Woman's Hour - Clean Break, PTSD Partners, Sizeism

Episode Date: October 23, 2019

Clean Break is a theatre company that works with women in prison or have been in prison. Clean Break is now 40 years old. and as part of their birthday celebrations one of their plays is on in the West End of London. It's called [BLANK] and is at the Donmar Warehouse. It looks at the experiences of women behind bars and the impact on their families and across society. Jacqueline Holborough the co-founder of Clean Break comes on the programme together with the play’s director, Maria Aberg and one of the actors, Lucy Edkins.We have the second in our series about the partners of soldiers with PTSD. Today we hear from Becky, who's 40 and a mum of two. She's known her husband since they were teenagers but she tells our reporter, Tamsin Smith, how PTSD infiltrated their relationship as soon as they moved into military married quarters.

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. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Wednesday the 23rd of October. In 1979, a theatre group called Clean Break was formed by a group of women who'd experienced prison. This year, on their 40th anniversary, there's a play at the Donmar in London. Blank explores the impact of prison on women and their families. Tomorrow, you can join us in a phone-in

about being fat, inspired by Sophie Hagen's book, Happy Fat. Today, we'll discuss her assertion that fat people endure systemic discrimination and abuse. And the serial, the eighth episode of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls. Now, if you were listening yesterday, you'll have heard the first in a series about post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by members of the armed forces and the impact it can have on their partners. It's been found that veterans' partners face an increased risk of developing

secondary PTSD. Over the past two years, the charity Combat Stress has been running workshops across the country to help partners in crisis. This summer, they launched an online programme designed to help partners isolated at home because of caring responsibilities, child care and work pressures. Well, we've been introduced to three women who participated in the programmes. Becky is not the real name of a mother of two who's 40 years old and has known her husband since they were teenagers, well before his military career. She told Tamsin Smith how PTSD infiltrated their relationship as soon as they first moved into married quarters. So we'd come home and if things weren't in rows or exact centimetres apart, he'd really get very angry. It'd bother him completely. It was the kitchen really,

you know, tea towels weren't in rows and the tea, coffee and sugar and just things like that. He'd get really, really angry and really irritated. So I'd go to the extreme to make sure that everything was in its place and he'd walk in and it'd be like he was completely disappointed that it was perfect. So then it spread to different rooms of the house and he'd keep going and going until he found something. And I could never reach his standard because even if I did reach his standard, he'd move the goalposts anyway.

I said, I'm not in the army and my son and my daughter are not your recruits. You don't need to come home and treat us this way. This is our home. You need to switch off. So did you think this was normal? I mean, did you talk to other wives about this? I did, and they all just laugh it off because they're all the same. They're all really particular about things in rows and the order of things and I was

like well did they get really moody and angry or you know what they're like they're all just squaddies that's how they are you I need to adjust. And at what point did other symptoms start to creep in which made you think that this wasn't just the same as the other squaddies and maybe there was something else happening? My husband did suffer from really bad hypervigilance, but I didn't see it. It wasn't the obvious hypervigilance that you think of, whereas people are visibly distressed being in crowds

every time we tried to go somewhere, or even just the part with the kids. He would be constantly risk assessing. He's registering every person that walks past, if they've got a rucksack. If they pass us again, he'd vary our route. But I wouldn't realise he was varying our route because he's seen the same person three times. He'd just say, right, come on, let's go over here, I want to look at this shop. It was a very sneaky symptom. I didn't spot it till about eight years down the line.

What was the trigger for PTSD escalating to the point where you realised that there was something seriously wrong? He didn't adjust to civilian life at all. So his mood really went, they were bad enough to cope with when we were in the married quarters but his mood really turned dark. We got a phone call and it was my husband's closest friend and they'd been in the army the exact same time from basic training and they both left at the exact same time. these men had been through thick and thin together whatever happened to my husband during his deployment had also happened to his friend they were always together um we got a phone call um from his wife saying he had tried to commit suicide just out of the blue and you know we seen him and we made sure everything was all right and when we come

back that night when we were at home he had the worst now I know is a night terror he had the worst night terror I've ever known he was you know he was screaming he was sweating he was punching in his sleep and I made the fundamental error of trying to wake him up out of it so I then got punched in the face and big bruises and he just put it down to a nightmare you know he was just stressed out about his friend and he was worried but then the next night another night terror then the next night another night terror and his symptoms just all flared and that is when he just went full-on PTSD. It must have been really frightening for you? You know in a funny sort of way even though this experience was frightening

it just gave me the confidence I needed to stand up to him and say no there's no wiggle room you can't argue with this symptom. I felt empowered because there was no escaping it. So was this the tipping point where he decided he needed help? This was my tipping point but my husband just hit the roof how do i suggest that he was so weak he would suffer from mental illness have i got no respect for him at all because to him that's like me saying he's not a soldier and that's his identity and how dare I take that away and he was so disgusted such a heartbreaking way he left the house completely enraged and went on this two to three week complete and utter binge drinking downward spiral which during that time he broke every marriage vow we ever took together. He just absolutely shattered our marriage

and it was in retaliation for me suggesting that he needed help. When that happened, could you talk to anybody about what had gone on? Do you know, I've lost so many friends. I had one friend who's been through thick and thin. Would you talk to anybody about what had gone on? Do you know, I've lost so many friends. I had one friend who's been through thick and thin. She phoned me up and she said, I never had you down as one of them pathetic women that support the husband when they're going out and doing all sorts. But he's got a really good group of close military friends

and his family and my family all stood together and said right you need to completely work up and you need to get help you've got to think about your wife and you've got to think about your daughter and your stepson you know you really have because you're gonna you're gonna be dead and out the blue he knocked on the door on our front door and he just walked in I went I need help can you phone combat stress it didn't matter what he'd done and how he'd behaved to me at that time it just mattered he needed someone to help him and so he then got treatment but talking about you I mean how did you feel about the fact that you'd been affected by his PTSD? He had certain triggers of suicidal thoughts

and he'd go into this deep emotional state where he'd just stare at the floor for like three days you couldn't communicate with him and one of them one of his triggers were was seeing how his behavior had affected me so I then thought I was so petrified of triggering this suicidal thoughts I was on such eggshells I was so stressed and I thought to myself you know I can't even have a cry. Because if he sees me crying, then that triggers this whole episode. I found myself repressing a lot of my feelings and just pushing everything down. Just trying to make sure he was the priority, not me. And that's the way we lived our lives. So my feelings and my stress and everything just didn't matter

at that time and to live like that is very difficult it's really difficult and I was sick with stress I was very angry I was isolated um because my just, I was just this pathetic woman in their view. And, you know, it's funny because I found myself suffering from the exact same symptoms as what my husband was suffering from. So you now know that this is secondary PTSD? Yeah. I wasn't even aware of secondary PTSD, but I did find myself suffering from the exact same symptoms. And because of his behaviour, I didn't want to go out and about because I felt so ashamed of what he'd done. So my life just, well, it just got turned upside down.

You know, living with someone who is knowingly suicidal isn't an easy day today. And it's not, and especially when you've got children in the house as well, because what do you do? Do you sit your young children down and say, listen, daddy's not very well. He might, you know, he might get a bit angry and he might do this or you know do you keep it try and hide his behavior and distract your children and they can sleep out at grandma's and go on big adventures when he's really poorly what do you do so it's really stressful it's really confusing you know you really worry about the environment that your children are coming home from school to every day and it's just this this head you just head is just constantly spinning

with it all and it completely consumes your life did you think that you needed help what help is there for me anyway you, a few sessions with a counsellor via the NHS. You know what? I just felt so overwhelmed. I really did. And I was just so overwhelmed. And I come back home and my husband went, there's a letter there for you from Combat Stress.

And I went, well, why are they writing to me? And I opened this letter and it was inviting me to join the Partners Programme. So what was that like when you went along to the group and you met other people, other partners in your position? There was just these eight women all looking very nervous and anxious. And we went round the table and all the women were describing the husband's illness and how it affected them and I just felt at home. I felt safe. I felt so relieved that I'm sat here with these women

because they automatically understood. Was your husband supportive of you going along to the sessions? Not at first. My husband would get very irritated the night before I was going and be very irritated when I come back but I just didn't care. And what was the most helpful thing for you that you learnt on the course? What did it enable you to be able to do at home? So the main thing it changed for me it was talking about living with someone who was suicidal for me this was like the highest cause of stress you know I was really hyper vigilant myself at home because I had it in my mind somehow that if my husband was

going to commit suicide he'd make the decision and then use whatever's at hand because if I was poorly I was on quite strong medication so I'd be walking around constantly with a great big bag with the medication and so he wouldn't have it to hand I'd make sure there was no rope in the shed or anything like that I was constantly risk assessing what's he doing where's he going and the lady from combat stress she talked about you know these are military men and they will have a plan go home and talk to your husband about his suicide plan she educated us on what to do if they do have a plan and she advised us to make ourselves part of that plan so I went home that day and I said do you have a suicide plan and he went of course and I went well what is it and he had it all in order his suicide plan was good to go and I was devastated because I'd been so stressed not sleeping just watching

him just being really upset and panicked that I'm going to lose him to suicide and adjusting the way we were living and the things he had on hand and none of that even mattered because his plan was something completely different. He had the rope under the spare wheel in the car. He had letters that were already pre-written and he was just waiting. He was just waiting and I said, right, I said, you need to make me part of your plan. And he went, well, why? I said, listen, I said, you know what our children are going to go through if you commit suicide? You owe me, you absolutely owe me a phone call. And he agreed.

And how long ago was this? This was a year ago. Maybe a little over a year. He agreed. Once he agreed and I'd become part of his plan, he wouldn't have changed it, so he had complete confidence that he wouldn't do anything stupid without phoning me first. And what difference did this make for you and how you felt?

Do you know, the stress just left. The hypervigilance. But it also gave me an understanding of what he was feeling and it really helped me day to day life it really did it just gave me the confidence I thought I can go out and visit my mum and have a cup of tea and he's not going to do anything stupid or I can go and watch my daughter's assembly at school and not be terrified that I'm going to come back and find him dead on the floor. So where are you now compared to where you were a year ago? After I sought help and I had the benefit of this course and all these new women who become fast friends. My husband then went on to the six-week intensive trauma recovery programme that combat stress do.

He's not whole again, he's not recovered, but little by little he's improving. And where do you think you would be if you hadn't got help to be honest I think I'd be on a very high prescription of antidepressants I'd be very highly medicated because I just wasn't coping I don't know where I'd be Becky was talking to Tamsin Smith, and there are links on the Woman's Hour website where you can find support if you're going through a similar problem, and you'll also find an article there on the subject. Now, still to come in today's programme, the 40th anniversary of the theatre company Clean Break and a production at the Donmar in London of a play about the impact of prison on women and their families.

Earlier in the week, you may have missed a lesbian couple who plan to marry in Northern Ireland. That was yesterday. And how to talk to your children about climate change. You can find us, of course, if you've missed a live programme on BBC Sounds. On the 31st of October to the 2nd of November, BBC Music Introducing Live will be at Tobacco Dock in London. There'll be lots of inspiring masterclasses, interactive sessions, workshops and some performances. And Woman's Hour will also be there. We'll be broadcasting from Introducing Live on Friday the 1st of November. You can find out how to attend at bbc.com forward slash introducing.

And those dates again are the 31st of October to the 2nd of November at Tobacco Dock in London. Earlier in the year, we spoke to a young Danish comedian who'd written a book called Happy Fat. She's now touring the UK to talk about the book and tweeting occasionally. I am not a body positivity campaigner, she said. I am a fat liberationist. I care about abolishing the systemic discrimination and abuse that fat people endure on a daily basis. Well, in conversation with Jane, she expanded on her theory. You know, I have the knowledge that fat people get hired less than thin people.

We get paid less than thin people. You know, I can't really turn on the television and watch anything without fat people being the ridicule and the punchline to any kind of joke. You know, you turn on the news and you see these headless fatties walking down the street with like obesity epidemic written everywhere. So you kind of know you're a very, very hated group in society. Well, it was just 24 hours ago at the start of Monday's edition of Woman's Hour that I was talking about recent research from Liverpool University, which talked about the link between emotional problems and obesity in young children. So without, I don't want to dismiss your passion for being positive about

being fat, but there is no doubt that some people pay a price for that, don't they? Oh, all fat people pay a price. Well, in general, all marginalized groups pay a price for being, you know, oppressed and treated very badly. So I'm in no way surprised that children get depression and anxiety because of the way we treat them. What surprised me about how people usually react to statistics like that is, you know, you go, oh, these fat children are sad. How can we make them thin instead of going, maybe they're sad because they're treated very badly and they're told by every single person they meet that they're worthless because of their bodies why not teach them to be why not teach society to to treat all of us better well what sophie had to say

prompted us to plan a phone-in about being fat which will be tomorrow. What's your experience of being fat? Are things more difficult if you're significantly overweight? Well Bishamba Das joins us this morning from Derby. She works in child protection and she's a plus size model. Bishamba what has fat felt like for you? Hi Jenny. Fat for um hi jenny fat for me is something that i have battled with all my life i was an overweight child um even in going into my teens and pretty much um throughout my 20s as well it's only recently that i've um over the past three years that i've lost weight um down to my own choices um now i belong to the south asian community india in particular and um it can't be denied our community is notoriously known um for body shaming so growing up i would have elderly you know elderly women who i don't even know coming up to me to say oh you have a very beautiful face but

you know you're fat who's going to marry you and imagine hearing that as a child growing up constantly it was basically you know instilled in me that I'm not worthy of anybody's love just because of the way my body was. I think Bishambe you've gone from a size 24 to a 16 or 18 recently why did you feel weight loss was important now in your early 30s? I think the most important thing is we all should do what we feel is right for ourselves and weight loss for me was important because I was starting to feel the side effects in terms of my health. Now I'm a young woman who would want to start a family and that was always something that was you know the forefront in my mind um now the reason why i couldn't lose weight much earlier on um is because i constantly felt trapped in this cycle where i was being bullied by people around me who would say that

they love me and that's why they were saying the things that they were to me um thinking that they're encouraging me when they weren't it was only when i was able to break free from all of that and realize that what mattered is what i felt about myself and what i needed to do for myself is when i started to take you know the right steps for my health how have you coped with what you've been asked to do as a plus size model um sorry jenny say that again how have you coped with the kind of things you've been asked to do as a plus size model i've really struggled with it i've been doing modeling now for about five years and when i first initially started i was actually britain's only asian plus size model so representation is very very important to me and um you know i think we all have the right on one hand we have the body positive movement that says you know all bodies are good bodies and

we encourage each other to be the way we are but then you know behind the scenes i felt the pressure when i was looking at the body positive sort of community as such that I needed to be just like them and that would include you know putting a lot of images of myself in swimwear or in lingerie when personally that wasn't who Bishamber Das is that didn't fit right for me and because I wouldn't do that I felt I wasn't accepted. So how would you describe yourself? I mean, Sophie calls herself a fat liberationist. She's a little bit critical of the body positive movement. Where do you sit in that, you know, what she describes as a political thing? I mean, I understand where she's coming from.

At the end of the day, when, you know, there's a lot that I do owe to the body positive movement it's because of that movement that I was able to finally you know see myself in a positive way and actually show other people as well through the work that I've done that you know it's okay to be the way you are but also at the same time I have felt pressure you know it started to become a bit of a movement where you need to be a certain way and that is the only way where you know in terms of how sophie describes it you know it's nobody should ever feel any sort of um discrimination towards them where i think maybe the body positive movement kind of dismisses that so you maybe are a fat liberationist would you say i think i'm probably i'm going that way to be honest with you well visham badass thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning and starting this conversation and of course we would like to hear from you you can join me

tomorrow morning for the phone-in program on your feelings about being fat. Has it held you back? Have you been discriminated against or abused? You can phone us. The number is 03700 100 444. The lines will be open from 8 o'clock in the morning or, of course, you can send us an email and that's through the Woman's Hour website. And, Bishamba, thank you again very much.

Now, in 1979, a theatre group was formed and it was called Clean Break. Two women had met in Durham's Maximum Security Unit and when they were moved to Ascombe Grange Open Prison, they found a governor who was keen to encourage inmates to pursue their creative interests. Clean Break created their first piece, which was performed at York Arts Centre and the University

with the Governor's blessing. Well, this year it celebrates its 40th anniversary with a play called Blank, which is on at the Donmar Warehouse in London and explores the impact of the criminal justice system on women and their families. Maria Eberg is the director of the criminal justice system on women and their families. Maria Aberg is the director of the play, Lucy Edkins is a member of Clean Break and acts in the play, and Jacqueline Holbrook

is one of the two founders. I'll call you Jackie, shall I? Yes, thanks. I think that's more familiar. Why did you set up Clean Break? We needed something to do that was positive, that was creative, that was giving us a chance to get together and just explore what was happening in our lives at the time. We weren't able to do that at Durham, but we were able to do it thanks to Susan McCormick, the governor at Ascombe. What were the problems at Durham? Why couldn't you do it there? In maximum security, it was just the rule book, really. We tried to get some stuff going in the exercise yard during our hour-a-day exercise. We thought we'd do Jesus Christ Superstar because someone had a record. We were dancing around, flapping our arms, but that was considered a security risk. We were told stop quite soon

after I was transferred and then soon after that Jenny Hicks so I think we were shipped out quickly they didn't want Jesus Christ Superstar in the exercise yard obviously so what did you create once you got to Ascombe Grange what was the first thing you did? Ascombe does a panto every year I don't know if it still does, but it did. And we were in the panto, and then we thought, well, why don't we carry on? We got some of the women who'd been with us in that to start a workshop. We began improvising, looking at scripts by Orton and Milligan, scripts that we thought were quite fun and edgy. And then we thought, we need to write our own material.

There were 20 of us by then and we thought the only way to really say what we need to say, we write our own material. We weren't allowed to write about prison while we were in prison. So we wrote plays that were a piece, two-hour piece, pretty much influenced by Orton and Spike Milligan. So quite spiky, I suppose you could say. Maria when you were offered the chance to direct this script Blank which is on now at the Donmar and how it made you cry why? Well part of the reason was I just had my daughter about four months before so I was probably very hormonal but also because it is

just a devastatingly beautiful bit of writing about the impact that the prison system has not just on the women who go to prison but on all the all the women and children surrounding them their their own mothers and their children and it's just a very very very brilliantly written and very insightful piece. And I think it hit me particularly hard as I was reading it with my newborn daughter in my arms. But why did you feel these women's stories were so important to tell? I suppose as a society, they're stories that we don't really listen to. They're stories we don't really give a lot of weight or importance to.

There's a lot of really unhelpful stereotypes surrounding women who go to prison. I think the stories are often sensationalised and the women are dehumanised in a way that I think is incredibly unhelpful. And Alice's play does the exact opposite of that. Alice Birch, of course, who wrote a hundred scenes. Exactly, yes. from which you chose 22 Yes I did which is a difficult process

because I would have loved to have included every word of those hundred scenes because it is a really beautiful bit of writing but that would have taken probably about six or seven hours to sit through and that wasn't quite what was appropriate for the Donmar Warehouse.

So I had to make a selection and I guess I made that selection partly for some practical reasons. So Alice wrote the play in part for the women of Clean Break and in part for the National Theatre Connections programme, which is for young people. So there were a lot of scenes that included children and some scenes that only included children. And we knew that for our production, we could only have two.

So there were some scenes that included more than two children, so I couldn't include them. So there was a kind of natural selection process up to a point. And then I suppose I chose plays that scenes that spoke to me um and that I felt sort of um really kind of uh sort of crystallized the issues that I felt were important and in part I made that selection together with Alice. Lucy how did you become involved with Clean Break? Well, back in 94, I went there to... I was doing a bit of stage management at the Gate

and I'd been acting up north and my mum knew about Clean Break. She was an actress and she said, oh, you might get an equity card if you went there. So I went along and auditioned for something and then I was taken on as an ASM on a couple of productions and then a DSM, Deputy Stage Manager, and toured around with Yard Girl.

And then I was doing writing and acting workshops as well. Did you get an equity card? I did, yes. I got an equity card in 94 or 95, yeah. What was it like then for the daughter of an actor and your father I think was a poet to begin to appear in plays at the

Royal Court and the Donmar with Clean Break I mean big stuff in the West End Yeah I mean it was a great privilege and I think my mum would have been proud of me to be in these impressive theatres in London and yeah it's been they've both been very different plays. One was the Inside Bitch at the beginning of the year was a devised piece.

And both are ensembles. So we've got fantastic company of 12 adult women and two children, four children, two on alternate nights kind of thing. And, yeah, all brilliant cast members. Jackie, what did you make of the title that Donmar, the description that the Donmar have given the play? They call it a provocation rather than a play. What do you think of that?

I suppose what it means is that they are opening, asking the audience to be provoked, presumably. I mean, I can't think otherwise. What did you think of it, Maria? Well, I suppose there's two elements to it. I suppose it's a provocation from the playwright, which is here are a hundred scenes which can be performed in any order and you get to see a version

of those hundred scenes and there'll never be another production like it of that same material so it's a provocation in a sort of formal theatrical sense but I guess like Jackie's saying it is also a provocation to I suppose confront some stereotypes and some

ideas that people might have about how these stories are told and who should be telling them and what space in the cultural landscape they ought to occupy. How has the company changed, Jackie, and developed over the years? I think it's fantastic. This year Jenny Hicks, the other co-founder, and I have been invited to take part in the 40-year celebrations. Because for many years, we worked for the first seven to ten years with Clean Break,

but obviously we've only had occasional contact. But this year we've been really on board with everything. I mean, I've seen five different Clean Break productions this year, each one unique, from the 12-minute sweatbox in a prison van to Inside Bitch at the Court, lovely thing by the young company at Lyric Belong, and now this epic Blank, and also a co-production with Cardboard Citizens,

which they did on site at the wonderful place that they have down in Kentish Town. Also, we were asked to come along and see the end-of-term celebrations. I mean, the energy and the joy of those women. A hundred women a year go through the process at Clean Break from introduction to drama right through to advanced theatre studies. And there's also, of course, a big welfare concern as well there. So it's just an amazing...

Jenny Hicks and I dreamt this. And to some extent, Jenny Hicks actually was right at pushing it after I left. She got the first premises and she got the charitable status before she left. And passed it on to wonderful women who've taken it on ever since. Do most of the actors still start their creative lives in prison and then as they come out they join Clean Break?

I think Clean Break has a programme inside prison where people are invited to come and listen and talk and give their stories. It's really all about telling stories and going on from there, how that develops for those individuals and what benefit it is to them. And being with other women in a women-only space really. Lucy, as far as your performance in this play is concerned, in the last

scene we see you and your adult pregnant daughter who's very angry that her mother went to prison and wasn't there for her. What's it like when you're performing really rather painful stories that might feel quite familiar um i think for any actor that would be i mean it is it's you do feel a hell of a lot of guilt because your daughter is there i I mean, as a character, just basically pasting you for what you haven't done. And I think probably it's difficult to take those words for anybody. You know, they're very strong words that Alice has written there.

I wouldn't say that particular story um i didn't have my own um daughter when i was in prison but i have other stories that i'm recreating earlier on and you know i'm kind of like prowling around in my cage earlier on and that's uh that brings back memories um i'm not sure if that's really answering your question There is a strong mother and daughter thread throughout the play, Maria Why is that important to show that impact of imprisonment on that kind of relationship? Well, a huge percentage of women who go to prison have children

and I suppose that's something that we don't often think about You think of imprisonment as being primarily a punishment for the person who has committed a crime. But actually, when it comes to prisoners who are also mothers, there are a lot of other people around them who also end up paying a very high price for the imprisonment and and given that last year i think 82 percent of women who ended up in prison were there for non-violent crimes it's not always the best i mean very rarely i would say the best way to um uh to rehabilitate because it impacts so many other people rather than just the woman at the center of jacket just looking back over i it's 35, 36 years since we met, years and years ago when this was all starting, what impact would you say Clean Break has had on your life

and women who've been part of it? I always had a massive impact on my life. The seven years I worked with them, I was an actor before prison, but I'd never written. And I've been able to have a very good career as a writer since leaving Clean Break. It's had that impact. But also seeing it now, seeing what is going on there now, the huge, the vast programme of work that they're doing and all sorts, I mean, anyone should check out the website, cleanbreak.org.uk, wonderful website saying everything that it's doing.

That's had a massive impact on me to see that it's come to that now, that it's been so successful, this wonderful organisation and the people who are running it. I'm gobsmacked. I was talking to Jackie Holborough, Lucy Edkins and Maria Aberg. Lots of tweets about the post-traumatic stress disorder. Kevin said, thanks for shining a light on this with the brilliant interview I just heard on your show. The interviewee spoke brilliantly. The segment was completely riveting, enlightening and very moving.

Joanne said, so moving I had tears in my eyes listening to this brave woman telling her story. Help should be easily available for all affected by PTSD. And Natalie said, I've just heard your programme about the experience of a veteran's wife suffering from PTSD. I would like to express my admiration for this extremely courageous woman who suffered body and soul but remained proactive protecting her family and on route to bringing her husband back to some sort of normality and then on the fat question louise emailed i'm sorry but i'm one of the people who's not hired fat people in the past simply because they can't and don't move quickly enough. We used to have a hotel and as roommates it simply doesn't work. Cleaning is fast hard work and obesity and speed do not go hand in hand. They also cost the health

service a fortune. We see it all the time. I'm 65 and average weight. No one needs to be obese these days and it's in everyone's interest to be an average weight, say, size 14 to 18. And then someone who didn't give a name said, if it's OK to be fat, it's OK to smoke and to drink excessively. The reason it's not OK to be fat is because you're ruining your own health and costing the NHS a lot of money. Saying it's OK to be fat is just burying your head in the sand, really.

You need to address the problem. Why don't grossly overweight people stop when they realise they're becoming overweight and do something about it then? Frankly, it's quite hard to be sympathetic about obese people because it's their own choices that have made them overweight. No one asked them to eat more pizza, chips or cake. They could have said no. Well, that's the subject of the phone-in tomorrow morning, fat and whether people are discriminated against because of their size and

whether they should be or not. And you can phone us from eight o'clock tomorrow morning. The number is 03700 100 444, or indeed you can email through the Woman's Hour website. That's tomorrow morning, Jeremy, two minutes past ten. Bye bye. Hi, I'm Alistair Souk, and I want to tell you about The Way I See It, a brand new podcast from BBC Radio 3. It's a 30-part series in which we're throwing open the collection at MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to some of the sharpest creative minds of our time. We'll be speaking to comedian Steve Martin, writer Roxanne Gay, musician Steve Reich and many, many more. I'll be your guide throughout the series, so

join me as I explore one of the greatest collections of modern art in the world. If you'd like to hear more, just search for The Way I See It on BBC Sounds. 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.