Woman's Hour - 18/08/2025

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

Women's voices and women's lives - topical conversations to inform, challenge and inspire.

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BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, this is Nula McGovern, and you're listening to The Woman's Hour podcast. Hello, you're very welcome, and I hope you had a good weekend. Well, we're going to speak about the weight loss drug, Manjaro, this morning. It's expected to raise its price significantly. We're going to hear why, and also what patients and doctors are doing in response. So that coming up in a moment. Also today, the Home Office has invested.

You may have heard £7 million in smashing Vietnamese smuggling gangs over the past months. But just how effective has it been? We'll take a look at Vietnamese nail bars and also how some of them fit into smuggling networks working from Vietnam all the way to the UK. This hour I'm also looking forward to meeting Kerry Evans. Now she is the Disability Liaison Officer for Wrexham Association Football Club. She has been called the heart and soul of the now famous club by the Hollywood. stars who took it over. That was in 2021. We're going to hear more about Kerry's life as she releases

her memoir, stronger than you think. Plus, one more story. It's caught my eye this morning. The actor Dame Helen Mirren has said that even though she is such a feminist, James Bond should be played by a man and that you cannot have a woman. She says, it just doesn't work. James Bond has to be James Bond. Otherwise, it becomes something else. I want to know this morning whether you agree or disagree. And if you think it can be a woman, who should it be? You can text the program. The number is 84844 on social media. We're at BBC Women's Hour. Or you can email us through our website for WhatsApp message or voice note. That is 0-3700-100-100-44. Looking forward to seeing your thoughts on that one. Let me turn to Eli Lilly. They are the US-based manufacturer behind

the weight loss jab Munjarro. And they say they will double the drugs price at the beginning of September. The company says it will bring the UK price in line with other countries. Pharmacists say the drug is mainly used by women. 70% of its users are female and it has caused concern for those who buy it privately, paying between £150 and £200 a month for their prescriptions. I have two guests to speak about this with us this morning. Pharmacist consultant Sahar Shahid is the founder of a company called the 24-hour online pharmacy and a board director for Scotland for the National Pharmacists' Association. And we have Jeannie Annan Lewin who uses Monjaro

and has spoken to Women's Hour before about how much it has helped her. Good to have you both with us. Jeannie, talk to me a little bit and our listeners about how this drug has affected your life. And welcome. Hi. I think it's just had a really positive effect, to be honest.

I think before this weight loss journey, I found it really difficult to keep weight off. I was yo-yo dieting a lot and I kind of the numbers in the scale just didn't move and then I started using this almost about a year ago and I've lost I think close to about four stone so far

I've still got quite a long way to go but I'm feeling a lot better my main concern obviously is I buy this off of I can't get it on the NHS I'm going to an appointment today to see if that can be rectified but I've been paying for it privately so the prices going up is not

doing me any favors. Do you have any idea how much the price increase may be for you approximately? I'm on quite a high dose as well. I'm on 10.5. So I think it's going to cost quite a bit. I'm not sure how much. I think it is, I read somewhere about 300 a month. So it's gone up by about 100 quid, but I don't know if that could be more or not. I think what the BBC is reporting for a month's supply off the highest dose, it will rise from £122 to £3.30. found. Yeah, not a fun time for more. Are you thinking about what you're going to do?

Well, I'm hoping today I might be able to get it via the NHS. I couldn't get it because I'm not pre-diabetic. No, I was pre-diabetic. I went on Mondiro to not be diabetic, not to get anywhere near that. So obviously, because I've lost weight, I'm not sure how that's going to go. But, yeah, I haven't thought about what I'm going to do. It means I'll just have to cut something else out in my life to sort of fulfill this. I'd be really, around, I'd be really,

curious to find out how it goes today and good luck with your appointment. But let me bring in, see her. That's quite a jump, isn't it? And we're hearing from Jeannie how important it's been to her lifestyle and her health. What are you hearing from your patients? Very similar stories as well. I've seen firsthand how amazing the drug has been for so many patients and life-changing. So I really do sympathise with a lot of the patients.

And my role right now is just supporting my patients through this announcement. and looking at what the options are for them. And we're given a lot of advice around good practice since an announcement has came because what we're seeing and what I'm certainly seen is a lot of panic buying, a lot of patients bulk buying, a lot of patients then now also turning to unregulated sources

and getting what they think is Manjaro but may not necessarily be Manjaro because it's a fraction of the actual price. So that's really worrying for us because we don't want patients to put themselves out risk by taking something that they think is Manjaro and actually isn't and it causes further complications. So I've been giving a lot of advice to our patients to make sure that they speak to their providers and work out what their options are because there are options that they can work

through and make sure that they can continue treatment as well. For example, what might some of those options be? We hear from Jeannie there, you know, she's an appointment later on with the NHS hoping that she'll get it that way. But this will affect private patients, obviously. Yeah. So a lot of private patients will be affected because the price increase is going to be affecting the private market. So one of the main options for patients is that we can switch their treatment to an alternative drug, simulotide, which at the moment is, you know, there's no price increase. It's similar price point to the current Mangaro prices. The clinical trials show significant results around weight loss, around about 17% on average, whereas when you compare that

to Manjado, Manjaro was about 22%. So it's still significant results for weight loss, and you know, it's still enough for a lot of patients. So that's certainly an option. And, you know, when any patient is considering to switch treatment, if that is the right thing for them, it needs to be done through a medically trained prescriber to make sure that that switch is done. Because the drugs aren't bio-equivalent. So there needs to be a washout period. There needs to be a typeation from the new drug. So just making sure that patients are getting the correct advice. And I will, of course, refer people to speak to their GP if they have any questions about this. You talked about a wash-out period. What's that?

So a wash-out period is if you have been on, for example, Manjaro for any length of time and you are wanting to switch over, you do need to stop that drug and allow like a drug-free period to let the drug come out your system before you bring in, introduce another drug. Because the drugs are obviously different, you don't want them both in your system at the same time. So we would encourage, we need to have a washout period. What about this, Jeannie, what you're hearing?

I mean, is that something that you would consider changing to a different drug? And I'm wondering how you feel about perhaps coming off for that washout period if, in fact, that's the way you go? I'm happy to do that, of course. but I worry about switching to another drug because I was on Ozmpic and I had quite sort of severe side effects so that's what I switched in the first place

and before that I tried oh there was another drug that you had to sort of inject every day which I found very unpleasant so I kind of don't want to go back to the alternatives that I didn't really feel like worked for me but of course I can't really afford considering the current climate

that we're in paying like an extortion an amount of money will definitely be quite challenging. Have you ever been tempted to go to non-official providers? I've seen a lot of them. I work in a fashion industry. There is a lot of people touting sort of those things online and through friends. There's like secret WhatsApp groups, all sorts of things. Really?

Yeah, I just don't think that that sounds very safe. I think you'll end up in A&E or something. So I'd rather go with something that's, you know, with a professional. Yes, indeed. And as I was mentioning there, of course, for people to go to their GP if they are thinking about changing drugs or any of these issues that we're raising here right now. But I'm thinking with you, Jeannie,

that must be an interesting place to be to work in fashion in an age of Ozempic Wagovi-Munjaro. Yeah, it's not the funnest of times. I can say that. mainly because I'm in a space that sort of still holds, you know, white Western beauty standards and I am none of those things. I like myself a lot, but in order to kind of progress and especially because everything is on camera these days, I do things essentially off camera behind the scenes. I'm a stylist, but people want to see your day to day and how you look, which means that

suddenly you end up getting a lot of hate if you're sort of posting things online and you don't look a certain way. So there's a lot of pressure now. That's not the reason I did. Obviously, I've gone on it. I've gone on on these drugs to sort of improve my health, but it does sort of creep into the psyche a little bit. Interesting. A statement was given to the BBC by Eli Lilly, which are the manufacturers.

And they said the UK was one of the first countries where Lilly launched Monjaro. Our priority was to bring it to patients as quickly as possible during a time of limited availability. At launch, Lily agreed to a UK list price that was significantly below the European average to prevent delays in NHS availability. with changes in the environment

and new clinical evidence supporting the value of Manjaro we're now aligning the list price more consistently to ensure fair global contribution of this cost of innovation. People will have seen as well. US President Donald Trump

he complained about the high cost of drugs in the United States and threatened the pharmaceutical industry with a most favourite nation drug pricing proposal to peg US prices to those abroad, for example. And Eli Lilly said it agreed

with the objective by President Trump but that cost should be shared more fairly, although a most favourite nation approach was not the right answer. Eli Lilly is American, just for those who are not aware. What about all of that, Sahar? I mean, how do you see this going then? I mean, we can only go by what Lily have told us. And one of the reasons is, obviously, to bring the UK market prices in line with the other global markets. That is one of their primary reasons. And what we have also seen is there is a lot of illegal export from the UK

into the other countries because it has been so much more cheaper. So hopefully with the prices obviously aligning based on Lily's, you know, kind of in theory, then that should stamp down on the illegal export because ultimately that causes a lot of patient safety concerns because you don't know how then this medication is then being exported, you know, what conditions has been kept in and then how it's stored because it is to be its co-chain management for this drug. So we don't know how that's been done. So ultimately that supply could also then, you know, cause patient safety issues. we don't know what's going to happen

but our focus is really much about supporting patients with their current situation even things like another option is supporting patients to stay on lower strengths and we focus on diet and lifestyle and alongside the lower strengths because as the higher strengths of price does significantly go up

so there are lots of options that we are just currently speaking to all our patients about and we have spoken about on this program the danger of unlicensed providers, for example, people taking it who don't need it, shortages, postcode lotteries, issues like that around the drugs. But I would be curious from you, Sihar, because you have been prescribing it to patients. How, some people call it a wonder drug. Do you think that's overstating it?

I think it absolutely can be described like that for certain patients. I work a lot with patients who have been chronically obese for, you know, on average 15, 20 years of their life, which is significant the impact that has on these patients mentally, physically, emotionally, and then to be able, for the first time in their life, to be able to lose weight and just do simple daily tasks that they've really, really struggled with, such as walking for more than five minutes or going up and down the stairs or playing with their children and not getting out of breath and, you know, feeling really exhausted. So in that aspect, it absolutely can be a wonder drug, you know, how they describe it. And I've seen firsthand how I've

who have been on medication for high blood pressure, they have been pre-diabetic, they've been classes, diet-controlled diabetic, and then through the support, through our pharmacy, when they've lost so much weight, they've been able to come off their high blood pressure medication, their HB1C has completely reduced, so they're not class as diabetic. Now, that is significant in terms of patients' health outcomes, because what we're ultimately doing when we support patients to lose weight and really kind of resolve obesity is that we're actually adding on

up to 10 years of life expectancy for these patients. We're supporting them to not develop further comorbidities later on in life, which ultimately has a huge impact on the NHS. Thank you both for speaking to us. Sahar Shahid from 24-hour online pharmacy and also board director for Scotland for the National Pharmacists Association

and Jeannie Annan. Lewin, who uses Manjaro, who has an NHS appointment today. I hope you get on well with it, Jeannie. Thanks very much for speaking to us. I also want to read a message that came in. Manjaro, I've written to my MP over the weekend to ask what pressure the government is putting on Eli Lilly or wider directly to Trump about this increase. I'm paying for Manjaro and will not be able to afford this after the price hikes published.

There must be thousands of people like me who are trying to shift weight and improve health. it surely must be in the national benefit. Also, lots of you getting in touch about my James Bond question, Helen Mirren saying it has to be a man. Also asking who might it be, if in fact you believe it could be a woman. I totally agree with Helen Mirren.

However, if James Bond were to be played by a woman, then Helen is at the top of the list. Aha, a one too. Ray, Helen Mirren's comment, surely the issue is whether a woman can play 007, not whether they're called James Bond. Of course a woman can play that. role and I might watch it

if that were the case. That's from Claire. No, that Bond really needs to be a man, but there's no reason that Moneypenny should not be empowered and be 008. So many messages coming in. Keep him coming. 8444. Now, picture this scene.

There is widespread screaming from fans, fireworks, balloons, an explosion of ticker tape. What warranted this response? Well, it was at a fan fest. for a certain TV show and the frenzy was due to the announcement

that London will be the next location for the real housewives TV franchise. It began in the States in 2006 that was the Real Housewives of Orange County following wealthy women, high drama, friendship fallout and since then it's had iterations across the states and internationally. The question is, why has it endured so long?

Also, what does it say about women, both those on that screen and those watching it? Why does this programme still draw such a huge audience. Well, here's a little taste of what we can expect from the London series. I don't even know

how many times she's been married. Like, is it three? Is it four? Is it two? Wasn't it one of the biggest divorce settlements in the UK? She's gone for the jugular. Do you and Amanda know each other? We do. Amanda and I,

we used to be best friends. We were not best friends. Ha ha. I'm joined now by Brian Moylan, author of the New York Times bestseller at the Housewives, the real story behind the real housewives. He also provides housewives

Recaps and Bulletin's for the online culture and entertainment outlet Vulture and Rear Seradetitam writer for The Guardian and The Times and author of Toxic Women, Fame and the Nauties. You're both very welcome. Brian, I understand you were at the London Premier. Was it as insane as

the announcement party? It's not too crazy by Housewives standards. No fights, no wine thrown, nothing like that, but we did get a chance to watch the episode, which was very good. a little sneak peek for everyone there. Okay, what to expect? The first episode, lots of introductions.

You know, it takes housewives a while to get going. You need to meet all the characters, all the players, their dynamics. And so, yeah, it's setting things up. But most importantly, it was funny. And so for any housewife show to be successful, it needs to be funny. So I'm seeing a lot of promise. And do you think it is the comedy or the humor that has kept it going for 20 years? I definitely think it's part of it and probably the most undersung part of it.

You know, when people think about Housewives, they think a lot about the drama and the fights and the glitz and the glamour. But I do think that it's the humor that really humanizes these women and keeps people coming back and definitely adds to the culture of memes and clips and things that are shared online that have united the fandom and kept it growing over these past 20 years. I mean, it's a long time for a society that many things. feel has a short attention span at times. Let me bring in, Sari, here.

Some critics claim the real Housewives franchise is inherently anti-feminist. I'm wondering what you think. Well, it has caught some fairly severe flak over time, hasn't it? Gloria Steinem called it a minstrel show for women, which is just some pretty savage words from Gloria. And what people are getting at when they criticise it is, really real housewives is a celebration of an incredibly narrow hyperfeminine very trashy and it's kind of written into the title sort of defined by their relationship to their

husbands although you know you can quibble about that because obviously it's a show about the women about their relationships but it is about catfights It is about wine-throwing, and it is about, you know, not really sisterhood. If there was too much sisterhood, a Real Housewives franchise would never work. I would take issue with that, just in that, you know, there is the difference between housewives like June Cleaver and Real Housewives. Real Housewives have jobs, are not necessarily married, are empowered, and it is about female friendship. Like, there is a lot, yes, they fight, but they come together at the end of the day. They forgive each other.

It's about conflict. and conflict resolution. So while you say it's about catfights, it's about a lot of other things, it's about business launches, it's about being single, it's about being widowed. You can't just say,

just like women aren't about one thing, that the show is about one thing. It's about the universal. Jump back in. Jump back in, Sarah Grace. Go ahead. Obviously, that is, as the critics would put it, it is about women being defined by their role as

current and current housewives. But actually what you see in there. But the critics can be wrong. Sorry, Brian. One second, Brian. Let's Sarah. finish your point and then I'll come back to you. So please speak, is that you see a lot of women who enter it because they want to launch

themselves independently. So the big example of this is Bethany Frankel, who is the huge success story of Housewives, who's used it to make herself a millionaire, launched this brand called Skinny Girl. In fact, it was so successful that there is a thing that is now in reality show Clause is called the Bethany Clause that allows the producer. to have a cut of brands that are launched off the back of someone's reality show profile. That is how influential and important and how powerful some of the women who've come out of these shows are. Go ahead, Brian.

No, I agree with you. Bravo, the company that produces Houseways in America would say now that the Bethany Claus doesn't really exist. But she's correct that, yes, it has launched a lot of very successful careers. and, you know, a lot of, you know, women have gone on it just to do that to have very successful businesses. It's an interesting thing. I mean, it's reality TV. I suppose it's a very much an illustration of what we've been living through in the past 20 years, in various guises, you know, various reality shows. And I was trying to have a look and see, you know, what research has been done on reality TV and our relationship to it. And not a lot in some respects. There was over a decade ago. There was an MPR.

was citing a study from Central Michigan University. And that was, that it said, watching reality shows contain a lot of relational aggression, you know, so whether it's exclusion or manipulation or bullying, can make viewers more aggressive in real life. Some would question, are those that with more aggressive tendencies, more drawn to that reality show, Brian? I think that can be true,

but I think that we've seen, you're right, there isn't a lot of research into it. There's a chapter in my book about kind of a lot of the research that has been done. A lot of it is very old. And there are things that say reality television, housewives included, makes better viewers because you're, as opposed to a scripted drama where there's one outcome, you're looking at all sorts of factors, including what you're seeing on screen, what these women are talking about on social media, what you're seeing on the after shows

that watch what happens live, and we need to triangulate. what the truth might be. And so it actually makes for maybe more astute consumers of media. But also anecdotally, I did talk to editors and producers who said their partners hate when they're working on a housewife show because it tends to make them a little bit more argumentative. So, I mean, I guess they could go both ways. It's the whole family is brought into it, which also is kind of gobsmacking in a way

if some of members of your family. I'm talking about your son, your daughter, your partner doesn't want to be part of it. And you're like in the spotlight to say the least. You mentioned scripted there, but it is constructed reality, right? Isn't it kind of scenes that are set up, Brian? No, not at all. I would say it's produced in that, you know, if Nini Leaks and Shrey Whitfield are in a fight, the producers are going to say you two need to sit down and have lunch in a way that, you know,

if you're in a fight with her friend, no one's forcing you to sit down with her. But then what they say and what they do and where they go is, in a lot of cases up to the women. And so, yes, they are, you know, and the whole cast goes on a trip, which production pays for, et cetera. So they're thrust into situations that might not be what we would be in real life,

but what happens in those moments is totally up to the women. And as a matter of fact, a lot of producers who I talk to from my book complain that the thing they like, that they like the least is that the women try to self-produce and come up with their own stories.

and they just want the women to be natural and let things rip. I think when they cast some of those women, you know that you're going to have a very feisty, opinionated person that may not just be following orders. That's just from my watching off it. Sarah, let me come back to you. You know, on the positive side of reality TV,

there was another study I was looking at. This was Daniel Lindemann, Sociology Professor in Pennsylvania, Lehigh University. And she talked about, reality TV, being more diverse demographically than other forms of media, you know, show a spotlight on patches of the social landscape that we

mightn't always see, in this case, extremely affluent people, etc. But the women are in their late 40s, early 50s, which, you just have to look at today's papers, there's lots of conversations about women being invisible at that age. I mean, is there a positive aspect to that? I think part of the appeal

of Real Housewives is it does have this sort of fairy tale element, this idea that all the women have a back story, it often involves divorce, it often involves an unhappy marriage, it often involves trying to rebuild themselves from the ground up after some kind of, you know, personal devastation. I think that's one of the big draws of it. But if I think, so Andy Cohen, who's the producer, the originator of this, he has summed up the overall appeal of real housewives as people really like judging other people. And that is essentially the number of it. So it's part of a, you know, a number of reality shows

really took up around the mid-naughties and especially became embedded in cultural life around the time of the financial crisis. And one of the sort of takes on that is that you have this period where lots of people are very financially precarious. And what they actually want to see is the rich, the wealthy, and the glitzy and comfortable

being sort of brought low, dragged into drama, shown as petty and venal and argumentative. And in some cases, because a lot of the cast of real housewives have, I mean, there have been hundreds and hundreds of women who have passed through it. So you can't really, you know, you can't overgeneralize. But because you were talking about very rich people who often come from slightly hardscrabble backgrounds, you know, there have been women in legal difficulties. There's one spin-off that involved a woman making calls from prison to, like, all of this stuff is going on. And like you say, it is this window into the lives of the rich and people, I think part of the pleasure is the judgment

and seeing them, you know, brought down a bit. I learned a new term, the TV of resentment, kind of alluding to what that is, Sarah, that you're talking about there. Okay, well, we've got a few views on Housewives there. I have a question for you on a different screen. I'm asking my listeners this morning whether James, Bond can be a woman. Helen Mirren says, no.

Curious for your thoughts, Sarah? Oh, absolutely not. James Bond as a character is a very specific manifestation of the male psyche. And I don't think you can take that out of a male performance. It's got to be a guy. That's the kind of madness it is. Let me throw it over to the guy. Brian, what do you reckon?

I mean, I think Jody Comer would care to disagree and would be an excellent choice for the female James Bond that I would pay money to go see. Brian Moylan, author of The Housewives, The Real Story Behind the Real Housewives, thank you, and also Saraditin, Gartian and Times writer, an author of Toxic,

women, fame, and the Nauties. Lovely to have both of you on. I'll read some of your more James Bond comments coming in in a moment, but I do also want to let you know you can catch up with all our listener week items on BBC Sounds. At the start of the month, you, our listener,

chose what we covered on the programme and made for some fascinating conversations from the woman who lives on the other side of the world, from her husband, to the experience of being a female bread winner. We heard from listener Melanie Williams as well. Melanie is forever having to adjust her seatbelt because of her bus size. She joined me alongside motoring journalist Maria McCarthy. Here's Melanie.

Your arms move, and as soon as your arms move, the seatbelt rides up over the top of your breast and suddenly it's a crissing. your throat. And it's a constant readjustment as I'm driving that, and as it sits across my throat, I'm thinking, if, I mean, God forbid, but if it were to happen, I was to have an accident while that seatbelt was across my throat, would it kill me, would it strangle me, would it break my neck, would it choke me? And I know I'm not the only person this happens to. In the 60s and 70s, they had these crash test dummies, which are basically based on a man who's 5'9, 171 pounds,

his name is hybrid three. And believe it or not, hybrid three is still in action today. They haven't really changed him. So it hasn't actually adapted for the fact that, you know, men are bigger these days, hasn't adapted for women or any other body type. Because if you have a range of dummies, then you can put those dummies in different situations.

You can try out different types of seatbelt. But that just hasn't really happened. And so now women actually, in a car crash. Women have fewer car accidents than men, but they are 17% more likely to die in one. The more I talk to other women, the more I hear people who are contacting the programme. It's amazing that we sit and take absolutely, we just allow that to happen rather than making a fuss. There must be a solution. There must be a solution. I know a lot of you, that resonated with a lot of you.

thanks so much to Melanie and Maria so you can catch up on all our programmes on BBC sounds thanks to the Bond, let me see I always thought Root Nega would make an excellent James Bond, says Joanne but lots of you agreeing with Dame Helen Mirren as well

I'm with Dame Helen who wants a female version of a bed hopping psycho with cruel tendencies let's keep it as a fantasy figure so says Michelle in Nottingham Now I want to talk about nail bars next if you pop into one in a big city like London or Manchester

you might notice that the technician will often be a Vietnamese woman or perhaps a Vietnamese man and some might be here illegally. The Home Office has revealed women's error that raids and arrests connected with illegal working including nail bars have increased by 50% over the past year. And while there are no figures on nail bars specifically, it is reported as a network of smuggling rings

with links to nail academies back in Vietnam. These academies often teach English as part of their course. Shema backed from the reporter from the Times is here with me and she visited these academies a really interesting article recently on a wider investigation really into people smuggling from Vietnam. Great to have you with us, Shema. Welcome. Tell us a little bit about these academies.

So they're really inside of standard nail shops in Vietnam. We went to three different provinces. One of them was in Hanoi, for example, so busy city and they're these classrooms basically at the back of these shops and yeah really tightly packed you know bright brightly coloured acrylic nails on the walls from students but what's interesting is they're not only teaching them as you said these kind of technical skills of how to do a good manicure but they're also teaching them often you know phrases in English British etiquette was was what one you know teacher told us was on her course

as well as skills for if you do go abroad because often you can find yourself in really dangerous situations as an undocumented migrant and then of course we went into some nail academies that are quite open about the fact that arms of those businesses

were directly cooperating with local gangs in Europe or America in order to move people across borders. So what would the trajectory be and I'm wondering also whether you spoke to anybody who was hoping to make that journey. Yes, we did. We spoke to quite a lot of, I mean, honestly,

all the students had the same kind of aspirations, which was they often came from rural parts of Vietnam because in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh, you know, there is a booming economy and there are lots of opportunities for people, but in rural parts of Vietnam, there aren't. So they would move to these now academies, get these, you know, lessons. And then they would plan if they were going to the UK,

which was one of the biggest countries that, you know, that they wanted to go to. They would plan to fly into Europe, possibly go through central Europe and then into northern France and come on the boats. But yeah, students were very open with us that, you know, the UK was one of the main places that they wanted to go to

and that's because there's an existing, you know, diaspora of Vietnamese. So it's so interesting then because you're in the UK and you can see the other end of that journey. Of course, the money that are here legally, working legally in al-Bars, but there is also some that are not.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I actually have, you know, gone to nail bars, got myself a manicure in it, and it has been done by, you know, a Vietnamese technician. And we know now, by speaking to lots of people in the UK, that there are plenty of workers who are being paid cash in hand. You might not notice that as a customer, long hours, below minimum wage. And often what we found out was that these nail bars were kind of a gateway to get into better paid jobs in more. you know, perhaps more dangerous fields such as cannabis cultivation where people can be trafficked and, you know, physically abused.

And so, so yeah, it's a very, it's really dangerous territory. But actually when you speak to a lot of these undocumented migrants, they just want to be able to send money back home. And of course, the British pound is strong. It's strong. Well, on that point, let me bring in our farm. She's a former BBC journalist now based in Hanoi. where her family is.

You've covered this issue for so long. You were one of the first to break that horrific story back in 2019 where 39 Vietnamese migrants were founded in a lorry trailer. Many will remember that story. But, you know, Shema was just referring to there that there is poverty in Vietnam,

but a lot of the stories we get coming from the country is that it's like a mini-China and that the economy is doing really well. How do you understand why people are taking these dangerous routes, channel crossings, for example, to get to the UK? Well, I think it's, you know, it's made for them to understand that it's the roots actually not dangerous enough. So, I mean, it's almost like business of families, family business to them. So, you know, people from their own village or people that they know, even their

relatives, go to the UK, work, earn good money, send money home. And they're, you know, So they spread that information about, you know, quite easy life in the UK where you earn money and the law is very relaxed. So that encourages people to go there. I mean, they don't really think that they're going to take risk. If you notice, you know, the number of people that travel to the UK by container trucks actually decrease big time after the 30s, after the Essex trafficking case. So now they pick, you know, small boats in a... crossing the English channel so it's less dangerous in their mind and it's you know almost guaranteed job in the UK waiting for them so you know they they have not much to lose that

that's why they still go there and I'm just wondering what is the government doing because with for example France etc you'll know that the UK is speaking about trying to smash smuggling rings we're hearing also from Vietnam from Schema there of things being quite organised in a way. Nor? So again, you know, as I explained, family business is very organized. You know, they know exactly where to go, exactly who to contact

and how to get to the UK, right? And from the Vietnamese authorities side, it's not much they can do because the exit is totally legal. They get some dubious visas from some kind of embassies in China, for example. They get visa from ex-USSR. republics, for example. So the route to Europe actually is legal. The only illegal bit is from

Europe to the UK. So, you know, I don't know. It's very, very difficult to actually stop that flow of people. As long as they think that they can still make money, they can still make their life there and go back home with lots of cash for themselves, for their families. They still continue doing that. That's so interesting. What about, though, the women that are here, you talk about a potential of exploitation, Seymah, that perhaps they're not as concerned about when they're setting off in the journey as Naur describes. Yeah, I mean, it's a really mixed kind of reaction to, you know, you often see with victims of modern slavery that some people don't acknowledge that they're in that position because, you

know, it's the cost to benefit ratio. But we did speak to quite a few women who said that, especially in the kind of transitional period so going from northern France into the UK there was the risk of while they were waiting kind of being in a debt bondage and whereas men were possibly working for these smugglers in front businesses or you know earning their keep as they waited for these boats some women told us that there was the risk of them being kind of put into false prostitution when when people are here in the UK we know that some people are trafficked on to other businesses I spoke to one undocumented migrant who said that he was trafficked onto four different cannabis farms and he started

in a nail academy obviously that's a man but we're hearing kind of similar things from women too and often I suppose the one difference is that women the women that we spoke to anyway they always kind of came in pairs so either with a partner or or friends or relatives and so you know they might have had direct connections to work whereas some men were unemployed from then on. But it really does vary. It can be quite, quite dangerous depending on. We did ask for a home office minister, someone from the UK border force, to come on the program, but no one was available. We did get this statement from Jess Phillips, the Minister for Safeguarding, and it says, we know vile people smuggling gangs often exploit migrants

by subjecting them to squalid conditions and below minimum wage. As we restore our immigration system, we must stop the lies peddled by these gangs about the ability to live and work in the UK. That's why the immigration enforcement teams have been intensifying operational. to stop illegal working, including at nail bars with visits and arrests up by around 50% since the Labour government came into power. We're also working closely with Vietnam to share better intelligence and intercept criminal networks who profit from people's desperation and are debunking the false narrative sold by trafficking gangs through our international communications campaign. We heard from now on what it's like on that side. But what about the 50% increase

in visits and arrests? I mean, we saw ourselves because we went to Northern France and on day we didn't know we were there for quite a few days but on the first day when we arrived we saw a group of about 20 Vietnamese migrants all going um onto these boat launches so we actively saw them getting on these boats so it's very much active um you know I'm sure there is some interception it sounds like from the experts that we spoken to there's a bit of a um a failure to kind of communicate the dangers of being here and I know that the government is starting a campaign on social media was um working with Vietnam so they're biggest messaging app is Zalo, it's like WhatsApp, and they're putting out messages on that.

But yeah, it seems as though that, you know, that's not being fully communicated. And, you know, as your, as your correspondent said, people think that's a risk as well. There was one interesting thing now that I was reading in some of the articles, because we often, you know, talk about economic migrants, for example, and people that are in, it could be a war-tong country or it could be a country where they just can't really make enough to survive. But then in Vietnam, there's a sort of relative poverty sometimes, like looking at poverty compared to other people. And that's what kind of is the impetus to go abroad and try and send money home.

Remittances are through the roof, even looking at a global scale. Can you explain that a little? That's right. In Vietnam, the economy actually moved a very long way. In the last 10 years, the GDP per capita actually increased tenfold. So, I mean, sorry, double too optimistic.

So it's not that ultimate poverty that people are escaping. It's some kind of relative poverty. You know, when you live in a village and then you look around and you see people that you know, people from the same background as you, who have children who went overseas and sent money home and they have bigger house, they have big a house, they have bigger garden, they have bigger cars, so kind of peer pressure, you know. So it's not people go to other countries, especially the UK,

it's not because they don't have anything to eat. That is already long past. It's because they want bigger things, they want better things for themselves and for their families. And that's why it's so difficult to prevent because it's not like, you know, if you don't have money, you can't borrow that amount of money to actually get visa and to get on an airplane to go to go anywhere, you know.

It's interesting two things. Shami, you have some of these in your article as well, the billionaire village. Yeah. No, so in a village called Nayan. There's a presence. Yeah, sorry, in a province. It's, you know, relatively rural surrounding it. But then you see these massive mansions.

And we spoke to some of the homeowners there. One of them is actually, you know, was the family of a victim of the Essex. Laurie incident and they said that a female member of their family had actually left to come to the UK this year and she she you know as we've been told by friends of her is now working in quite dire dire condition so there really is a cycle that we see going you know to send back these remittances I'm back to you nor I mean because some of the smuggling can be 15,000 25000 pounds to be smuggled across all the way to the UK, which is a huge amount of money if people are making a few hundred a month, for example, two or three hundred a month. And I did wonder, why invest that money in a person

coming to the UK instead of, you know, because it's the whole family that comes together to raise that money for that one person to go. I mean, it's like 10 years worth of wages to be smuggled. Right, yeah. One pound sterling is 36,000 Vietnamese dorm, which is quite a lot of money. I mean, people go because they are confident that they can get that investment back. One interesting detail is that Vietnamese actually dominate the nail industry, not only in the UK, but also everywhere in the world. If you go to the U.S., you see the same thing, all Vietnamese own salons. So they're confident that they can work, you know, eight hours, 12 hours a day, get the money, send home, and probably get more people coming out their way and, you know, and do the same thing.

So I think, yeah, it's a really, really big headache, I think, for both the British and Vietnamese authorities. But, you know, at the moment, they spend like, what, 7 million pounds on raising awareness. It's just not enough, isn't it? I mean. And I just came across the remittance figure that I was looking for. So migrant remittance to Vietnam is 8.03 billion pounds, making it among the world's top 10 remittance, receiving countries and those according to

Seb Rundasby who is an analyst thanks very much to both of you for coming in Shema Bakht and from the Times and also my previous colleague

who is in Hanoi that is NAR FAM now based in Hanoi thanks to both of you for speaking to us here on Women's Air James Bond continues

keep a male James Bond but have a brilliant supporting cast of stronger women characters like Jodie Comer Zoe Saldania, Rousanega and definitely Helen Mirren for M. Bring him into the 21st century.

There's another way of going about it. 844, if you'd like to get in touch. Now, somebody was asked, would you like to come on a journey with us? These were words that came down the line from a Hollywood superstar to my next guest. And it meant a whole new world of money and fame for her football club in North Wales.

My guest is Kerry Evans. She is disability liaisons officer, DLO, for Wrexham AFC. You might have seen her in the programme. Welcome to Rexum. Yeah, it's about the takeover by the actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. And she has written a memoir, stronger than you think. It's her story all about against the odds. She found herself through football and many life-changing events as a fan and through advocacy.

Kerry, you're very welcome. Thank you very much. Good to have you. I know it was a disappointing weekend for Rexham. and we'll start with that. Sadly, yes. I'm so sorry that we have to start there, but it's against West Bromwich Albion.

But that aside, let's just park it over there. We'll see what happens to the club. What is it like being a Wrexham fan now? It's off the scale. It's absolutely brilliant. What a ride that we're on. Yeah, it's very exciting times. And you're a TV star too.

Well, they do say that. I don't think so myself, but, you know, they do say that, yes. But I mentioned the phrase, would you like to come on a journey with us? This was your first brush with Hollywood. A call from California, I believe. Talk us through it. Yeah, I had contact from our trust at the time because we were trust owned, telling me that either Ryan Reynolds or Rob McEleney wanted to contact me to chat,

and that was all the information I was given. So I then spent two, three days panicking when that call was going to come in, what was going to be said, hadn't asked any questions, and it was nine o'clock at night. My mobile started ringing, said California, and it was Rob McEleney. And what did he say? He was, I was so nervous. And within a couple of seconds, I just felt he put me so much at ease. He knew so much about me. He had definitely done his research.

He knew what I had already achieved at the club. He discussed things that had been implemented and very much said that if they were able to purchase Rexum, they very much wanted me on the journey with them and would I be up for that? So yeah, of course, of course the answer back was yes. Yes, please. No hesitation.

Oh, my goodness, no, no. Because my understanding is they were told they needed to speak to you and Dixie McNeil, a footballer for Rexum previously. And you are the heart and soul, as you've been described. So DLO, Disability Liaison Officer, what does it mean? What do you do? I support and take care of, I'm the voice for fans with disability.

So I fully support and take care of people in any way that they need. I'm there to support them on match days. I'm there to help if they've got any queries or problems. It's an absolutely fantastic job. and what a privilege to be able to help families to attend to attend Wrexon Football Club. And you do it why? How did you fall into it?

I fell into it from the point of I hadn't worked for a long time. My husband was very involved with the club. And I decided there was the job role going out for Disability Liaison Officer. And at the time, I thought it would be a meet and greet on match days, you know, make people feel welcome. hadn't worked for a very long time and thought that perhaps that was something I could offer completely different to what I thought

the job has just grown and grown and I'm so passionate about what I do being able to make a difference and just be able to help people is an absolute privilege. I was reading in your book that when you started in that role and you are a wheelchair user,

you say you had a very stereotypical able-bodied. view of what disability was. Can you explore that a little bit with us? Yeah, of course. So I went into a wheelchair at 30. So I lived a very able-bodied life until then. You know, I know what it's like to pull up outside a shop and nip into the shop and, you know, and life is very different when you're then in a wheelchair needing to get a wheelchair out of a vehicle. So, so yeah, I felt when I first went to the club, that was, that was what I understood. That was what I felt I could improve and help with. But it's only starting that journey that you then realize, you know,

there are so many hidden disabilities. There are so many other disabilities. And because you could see the difference that it was making, I wanted to do more. So the more I did, you know, the better we became really. Give me, and I know you seem to be a modest person, I think, reading your book, but give me your top three achievements at Wrexham when it comes to providing for those with disabilities. So my first thing I did was wheelchair accessible away travel because we just physically didn't have that in place and it was important to me that if able-bodied fans could go to away matches, so should wheelchair users. My second thing was our autism-friendly quiet zone, which has changed lives beyond belief. That now brings in

families that physically say they couldn't sit in our stadium if they weren't being looked after and in that area, they couldn't sit amongst the crowds. And the third one is I actually brought power chair football to Wrexon Football Club. How cool. So that was creating a whole new world of people automatically myself included would say, well, I'm in a wheelchair, you can't play football, but in actual fact you can. And I was the person that brought that to Wrexon Football Club. I love all those. You were born with cerebral palsy. Yes.

And I don't think your parents were given very much information at the time. It took quite a while before it was recognised. And you also suffered terribly at school because of that. You talk about having red hair and a disability and that made you a target. It got pretty bad, didn't it? Yeah, it got really bad. It really did. Those days were very, very dark days.

Yeah. still now it hurts to look back on that period of time. And I'm just, you know, it concerns me nowadays that children can get picked on 24 hours a day. With social media. When I went home, I could shut the door and that ended until the next day. Nowadays, it, you know, it really is a big thing for children

if they're in that same situation. People can get them 24 hours a day and it's really, you know, quite harrowing. I love how open you are in your book. I read that you felt jealous of your daughter almost about how wonderful school is for her that you could see what could have been. Yeah, of course.

I would have loved that experience through school. You know, my brother had a good... Well, both my brothers did very well at school. My daughter herself, as you mentioned, you know, had a wonderful... She was a very, very popular child and was always top. of everything, I was always the child that never got picked and nobody ever wanted to do things with

and it does have an impact on the rest of your life. It really does. That's the sad thing. Which we see through your book they didn't even use your name for those of us that remember on the buses. They used to call you Olive trying to, they wouldn't use your name Kerry.

But you also were kind of getting along with your life. When you were 30 then, you had a brain bleed. which then meant you have to use a wheelchair since that time and have had to adjust to that whole life. And I just thought the candidness about what day-to-day life is like was very poignant.

You have carers, you didn't want to be secretive about them, you wanted your husband and child to see what was happening to you. Why was that important? Because I felt that my daughter was seven. And if we'd have closed the door for that, to be able to support and help me in a bedroom, that then became something that she didn't understand. And I think that if you're open and honest and she was able to wander in and just be part of whatever we were doing and helping. Yeah. And that that then didn't become a big thing

in her head of wondering, you know, what support does my mum need, what help does she need? I felt the more open and honest we could be. And I've always been that same, the same way now. I've got little granddaughter now and I'm very much open with her as well. So I think that's really important. I think if you hide away, you almost, it becomes a much bigger thing in somebody's head because they don't understand. And you really don't do that in the book. I just found it really eye-opening in the way that you described being disfabled and how society treats you. There was a line that really struck out to me, Kerry, which was losing yourself is a gradual thing. Yeah, very much so, very much so it's unless you've been in that situation nobody can ever put you there um it's i think i think

as a family we grieved as if i died you know it was it that that person had gone the person that was before pre-30 was gone um and it very much is a gradual thing that you have to then it's taken a long long time to come to terms with and get to where i am today but where you are today is What's the word you'd use to describe it? It's completely overwhelming. Completely overwhelming. I am absolutely honoured to have been given this chance and hopefully proving myself with what I'm doing.

I think very much so from what I'm hearing and what I'm reading. What would you like? Is there anything else? Do you have a bucket list? Something else that Wrexham needs to do? We've always got more to be done. I'm working with people starting the season now. You know, we've helped so many disabilities and I want to be able to do more.

I want every single person, regardless of what they need to get into our stadium. If they need it in place, we need to put it. And, you know, it's an ongoing thing. We're always going to need to do more and we are very much committed to doing that. And I have to ask you, how are you feeling about Wrexham itself? I'm talking about scores on the doors. Well, I mean, I've got to be honest. I didn't think last season we'd be heading up into championship.

That was a real, you know, to be back to back to back. We've now got a new team, so I've got to gel together. I'm not deterred by the results so far. I still think we'll do very well in this league. Stronger than you think is Kerry Evans' memoir. Thank you so much for joining us on Women's Hour. Really lovely to speak to you. And we'll be back again this time tomorrow.

That's all for today's woman's hour. Join us again next time. Hello, I'm Helen Lewis. And I'm Amanda Nucci. We're the hosts of BBC Radio 4's Strong Message Here. And over the summer, we are bringing you a series of short episodes called Strong Message Here, Strong Recommend. Amanda, what is a Strong Recommend?

It's something we recommend strongly from the cultural recommendations. It could be a book. It could be a TV show. It could be a play. It could be a... It could be a video game and if I have anything to do with it, it will be a video game. It could be not necessarily something that's just out this week or just out now. For example, I will be recommending Richard II by a writer called William Shakespeare.

Ah, I hear big things ahead for him. I'll be talking about taxonomy, I'll be talking about Eldon Ring, I'll be talking about why it's worth standing just off Oxford Street at 9pm this summer. So that's strong message here, strong recommend. It's a shorter programme with a longer title and you can get it now on BBC Sounds.