Woman's Hour - Comedy Women in Print Prize 2020; Contraception and young women; Mandy Cassidy

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

The Comedy Women in Print Prize is the only literary prize in the UK and Ireland to spotlight funny writing by women. Now in its second year, it was launched by comedian and actress Helen Lederer in response to the lack of exposure for female comedy writing. The 2020 shortlist for Published Comic Novel included the likes of Candice Carty-Williams, and Jeanette Winterson, but the winner was announced on Monday evening as Nina Stibbe for her novel Reasons to be Cheerful. We’re joined by Nina and the Chair of Judges and bestselling author Marian Keyes.A study by Imperial College London suggests that providing financial incentives for GPs to offer information about long-acting reversible contraceptives, such as the hormonal implant, is associated with an increase in their use and a reduction in the number of abortions, particularly in young women ages 20-24 and those from deprived backgrounds. The study used anonymised data from over 3 million women over a 10 year period. Jenni speaks to Professor Sonia Saxena, one of the co-authors of the research.When listener Christine was a kid she was told never to talk to neighbours or answer any of their questions and people outside the family weren’t allowed in the house. She never knew the reason why. But she has just discovered a shocking secret and now has answers. Christine spoke to reporter Jo Morris.A new series of Ambulance starts on Wednesday 16th September on BBC One. Jenni speaks to one of the people featured, an emergency medical dispatcher called Mandy Cassidy, who was motivated to work for the Ambulance Service when she lost her son. He was just 18 years old and was a victim of knife crime. He wasn’t in a gang, but simply had gone out with friends. There was an argument that night and he was stabbed.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Sarah Crawley

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Tuesday the 15th of September 2020. Good morning. Tomorrow night a new series of Ambulance begins on BBC One. This morning I'll talk to Mandy Cassidy, who's worked in the service since her son was the victim of knife crime.

What drew her to such a demanding and often demoralising job? A study carried out by Imperial College suggests a new way of reducing the number of abortions in young women. Might providing a financial incentive to GPs encourage them to prescribe more suitable contraception? And a second chance to hear another of our series of family secrets. Christine finds

out why she was told as a child never to answer questions from the neighbours. Now last night the author Nina Stibbe was awarded the Comedy Women in Print Prize. It's the only literary prize in the UK and Ireland to shine a spotlight on funny writing by women. It was set up in 2018 by Helen Lederer in response to an historic dearth of female winners in the Bollinger Everyman Woodhouse Prize for Comic Writing. Well, Nina's award was in the category of Published Comic Novel for Reasons to be Cheerful. The story is set in Leicester, where her central character, Lizzie, gets a job in the city as a dental nurse. When people in the village heard I was about to start working in the city, they tried to unsettle me with tales of woe. I'd soon regret it, they said. The journey

into Leicester was so long and winding and went all around the houses. I'd spent half my life on the bus and half my wages on the fares. And when I explained I'd be living there too, they told me I needn't think city folk would smile at me or say hello because they wouldn't. And if I accidentally dropped my library card, they wouldn't. And if I accidentally dropped my library card, they wouldn't run up the street to hand it back. They'd use it to borrow books like the Tudor Appetite and the Betsy and never return them. And it would be on my record forever that I liked porn. Now, who would have thought that dentistry could be funny? Well, I'm joined by Marion Keys, who chaired the judges for the prize, and by Nina Stibbe. Nina, what actually inspired Reasons to be Careful?

I wanted to write a coming of age of a young woman in that time, in the early 80s, because I was a young woman then myself. But I know that some people were a bit dubious about my setting it in a dental surgery. And I don't know how you felt about that, Jenny. I hate, actually, my dentist is one of my friends. So I hesitate to say I hate dentistry but I do hate dentistry and I used to go to her in great terror. Yes well I mean I didn't think it I thought it was a great idea to set it there because it was a way of putting my character who was this young adult who thinks that adulthood is going to be less chaotic than adolescence.

And of course, it's not. And I thought having her there in that very intimate space with lots of adults trooping in every day, she'd see adults warts and all and that kind of thing. But since publishing the book, people have revealed a great fear of dentistry, which I don't myself have. So anyway, it's turned out okay. You're very lucky not to have that fear. I think it might be something to do with one's age because dentistry when we were very young was not as painless as it is these days. I remember having fillings with no injections.

So maybe that's why we're all so scared. Now, as you say, it's set in the 80s and it does explore really limited opportunities for women in that period. Why were you keen to tackle it? To tackle the issues that come up in the book and at that time? Well, it's interesting. I never set out to write comedy, but I always set out to write about real lives, particularly of women. And I couldn't have written about the early 80s without writing about or at least touching on casual sexism and racism and the subject of contraception and reproduction and that kind of thing.

But the comedy comes second, really, I have to say. The mother that she's getting away from, who inspired her? My mum. Oh, your mum can't have been as horrible as that. But Jenny, she's not horrible. She's just, you know, she's as much a victim of that world as the young Lizzie. You know, she's there and she says, doesn't she?

She says, I'm a member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists and I've got a singing voice and I'm thin, but the only thing that's ever given me any acknowledgement is having five babies. So I see her as a victim, not a villain. OK, I'm sure your mother won't be upset by what I just said. She will be. What was the inspiration behind JP, the racist, small-minded dentist?

Men. Men at that time. I mean, not all of them, but you know, he's, he's not two dimensional, is he? I mean, I think there are things about him that you could identify with. He's, again, he's part of that world. He's worked his way up. He's a social climbing, anxious man. He wants to join the Freemasons and they won't let him in because he's not posh enough type thing. So I think he's, although he is horrible, he's also a victim of that time as well. But yeah, he is horrible. And Marion, what stood out for you about this book as chair of the judges? So much. I mean, Nina's command of language is just astonishing. She has a really wide vocabulary and she uses words with great care. So I think it's gas that Nina says that she never set out to write comedy because for me, she is instinctively comedic in her writing. Also,

the tenderness that she brings to the characters, particularly her relationship with her mother and her sister. And then I know that JP is not a likable character, but in a way, the whole situation created with Lizzie's working situation is like a microcosm for life like Lizzie had so little power in that situation and JP the dentist wouldn't take patients who had foreign sounding names and and it's so frustrating to be a witness to that sort of racism and not be, you know, to be quite powerless or to feel subversive if you try to address it. And so much comedy is rooted in tragedy. And I think there is a lot of tragedy at the heart of Reasons to be Cheerful. Why would you say, Marion, it's important to have a comedy prize for women?

Because women writers of comedy weren't being celebrated. They weren't really known. They weren't winning prizes. And by setting up the Comedy Women in Print Prize, it's brought a whole genre of books to people's attention. Like it's a way to celebrate funny women writing. And it's a way to almost make it respectable. I think a lot of people felt that women writers aren't as funny as men or that there's something a little bit distasteful about women trying to be funny. But I think especially the shortlist that we had, which is full of like such wonderfully diverse books, it shows that there are many, many ways that women are writing comic novels

and that there is something for everybody. Nina, what does winning it mean for you? Because, to be fair, you have also won the Woodhouse one of only four women I think to win it in 20 years yeah well first of all I'm thrilled to have won the quip prize um partly it's just lovely to win and be acknowledged um but we were the short list and the long list were judged by people like Marion and Emma Kennedy and Joanna Scanlon. So because Helen recruited all these extraordinarily talented judges, just being shortlisted or longlisted meant that your book is being read and mulled over by these comedy goddesses. You know, so that's fantastic and wonderful um and about the woodhouse i i don't

know i always think with the woodhouse prize i only won it because marion would have beaten them up if a woman hadn't won it is that true marion would you have beaten them up if a woman hadn't won it i well no i mean obviously not but in, I did actually call them out for the fact that they had had only two and a half winners in 19 years, one of the years a woman had to share it with a man. And I was, I mean, it caused a bit of a furore at the time, because I suppose women aren't supposed to complain and I think it obviously well I mean Reasons to be Cheerful is a fantastically comic novel and it would have won on its own terms but I think maybe they it refocused their attention perhaps um and I'm and I am so delighted and in fact on this year on the shortlist half of the women half of the the shortlisted authors were women which again is a break with tradition so you know I wouldn't have beaten anybody up but I am really really pleased yeah Marion how differently have you found men

and women respond to women's comic writing because I know one reviewer called Nina's book slight yeah I mean the thing is men and women are socialized very differently and so much comedy is grounded in shared commonality and there will be things that men cannot identify with in in female comic writing um also i think if women write in any way about bodily functions or in any way body men have been told that women talking about or writing about those sort of topics are are being distasteful unladylike um and And also there's this myth that women aren't funny, which becomes self-sustaining. So men tend to steer clear of female comic, any kind of funny women, because they feel that it's got nothing to say to them or that it's just not important in any way. And also I read a very

interesting article in The Atlantic that says humor and intelligence are very closely linked and that men use humor to try and attract women. So men and women are actually drawn to funny men because it implies intelligence. So women look for men who will tell them jokes and men look for women who will laugh at their jokes. You know, so it's like, it's all about the man and how funny he is. And that, I mean, you could look at it as almost an evolutionary function, which, you know, doesn't have to remain. But yeah, men, anecdotally and also in fact, most of them, many of them just won't, just feel it's not, funny women are not for them. Just to end, Marianne, let's have a couple of funny novels that you think we should be reading that are written by women.

I have so many. OK, Standard Deviation by Katherine Heine. She's an American writer. The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae, another American. Oh, my God, what a complete Aisling by two Irish writers, Eimear MacLysa and Sarah Breen. The Arrangement by Sarah Dunn, which is about, it's hilarious, it's about a couple, sort of happily-ish married who decide to have an open marriage for a while. And then, I mean, there are the classics, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, Diary of a Provincial Lady by

E.M. Delafield, Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford. I could keep going. I mean, I could be here all day. But that should give people. And of course, I mean, obviously, if you haven't read Reasons to be Cheerful or our wonderful runner-up, Queenie, or indeed our entire long list, they're all fabulous novels and all very funny. Marion Keyes and Nina Stibbe, thank you both very much indeed for being with us this morning. And if you have a favourite comic novel by a woman that you'd like to pass on that Marion hasn't already given us,

do send us an email or a tweet. What have you really enjoyed? Now, some time ago, we asked you if you had lived with a family secret which had puzzled you during your childhood and youth and then, as an adult, you discovered what had been going on. Your responses were often quite shocking, but clearly for so many of us, keeping things within the family is far from an unusual phenomenon. Well, Christine is now 76 and Jo Morris joined her in her living room,

surrounded by family photos. That's my mum, Joan. Oh, she looks about, what, 14 maybe? Yeah, maybe. When was this taken? 12, 14. It was in the 30s anyway. That's my grandmother.

She was the one who looked after me after I was born. She looked after me for eight months after I was born. Did you always know that? I knew I stayed with her for eight months, but I didn't know why. Did you wonder why? No. You don't wonder why when you're a child. That's how it was.

I grew up with my mum and dad. We lived in a flat, a little block of flats. Just an ordinary childhood. Went to school locally. That's about it really. That's my childhood. And what was your family life like? What were your mum and dad like? Very secretive. Really? Yes, very secretive. yes very secretive we weren't encouraged to speak to neighbors my mum always thought neighbors were going to be asking us questions and we were always told never to speak to neighbors never to answer any questions

and children weren't really welcome to play in our house, which I was always quite unhappy about. Didn't understand why, but that's how it was. So what would your mum say then? What sort of things? Your dad doesn't like people coming into the house. And that was it. It's only as I got older that I realised that not everybody was like that. One of the things they didn't want us to talk about was that my, which I didn't realise at the time, my mum and dad were never married.

Oh. Which at the time I imagine was quite... Well, they didn't want anybody to know that, obviously. There were even more secrets that I didn't know about far more secrets. Did everyone get on in the family? Mostly there was just my mother's younger sister Jean

who we didn't get on with nobody much liked her even her own mother didn't like her very much Your granny? My granny yes How did you know that? Well she used to talk about her. She didn't look after her children. She neglected her children.

How many children did she have? I think she had about eight children by different men. My mum was her main support financially. My mum didn't have a lot of money. We didn't have a lot of money. She was like, my mother looked after Jean her whole life. My mum and I used to go and visit her and take her stuff, which she would then flog. We'd take clothes for the children. We'd take bed linen because the children would be sleeping on beds with no bed linen.

We were always having to deal with her and get her out of scrapes and things. So you contacted us and you've recently discovered a family secret. I don't know why. It was about January, February 2016. It came into my head. I wanted to see my full birth certificate. January, February 2016, it came into my head. I wanted to see my full birth certificate. I'd only had a shortened version.

So I sent off, I decided I was going to send off for my full birth certificate. And honestly, Jo, I do not know what prompted me to do that. Nothing had happened. Can you remember where you were when you suddenly thought that? Here, sitting here. Sitting where we are now on the sofa in the living room? Yes. Had you ever wondered up to this point where you'd only ever seen your shortened birth certificate?

No. So what did your birth certificate, your shortened version, have you got back to hand? The shortened version says that I was born 1944 and that my grandmother registered me doesn't say anything else so no mention of who your mum was no mention of who your dad was no do you want to know what my greatest fear was after I'd sent for it it suddenly came into my head what could I possibly find out that would be really awful and what I could possibly find out that would be really awful would be that Jean was my

mother the auntie that nobody liked and when the birth certificate arrived, I opened it, not expecting to see anything like that. But there it was. Name of the mother, Jean Elsie Louise. And name of father, unknown. So that was the secret and my mother's whole family they all knew

all her brothers knew and my dad knew everyone knew except me even my dad's sister knew, evidently. Can you remember how you felt when it was in your hands? How didn't I know for the whole of my life?

How didn't I know? And one of my step-grandchildren was here at the time. What did you say? What did you say to them? I'm not sure I can say it on the air. Jesus! She said, what? Granny, what? I said, I've just had a big shock. I told her, I said, the person I thought was my mother

wasn't my mother and I don't know who my dad is. And she just laughed. That's what teenagers do, isn't my mother? And I don't know who my dad is. And she just laughed. That's what teenagers do, don't they? And most people I've told, after they got over the shock, because I've told my kids and I've told a couple of very close friends, and after they got over the shock, they've just gone and laughed

and how do you feel about that well the next thing they say is and how do you feel about it and my answer to that is i'm so lucky I'm so lucky that my mother rescued me. And we don't know who my dad is. How do you feel about the fact that people laugh? Here you are, you've lived 74 years. Yes. Thinking two people were your parents. You suddenly discover they're not. It's a big, big thing that you've discovered. I know, and people expect me to be completely flattened by it or something. But it's actually quite a relief.

I don't like secrets. And maybe other people who think there's things in their families that they can't say, maybe they'll be able to tell somebody about it. Everything in my life wasn't perfect. My childhood wasn't perfect by any means, but it was a darn sight better than it would have been. Do you think somewhere there was a sort of inkling or something? I never felt anything towards that woman apart from dislike. Never felt anything towards her. I didn't feel any connection. Jean showed no interest in me.

She showed no affection, no interest. My very close friends have said, yeah, we've always known there must have been something weird in your background. Why? Look at you. Perhaps that's why I went into psychiatric nursing, I don't know, to find out about people. There's always a story.

Families will kill to keep secrets they don't want known. It's a very strong thing. So what do you think happened, though? Do you think your mum agreed to take you on straight away? She would have. She would have. I was never adopted. I've only just found this out. I've only just found this out in the last 18 months.

How did that work in those days? Could you just have any old child live with you? And also, you obviously then don't know who your dad is. No, I don't know who my dad is. I mean, there are huge bits now that I don't know about my medical background, obviously. And your own children and your grandchildren. Yes.

Are you curious? Not that much. Supposing I found out something even worse, what would be the point of that? Has it changed how you feel about your mum? As well as having loved her, I'm very grateful to her. I don't remember being grateful to her before. Not grateful to your mum, are you, basically?

Just your mum. And the other thing you have to know is my mum never managed to have... She never managed to carry a baby to term. She never did. She had several pregnancies when I was a child, but she never managed to carry them to term, which was terribly sad. Because she was, you know, she had a huge maternal instinct.

What is a mum? A mum is somebody who looks after their children, who loves them for their foibles, for their good bits, for their bad bits. And that's who she was. Christine was talking to Joe Morris, and you can hear more family secrets in the next couple of weeks. Now still to come in today's programme, the new series of Ambulance on BBC One, which begins tomorrow. Mandy, who features in the first episode, joined the service after suffering a personal tragedy. Her son was a

victim of knife crime. And this week's serial is also about the work of the service in Lifelines. Imperial College London has completed a study of the impact of prescribing long-acting reversible contraceptives to young women on the rate of abortions in those aged between 20 and 24. One of their suggestions is that GPs could be given a financial incentive to prescribe more of such contraception. Well Sonia Saxena is Professor of Primary Care at Imperial College and a practicing GP. Sonia, what prompted this study? Morning, everyone. Morning, Jenny. What really, the starting point for this study was that contraception is a really important tool in any woman's armoury. I think that it's one of the most important things that women can do to take control of fertility,

take control of your life. You have access to getting educated. You can go for paid employment. So it's a really, really empowering thing for women. But we need better contraceptive programs worldwide. Across the globe, about 44 percent of pregnancies will be unintended and up to half of those are due to incorrect or inconsistent use of contraception now here in the UK we've got the highest teenage abortion rates in Europe. We have one in four pregnancies that end in abortion. And all of this seems to be very, very preventable.

The uptake of these much more reliable methods, for some reason, is much lower than in the developing and lower income countries. So the uptake of these very reliable and cost-effective methods is about one in six women will take these up and what long-term contraceptives were you interested in so the sorts of longer term methods that we're talking about are, first of all, the intrauterine system and the intrauterine device, often known as the coil, that just sits in the uterus. And, you know, we put that in for you in primary care. The contraceptive implant, which is a small sort of plastic looking rod, which sits just underneath the skin and we insert those upcutaneously. And also, often used in younger women,

contraceptive injections of hormonal contraception. That's called Depo-Provera sometimes. And how safe are they, particularly in young women? They're enormously safe. In terms of preventing pregnancy, they're probably safer than vasectomy their failure rates are very very low in terms of the safety to a woman's health no contraceptive is without side effects and certainly in the 60s and 70s in the early days of coils uh it was linked to higher rates of um pelvic inflammation and and infection but those rates are very low so certainly um there are side effects some some women will experience a slightly heavier bleeding with the coil.

But I think that these aren't particularly the reasons for the low uptake of these methods. So I think that they are generally safe. They're very, very good for pregnancy. They're cost effective. After about a year, I think that the cost of putting in these slightly more expensive methods um is regained so why are younger women rarely informed about them and using them well there's jenny there's a number of reasons i think the first thing to say is that you start off at different stages as when you are actually

seeking contraception so many women who reach puberty and become fertile need effective methods and that might be the first time when they start a sexual relationship and they might get put on the pills because they may not have a regular partner so I think that the first the very first method that many women young women will be offered will be something like the contraceptive pill as they move on from condoms and and often women will just remain on those until something else big happens in their life. So there will be no change. But of course, women, we think about this now in terms of sort of contraceptive careers. As your life stages change, your contraceptive needs will alter. primary care in my surgery when they're starting to think with with their partner about pregnancy or

they might take on a job and they need much more reliable contraception so so we see them at different points in their lives after you've had a baby you might need your needs will change so so if those women are coming and having conversations with us, then we have an opportunity to counsel them about the full choice and what really fits their needs. Why did you think a financial incentive scheme for GPs might improve matters and more young women would be prescribed these longer term contraceptives? There's been lots and lots of changes within the health system. So most women will prefer to have their GP as their provider for contraceptive services. They've told us that in countless surveys. But what's happened since 2004 is with big reorganisations,

we've taken on a lot more work from hospitals and we've been incentivized to manage specific conditions. So we've shown with some of these schemes that we are able to manage diabetes better, some of the chronic conditions, cardiovascular disease and then around 2009 a scheme was introduced to add um specifically these kind of contraceptive services and offering longer-term methods came in where GPs were given a very tiny percentage of the budget less than one percent um to spend time and uh counsel women about contraceptive choice. Now, my previous PhD student, Dr. Nia Arismith, found that actually there had been an increase in these longer-term methods around that time, but we hadn't really looked to see whether at an individual woman level, whether that actually meant that women were taking up higher rates

of these longer term methods. So Dr. Richard Marr, who led this research, who's doing his doctoral research, has done some painstaking work of over 4 million women from 2004 across to 10 years to see whether or not the scheme itself could be attributed some of these changes. So how proven is a connection between long-term contraception and the abortion rate? There have been numerous studies looking at abortion rates when women are using these methods the coil the contraceptive implant because it offers you long-term protection five years or more so three years for the implant more than five years up to 10 years once women get used to taking them we're not relying on

inconsistent use forgetting the pill. It's another action in busy lives. So we think that its effectiveness in reducing pregnancy rates comes from adherence-related issues. Once it's in, you are effectively rendered infertile for a period of time, but it's not forever. It's completely reversible. So the link between that and abortion rates comes when you look at the age of women who have unintended pregnancies. So half of pregnancies at the age of 18 end in abortion, and the rates are nearly up to 60% when you're looking at the 16 year old

and the thing that i should mention is that this scheme had two elements to it it had an incentive for women who were already taking contraception to offer them choice so that we think resulted in a switch from these pill related methods where women have to take them regularly, non-LARC methods, towards the longer-term methods. And the other element of it was to offer choice to women who were turning up for emergency contraception. And by and large, that's very young women under the age of 20. Well, Professor Sonia Saxena, there we must end, but thank

you very much indeed for joining us this morning. Now tomorrow evening, a new series of Ambulance begins on BBC One. In the first episode, the pressure that's placed on the people who work in the service is immediately apparent with thousands of calls coming in.

Ambulances being dispatched all over London, a clear risk of violence in some cases to be faced by the paramedics and at times a terrible sense of sadness and failure, as in the case of a young man who had a cardiac arrest at work and all efforts to resuscitate him failed. Here, Mandy, who's responsible for dispatching the right ambulance to the right emergency, is speaking to the two paramedics who are back in their ambulance after the young man died. Do we know exactly what the cause of this was?

No, we don't know. And there's not really much history that we've been able to gather. One of the colleagues on scene did see that he had a picture of his family on his phone as well and he's very young himself. So yeah, very, very sad. That's very, very sad indeed. As long as you guys are okay, make sure you're all right. Of course. Thank you ever so much for your support. Thank you. support thank you it's very young no age is it it's no age as a mum myself I do think about mums getting phone calls to say that their child's not going to come home. Because no matter how old your child is, they're still your child. Well, Mandy Cassidy features throughout this first episode. She joined the ambulance service nearly 18 years ago after her 18-year-old son became a victim of knife crime. Mandy,

good morning. What happened to your son that night um so um my son was out with some friends um there was an argument between the friends and uh one of them stabbed him in the chest um and as a result of that um he died we didn't die straight away um we were called to the hospital um and unfortunately we didn't get there in time to see him um he died we didn't die straight away um we were called to the hospital um and unfortunately we didn't get there in time to see him before he died now why did your tragedy lead to you joining the ambulance service so you sort of become a little bit lost. I had two other children as well, so they were younger, and I'd always worked around my children. I'd always done jobs that I could be there after school, etc.

And my youngest child had just joined high school, and I was a little bit lost myself of what to do. And I saw an advert for a call handler for London Ambulance Service and I thought, I could do that. And I applied and I got the job and joined London Ambulance Service. What training did you have to do? So initially we did a week's first aid course and then we went on to do learning how to do the call taking side of it.

So it's about three weeks course and then you come into the control room, you get a work based trainer and you sit with them for a number of shifts until you're competent and signed off to be able to take calls from the public. Now, as a call handler, and I did watch tomorrow night's programme yesterday, as a call handler, it seems the first thing that's asked is, is the patient breathing? But then, how then can you help from a distance before there's any chance for the ambulance to get there? So once the call's been taken and you do ask if the patient is breathing we get an address and as soon as we can get an address if the patient isn't breathing we can start talking the person who's on the phone through and how to resuscitate the

patient how to do cpr um we're the first port of call and And believe you me, call taking is the hardest job, I think, in the ambulance service. You're working blind. You have got to rely on what that person's telling you. And it can be very, very difficult. Sometimes they don't know where they are. Sometimes there's a language barrier. But honest to God, it is the hardest job, I think, in the ambulance service. And the person on the ambulance service and the person

on the other end of the line is often just panicking because somebody they're close to is really suffering yeah so though you obviously you can get shouted at you can get hollered at you can get told you know where i am um you we can have some quite abusive callers as well which sometimes does get quite personal. And you do have to try and put that aside because they're in a stressful situation. Sometimes that's not always the easiest thing to do when you're trying to help them. But like I say, it's the hardest job. But now there's an emergency call dispatcher.

What would be a typical day in this job? So, as a dispatcher, dispatching the ambulances, I have to utilise what resources I have. Calls can be babies in cardiac arrest, to road traffic accidents, to people with a cold, to people vomiting, to people who've stuck their toe. And that could be like within an hour of coming on duty. It's obvious from watching the programme that knife crime, which so damaged your life, has escalated in recent years. How many calls do you get that are related to knife crime these days? I wouldn't like to say the statistics completely. I think at the weekend I believe there were something like

eight stabbing-related incidents over the weekend. Yesterday I think I dealt with three just in a 12-hour shift in one particular area um no no you don't only do this incredibly pressured job and you can see from the program just how pressured and sometimes upsetting it can be you also go into schools to teach children about knife crime what are you trying to teach them so we're trying to educate them into that they have got a choice they have got a choice to make we try to teach them the consequences of it there's a program that we we go to it's called your life you choose and it's multi-agency. There's London Ambulance Services, the police,

there's magistrates, there's directions, there's prison services, and we all do hour-long sessions with the children and teach them the consequences of what will happen if they get involved in knife crime. You know, we try to build them up, that they have got choices, that, you know, they're the future of this country, basically, these children that we're teaching.

They're the ones that are going to be our next prime ministers and our paramedics and our doctors, nurses, teachers, radio presenters. And that, unfortunately, this is not a dress rehearsal. When they're dead, there is no coming back from that and that's a really powerful message that we have to try and get over to them to make them realize that if something is going on that they feel out of control of that they've got somebody that they can go to to turn to teachers at school or paramedics or as when we visit the schools. And it's a really, really powerful presentation that all of us do. I was talking to Mandy Cassidy.

Now, we had lots of suggestions from you about books by funny women. A Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Banks. Camberwell Beauty by Jenny Eclair, one of the best books I have read. Her observations are bitingly accurate and astute, but also laugh out loud funny, said someone. My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, one of the funniest and different books.

And Eliza Seagrave's book, Diary of a Breast, pricelessly funny and a great take on the subject, too near to so many of us. And then on family secrets, Frances said in an email, I fully empathise with Christine and her reaction when she found out that everyone else knew but her, that her parents are not her parents the same thing happened to me exactly when someone else told me I was adopted and then I began telling my friends or so-called cousins I found out they all knew after my investigations and several years later and then having my own children, I eventually met my real mother and I'm happy to report that I had 22 years of knowing her.

I also have two half-sisters. On the question of contraception and young women, someone who didn't want us to use her name said in an email, as a 22-year-old, I'm on the contraceptive pill rather than long-term methods because of the lack of control, I would feel, on methods such as the coil or implant. Numerous friends of my age have tried the coil and experienced such bad pain, they've had to have it taken out. Similarly, I'm worried about going on the implant because of effects of irregular periods and problems with skin, which friends of mine have experienced. Although I agree that long-term contraceptives are positive for some women, for many, especially if GPs are incentivised to prescribe them,

young women like me often feel that they don't have the element of control over periods, skin conditions such as acne, and also the fact that you can just stop taking the pill if you have side effects, rather than having to convince the GP to remove the coil or the implant. And Kate, on the same subject, said in an email, Having had an abortion at the age of 21, I can say that I definitely would have benefited from some longer-term contraception while I was at university. Long-term contraception was available at the time, it was 2006, but I chose not to take it because I preferred the flexibility of the pill. I also heard horror stories about weight gain from friends who had had the contraceptive

injection. I was wrong to discount long-term contraception as it would have saved me from a lot of trauma. Now do join me tomorrow when I'll be talking to Saskia Reeves about her role in a four-part drama for the BBC called Us. She plays Connie, who wants to end her 24-year relationship with her husband Douglas, played by Tom Hollander. They've booked a European tour with their teenage son Albie. How will that go?

Do join me tomorrow. Until then, bye-bye. Have you ever wondered what teachers talk about when no one else is listening? Well, you're about to find out. I'm Maureen Bake and my brand new podcast, The Secret Life of Teachers, goes behind the headlines to see what's really going on

as teachers go back to school after the lockdown. I was a teacher for almost a decade, but I never witnessed a time like this. So I've created my own virtual secret staff room, where each week some teacher friends and I will discuss everything from remote learning and mental health to offset inspections and teachers behaving badly. If you'd also like to overhear their uncensored staff room confessions,

then subscribe to my podcast, The Secret Life of Teachers 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.