, that part of Wales.

Well, yes. I'll send you some pics. Yes, I'd like that very much. I think you could entertain the notion of joining in the September one. Ben Nevis, yes. Ben Nevis, yes. I'm not sure what Ben Nevis has done to deserve that, but yes. Okay, well, think on that.

We wanted to talk to you about lots of the other things that are in your life at the moment, if that's okay. You are currently Chancellor of the Open University, President of the British Chambers of Commerce. You were a director on Twitter before Elon Musk took it all for himself. And as you've mentioned, one of the UK's tech pioneers. I feel like this is your life. I feel like someone's going to walk in with a big red book. I think we should definitely tap into your tech expertise. When you first became digital champion back in 2009, I know that you wanted to make the point that there was a lot of enthusiasm back then from

the government to better understand the digital world. But much further down the line, I know that you're also quite critical of the people who are in government who don't understand the digital world. So where does that leave all of us? What should we all be thinking? I mean, are we basically just not being led by the right people with the right expertise at the moment? Well, I think it's slightly, I frame it slightly differently. So I think the first thing that infuriates me is that we still have,

by some counts, 10 million adults who are unable to perform five or six basic tasks online. Can you imagine that right now in your life? Most jobs, I think it's 99% of jobs are only advertised online, sorry, and yet there are 1 million unemployed people who have no digital skills. I mean, that just strikes me as so dumb. Can you identify a digital skill? What are we talking about? Being able to search for something effectively or being able to fill in a form online or being able to buy something.

Pay a bill, set up a direct debit, whatever it might be. I mean, a lot of these people probably don't have bank accounts. But I just feel as though it's so short-sighted, the way that politicians frame digital technology. It's always about the shiniest thing in the room. And, you know, I've been that shiny thing for a brief period of my life. But that is not where we're going to get the big rewards, in my opinion.

We're going to get the big rewards by making sure everybody has an access to and a basic understanding of technology. So that's a big issue and one that we could so easily solve if somebody just prioritised it and put attention on it. But do you think it's too late

for someone to bother to do that because the shiny baubles are now so shiny? No, I don't actually. I think that if we're thinking about, you know, pick, delete as appropriate, levelling up, or a country that works for everyone, or taking back control, this is just a policy plank that people need to work into it. And there was a push around this in 2009,

kind of even under David Cameron, and it sort of faded away over the last decade. And I really hope if there's a change of government, whatever shade of an election, they might reimagine how tech policy looks. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to hear that because certainly Jeremy Hunt has made it quite a plank of all of his budget announcements, his policies as Chancellor to really sell this country as being a home for digital entrepreneurship and a real, you know, healthy digital sector sector but you still believe that there's

an underbelly that is completely ignored. Absolutely and that's great but that's only a very small fraction of the picture right that's about building new businesses and innovation all the things that we should be doing but I'm talking about the more fundamental building blocks of what makes a modern Britain one of which is great digital infrastructure and skills, and we don't have either. Yeah. In your role at the British Chamber of Commerce, what is it that you believe most of your members really need to see from the next government, whatever shade it is? We've just done some pieces of work around the future of the economy for exactly this purpose. So our Director General Siobhan talks about the playbook for an incoming government, and there's five planks to this work. The first Director General, Siobhan, talks about the playbook for an incoming government. And there's five planks to this work.

The first is the transition to net zero. What do businesses need to be able to effectively decarbonise the economy? The second one is around people and skills. I think the thing that surprised me most, travelling around from Preston to Poole to Edinburgh via Coventry, Doncaster, I'm used to tech always having a skill shortage of people because there's always stuff being invented that people don't understand.

But every single sector that I have met or talked to, from manufacturing to hospitality to anything in between, has said we can't find the people we need, retain them, retrain them. So this is a massive issue. The third piece is around global Britain, how we get more inward investment

and also how we export more. 10% of British businesses export, 63% of British chambers, members, businesses export. So even if you could double that 10% number, we all benefit massively to GDP. So that's a huge piece of it. The next one is around digitisation, obviously, and some things we've talked about. And the final bit is about how to build strength of local place. So those are some of the issues that we're always talking to governments about.

I know that the Online Safety Bill will have taken up some of your time in the House of Lords as it made its way through that and then back to the House of Commons. Do you think it's robust enough? Is it the best piece of legislation to protect particularly our children? I was not closely involved actually and so all hat tips to people in the laws that were particularly lord clement jones was incredibly uh influential and worked very hard on this beban kidron the campaign they worked a lot on the children's part but i think your question is right it started as

i understand it as a piece of online safety legislation for children and it escalated and grew and not just because of amendments but because of just the process and the time of the legislation passing from idea to pre-legislation scrutiny and post-legislative scrutiny so it has grown and morphed and become so much bigger than just about children and I can't answer that question I mean I think talk to Ofcom they'll say yes you know it's going to be effective we've got more tools we've got more people we can do more but I think we have to also be realistic about where we're at and where the power sits in some of this stuff and the power is such an interesting point isn't it the children's commissioner Rachel D'Souza told us that she very much felt that her job and her role would only be validated when she saw

a head honcho from a tech company jailed for not doing the right thing on their own platform which we found quite surprising actually but would you agree with that? I think lots of people have said that you know I'm not a big fan of putting people in prison so I'm not sure I'd pick that but I think effective accountability and legislation and therefore follow through with that is essential. And I think that we have 100% kind of slept walked into where we're at now with the technology platforms, the power around us, and we should definitely be very worried about the impact that it's having on our daily lives. Hardest question last.

How much time do you allow your seven-year-old boys to spend on screens and do they have access to smart things? How much time do you allow your seven-year-old boys to spend on screens? And do they have access to smart things? No. And I was recently asked on a competing radio programme to say whether I thought... That very day. I know, whether eight-year-olds should have smartphones. I thought, who is arguing that this is a good idea? I feel like some of us have taken leave of our senses.

No, they don't have access to a smartphone or a device. They're allowed an hour at the weekends to build stuff on a hotel app they're obsessed with, which makes me laugh because I've always wanted to own a hotel. And I don't know when they'll have a smartphone. And I definitely would not give a child of under 13 or probably 14 a smartphone. Full stop. That's it. Can you answer this one in about 10 seconds?

If you had had access to smartphones and technology when you were a teenager, do you think you would have gone on to achieve what you've achieved? That's a really interesting question. I feel like everything in my life has been such luck. I have absolutely no idea. I think I'd have got sucked into the rabbit hole of watching Sid Cherise videos. Okay.

That's a good answer. That was Martha Lane Fox. And you can do a Google search on her expedition to raise money for those three charities if you just pop her name into any well-known search engine. And we'll put it in the description too. Eve, you're an absolute star. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you, Eve.

Thank you for listening. And if you've ever polished a male Morris Dancer's Bells, we do want to hear about it. Just no pictures. Jonah Fee at Times.Radio. Thank you. Well done for getting to the end of another episode

of Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. And don't forget, there is even more of us every afternoon on Times Radio. It's Monday to Thursday, three till five. You can pop us on when you're pottering around the house or heading out in the car on the school run or running a bank.

Thank you for joining us and we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon. Don't be so silly. Running a bank? I know ladies don't do that. A lady listener. I'm sorry.