Woman's Hour - Adoption, Camille O'Sullivan, Wicked

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

The complex needs of adopted children are leaving parents at breaking point as they say they are being denied support then blamed by authorities when they can no longer cope, a BBC investigation has found. A BBC Freedom of Information request revealed the scale of the crisis, and the number of families that are returning their children to the care system. Anita Rani is joined by BBC special correspondent Judith Moritz and Fiona Wells who runs PATCH, Passionate Adopters Targeting Change with Hope, a support group for adoptive parents.For the last two years, the mystery of exactly what happened at Erin Patterson's dining table had gripped the world. And then in September this year, after a nine-week trial, Erin Patterson was jailed for life - with no chance of release for at least 33 years. Her crime: murdering three relatives by intentionally poisoning them with wild mushrooms and trying to kill another. Dubbed the ‘Mushroom Murders’, Anita speaks to Sarah Krasnostein, who wrote a book about Erin’s trial, and Dr Stephanie Brown, a historical criminologist, to understand the public view of women who poison.Camille O’Sullivan has toured with the Pogues and was chosen by Yoko Ono to perform at Meltdown festival in the Royal Festival Hall. Now the Irish-French singer is bringing her hit show to the Soho Theatre in London. LoveLetter is a personal response to the loss of the artists who inspired her, particularly her late friends Shane McGowan and Sinéad O’Connor. The second part of the hugely popular film Wicked - called Wicked: For good, starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, continues to take the UK and the world by storm. It's already taken over $226m at the global box office. Telling an alternative version of the Wizard of Oz, it explores how our perception of good and evil can be distorted. It's also the story of the unlikely friendship between Elphaba and Glinda and the tensions that can be put on that friendship. Anita is joined by the Independent's chief album critic Helen Brown and film critic Leila Latif to discuss why Wicked has been so successful and what it tell us about female friendships today. Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Corinna Jones

Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast. Good morning and welcome to the programme, as you've just heard in the bulletin. A BBC Freedom of Information of Local Authorities show that in the past five years, more than a thousand adopted children in the UK have returned to care. About three and a half thousand children are adopted each year. Many now have complex needs, leaving parents at breaking point. We'll be finding out what's going on.

Wicked for Good. The second movie is out, and this franchise, a story about female friendship at its core, is still going strong. The first film, taking $750 million, a box office smash. We're going to understand what spell you have to cast for this level of success at the cinema. Women Who Poison. The case of Erin Patterson in Australia gripped many. She was eventually found guilty and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her husband's parents and sister.

But why the fascination with this case and women who poison generally? And a real Friday treat for us all. The incredible singer, Camille O'Sullivan's new show, Love Letters. I saw it last night in London. It's utterly extraordinary. Camille interprets songs by artists and friends and people. She's lost. Sheenade O'Connor, Shane McGowan, Tom Waits, to name.

a few. Well, Camille is here to tell us all about her new show and lots more besides, and she will be singing live. I cannot wait. And it's Black Friday. Some of you may want nothing to do with it. Many of you will be rushing for bargains. While the Retail Trust, who are a charity for retail workers, have asked shoppers to remember their humanity as they battle for bargains. They conducted a UGov poll and found nearly a quarter of people have forgotten to make eye contact at a shop worker or forget to say hello and thank you. 71% admitted to getting annoyed with shop workers, delivery drivers or customer services. So this morning, I want to hear your stories of customer facing work. Were you on the shop floor? Are you on the shop floor? How are you

treated? Do you know your local shopkeepers and their stuff? Do you pop in for a chat, even if you're not buying anything? I think it's a pretty straightforward equation, don't you? Usually works. Be kind to people treat them with humanity and you'll probably get great service, a good relationship, and you'll feel good. But this morning I want to hear your experience of shopping on the high street or working in retail. You may not have had a good experience, whatever it is, get in touch in the usual way. Text number 84844. You can email the program by going to our website or drop me a WhatsApp or even a voice note on 0700-100-444. That text number once again 84844.

But first, the complex needs of adopted children are leaving parents at breaking points as they say they're being denied support then blamed by local authorities when they can no longer cope. A BBC Freedom of Information Request to two local authorities show that in the past five years

more than a thousand adopted children in the UK have returned to care. About 3.5,000 children are adopted each year. The BBC has spoken direct Peter 50 parents who talked about being threatened with prosecution, facing financial ruin and being brought to the brink of suicide. One social worker has admitted that parents are often wrongly accused by a system that's set up to look for blame.

The true scale of the problem is unknown as local councils are breaching government guidelines by failing to record the number of adoptions where the child has returned to care. Well, to hear more about what the investigation discovered, I'm joined by BBC's special correspondent Judith Maritz and Fiona Wells, who describes herself as adopted, adopter, social worker and founder of patch, which stands for passionate adopters targeting change with hope, a support group for adoptive parents.

And I must say, if you would like to share your stories or experiences of anything you hear on the program, that text number once again, 844844. Judith and Fiona, welcome to Women's Hour, both of you. you. Fiona, I'm going to come to you first really because that's quite a name, passionate adopters targeting change with hope. Tell us about Patch. Yeah, so Patch was set up around a couple of years ago because I became really frustrated with the ideas, the idea that parents were being blamed when facing crisis. And I wanted to set something up that said that I believed in adoption because I am adopted and I have children who are adopted, who I love dearly.

So I wanted in the name to be something that said, you know, we need to get this better. We need to get this better for children, for parents and for systems. Who's blaming them? The system, systemic toxicity around families in crisis is horrendous. So unfortunately, it's social workers and local authorities. But I do think it's because of gaps in policy process and in legislation that, these things are happening. Judith, what led you to request the freedom of information and what did you find out?

We did two new pieces of research. The freedom of information request, first of all, we believe, is the largest research exercise into how many children have been returned from adoptive homes into local authority care over the last five years. We asked every authority responsible for adoption in the whole of the United Kingdom, all 213 of them. How many children in their areas have been returned to care? And we established that it's more than a thousand at the very least who've been in that situation. A thousand children, meaning a thousand families who've gone through this. What's known as legal abandonment, terrible phrase.

But behind that are a thousand stories of awful suffering. The thing to add is that we think that that is the tip of the iceberg because 40 of those local authorities didn't supply us with any data. And that's in breach of government guidelines, which says they should be recording this as a a matter of course. We're going to hear now a clip from your report and this is with Nancy and Simon. Would you like to give us some context before we hear it? Nancy and Simon are very typical of all of the families and we spoke to 50 families, 50 parents directly in this situation and Nancy and Simon adopted three children, three girls and they said to us, you know, this was going to be our forever family. That is not how it's worked out.

They have ended up now in a situation where only one of their daughters is still living at home with them. Right now, my memory of happy times is completely blank. But I know there were some, but I can't pick them out. I remember being told just before the children replaced with us that they just needed love and a good home, and that was fundamentally not true. We adopted three girls. We thought it was the best chance of us having a family, wasn't it? Yeah.

Yeah. They were all subsequently diagnosed with having fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. We could give them as much love as we could, and we could give them the good home, but they just needed more than that. When things didn't go as we'd hoped, we were then put through an investigation that just left us feeling, yeah, fear in the worst.

It was terrifying. Not only if you got the accusations that your child has been making against you that are very upsetting in their own right, you then have someone from authority who is investigating you. I do think this is a natural scandal. I don't think adoption as it stands. I don't think it's fit for purpose. It's quite heartbreaking to hear that.

It's heartbreaking for everybody involved really, isn't it? And Judith, as you mentioned, that's Nancy and Simon, who now have only the youngest of the three girls that they'd adopted, Tam, living with them. So what happened to them as a family? Well, the elder two daughters, essentially what's happened is they have, between them, each of them, made a series of untrue allegations about their parents, about Nancy and Simon, which got to a point where the eldest daughter they had to take legal steps to stop that happening, and the middle daughter is now in a situation where she repeatedly makes so many untrue allegations about them that when she visits, she has to be accompanied by. witnesses. Now, you need to understand here that the context of this is that they are, I think, fairly typical of children who have come to an adoptive family without, first of all, that family fully being told about the whole context of their background. You heard there that

they were diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome disorder. The family did not know that. That as a syndrome can lead to mixed memories to children who've been very traumatized, making false were untrue accusations. And what? has happened here essentially is that that family was not given the support needed or the understanding needed to deal with it. Fiona, you speak to families. How common is it with the families that you support, that children go back into care? And what are the reasons for this happening? I think simplistically, when a child is removed from harm, from her, from being abused, from, you know, really horrible, awful situations.

They have injuries. You know, they're not physical injuries. Well, they can be physical injuries. And then they're ignored, you know, with the sort of emphasis that loves enough or, you know, a forever family will heal everything. And that's not true. And we're not validating.

We're not respecting. We're not considering the hurt that's happened to our children and giving them a pathway that helps recovery and healing. and not to say that there's a perfect calculation for that. And then when trauma symptoms and many, many other elements are at play, it becomes untenable to continue in a situation where you're dealing with child's parent harm, where you're dealing with really adverse behaviours from children.

And there's no support, there's no understanding, there's no narrative as to where you can get help from. And, you know, there's so many of the parents that I've spoken to that I've liaised with that I'm supporting, have been through these very, very typical situations that you've just heard about. It's absolutely complex living with a child who hurts. Yeah. You know, and I bet there's lots of people listening who are really leaning in to and feeling this.

There's something about hearing this story and how, as you say, it's so complicated for everybody involved and presumably very traumatising for everybody. What impact can it have, Fiona, on both the child and the parents? well children don't understand why they're hurting so when behaviors become you know high level adverse behaviors the child can't sit and tell you why they feel the way they do it's not their fault that they're acting or doing the things that they're doing that's their impulse that's their their body and their brain and their memory foam saying I'm hurting and I'm hurting because something really bad and tragic happened to but I haven't healed from it so then when

parents are having to live with that and their limited support network because the narrative around these situations are often complex and support networks don't understand it you know you are living in a very and not I'm not blaming children in any shape or form but it can be really toxic it can lead to mental health problems it can leave to crisis it can lead to not being able to work because you have to take so much time off it can I mean it's horrendous for so many of us some of us have lost our jobs some of us have got mental health problems that we didn't have. Some of us have ended up, you know, with divorces and, you know, there's so many elements to this and there's so many families struggling

and suffering and the blame is just so not. It's not right. It is a scandal. Judith, you spoke to a solicitor, Damien Dobson, and he specialises in adoption. And he says, the number of adoptive parents in crisis calling him is increasing all the time. He mentions a figure of 400 just in the last So what kinds of things are parents telling him? Yeah, he tells us, in fact, I spent the day in Damien's office watching him work and it's extraordinary because really he is a one man band here who's become a de facto helpline. He takes calls every day from adoptive families who are looking for help, legal help. I mean, I heard one phone call that was very distressing as a family phoned in, the mother wailing on the phone saying she had been put in a police cell because her daughter had made an untrue allegation and the police had to investigate.

In terms of the legal help he can give them, very sadly, lots of these parents reach the end of the road to the point where they have to consider returning their children to the care system. They tell us they feel they have no other option. And the system around that is tricky. It's difficult. It's broadly, it's what's known as a Section 20, which is referring to the Children's Act in 1989. Now the problem here is that Fiona just talked about blame within the system. And we're hearing this testimony time and again from parents saying we feel the authorities have been looking for evidence that we're the ones who caused the problem. Well, one of the reasons Damien Dobson,

the solicitor has explained to us that he thinks that happens is because the way the law is written, the way that act, the way Section 20 is written, is that when a child goes back to the local authority for care, somebody, has to take responsibility. It's a bit like the days when you used to not be able to get a no-fault divorce. Well, what they want to happen, what Damien would like and other families tell us they would like, is for the section

20 to be redrafted so that it's now possible for these families to get help without somebody having to be found at fault. It isn't anybody's fault this. It's not the children, certainly, it's certainly not the parents either. But at the moment, the way the law is written, somebody

ends up having to tick that box on the form essentially. And that's one of the reasons, I think, while we're hearing this repeated testimony from people saying, you know, we've heard, just to explain what blame means, we've heard some parents telling us they've been threatened with prosecution if they try to begin the Section 20 process. We've had parents telling us that they've been lied to by social workers. We've had parents telling us that they faced all sorts of other, more insidious threats looking at documentation from, you know, different documentation from officials in which

there's a narrative that it's the adoptive parents who are at fault. And that's what's behind all of this. So much has come out of this report, Judith, that really makes you want to sit up and it makes you really sit up and pay attention. One of those things is for the 50 parents you spoke to, a quarter said they'd been arrested after their children made untrue allegations about them. Broadly, what were the reasons for the arrests? Well, it is exactly that.

It's that a child may phone the police, and we spoke to one family in which their son had told he just lied to police officers that he'd been assaulted by his mum. That had not happened. She was arrested. She was taken to a police cell. She'd never been into custody in her life before. The police quickly dropped that.

They realised that it wasn't true. But she still, you know, she burst into tears when she was talking about it. And this was, you know, a few years ago. Now, of course, that was a direct accusation from the child. It wasn't the local authority who was involved there. But it feeds in, she said to me, to this general sense that it's my fault.

She had been sent on parents. courses, as though it's something that I have to fix, you know, then there's safeguarding investigations that have been launched because allegations are made about me. They're not true either, but someone's now investigating me. I work with children or I work in a situation where that is very damaging. So it's a whole range of different things here which run alongside each other. Fiona, you started by saying and explaining that a lot of children in the care system now have very complex needs of gone other days when it's babies being taken away from mothers so what support are parents getting and what information are they given about the children's

needs when they're being adopted i think i think they're not getting enough support we're not like the support takes so long it's an assessment it's a you know you have to wait for an allocated post-adoption social worker and then when the support finally gets to there you've built into such a level of crisis that it's it's kind of too late the problem at the start of the journey is that information isn't shared, accurately, responsibly, honestly. And, you know, honestly, every child who comes into care should have an impact pathway that says, this is what's happened to them, this is what it means, and this is what they need to thrive, to recover, to heal, to live life as normally as possible.

And unfortunately, because that's not in place, children are becoming statistics in the, you know, criminal justice, mental health, etc. We need to heal children who have experienced adversity. We can't just carry on ignoring it and blaming parents. And again, the lack of systemic process, law, et cetera, is failing everybody. What changes need to take place? Just that. We need systems, processes and policy and law to be changed,

to wrap around families, to scaffold families together so that children have the option, the possibility to thrive. And because a lot of adopted children do thrive. Yeah. When it works, it works. But we're in a different situation nowadays where children were relinquished. We're in a situation where the, you know,

the threshold to remove a child, and that's because a social worker is high. You know, they have to have experienced a lot of adversity. We can't just ignore that adversity through permanence. And we must mention going back to the story we were listening to earlier from Nancy and Simon that they have their youngest daughter, Tam, still, and because for many children it does work.

Social services have jumped to the most serious kind of situation when there was actually nothing going on. Sadly for my sisters, their trauma has made it harder for them to accept having that sense of belonging in a family. I got a chance of life that I wouldn't have got if I was still in care. When you've been through a lot of trauma, when you find that home that feels safe, It's like having a magic blanket.

I just love that they're still there, keeping me happy and making sure that I'm succeeding. I just love them. And that was Tam, the youngest daughter of Nancy and Simon. Judith, we should say also that in some cases adopted children go back into local authority care for their own safety, not because the parents weren't supported or couldn't cope. Yeah, and I think that speaks to just how complex this is.

it's very difficult to make broad brush statements by any of this. Every story is different. But, you know, we spoke, as part of this investigation for BBC News and Fileon 4, we spoke to a social worker directly who talked to us from inside the system and said that it is her experience, a senior, a very experienced social worker who's worked across 12 local authorities for 25 years, that there is a culture of blaming parents within the system. Now, you know, we've put all of this to the various.

local authorities who we've researched. And first of all, the authorities who are connected to the case of Nancy, Simon and Tam, who we've been mentioning, I should just say they have said they're committed to giving full disclosure of a child's history and needs. And also the authority who is dealing with the middle daughter's case, that they say they are sympathetic to the couple's situation, but safeguarding is complex and they continue to work closely with their daughter. The Department of Education, who oversee adoption, have told us that supports him.

place to help adoptive families and keep them together and they say that they're hoping to transform the children's social care system with a new children's well-being and schools bill. And lastly, I should just say in terms of social work, the body there which looks after social workers, British Association of Social Workers, have pointed out. They say that the social work sector is under considerable strain with the highest ever level of referrals to children's social services in a decade and a depleted workforce. Thank you so much. Thank you Fiona Wells and to Judith Murrett. And you can find Judith documentary

by searching File on For Investigates on BBC Sounds. It's called Adoption, the Blame Game. And if you've been affected by any of these issues, then please go to the BBC Actionline website. I've had a message in from somebody saying, I'm a teacher and remember working with an adopted and then fostered child over 10 years ago. At the age of six, he'd been put with a family

without them knowing any of his past, neglect, abuse or medical needs and extreme behaviour. Consequently, that adoption deteriorated and they couldn't cope with him anymore and so another foster family was found for him. This next foster family was also not fully told about the child's past and the school wasn't allowed to communicate

with the new family until the child had moved. Worse still, the school wasn't allowed to tell the child that he was moving family and one day had to tell the boy that he wasn't going home to his adopted family that day and someone knew was taking him home. Obviously, this was very traumatic for him and everyone supporting him.

As I said, if you have been affected by any of the issues you've been hearing about them, please do go to the BBC Actionline website, and our text number is 84844. Now, for the last two years, the mystery of exactly what happened at Erin Patterson's dining table gripped the world. Five people sat down to eat lunch at her home

in rural Australia on the 29th of July, 2023. Within a week, three would be dead. A fourth would be fighting for his life. In September this year, after months, of speculation and intrigue Erin Patterson was jailed for life. Her crime, murdering her husband's parents and sister by intentionally poisoning them with wild mushrooms and trying to kill another. Dubbed the mushroom murders were joined by Sarah Krasnestine, who has written a book about Erin's trial and Dr. Stephanie Brown, a historical criminologist and Women's Hour researcher

in residence, to understand the public view and the way that the media treat women who poison. Sarah and Stephanie, welcome to the program. Sarah, what fascinated you about this case? So I think the nature and velocity of the public interest surrounding it, it came with its own fully formed narrative very quickly. We've seen, of course, many complex, egregious murder trials in our time, but the weather system surrounding this. particular offender and this particular set of offenses had a different, very sensationalist quality. So I co-wrote this book with my colleagues, Chloe Hooper and Helen Garner. None of us really wanted to write about it for that reason. There was something in the public interest that

we found repellent, but we found ourselves an excerptly drawn in. And so we're writing about the trial, but we're writing about the nature of the public interest and our own interest as well. So, yeah, how did the book come about? And what are you trying to do with the book? What are you saying in it? It's a conversation between the three of you, isn't it? That's right. So, I mean, each of us write literary journalism or narrative nonfiction, however you want to refer to it.

We write Melbourne stories. This was a Victorian case. We write, you know, women's stories, crime and justice. So each of us had been dealing with a lot of questions about, you know, assuming that we would be writing about this. And we each separately bristled against that assumption for those reasons of the sensationalism. But listening to the early proceedings, I was dipping into the preliminary proceedings, not with the kind of total attendance that I would have had if I was writing this as a trial novel. But there was something that sucked us in.

And we weren't at first fully, I think, conscious of the nature of that interest. And that is something that each of us was curious about in our own way. So less about Erin Patterson and more about what about us that was attracted to that trial. So the conversations over the 10 weeks of driving down to this regional courtroom in country, Victoria, kind of outlay our own interest, what we're hearing, the ethics of true crime generally, and the ethics of this case specifically. Yeah, well, you weren't alone in your interest. Stephanie, you research into the history of crimes.

Why the fascination with this one? And let's be more specific about the nature of this. particular crime and that poison was used. And poison is often framed as the weapon of choice for women. Is there any truth in that idea? So the idea of poison as a weapon of choice for women is far more a product of cultural storytelling than it is of historical reality. So if we look at court records across the 18th and 19th centuries, it shows us that men and women poisoned at broadly similar rates. there is sensational press coverage, particularly in the 19th century and right up to today, around a handful of notorious female poisoners.

One of the most famous examples from my research is Mary Ann Cotton, who is often referred to as Britain's first serial killer. Now, Mary Ann Cotton was from County Durham. It's widely believed that she poisoned 21 people. And she used arsenic to poison her victims, putting it inside a comforting cup of tea, keeping a small teapot reserved for this nevarious purpose. Cotton was then hanged in Durham Prison in 1873. But while there are a few cases of particularly notorious female poisoners, we must resist

this stereotype that poison is a as a weapon of choice for women because statistically it just doesn't support it. Men and women poison at similar rates. Where does it come from then, this stereotype? Novels. Agatha Christie? Absolutely. There can be a temptation to credit Agatha Christie with this idea of the female poisoner

because she used poison so brilliantly in her plots. And of course she drew on her own expertise from her time in a wartime dispensary and time serving as a nurse. And her novels absolutely teach readers to think about poison. as precise, invisible weapons that are often in the hands of women. But Christy and other novelists didn't invent that stereotype. They're tapping into much older fascinations. So, Sarah, why do you think it grips the public imagination for so long? And yeah, I could hear that you wanted to chip in there.

No, I'm so fascinated by that because this gap between the empirical data and kind of the size, the outsized looming large of the female poison, So, I mean, part of our conversations where there's something primal about this, it's almost archetypal. And I'm always coming back at my work to Jung's ideas of archetypes being bivalent. They have a light side and a dark side. And here we have the mother serving a nourishing meal in a kitchen. And we all have a blueprint for what those ideas should be.

And it's recognizable. It has a coziness. It's domestic. It's something that everyone can recognize. And at the same time, we recognize it not at all. So it has this uncanny aspect and this very activating effect in the public psyche about, you know, this is a woman acting, you know, in the inverse to how she's expected to behave. And I think there was this quality hanging over the entire trial, certainly immediately after the verdict. And it felt, yes, she's guilty.

Yes, she did egregious offending. but there was a kind of a righteous glee or zealousness in the nature of the media coverage, a mocking tone and kind of this outsized carnivalesque atmosphere on her guilt finding. That was something deeply wrong has been righted. And it definitely had a witch trial element about it. Stephanie, yeah, Carrie, let's continue with that. And we do see this. We're fascinated by women killers.

I mean, Lucy Wersley presents a podcast series for the BBC. and Radio 4 called Lady Killers, for example. What does your research show us about the way that these cases particularly are reported on in the media? So there's a complete difference, both historically and today, in our reactions about women who kill versus men who have been suspected of committing murder. Virtually in all places and periods, men make up the overwhelming majority of homicide suspects. So male violence in a way becomes almost normalised, Violence is then tied into masculinity, ideas about dominance, control, macho behavior, even playground scraps and boys will be boys.

So when a man kills, it tends to fit an existing script. When a woman kills, on the other hand, this disrupts expectations of what a woman should be like. Traditional femininity pointing to ideas around being caring, maternal and nurturing. So female violence is seen as strains, shocking, and then in need of explanation. And did Sarah certain elements of Erin's personality or a background or even her appearance get over-emphasized? Oh, I think to an unnatural extent, yes, it was definitely that. It's like she was the subject of, you know, I think rightful outrage, the nature of the victims, the kind of breach of trust that we saw, that definitely plays a role.

But at the same time, it was like she wasn't even taken seriously in her intention to kill. She was this object of kind of absurd mockery. We saw the proliferation of mushroom-based merchandise, where, you know, if the murder weapon had been a gun or a knife, we certainly wouldn't be, you know, making earrings out of it or having, you know, little cartoon memes about it. And yet that was the water that this trial swam in. So, yes, her, you know, her appearance to a certain degree,

but the courtroom itself was locked down in the sense that very stringent reporting prohibitions on what was happening in the room. It was very much just the facts. But afterwards, we saw a series of six photos that had been taken earlier in the trial with a kind of a zoom lens of Erin in the prison van. And in the book, we discuss how they recall the Sharko photos of women in asylums during the time of Freud and this question of, are they driven mad or madness always at the center of these types of offending. So, you know, it definitely had a different quality that I have not seen in any of my coverage of major murder trials where it's a male offender.

And you were there for the entire case. You watch it played out. You've written a book. What's your conclusion? What have you drawn about it? What conclusions have you drawn about it? Well, this case says so much more about the public following the case and the nature of true crime, women's interest in true crime than it will ever say about Erin Patterson. You know, in Victoria, the crown is not required to prove motivation as an element of murder.

So, you know, and she maintains her innocence. So no psych reports were provided. There's very little insight into her motivation. And indeed, the question of motivation presumes that she is conscious of her own motivations, that she considered. herself to be, you know, doing this intentionally, that she is honest with herself, whatever you want to call it, disorder was in the room. So I think this case, you know, there will be an appeal heard in the next few months. But ultimately, the only person who knows, and the judge made this point, why she acted is Erin Patterson. So it's a case that gives us a lot of information, but ultimately very little of it to do with the offender at the heart

of it. Well, so interesting speaking to both of you, Sarah and Stephanie. Thank you very much. is serving a life sentence for the murders of her husband's parents and sisters. She is appealing her a conviction and Sarah's book, The Mushroom Tapes, is now out now, co-written, as she mentioned, with Helen Garner and Chloe Hooper. And Stephanie Brown is on the new generation thinker scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC, which showcases academic research. So we'll be hearing more from her on Radio 4. Now, we also want to hear from you about your experiences of working or living at night time.

This is for a future program. Do you find yourself working mainly in the dark at this time of year? Maybe you choose to work at night, or perhaps it's when you have to do your job. Please do tell us about your experiences. Get in touch in the usual way. The text number is 84844, so your nighttime work experiences, or you can email the program by going to our website.

Now, it's Friday, and I promised you some music. Camille O'Sullivan is a multi-award-winning Irish French singer. She's toured with the Poges. She's performed at Yoko Ono's Meltdown Festival. And now she's bringing her hit show Love Letter to London. I'm delighted to say. Camille is here in front of me in the studio. I was in the audience last night.

Quite frankly, one of the most perfect experiences. It was extraordinary. So thank you for that. Absolute pleasure. And thank you for coming in the day after a show. Oh, listen, like I was good fun this morning going, I don't usually see date like that. Well, there you go. You are part of the night time. I did invite you as all. I did say, come all back to my place until I have to go on to women's hour.

It would have been easy if you'd just come straight back to mine and then we could have come into work together. Tell me about this extraordinary show. I've seen it. Love letter. You perform your interpretations of David Bowie, the Pogues. Janada O'Connor, Nick Cave, Radiohead. Tell us more. Well, I suppose, you know, I've been singing for years now interpretations of Nick Cave and Bowie and Beryl and it's a love of the lyric and a love of kind of inhabiting, like what I suppose I loved about Bowie. I was a big fan of his was chameleon like nature, showing different parts of who you are as a person. So sad, vulnerable, happy, sexy. And now that I'm unraveling more crazy. But this particular show, probably came from a very personal place when Shane and Sinead passed. I had

been such a fan of them both and on hindsight when they did pass the notion that they were such a voice for us growing up in Ireland and changed who were as people and kind of in missing them I just sat with Shane's lyrics

not listening to his music was after having toured with the Pogues and being with him in those last few days as a good friend close to himself and his beautiful wife, Victoria and his gorgeous sister, Chauvonne.

For many years, I was like, I was too scared to approach his songs because the wonderful backbeat of the post has its own kind of thing and you could sound like you were a bad wedding band but sitting with the lyrics, I just went, oh my God, you were an incredible writer.

Poetry flows through it, every verse is vivid like as if you're walking through kind of some melancholic kind of thing for me as an Irish person the beauty in his work so I just thought that's what I want to focus on

and that's what I want to bring to life and then with Chenade was you know two of them they were just they were just gorgeous people and I approach her thing like that a cappella that we do of her as a mum so it was kind of really the most personal show I've ever done in the sense that because I was a fan

first, then I got to know them as friends, which is kind of an unusual thing. But a lot of people at home are really missing them. So, and then there is my own madness that's going on, that I'm, you know, it's all unraveling. Yes, it's how you. We will talk about the unraveling because you're in a very safe space to talk about women unraveling. And it's a magnificent thing to witness.

I feel like everybody would love to hear you sing if you would. Okay. Tell us what were you going to perform? this song, this is the one that kind of really, when I first read it, it made me think of Patrick Craven and Brendan Behan, it's called the Broad, Majestic

Shannon, and it's a title that had come from an old traditional song, but it's that, you know, Shane was in England yearning for home. His sister, Yvonne, remember, is playing at this gap in the wall and it's where his ashes

were scattered, so. Oh my goodness me I should have had a whiskey before Don't need one You've taken us right there Oh Camille I just miss them so much So that's all I'm thinking

Well you had tears in your eyes singing it A tears in your eyes singing it last night In fact for a lot of the songs I have to say we were weeping with you as well Because you make us feel your performance There's something extraordinary It's the lyrics, it's you It's what you give to us

but it's you singing to Shane McGowan as well. And you do explain that he was a friend. You sang with the Pogues. Tell us about the first time you met him. Oh my God, it was mad. I was an architect before. I switched this mad career to run away with the circus. And I was a student at the time having a lovely mince pie up at a party.

When I got a phone call, it was days before mobiles or whatever. And would you like to sing with Shane McGowan, Fairtale of New York? And I said, absolutely. They said 15 minutes time in the Olympia Theatre. I was like, what? So I was on my little bicycle and the paper I had to write because I knew the choruses but not the verses. And I stepped up on stage and that was the first time I met him

was singing with him because he was already on stage. And that began a kind of a mad, I can never think of in a linear line. To me, it's all kind of all over the place with that wonderful man and his band. But of laughing, dancing and singing in his arms. I mean, magical moments when they had snow coming down on stage. And the Pogues are just like you would like Shanade, like the authenticity of the Pogues, the anarchy how they played on stage is so powerful.

And like sometimes when I was looking at the audience, I was like a load of Vikings looking back at me. Like it's the passion and the singing back. And Shane used to stand still like the Dervish moved around him. And he was really, he was such a clever, like, a person in his lyric and speaking, you know, it was just amazing. I mean, and also, I have to say, I felt the same watching you. And I have to give Fergal another name check because you're brilliant on stage, the two of you together. You mentioned there that you were trained as an architect, but you also give us a little insight into your own upbringing and this, your father and your French mother and this extraordinary big house that you lived in.

Yeah, it was kind of bad. Yeah. So dad used to be like a Formula 2 racing driver who brought up in England. His father was Liverpool, three generations back O'Sullivan, then met my mum after a car crash in Monaco, one of the races, and brought her back. We were born in London. And then he brought us to a great nationalist village, which I do love in Cork, but it was quite hard for us. So in this big house, I don't think I met my neighbour until I was 15 or 16. We met. in a youth club asking where did we come from and I was like, you're my neighbour, I've never met you. So an interior world

with these two bohemians listening to music all day long and she had, has a great love of Jacques Brel and Tchaikoski and ballet music and Gilbert or Sullivan and then Dad Deep Purple and the Beatles and my sister Bowie. So the whole

that upbringing was full of, funnily enough, not Irish music. So this is where a first for me, you know, I think very much I love the mix of being like these little cat from all the different places because the French, the Irish, you've got the French passion, which I, I'm now, I've got a repression as an Irish person. So I'm always fighting with it on stage. And that's where I get the shame at 4 a.m. in the morning because the Irish have the darkness and then the reserve of the English.

So it's quite a nice mix of three things. My mum said, I'm so glad you're not fully French. You'd be far too serious. You've got the madness of that. So it's quite, you know, it's quite, a nice mix to sing those songs, you know, and be uninhabited, uninhibited on stage. How do you feel when you're on stage? Because it is very intimate. You're incredibly powerful but also very vulnerable. Terrified. Are you?

That's really interesting. I think the front row looks terrified. And so my that's why I'm always hugging them going. Yeah, but you're hugging them. You're literally hugging people and sitting on their lap. They don't understand why. And is that fear and also the unraveling? Yeah, that was something, I think as I was getting older, I think I always hid it.

I think I love music and my dad said you're highly sensitive we're a bit worried about you like one of the funniest things that was said to me I remember was a guy in Cork where I'm from I did a gig outside near

like some ruin and he says you're like a mouse backstage we're terrified we weren't get you on and then you came on like a big lion transformed and it was people have said that

and they said it's like 20 different people so I love inhabiting songs so they first of all it was like as a girl to free me of like, oh, I can be heart or it can be angry, it can be strong, I can be, you can become different things in songs and in stories. And that's why the likes of weights and cave and Bowie allow you to do that. But then after COVID, I just thought everybody has been through something and I can't go back out and pretend to be enigmatic and I don't look like the poster anymore. So I just thought

I joke. When I said I didn't look like that, they all laughed and I went, uh-oh, that's true. Uh-oh. And then the hula hoop came into it. They were like, what is you doing with that? So the idea was, it's all going south. I might as well embrace it. And my friend said, Cam, you've got a nice little humour, so share it. But I do, like, I think the nerves, because I do think it's completely bonkers to be in front of an audience. But I love singing.

I do love the darkness. And because of the darkness, that makes me, you know, joke a little. But I feel that it's the being in front of somebody and being. nervous makes you so alive and makes the songs real. Well, I can only tell you as someone who experienced it that it is, you make us feel alive and the unraveling, listen, for a lot of women in the audience, we can hard relate and we appreciate it and you are extraordinary in every way. And I want you to stay right there because the next item is relevant to you. So I'm going to get, Mike, bring you back in to

give me a comment. And it's, you can experience it yourself because Camillo Sullivan and Fergal Murray, you can see them both live in Love Letters. It's on at the Soho Theatre in London until the 6th of December. I might actually come back and see it again. Well, I promise you we're singing in the kitchen. Oh, yes. We're singing in the kitchen together. Now, the second part of the hugely popular film, Wicked, called Wicked for Goods, starring

Cynthia Evo and Ariana Grande continues to take the UK and the world by storm. It's already taken over $226 million at the global box office. It tells the alternative version of The Wizard of Oz, the story this time, told through the eyes of Elphaba, the green-skinned, black-robed, wicked witch of the West and the fairy godmother-like good witch, Glinda, dressed all in pink, and explores how our perception of good and evil can be distorted. It's also the story of their unlikely friendship and the tensions that can be put on that friendship. So why has it been so successful? And what does it tell us about female friendships? Well, I'm joined by the Independence Chief

album critic Helen Brown and film critic Leila Lateef morning both why is it why is it so successful Leila I think it has a really nice balance of being like feel good

you can bring everybody from 8 to 80 to this thing and it's going to be enjoyable it's going to be pop-tastic it's going to be colourful but it's got a little sheen of prestige which I think is also getting the cinema fans in you know we've got fantastic actors here

we've got Oscar buzz and we've got like a sense that like this is not, you know, just like disposable, you know, a blockbuster nonsense. This has actually got some real talent behind it. And particularly in the vocal performances, they're just astonishing. Helen, you went to see it with your 13-year-old daughter. And I believe she didn't want to see it initially.

Yeah, so initially she was not keen. My daughter is a goalie girl. So she plays football on the local team. She doesn't identify with pink princessy. She saw it, you know, she's like, oh, no, this sounds, you know, this sounds, oh, you know, Disney and, oh, Mom, I'm not sure. But she absolutely loved it. She hugely identified with Alphabet, and she's been on a very similar friendship journey.

I think, like a lot of us, she was a tomboy at infant school. She was only friends with boys. She loved the directness of those relationships. You know, I shove him, he shoves me back, it's over. He started high school and found that whole gender segregation thing that occurs when you go up to secondary school and really struggled with the complexity of all these female friendships, you know, the Machiavellian nature of it. I mean, they're all experimenting with these power dynamics.

She found it, you know, people not being direct, she found incredibly confusing. But here is a film that unpacks all of that that shows you the popular pretty pink girl and the more out-the-out-the-out-out-sider in Elphaba and how they learn to appreciate each other. You know, there's some sneaky tricks played on our lovely Elphabur, beginning but they you know one has the popularity but not the magic the even has the magic

but not the popularity and this film is so good at unpacking the tensions that we all have with those frenemies you know we want a little bit of what the other person has and it it takes a real strength of courage to learn to appreciate the differences and unify you know it's not a this isn't a tidy story this isn't a all girls get together and sort it out this really looks at the complexity of that frenemy status camille you have you seen it are you a fan I saw it with my little, I think you must have been 10 at the time. And I was a big fan of the original. So I was skeptical before I went, but I really enjoyed it.

And the last scene in the first film, the singing was unbelievable. Like it was unbelievable. And it was great to see it with the kids too. But all the adults were delighted. So it was magical. I'm going to fess up and say, I haven't seen it yet, right? But what I'm really excited about is just going in this Christmas because it feels like the perfect.

And I'll get to watch both back to back. But I did see it. Yes, carry on, Helen. I was going to say that, yeah, you know, and we have the Wizard of Oz generally on TV at Christmas. And this fits in so well with that narrative arc because there we have Judy Garlandby, you know, the OG girl start. Now, she was bullied in Hollywood. She was the ugly duckling.

Louis B. Meyer called her his little hunchback. They dressed her in gingham to blur her curves in Wizard of Oz. She was put on a dyer of coffee and chicken soup and reportedly cigarettes at that age. possibly have better mint as well, to make her fit into the Hollywood system. And so this is kind of a redemptive arc. This is Hollywood saving itself. And actually, be the woman you need to be.

Do not be bought in a box like Judy Garland was. Absolutely. Layla, how much of its popularity is down to marketing, though? Cynthia Eva and Ariana Grande have toured the world and been on every red carpet. And a lot has been made about that amazing rapport between them. Yes, no, I think it's an incredibly effective marketing tool that these two women are not refusing to be pitted against one another and it's very heartwarming to see.

The cynic in me at first when I kind of saw them being so affectionate and so loving towards a woman was just like, oh, okay, has this been something that's been workshopped in a sort of, you know, executive boardroom? But no, but then when you saw moments where like one of them is made uncomfortable or, you know, that horrible moment in Singapore

where poor area and grande was kind of, you know, almost tackled on the red carpet, you see actually instinctually, this is a group of people that really do feel very protective of one another. And of course, they filmed it back to back, It's been a long time since they've actually been working on this film and there's a really infectious, joyous sense of light that they're thrilled to be reunited.

And yes, no, I think I've actually enjoyed the marketing tour more than the film. Oh, yeah. It's with Jeff Goldblum looking a bit confused in the background. I really know the girls have totally got handling the fuss on the red carpet. He's sort of flapping around in the background. Yeah. I think it's an interesting one.

Sorry, I just think it's an interesting one because it just has so much. Obviously the box office is doing incredibly, but also just you think of all the little girls and boys and people every of that are going to be buying the merchandise at Christmas, buying the pyjamas. I might buy myself some pyjamas if I'm like, you know, it has a potential to really be a huge success on so many levels.

Are we seeing a big cultural shift here, Helen, with Wicked? I mean, in terms of stories of women, I'm thinking of Wednesday, possibly Frozen. I mean, I think this all stem from Matilda going back. Yeah, well, I mean, Edina Menzel, who sings in Frozen, which is the first Disney film where a woman rescues another woman and the prince are sidelined.

And Edina Menzel sang in that. She was the first person to sing Alphabet in Wicked on the stage. We have a generation of girls now who are being raised with these social structures made explicit for them. I wouldn't have known terms for the patriarchy. I wouldn't have known about female archetypes at 13, 13, 16.

Pearl knows all of, my daughter knows all of this stuff. She knows the backstories and her friend. I'm picking, you know, oh, mum, you would have been burned as a witch. You would have been an alphabet. I'm like, yes, I wish I could go back and hug my little self and give myself a broomstick to fly off. I don't know what this means because I haven't watched it yet, but I'm going to ask you very quickly.

We've got like 10 seconds, five seconds each. Elphabre or Glinda? Helen. Alphabet. Leila. Alphabet, I don't care if you like me. Elphabba. Okay, all elphabas.

I'll let you know once I've watched the movies. Thank you, Leila. Thank you, Helen. Camille, once again, thanks to you. Absolutely extraordinary. And of course we can't forget Fergal over there. That's it for me. Thanks to all of you who've been getting in search for the programme. Sorry, I didn't get to read out all your messages. Do join me again tomorrow for weekend, Woman's Hour. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time.

After Anthony Easton's father passes away, he goes through his dad's old suitcase. It's filled with cryptic clues, neatly stacked German money, a family tree he doesn't recognise, and also finds his father's birth certificate, but bearing a different name. From BBC Radio 4 in the history podcast, I'm Charlie Northcott, and I've been working with Anthony Easton to understand his family's dark history

and how they lost a fortune worth billions today. What happened to his family, their business empire, and all the money? Listen to the house at number 48 on BBC Sounds. Thank you.