Woman's Hour - Cara Delevingne, Women in construction, Lisa Jewell

Episode Date: August 31, 2019

Cara Delevingne is one of the most recognisable faces in the world with over 43 million followers on Instagram alone. She’s spoken openly about her sexuality and issues with severe depression. She began modelling when she left school but is now is concentrating on her acting career and plays the lead role in a new Victorian fantasy drama series Carnival Row. She talks about her role as Irish ‘faery’ Vignette Stonemoss opposite human detective Rycroft Philostrate played by Orlando Bloom.This week Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty to two additional charges of predatory sexual assault and has denied all allegations of non-consensual sex. A new documentary looks at the rise and fall of the film mogul. We speak to the director of the documentary, Ursula Macfarlane, and to Hope D’Amore who says she was a victim of his alleged abuse.What is it like to be a woman in the construction industry? Currently women make up 16% of the total UK workforce of two million people. How can the industry attract more girls to the trades and what’s the reality of working in such a male-dominated environment? Tina Daheley speaks to Roma Agrawal, a structural engineer who worked on the Shard, Katie Kelleher, a former crane operator who now works as an Appointed Person at Select Plant Hire, Hattie Hasan, founder of Stopcocks Women Plumbers, Cristina Lanz Azcarate, Chair of London South East NAWIC (National Association of Women in Construction), Sarah Fenton, Partnerships Director Midlands and North, CITB, (Construction Industry Training Board) and Lynsey Davies, a plasterer who is now training to be a quantity surveyor.Lisa Jewell is celebrating twenty years as a bestselling author. She tells us about her latest psychological thriller The Family Upstairs.Vegan vlogger Rachel Ama Cook the Perfect… Caribbean Jackfruit Fritters. She explains how she takes inspiration from her Caribbean, West African and Welsh roots and shows how you can take your favourite dishes and adapt them into quick, easy vegan recipes from her book Rachel Ama’s Vegan Eats.Plus, is the jobs market working for women? We ask if policies on part time or flexible working actually work in practice? We hear from Lucy Adams, CEO of Disruptive HR, Kirsty Holden, blogger and founder of TheMoneySavingMum.com and Anna Codrea-Rado, journalist and presenter of the podcast “is this working?” about the modern workplace.Presented by Jenni Murray Produced by Sophie Powling Edited by Jane Thurlow

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Good afternoon. In today's programme, the model, actor and Instagram personality with 43 million followers, Cara Delevingne. I'm not trying to be a role model. I'm not trying to be perfect. I'm trying to let people realise, and especially young girls, that it's OK to be who you are

and stop trying to be like these people that they see in magazines because that idea and the glamourisation of celebrity is not real. We'll talk openness, being one of the most photographed faces in the world and playing a fairy in the television series Carnival Row. Lisa Jewell celebrates 20 years as a best-selling author. What inspired her thriller The Family Upstairs? Women in the construction industry. Hattie Hassan founded her own plumbing company. I couldn't get a job. I wrote to everyone. It was a bit like, you're ringing for your son? Are you ringing for your husband? No, I'm ringing for me. Oh no, sorry, we don't have any places.

As I always say, nobody would employ me No, I'm ringing for me. Oh no, sorry, we don't have any places. As I always say, nobody would employ me, so I had to employ myself. Self-employment is becoming increasingly common for women. Why do so many feel the modern workplace isn't working for them? And vegan food becomes the UK's fastest growing takeaway. Rachel Ammer, the vegan vlogger, cooks the perfect Caribbean jackfruit fritters. You may have heard in the news earlier this week that the film producer Harvey Weinstein had appeared in court in New York and pleaded not guilty to two further charges of predatory sexual assault in addition to sexual misconduct claims made against him by

more than 70 other women. He will face a criminal trial in the new year. Any allegations of non-consensual sex have been unequivocally denied by Mr Weinstein. A documentary which will be broadcast tomorrow at nine o'clock on BBC2 is called Untouchable, The Rise and Fall of Harvey Weinstein Ursula McFarlane is the director of the film Hope Damore is one of a number of women who have spoken for the first time about what they say happened to them She worked for Weinstein in the late 70s as a young PA when he was building his career.

What was he like back then? I think he was essentially the same man he is now. He obviously became bolder in his actions as he got older. But the accounts that I've heard of him, he really hasn't changed. So the obvious question is, well, then why did you go to work for him? Part of his makeup is that he can be extremely disarming, very charming man. He initially asked me if I would work for the concert promotion business. And I said, you know, I'm not really, I'm not a good fit for that industry. I had worked backstage at a big concert he had

just as a gopher. When he offered me the job, I said, really, this isn't something I'm very good at. And he just, well, what do you like? What do you do? And that's how we started talking. And I said, well, I love film. And he said, oh, oh well my brother Bob and I are getting into that business I love films too and he said so if you worked here you'd be around that as well so that's how I ended up working with him now I know you alleged that he abused you what happened to you before we went to New York before there I mean he raped me um before we went to New York, before the, I mean, he raped me, um, before we went to, to, uh, on the business trip to New York where the rape occurred. Um, you know, he would, he would flirt with me in the office, but that was not unusual. I mean, things like that happened all the time, especially

back then. Um, we were both right out of college. I, you know, we went to the same university. He's two years older than me, I think. And he actually grabbed me once in the office. There were at least two people there to witness it. He grabbed me and pulled me into a closet and tried to kiss me. And I just pushed him off. And I said, Harvey, and, you know, just kind of what the hell. But I left it off, which is pretty much what you did back then. That wasn't against the law. And now it would be considered an assault.

For several years after that, it was, oh, you know, what's her problem? She can't take a joke. She's a bitch. You know, she has no sense of humor so I just kind of you know left it off put it out of my head and kept going you used the word rape how did how did that happen how it happened was uh he asked me if he said he and Bob were going to New York to talk to um someone about distributing the. Did I want to come along and just listen in on the meeting? I said, absolutely.

And when we got to New York, we're waiting in the lobby of the hotel. And it was sort of you wait here with the bags. I'll go check us in. And when he came back, he said, oh, there's been a mistake. There's only one room. And I rolled my eyes and I just said, Harvey. I said, well, fine. Then you're sleeping on a mistake. There's only one room. And I rolled my eyes and I just said, Harvey. I said, well, fine, then you're sleeping on a chair. But, you know, that night I went to bed with a T-shirt and shorts on.

And, you know, suddenly he gets into bed with me and he's naked. And that's as far as I'm going to go with the details of that right now. You don't need to go into any further details I think we can understand exactly what it is you're saying but why did you not make a complaint about it at the time? First and foremost I can't emphasize enough the humiliation and shame so not only did I not make a complaint, I didn't tell even my closest friends. I didn't tell my sisters about this for 40 years. I told no one. And, you know, I felt like it was my fault, even though it never occurred to me that something like that would happen. I've been in situations with guys our age in college. You study all night. You sleep for a couple of hours on whatever's available. Nobody forces themselves on you, even if someone says something, tries to make a movie to say, you know, listen, no. And that's that.

But also, you know, he was a powerful guy even then. And he was wealthy even then. And he, he is an imposing force. You've probably heard about his screaming tantrums, but he's also just a large person. So even if he didn't start screaming at you, I mean, just his physical presence is, is, is, can be very threatening when he wants it to be. And he had always, he had said more than once, I own the cops in this town, this town, meaning Buffalo, the rape happened in New York City. But, and, you know, I don't think the police in Buffalo, New York are corrupt. But I knew he hired off-duty policemen to do security at the shows. And I believed him.

Any allegations of non-consensual sex we know are denied by Mr. Weinstein. And I did wonder, watching the film, how concerned you might be that you're rather denying him the right to be innocent until proven guilty by making the film. Well, I mean, we, you know, we spent a lot of time, you can imagine, you know, the BBC, but any broadcaster would legal that film to the hilt. And there were many things in the film that we couldn't stack up, we couldn't corroborate. So we ended up not having to use them. But you know, we approached Harvey several times by his lawyers for an interview, we were very keen to his point of view, he constantly declined. He was sent a very detailed list of all the allegations in the film at the end, again, didn't come back to us. So I mean, I think he was given a pretty fair crack of the whip. And in terms of his trial, you know, yes, is he going to get given a fair trial?

I mean, frankly, my concern is much more for the women who are going to be in court, who are going to be, you know, discredited, dragged through the mud by his lawyers. There is a gossip columnist in your film who says it was assumed that aspiring film stars wanted to sleep with him. What do you say to people who say, oh, some of these women were complicit? Look, I think, you know, I have heard through reliable sources that there were women who slept with Harvey consensually and in some kind of trade-off for getting a small role in a film. I have heard that. I have not met any of those people, so I can't testify to that.

But I just want to be really clear that every woman I spoke to and everybody in our film did not go to that meeting with intention of having any kind of sexual encounter with Harvey Weinstein. I believe them. It's very clear to me. And I have not heard a single survivor whom I don't believe. And I think there was, you know, there is nuance there. There, you know, there are people who you could say, well, why did you go back? You know, you knew that he was a kind of, you know, that you're accusing him of these things. So why did you go back? But it's a very delicate dance, you know, between someone who wants something badly, a job, a career, who is vulnerable and someone who is very powerful. Hope, why did you not speak out till now? It's ever such a long time since it happened.

It is. It is. And I've actually defended Rose McGowan and Ashley Judd because they've been accused of, well, this isn't believable all these years later. And I said, oh, trust me, it is believable. I can, you know, I'll see their 10 years and raise them 30, basically. I would never have spoken out. Actually, it's Harvey's the reason I spoke out. They came out with their story. I was, first of all, extremely grateful for them, to them for speaking up, because I knew how frightened they must be.

I knew that they must assume that they would tell this story. Once again, it would not get published, but Harvey would know about it, and he'd make their lives hell all over again. And it was the evening, I believe, of the day that the New York Times article was published, I heard on the news that he was going to sue for defamation. That's why I spoke out. I mean, that's, finally, I got angry enough. And, you know, I've said this before, but it, for some reason, it's easier to stand up for other people than it is for yourself and and I thought you son of a bitch not this time and so I emailed Jodie Cantor who was one of the authors and I said I can corroborate what those women said because there was enough that was similar to my situation

that I knew it wasn't a coincidence that this was his MO he He was still doing the same thing. He was just more brazen about it. I was talking to Hope Demore and Ursula McFarlane and Untouchable, The Rise and Fall of Harvey Weinstein is on tomorrow night at nine o'clock on BBC Two. Alison tweeted, listening to Hope, I was reminded of the power of sisterhood. She was unable to allow a few brave women to stand up to Weinstein alone, an example to all of us that we should speak up for women. A campaign to diversify the building industry was launched this month by the Construction Industry Training Board. It's backed by the Department for Education and there's a £10 million investment. Two million people work in construction, but only 16% of them are women.

How can the industry attract more girls to the trades? Martina Dehealy spoke to Roma Agrawal, a structural engineer who worked on the Shard, Hattie Hassan, the founder of Stop Cox Women Plumbers, and the architect Christina Lanz Ascarati, who chairs the London South East National Association of Women in Construction. Sarah Fenton is the Partnerships Director of the Midlands and North Construction Industry Training Board. Lindsay Davies is a plasterer who's now training to be a quantity surveyor. And Katie Kelleher is a former crane operator who now works as an appointed person at Select Plant Hire. How did they get into the business?

Katie starts us off and explains how she became a crane driver. Five years ago, I was a recruitment consultant. So I worked in trade and labour. And I just noticed that people were earning a lot more money than I was and it came down to that. I didn't have any skills, I didn't have the qualifications. It wasn't that I aspired to be a crane operator but I thought, would construction have a place for me?

Could I fit in somewhere? I sent out a CV and my company Langer Rook rang me up. They said, we've got a new apprenticeship, would you be interested in coming for an interview? And I'd never thought about being a crane operator I didn't think women operated cranes I think maybe around London I probably know 10 in total how do people respond to you when they find out what you do people are generally shocked I remember when I first walked on site and just people stared at me and it was really daunting and it was um it's a moment that I talk about a lot so I often say if I was a younger

apprentice I wouldn't have got past the first day the only thing that got me through that day is because I knew I wanted to change my life but even then I'm going should I go back to recruitment what am I doing here why am I here why am I putting myself through this I mean you're clearly very you know self-motivated you're talking about it in a very pragmatic way but how old were you when you first started? Oh, I was 29 when I first started, so quite late, I guess, for an apprentice. I felt old for an apprentice. See, I think when you think of apprenticeships, you think of younger people doing it,

and it's not the case, especially not in crane operating. But if I was fresh out of school and I hadn't worked before I'd have gone that first day and never gone back again. Hattie, you're a plumber, but that wasn't something that appealed to you when you were at school why not uh well when I was at school uh I was always handy I had a nickname maintenance well that was it one word maintenance yeah that was your nickname yeah whenever something out broke maintenance fixes for us so they bring me their broken things i put them back together i was

always fascinated in how things worked and what have you but you know when you're kind of 15 16 and you're trying to choose what you do you don't want to do something different you want to be the same as everyone else so that was what that was what i did i became a teacher and teaching wasn't fulfilling me so in 1990 at the age of 27, I decided I was going to try and do something else. I knew I wanted to do something that was handy. So I'll just look back basically, because when I was at school in the 70s,

I wanted to do engineering. I wanted to do technical drawing, metal work. And they strictly told me in my school, those are boys' subjects, you can't do them. I don't know if they did it in all schools in the 70s. They did it in all schools in the 70s they did it in mine so I had to do needlework and cookery and what have you so I I decided at 27 I wanted to do something else and I looked back into what I really wanted to do and engineering and all of that sort of stuff so I went to a plumbing evening class to see if I would like it and I loved it and then I transferred onto

a full-time course and everybody was young they were all like between 16 and 18 and just a load of lads a couple of them were the sons of the and sons companies some of them were just off the street just to keep them off the street not even necessarily wanting to be plumbers when i transferred my course up to leeds college i was the only woman in the entire college trainee and i had to use the female staff toilets because they didn't have facilities for female trainees at that time they were really brilliant though really really supportive um they loved me because i loved plumbing but i loved it absolutely loved love plumbing. But I loved it, absolutely loved it every minute. I haven't regretted it for a single moment. But I couldn't get a job.

I wrote to everyone. It was a bit like you. Are you ringing for your son? Are you ringing for your husband? No, I'm ringing for me. Oh, no, sorry, we don't have any places. Is that why you set up your own company? Straight away.

As I always say, nobody would employ me, so I had to employ myself. Lindsay, you're not just a plasterer, you're a decorated plasterer. You've won an award for what you do. How did you get into it? I was 33 at the time and I was nine months pregnant. Every job I've done has never fulfilled me. I've worked in retail, banking, and I just always had a passion for construction from a young age. I always used to help my uncle, and he was a builder, and I was always mixing cement for him.

And it's just something that's always been there with me, and I kind of, as Harty was saying, it just was in a woman's world. And when I was in school, the type of things that we were told to go into would be nursing and teaching and construction never ever came up at all. I think it was just when I was pregnant I really thought I dreaded going back to work. What were you doing at the time? At the time I was working with the mental health it's fantastic such a rewarding job but it just wasn't fulfilling me as for my career so that's when I decided I'm gonna go into

construction I'm gonna do this while you were nine months pregnant I know I know must be mad well due to commitments to financial commitments I had a mortgage and I had a child as well but it was three and a half at the time and it was the only opportunity that I could have to take some time out to actually go to college and complete a course and then when I completed the course Kavla came in and they had a shared apprenticeship scheme and they were able to offer me an opportunity to train with them and actually get paid at the same time so I didn't have to go back to work after my maternity which was fantastic for me because I was able to continue my career as a plasterer. What was it like being a plasterer?

What was your first day like? Oh my gosh I can't even begin to tell you. I've got pictures I'm absolutely black. My first job was pulling a ceiling down up in the valleys and honestly I cried. I did I cried as my first day and I thought to myself I'm not going to be able to do this I'm just and the guy I was with bless him like and he was lovely and he was just he didn't know what to do at the time and he was like oh look come on now it'll be okay and I was like yeah but I've never laid on a ceiling before it was I was sweating pints I was soaking and I was in this all-in-one suit. And I got pictures of me on site, honestly.

And it's all you can see. I've got black all around my eyes. It was so funny. Now, Christina, you have spoken in the past about how long it takes for women to not only become architects, but to be paid well. Do you think money is a major hurdle? And how big of a challenge is that?

Architects are not very good at business. We do it for the love of the job and very often end up putting more time than we should. And this is generally. We don't do it for the money. However, it is quite frustrating when you find out that despite the fact that you are doing the same job as your colleagues, you are getting paid much less. I used to work at a practice where I was running big projects and I was doing a really good job. I'm not being immodest, I'm just being factual. And one day somebody printed the pay list of the whole office and forgot to pick it up from the printer. And another one of my friends cast an eye on it. And like a record, you know, she scanned through it and learned everybody's payment. So she came

to me and said, would you like to know how little you are paid? And I said, no, I would not. And she said, no, no, but seriously, you have to be angry. And she actually struggled with this piece of information because one of the things that she was wondering about is, what do I do with this? Shall I pin it in the coffee room? Shall I scan it and send it on an email? So at the time, I was not unhappy with my salary, but that kind of made me think, OK, my next review, I need to actually go a bit higher.

But it's not about, you know, when we talk about equal pay, it's about fairness. It's not about the money. And it's about being valued in the same way as a man doing exactly the same job as you. As a brain operator, you all get paid the same, by the way. We all get paid exactly the same. Nobody gets any more than anyone else.

One of my favourite topics at the moment is about shared parental leave and men taking time off and so on. And ACOM pays men and women the same. You get the same pay for the same length of time that you take off. And for me, that makes a huge difference because we now see men, my male colleagues, are taking more than two weeks off to look after their children. And I think that until we get that societal equality in how we look after our families, it's not going to really translate into the workplace. Katie, I was shocked to learn, and I didn't know about these the statistics about the the number of construction

workers who take their own lives yeah how do you deal with the isolation of being a crane operator when you are on your own for most of the time I think it's it can be tough and it's one of them things that you either love and you love that time on your own or you just don't but you do have constant contact with the people on the ground so you do have a radio and i mean lifting is very much about teamwork anyway so we work in lifting teams so you're not you're not really on your own you are part of a team i mean i worked with a hell of a lifting team at tottenham court road crossrail and it was one of the best teams i've ever worked with. It was brilliant. Yeah, across the industry, this is a huge, huge thing. And every single day, two construction workers, unfortunately,

take their lives. Every day? Every day. There's a huge thing to combat here and it's not going to take one organisation or it's everyone looking out for each other. And that's the great thing about the construction industry is that teamwork and that ethic. For example example from CITB's point of view in terms of funding intervention and so we've

committed a million pounds towards supporting this issue and actually getting mental health first aiders on site so treating it exactly the same as physical first aid it is a significant challenge and an issue. But I do think that having women on site, actually, from my perspective, my days on site, we kind of are a bit more aware of people maybe around us. I do think there's a great role that women on site can play to help with that culture of being able to talk about things and being more open. Sarah Fenton, Katie Kelleher, Roma Agrawal, Hattie Hassan,

Christina Lanz as Karate and Lindsay Davies. Alison emailed, as a chartered surveyor, 40 years after qualifying, I'm still greeted by, oh, I was expecting a man, and similar comments when I arrive on sites, but it's a great career and with modern communications, very family friendly. Susan emailed, I'm 59 and joined the industry in 1981 as a site engineer on a nuclear power station.

There were three women and several thousand men. Last year, I ran a project to build a new school with a female architect, mechanical engineer and two quantity surveyors. And for once, we outnumbered the men around the table. So things have improved. Now imagine you're a young woman, the daughter of adoptive parents who has a job and a small flat in St Albans and then on your 25th birthday you discover you've been left an eight-bedroom house in Cheney Walk in Chelsea, one of the most expensive parts of London. Lucy finds out that it was in this house that she was discovered as a baby,

well-dressed and cared for, lying happily in her cot, whilst in the kitchen below there are three decomposing corpses. In The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell, Lucy has to find out what happened and why. So what a house on Cheney Walk in Chelsea. I live in London, I walk around London and I live in a very nice house in London but I often see these other houses in London and my mind boggles with the concept of who on earth lives in these enormous enormous houses how can they afford to live in these enormous houses and there's something quite anonymous about a lot of them a lot of them are actually empty so I think part of choosing this huge house in Cheney Walk was that sense of anonymity that sense that nobody's really looking

because there's not that sense of community and a lot of these houses I say remain empty unlived in you know so that that was more rather than choosing a dream house what sparked the idea though for a story which has three narrators Lucy Libby and Henry and I think you saw someone at one point who sparked the idea yes absolutely I was in the middle of writing the book before and i was in the south of france on holiday with my family and um we were in one of those very posh beach um beach club restaurants with the um on the decking with the little jets of water being sprayed on us to cool us down and i saw on the um the boardwalk behind the restaurant there was a shower block for members and i saw this woman woman, very slim, very brown, slightly bohemian looking. For some reason, I just assumed she was British, dragging these two small children by the hands down the boardwalk into this shower block,

clearly not supposed to be going into the shower block, looking over her shoulder to make sure she hadn't been seen. And I'm sure there's a very banal explanation for why she was doing this, but I couldn't stop thinking about her. I just felt there was a story. I felt she didn't belong there. And so I went off and made one up for her. And what inspired the idea, which is so frightening, of someone moving in into somebody's home and completely tearing it upside down?

Yeah. Well, that was the thing. When I decided I wanted to make a story for this lady, I imagined that part of that story would be that she'd escaped from somewhere. And then I tried to imagine what she could man showing up one day. And as you say, without spoilers, sort of slowly taking everything over. You often write about families and unreliable parents and teenagers. Now that we've got Henry, Lucy, Finn and Clemency, what attracts you to writing about teenagers? I don't know, because even when I had young children I wrote about teenagers

and I think it's sort of in a way I was almost sort of waiting to meet my children as teenagers I have enjoyed this stage of parenting more than any other stage of parenting I don't really remember being a child myself I can barely recall anything about what it felt like to be 8 years old but I can remember nearly everything about what it felt like to be eight years old, but I can remember nearly everything about what it felt like to be 15, 16 years old. So yes, I've always been writing about teenagers. And there's just something, a teenager can be anything you want them

to be as well. They're so fluid. They can be dark, they can be light, they can be ridiculously stupid and ridiculously brilliant. they're capable of anything they haven't they're not fully formed so there's just so much freedom there you're celebrating 20 years as a best-selling writer but you didn't set out as a writer how did you begin a career i was a secretary um when i started writing my first novel. And I'd just, in fact, been made redundant from my job as a secretary. And at that point in my life, I was 26 years old. I'd just come out of a very dark marriage. I was celebrating my freedom.

You know, I was back in London, back with my friends. And I did a little creative writing course just for fun. But at that point, if you'd asked me what I wanted to be when i was a grown-up i would have said i have absolutely no idea and i did secretly um hope that i might meet a rich man at some point because i had no clue where my life was taking me um and then i had a very fortuitous conversation with a friend on holiday shortly after i lost my job i'm saying you know you haven't you've been made redundant you know a you've been made redundant. You know, a lot of people use redundancy

as an opportunity to change the direction of their life. Is there something else you'd rather be doing than being a secretary? And because I'd just done this creative writing course, I found myself saying, and possibly even thinking for the very first time in my life, I'd like to write a novel, I think. And she made me a bet.

She wasn't going to let me get away with it that lightly. It's like, you know, you have no idea how many people have told me that they want to write a novel. Write three chapters and I'll take you out for dinner to your favourite restaurant. So I did. And that was my first novel. And how easy was it to get it published? I think you sent it to quite a few people. It was, well, it wasn't that. It was just I sent it out to 10 agents and I got nine rejection letters, which absolutely as I'd expected, because clearly I was a terrible writer and why on earth would anybody want to publish my book? But then the 10th one took it on. She made me do an awful lot of work on it.

You know, it was my first novel, so it needed to be bashed into shape. But yes, it was after that she was amazing. She got me a publishing deal very quickly. Now, you began with romantic comedy and then you moved to these dark psychological thrillers. Yes. What prompted the shift? There was no prompt and there was no shift. It's been a very slow process

because I've written 17 novels now. But there was probably one point, if you want to call it a shift, where I was writing a novel about a much married man. It was called The Third Wife. And it was supposed to be a study of the family, the impact on the family of a father going off and having more and more families with other women. And I was about halfway through it and I suddenly realised I was bored and I just thought I need some this book needs something else I took the third wife um who I'd been writing about and um rewrote the first chapter with her being thrown under the wheels of a night bus on Charing Cross Road so therefore I'd killed my first character and you can't kind

of come back from that so I think that cemented my my journey into psychological drama you're not keen on police procedure though are you I'm'm not keen on research. I'm not a learner. I don't want to go off and learn anything new be it ice skating or police procedure or anything. I'm very very lazy. I don't like doing research so I use my characters to work out the mystery. Before the police are even called I've got my characters finding out exactly who done it and what happened. Yeah it's just pure laziness. The refreshingly honest author Lisa Jewell talking about her latest novel. It's called The Family Upstairs.

Still to come in today's programme, as more and more women decide to become self-employed, why is the workplace not working for them? And Rachel Ammer is the vegan vlogger. She cooks the perfect Caribbean jackfruit fritters. And don't forget that if you miss the live programme during the week, you can enjoy us any hour of the day. All you have to do is subscribe to the daily podcast, and you can find that on BBC Sounds. Cara Delevingne is one of the most recognisable and most photographed faces in the world. She has more than 43 million followers on Instagram, has spoken openly about her sexuality,

a history of severe depression and her difficulties growing up within a privileged background. She began modelling when she left school but she's now concentrating on her acting career. She began modelling when she left school, but she's now concentrating on her acting career. She plays the lead role of a fairy in Carnival Row, which is a Victorian fantasy that's been compared with another famous fantasy series, Game of Thrones. How would Cara describe it? I think when people try and compare it to Game of Thrones, it's a little bit lazy, only because it's a fantasy. And yes, I know Game of Thrones has ended and I know this has now started. But we did this two years ago and the concept, the idea, the land, the world, everything is different.

You know, it's a neo-Victorian fantasy crime drama with a love story, which also has this beautiful underlying social commentary, which is not so beautiful. It's actually terrifying. But it's kind of using fantasy to really look back and have a mirror at what's going on in the world right now. And I think that's really, I think it's important. And I really do think that, you know, people are scared or almost, you know, like, would prefer to be ignorant

to what, you know, the pain and the suffering is going on in the world. Now, Orlando Bloom plays a detective hunting someone with a grudge against the immigrant fairies of whom you are one. So how much is the series specifically reflecting themes of immigration, xenophobia? It's mirroring it in a way that is terrifying, but also it's really talking about power. And I think the way that, governments or people have power and like to use power to make fear and have, you know, power to make people fear each other instead of actually fearing the people in power. Fear is a way of controlling people.

Fear is a way of going, okay, don't like your neighbor, because they're the ones that are going to do this. It's a way of control, to keep people scared, to keep people wanting to look for answers and to look for people who are in control is almost wrong because the world and the people living in the world are the ones who know the reality of it. And I think that's what it's talking about. Now you play a fairy called Vignette. How would you describe her?

Vignette Stone Moss. You don't know a lot about her, exactly where she's come from, or you know that she's a survivor. She has come through hell to kind of get to where she is and she still has this heart you know the thing i think about her is you know she obviously has had to grow a tough skin you know to survive and which we all do but a lot of the time you know people who get hurt or people get heartbroken they kind of i i've had this before where you kind of harden your heart a bit and you don't let people in and you kind of get a bit more

you know you kind of shut your heart away and with her she has this tough skin but her heart is still so open and so instead of kind of trying to have revenge or kind of hate people she all she wants to do is forgive and to have compassion and to still love and understand and I think that's her best quality and I think that's the point of the fairies which is what I think humans need to learn from more is that like we're all sensitive and in this day and age sensitivity is kind of beaten out of us or aggressively told that you know having emotions is too much in this world but emotions are the things that are going to save us our empathy for each other and compassion for each other are the things that we need most now you're 27 now, 43 million Instagram followers.

That's wide. It's a lot. How much do you feel pressure that you're a role model for young people? It's a weird thing because sometimes when I'm really thinking too much, I'm suddenly like, why do I put myself through so much pressure and so much, because I really put myself out there to be judged and to be criticized, which I am a lot. And that's fine. But sometimes it really hits me. And I'm like, Oh, I can feel it sometimes the weight of it. But it's not the pressure to be

a role model, because I'm not trying to be a role model. I'm not trying to be perfect. I'm not trying to be an example. I'm trying to let people realize, and especially young girls, that it's okay to be who you are. And stop trying to be like these people that they see in magazines. Because that idea and the glamorization of celebrity is not real. Everyone is human. And I don't like it when people try and make it seem like their life is perfect. Because when people make their lives seem perfect, actually they're far more troubled than we think they are. You're very open about your sexuality, about having depression in your early 20s,

a breakdown when you were 15. What do you hope young people will learn from you in those kind of areas? I think what I'm learning from young people too, is I think now young people are so much more open. And I wish I had been. And I think the most important thing from young people too is I think now young people are so much more open. And I wish I had been. And I think the most important thing that young people need to know is that it's okay to be young. And it's actually important to be young and don't try and grow up too fast. You know, being a child is some of my favorite memories. And it ended pretty fastly just because of certain situations.

Why? Why did it end fastly as you put it? Fastly, quickly. Fastly. No, just because i had to grow up very fast and i think in a in a household which was maybe slightly more chaotic than others you just have to i kind of was in fight or flight mode since i was four years old so i didn't really feel like as much of a kid um but i am still a kid in so many ways but it's more like for kids like take your time and really aim high. Like, really aim high. There's so much people now, like, you know, and it's fine to do YouTube videos and to do all those things. But there's so many areas in the world where people are needed in other areas where people can, you know, strive for more.

And I think also talking about, like, communication, again, for me, was the thing that really caused things like having issues with sexuality, having issues with depression. It all came down from lack of feeling and lack of communication and talking about things that affected me. People see you as having had a very privileged upbringing, is it? Well, my family had money, so that's privilege, isn't it? That's what privilege is meant to mean. In my mind, privilege is love. Privilege is and I had love. Don't get me wrong. I definitely had love. But, you know, I think it's quick to say and people like, you know, she wouldn't be where she was unless this was her family. And this is that and that. I never wanted to use my family or privilege or anything to get anywhere. That's not... I want to be known for being good at what I do and I want to be known for being a hard worker. But that's fine. People are always quick to say things and that doesn't matter because I think the work speaks for itself, hopefully.

Your godmother is Joan Collins. She is indeed. What's the best advice she's given you? I think I remember telling her I wanted to be an actress when I was really young and my parents, I'm pretty sure they said it was a bad idea. But she always said, because I knew I wasn't going to do well at school because of my severe depression and from 15 onwards. But annoyingly, I thought the only way to be an actor, obviously, was drama school.

And I knew I wasn't going to be able to finish school. And I didn't know what I was going to do. But she said, if you really want it, and I think you do, because I know you, you're going to do it. And that was just one of the words, like, the things that I really wanted. Because I guess my parents were like, they were being rational. They're like, so many people don't make it as actors. Why do it? You're a model. You've got a good career as it is.

Why change it? You know, why try for anything else? But she was always like, she just kind of gave me that confidence because I think she saw something in me that was similar to her, I guess. How true is it that you are now married to Ashley Benson? Not true. The rumours went everywhere. Yeah, I know. People like to make rumours. But yeah, no.

But you are together? Yes, we are very much together. And I do have to ask you about this, slightly embarrassing. The paper said you carried a sex bench into your home. What is it? So it was, so my friend was getting married. We were throwing like a bachelorette party for them. And so many people, so many of my friends said that it was, that they look staged.

Because when I saw the photo, it does look staged. It's not. We were just carrying it into my house. I mean, to be honest, it's one of the funniest photos in the world. And I kind of want it framed in my house because it's hysterical. But you can see us both laughing. And I think there's a moment where I said, God, imagine if someone's taking a photo of this, what they would think. And then that happened.

So what actually is it? I think it's called an obedience bench or something where you just tie someone to it. It looks like a massage table almost, but not. And you haven't used it? No. I mean, we used it on the night of the bachelor party, but it wasn't used for what I think it's meant to be used for, if that makes sense. Perfect sense, Cara. And the first series of Carnival Row is available to watch on Amazon Prime now. The Office for National Statistics

published figures earlier this year that showed that the number of women opting for self-employment rose by 31,000 in the last three months of 2018. Other figures say the percentage of women choosing self-employment in the past decade has risen by 67%. So what's gone wrong with the nine-to-five job? Why do all those new employment practices, such as flexible or part-time working, appear not to be so attractive as working for yourself? Or is it that employers have simply not fallen in with what's expected of them? Well, Ana Codrierado is a journalist who presents the podcast Is This Working? Lucy Adams is a former head of human resources at the BBC and now chief executive of Disruptive HR.

And Kirsty Holden, who joined us from Humberside, is a blogger and founder of themoneysavingmum.com. What was the job she loved? I used to work for one of the biggest government agencies and it was my dream job. I'd always wanted to be in the legal department of something. I just wanted my hand in with legal and I got that opportunity and I was there for 13 years.

How did it change after you had your first child? It wasn't so much after my first child, although I did have to go through, well, I went through the flexible working applications and it was actually granted. There was no issues back then, but that was nine years ago now. That was quite a long time ago.

However, with my second child was when things started to change. It wasn't, it was a battle. It was a massive battle. I think I did about three flexible working applications in the space of about four years. My first one was granted. The second one and the third one went to appeal and was granted at appeal. It knocked my confidence. It was terrible, really. So what was it that made you say, right, I'm off, I'm not doing this anymore? At the time I didn't realise that I was actually going through discrimination and bullying. It didn't really occur to me that that's what that was

until I ended up referring myself for CBT and it was then that it was quite clear that it wasn't me. Everything that I was feeling and everything that I was being put through it was not because I had children it was not because of me it was my employer and it was at that stage I needed to do something I couldn't it was not healthy. Lucy I know you've described so much of human resources work as a parent-child relationship. What did you mean when you said that? Well, a lot of what we do in HR is we have kind of two types of parenting role.

We have the caring parent, which is where we try and do, you know, kind of make everything all right for everybody. But we also have the critical parent, the compliance officer. And this is, I think, the example that the cursors experience of that kind of compliance officer role that we see, which is almost all of our policies are designed around the tiny minority of people who are going to behave badly. And so the policies are designed to protect the organisation from a tiny minority, but unfortunately are applied to everybody. And so what we see are these kind of big, bulky processes,

loads of hoops to jump through for what would seem to be a very reasonable request. And these are supposed to be rights. You know, flexible working and part-time work are supposed to be rights. Flexible working and part-time work are supposed to be in law as rights. Why would somebody like Kirsty have to go through all these applications and feel she was being bullied? is the kind of the legal position. But of course, we know that the vast majority of people who want to work flexibly want to do so because actually it suits them and they will perform better. Unfortunately, part-time working, flexible working

is very often seen as working less than, that it's somehow a privilege that is bestowed on people to get away with working less hard or less effectively, when actually it's the opposite. You know, we see that those organisations that get it, that understand that their role is to create the conditions where people can do their best work, that flexible working is right at the heart of that. I think it's seen in this very traditional way where if you're not in the office, this culture of presenteeism. You know, I've known

people who have kept their jackets on the backs of chairs and gone home to make it look as if they're working harder than everybody else because they're still in the office. This culture where we see, you know, very often, I don't want to stereotype but very often um older blokes um who are in management positions they do these air quotes where they talk about working from home as if somehow what they're really doing is you know doing the washing and well they might be and why not you know um then you can still work once you've got the washing machine exactly you know and they're not trying not to be biased about this but oh dear jenny shut up and they're not spending hours of wasted time commuting how much do people without children want this sort of thing to and should they have the right to it

they should have the right to it and plenty of women who don't have children want to work flexibly i include my i include myself in that I worked for an organization where I asked to work one day a week from home because I'm a journalist I need to write I need a bit of headspace to write offices are super noisy they're not always the most conducive to your best thinking work I didn't even get to the point where I was putting in a formal application because already at the initial conversation I was turned down. The reason I was given was because if this right was given to me, other members of the team would also want to work from home and they couldn't be trusted. And that working from home is, as we've already discussed, it's as though it's granted to people

as some kind of privilege or something that you earn rather than something that you should just have an automatic right to it. And women who don't have kids also have plenty of reasons for why they would want to work flexibly. They may have a medical or a mental health condition or any other number of reasons. They may have an elderly parent. They may have an elderly parent. They may have claustrophobia and commuting might be a problem for them. There are so many reasons why they would choose to work either flexibly or from home or just in a way that actually suits them. And actually also means that they are working better and actually producing higher quality work, which in turn benefits employers.

But this piece of the puzzle just it just hasn't fallen into place yet and why why do you say there are such big numbers of women leaving traditional employment and and setting up on their own um well some of them are being forced into it so i think what we've really been talking a lot about here is all of these gender-based microaggressions and small almost invisible ways that women are just made to feel like they do not belong in the office but even things as it sounds really silly but there are studies that have come out that say the air conditioning is set too low for women so it's often women who feel cold in the office all the way through to um i used to work in an office where every morning i would go in and the security guard would tell me to smile, which sounds innocuous enough, but that is

a man telling me that I have to look a certain way and be happy just to make him feel comfortable. These are all the kind of small ways that women are made to feel like they don't belong. And then this continues to get worse and worse until women are being turned over for jobs because they're pregnant or women feel that they can't even go for a job interview with their wedding ring on because that will send a certain signal. It's essentially women don't feel like work is working for them. And so they feel like they have to go and strike out on their own. I was talking to Anna Codrierado, Lucy Adams and Kirsty Holden and Charlotte sent an email. She said, I had a successful teaching career with a proven successful track record. But when I returned from my second pregnancy, I was hounded to work harder and longer.

And eventually I spoke to my headmaster about the pressure I was under and discussed flexible working. It was rejected. I was made to feel that I was a hyena not performing rather than a hard-working valuable employee who'd achieved great results. I left the job feeling pushed. Thank you for talking about this because I'd felt so alone. Stephanie emailed every one of my employees who wants flexi working wants to leave by 2.30 for the school run. Likewise, everyone wants holidays in half-term. The rest of social institutions are not flexible and so businesses end up trying to circle a square. As a woman, I would like to see more flexibility in schools, school holidays and times people can make appointments then I might be able to let everyone work flexibly and still have good cover across the working day when customers

expect us to be staffed. You may have seen in the papers earlier this week that vegan food has become the UK's fastest growing takeaway which means Rachel Ammer's book Vegan Eats could not be more timely. And for me, she cooked Caribbean jackfruit fritters based on a recipe that her grandma used to make. My grandma, she's from St Lucia, and she was an incredible cook. And one of the things she was known for making was fish cakes. But I wanted to make a vegan-friendly version. So I got inspiration from her,

and I've made these using chickpea flour to bind it all together which is great for binding vegan food I've added loads of fresh herbs I've even added some jackfruit as a kind of almost like a fish replacement you could say and it just makes it really delicious and makes these really nice vegan Caribbean fritters now jackfruit is not familiar to me at all what is it so jackfruit is a fruit the origins of jackfruit is not familiar to me at all. What is it? So jackfruit is a fruit. The origins of jackfruit are actually from India and then it spread to Southeast Asia. And now you can see it in South America. You can see it in the Caribbean. And now we're seeing it in places like London. It's a really versatile fruit to use. There's like you can have ripe jackfruit, which is slightly brown on the outside.

And it tastes kind of like a mango and a passion fruit combined in one. Or you have jackfruit that isn't quite ripe and it's kind of green on the outside. And that's when people use it for savoury cooking. So whether they want to use it for a meat replacement to do like jerk kind of jackfruit tacos like pulled pork. That's, I think, one of the most popular ways people are using it as a vegan food at the minute so what have you got putting together there we've got the frying fat in the pan we've got some oil in the pan what kind of oil is it just any neutral vegetable oil for this um and then i've got some fresh herbs so i've got some coriander and parsley which you'll see a lot of in Caribbean cooking kind of those fresh herbs as well as green onions so they're in this bowl

with jackfruit chickpea flour tomatoes I've added some nori flakes which are seaweed and they're going to add like a fish like flavor to it and a bit of chili in there mix it all together combine it with the jackfruit and then you just fry them so it's really simple it's all in one bowl so you really do it just like you do a fish cake just like you do a fish cake and then we're just going to add it straight to the oil and a nice sizzle going on there yeah so how easy did you find it to adapt your favorite recipes the ones that you were familiar with, the ones that your grandmother had been so good at cooking,

in order to be vegan? It was more of like this fun thing for me to do. I love food. I love the Caribbean flavours I was used to making. And then I went, if I'm going to go vegan, I want to enjoy it. I want to love the recipes. And it became a task to then use the flavours, the nostalgic flavours I was used to. Like, I used to love the recipes and it became a task to then use the flavors the nostalgic

flavors I was used to like I used to love having this brown shoe chicken I had before how can I make this with vegan what different fruits and vegetables can I use to create different textures to make food just as delicious but also vegan you do have a recipe for tuna pasta using jackfruit again instead of tuna. Yes. Why is it such a good substitute for meat and fish? Well, for me, I wanted a lot of the recipes in the book are just vegetables, but I wanted to have some nostalgic ones. So tuna pasta was like my university go to. I just made tuna pasta all the time.

I was like, let's recreate this, but vegan. The jackfruit was just perfect for it because when you bite in the tins, it is slightly salty. It's very simple and adds a great texture. So you can kind of see it's like stringy and it pulls apart, which is a little bit similar to tuna. So I wanted to use that, including some nori sheets to get that kind of seaweed flavour

and just make food that i i love vegan as well how big is the fruit if you buy it it's huge so if you buy jackfruit fresh you'll see them growing on trees in like costa rica yeah not in england not in england or scotland or wales no um so i don't actually cook with it often. It's like a specialty thing for me. But they're huge. When you buy them huge, when you buy them fresh, they're so much more affordable than if you buy a tin and you get about 400 grams and you get a smaller portion.

But it's this big, oval, round, beastly fruit. You don't want to stand underneath one if it falls from a tree because it would be very severe so they are sold on the market they are in this country now they've come into this country they are if you go to somewhere like brixton market you'll see fresh jackfruit everywhere how would you substitute i mean i was just thinking of what are all the familiar foods that i think i know with a car a Caribbean sort of background um curried goat oxtail soup yes and jerk chicken yes what would you put in a goat curry in a goat curry well I

don't cook with soy and some people would use like a soy protein or seitan I'm not sure if you know infamous seitan seitan's like the proteins of flour and it's binded and people use it as a meat replacement to do kind of fried chicken but I like to use kind of fresh fruit and vegetables so I would use something like oyster mushrooms and when you grill them you get a really nice dare I say meaty texture so we use the same seasonings you would in an oxtail and the same ingredients but instead of adding the meat I would add some grilled oyster mushrooms and jerk chicken jerk is like my favorite there's a lot of jerk recipes I've even got in the book these barbecue jerk tacos where I've made a homemade barbecue jerk marinade I've roasted

them in the oven with some oyster mushrooms so they kind of crisp up and I've also got some plantain and some like deconstructed coleslaw. And it comes together and makes these epic tacos. Hang on, what is deconstructed coleslaw? It sounds like a really fancy way of saying coleslaw that's not built together. Some shredded cabbage, some mayonnaise, which I've mixed with jerk seasoning. And it just looks like this beautiful ensemble and it tastes amazing. Rachel Armagh cooking Caribbean jackfruit fritters, a recipe from her book Vegan Eats. And you know, the jackfruit really did taste kind of like fish.

Now on Monday, join Jane. She'll be discussing periods and sex. Does the idea disgust you or your partner? Can you get pregnant during period sex? Do you feel like sex during your period? Does orgasm help period pains? That's Monday, two minutes past ten. Bye-bye. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered.

There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.