Woman's Hour - Five frank and fearless moments: a special episode

Episode Date: October 7, 2019

Whether its tips from a 91-year-old sex therapist or the upskirting story that sparked a campaign to change the law, the reality of being a female crane driver or Nadiya Hussain on getting a haircut with a hijab, Woman’s Hour is the place to hear these conversations. In this special podcast-only episode we’re joined by Deborah James from award-winning podcast You, Me and the Big C and writer and activist Scarlett Curtis to dissect some of the best, frankest, most fearless and even funny moments in the programme’s recent history.They also talk to Jane Garvey about the issues close to their hearts, from living with bowel cancer (and talking about poo all the time) to why it’s essential we all start being more open and honest about our mental health.We’ve come a long way since the programme was first broadcast in 1946 (with a male presenter!) and this special bonus episode is a great insight into the Woman's Hour world right now. The live radio programme and podcast covers the big stories and issues that matter from a female perspective, with women telling their own stories at its heart. Follow us on Instagram @BBCWomansHour for more frank and fearless discussions and plenty of inspiring women.

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. Hi, this is Jane Garvey, and I want to say a warm welcome to our Woman's Hour World.

If you've never heard the programme or the podcast before, you might not know anything about it. Well, all I can say is it's been around a long time. It's going to be here for a long time and we have changed. We are essentially a live radio programme and then the podcast offering you a female perspective on our world, covering all the big stories. And it has to be said, quite a lot of the small but potentially life-changing ones as well. The heart of this programme, which began in 1946, is women telling their own stories. So in this Woman's Hour podcast exclusive episode, I'm going to be talking to the podcaster Deborah James, aka Bowel Babe, and to the writer and activist Scarlett Curtis. And we're going to be talking to the podcaster Deborah James aka Bowel Babe and to the

writer and activist Scarlett Curtis and we're going to sit together. Welcome to you both. Thank you. Just listen to some classic Woman's Hour moments, some of them very old, others relatively recent. Let me just give you a little blast from our Woman's Hour, and this is how the presenter used to sound. This is 1957. Forty years ago this year, an act to give women the vote was on its way through Parliament. You see, standards have definitely slipped. Notice any difference in 1968? Here we go. All the women I talked to agreed that the main barrier to equal pay was the fact that women's work tends to be classified separately from men's

and that where women did exactly the same jobs as men, equal pay followed naturally. That of course is the theory and it remains the theory and it's a subject we often return to on the 21st century version of Woman's Hour. So Scarlett Curtis, your latest book is called It's Not Okay to Feel Blue and Other Lies. And Deborah, what are you busy doing at the moment? Living with cancer. And I use that word living. Just podcasting. You, Me and the Big C is our podcast, which basically documents the highs and the lows of what life with cancer is like. I have stage four incurable bowel cancer, but I'm very much sitting here and I'm very pleased to be here and alive.

And you two, you know each other, don't you? Yes, we know each other through the Instagram feminism podcast world. Yes, absolutely. We were saying actually, you know, Instagram does have a real life side to it, doesn't it? People always say, what's it like? You know, what's it like to actually, you know, be an influencer by modern terms? The reality is actually just meet people in real life and you become friends with them exactly and you get to choose your friends

via dms that's one way of doing it probably a very good way of doing it now let's just journey together through the land of woman's hour and i just want you to listen to these clips as i'll be listening with you and just see what you think. This is 91-year-old legendary sex therapist, Dr. Ruth Westheimer. And she's telling me what she says to women who are still asking her one of the biggest questions of all. How do I have an orgasm? I say, thank you for asking. How wonderful that you can ask. Now go and get a book.

Now go and get a vibrator. But careful, don't ever go and get a vibrator but careful don't ever get used to a vibrator why not? because no penis can duplicate the vibrations of a vibrator

so use a vibrator get aroused, put it aside finish with your hand otherwise your expectations will be simply set to fire. Exactly. Right. But look, we have come far. Look, Great Britain, you and I sitting, talking on radio

about the importance of having sexual satisfaction. It's just not something to be put on a back burner. And those people who are widows or for whatever reason haven't found somebody right now, do satisfy yourself. Not in public. Not in public. Not even Woman's Hour would recommend that.

No, it has to be said that even in these enlightened times, we do take a firm line on public masturbation. But Ruth Westheimer makes a series of extremely good points there. I don't quite know where to start. But, Deborah, it is an example of how frank we are free to be on our programme. We're very lucky, actually. It's wonderful, actually, just to have a really blunt conversation. We have to use the words like, you know, masturbation.

I talk a lot about poo. And people shy away from actually using the correct terminology, don't they? And it's wonderful, actually, to have a radio programme that we can speak so bluntly about pleasuring yourself. And why not? We should all be doing it, right? Scarlett, are your generation actually maybe more puritanical than we might think? I don't know. I think they definitely are. I love that clip.

I've got an activist collective and we did a campaign puritanical than we might think i don't know i think they definitely are i love that clip my i've got an activist collective and we did a campaign about a year ago called hashtag girls wank too which was all about talking about female masturbation and the pleasure gap which is apparently 52 there's a 52 pleasure gap where women orgasm 52 less than men and through heterosexual intercourse yes yeah well I think in general women don't know their own bodies and I think what we found was even with young women with teenagers with women in their 20s there was so much shame around orgasming masturbation buying a vibrator and we sort of wanted to open that up and talk about it and as soon as you get someone

on an incredible show like this talking about it you never feel ashamed again it's such an easy way to smash that stigma yeah it's a weird one isn't it I'm thinking about it now there was just this assumption that teenage boys not only masturbate but simply can't stop masturbating yeah and no but nobody talks about girls I've got three younger brothers and my parents talked to all three of them like this is a natural part of life you're going to do it you know don't do it in public and I never got that chat and we never talked about it at school and if you did do it it was so shameful I thought that I was kind of the devil's child but the worst thing is is that it's now transpiring into we're at an all-time low in terms of cervical screening in the UK and the thing that I wonder

in terms of I'm sure loads of people are asking the same question actually that embarrassment over checking our bodies knowing our bodies understanding what's normal you know we have to have the conversations because unless we have the conversations we don't know when things are going wrong and then we don't know when to go to the doctors and then we can delay our diagnosis and people die as a result of it. So there's pleasure on one end of the scale. And there's actually health and livelihood on the other end. Ignorance is so damn dangerous.

It's so dangerous. And I can't believe, actually. I know we're sidetracking. I cannot believe we're at an all-time low for cervical screening in the UK. It's embarrassing, actually, that we've got a generation of kids not saying, hang on, why aren't I getting my smears? We have to re-educate that. But I think a huge part of it is we don't know our own bodies yeah so you'd never know to go if you thought something was wrong because you don't know

what's normal who recently felt it was zoella wasn't it filmed her smear test i loved that video which was a good really good thing to do i know my kids saw that and were and actually do you know what it actually inspired me to i knew I should have gone probably a year ago and I went after I knew I didn't watch so well as film but I was aware of it and it made me go so there you go these things are worth doing absolutely um this is less positive frankly the activist Gina Martin who's a really impressive young woman here she is telling Jenny what happened that's Jenny Murray who also presents Woman's Hour. Jenny's been doing it for even longer than I have. That's saying something. Here is Gina Martin telling Jenny what happened

when she found out that a man had taken a photo up her skirt when she had been at a music festival. I looked at his screen and he'd been sent a picture on WhatsApp between a girl's legs. It was an upskirt photograph between a girl's legs and it was a well-taken picture it wasn't like a quick taken picture and for some reason I was like oh that's me I just knew it was me because of how they were acting so I grabbed the phone um how had he taken it I think because there's one of them was behind me and one was kind of to the side of me so I think

while I've been talking to my sister the guy I think it was had obviously bent down with his smartphone to the ground like my calves and taking the image with his camera pointed up and you can do that now because of smartphones you can't hear anything there's no flash it's very easy to do that to take these kinds of pictures um so I saw it and I saw it been sent to him I grabbed the phone I looked at the picture to make sure it was me with my clothes and stuff because I didn't want to accuse him of something if it wasn't um and it was me and I just got really angry I just that's a picture of my skirt how disgusting and he was screaming at me that it wasn't and then he grabbed me got into like a bit of a scuffle and I was like I can't do anything here because I need this phone this is my evidence so a couple people around me helped me out one guy

just looked at me and was like run and three guys pushed him back and I just ran through the crowd and I was crying a lot at this point, so people were moving out my way quite quickly. I ran to security and obviously they saw a girl crying with a guy running after her, so they kind of circled me. That's the very impressive Gina Martin talking to Jenny in 2017 and Gina has changed the law. Upskirting became a criminal offence in England and Wales

after her campaign and offenders could face up to two years in prison for taking an image or a video under somebody's clothing in order to see their genitals or their underwear. Now very recently on the programme we talked about street harassment, huge reaction from the audience to that. We had two really impressive young women discussing what happened to them on a pretty much daily basis as they walked up and down the streets carrying out their real lives. Scarlett, to me this is deeply, deeply depressing that women's lives have changed so much, our expectations are so much higher than our mothers but still this goes on. I think it's really depressing and I think a lot of my generation is

starting to realize that we were kind of brought up being told we were equal and then as you get older or as you become a teenager or a woman you realize how unequal we are and how much you have to go through compared to your brothers your friends and I think the only thing that keeps me really hopeful is I see so many young women sort of taking this into their own hands and becoming activists and really fighting to change things and change the law. I've been a part of campaigns to change three laws

on, you know, women's rights. And I think we all feel like we've had enough. And that happened 100 years ago as well. And we shouldn't be having to do this anymore, but it is the case. I think another thing that Gina's story really makes me think is just sometimes the emotional labour of going through these things. I was on the tube just the other day and a man started stroking a woman's legs who was standing up

and me and two other women were there and we all kind of looked at each other and she came and sat in my seat and we made sure he got off the train but it's you know she was probably on her way to work and if you start crying or if you try and do something or if you call the police that's hours and hours of your day and it's a very emotional thing to give up and I think sometimes a lot of women just don't want to go through that so we just let it pass yeah we don't talk often enough actually about it's not just in these areas the emotional labor of being female I always I was actually think that it's the constant remembering anniversaries birthdays don't even talk to me about that festival at the end of the year that seems to crop up with incredible frequency.

Do you get... Me, Deborah. I do. For me, it's the constant proving oneself, I think, within an environment where you shouldn't actually have to prove yourself. Yeah. And I think it's almost justifying why you're there and never apologising for why you were there.

But even I found in my previous life um I used to be a deputy head teacher in a secondary school and the thing that always shocked me um is whilst education is an incredibly female driven um career actually as soon as it comes to leadership um actually it's male driven even across the board like even even primary even secondary and I find it quite amazing and I almost found myself um you know justifying why I was there as a deputy head actually you know being able to realize I could absolutely do my role but almost kind of saying well no it's okay to act feminine and do my role and I'm there because I have feminine traits I don't need to act like a man I'm not there to act like a man.

I've been put into my role actually because of my traits, because of me, not because of my gender. So yeah, it's just proving myself, I think. It's really interesting to me. I've been thinking lately about my years at university because my eldest daughter is at uni now and there's been a lot of stuff in the last couple of weeks about mental health concerns surrounding universities. We also know there have been a lot of stuff in the last couple of weeks about mental health concerns

surrounding universities we also know there have been big issues in schools as well and we started to have a proper conversation about mental health but it did strike me that looking back to I was at university in the early 80s I do not remember a single conversation about my mental health or indeed anybody else's now maybe I was also was also, I should say, very fortunate, didn't have any real crises at that time, but now things are totally different. And we ran a series a couple of weeks ago, months ago actually in the summer, about teenage mental health.

We got the view of teachers, like yourself in your other life, Deborah, doctors, parents and young people. And again, the response from our audience, Scarlett, is always pretty big, but it gets bigger when we're talking about, if you like, issues that are really relevant to the home and to family life. What would you say about all that?

I mean, I think for me it's one of the biggest issues and I do think we're kind of facing a generational crisis around mental health. the stats on young people in mental health are so high and the care is so low and it's if anything getting lower over half of young people who have a diagnosable mental health condition aren't receiving any treatment and I suffered from depression anxiety and PTSD for I mean I still go through it I was out of school for two years with it I could barely leave the house I had panic attacks every time I stepped out my front door and it it it defines who

I am and it defined what I was like and at the time no one was talking about mental health you know and that was only a few years ago and I felt so ashamed and the thing I always say is there's two parts of mental health there's the brain neurological side which is really hard to fix and takes you know therapy and medication and doctors and then there's the shame and for me the shame was at least 50% it was so defining I couldn't talk to anyone about what I was going through and I I just hated myself and my brain and I felt like I was really broken and to me it's the shame that you can fight and the shame that you can get through and the shame just all the shows that you guys do every time anyone talks about it you are helping people feel less ashamed about this thing that isn't shameful and is

actually very very prevalent and normal do you think there are any taboos left in terms of mental health I think something so I've just brought out this book which is bringing out this book which prevalent and normal. Do you think there are any taboos left in terms of mental health? I think something so I've just brought out this book which is bringing out this book which is a collection of essays and for me one of the biggest things that I think is being left out of the conversation is the intersectionality of mental health and we were talking about it a little bit but we tend to talk about mental health as if it's all one thing and actually if you're a woman you're facing specific problems with your mental health if you're a person of colour you're facing specific problems with your mental health. If you're a person of colour, you're facing specific problems with mental health. There's an incredible deaf writer in our book who writes about how in the deaf community, mental health rates are twice as high. But the care just isn't there because talking therapy is kind of the only thing we have.

Gosh, no, I'd never thought about that. I know. And I have a friend who's Arabic and he's had a really hard time finding an Arabic therapist. So I think we are not yet talking about mental health as an intersectional issue you know I went through a really hard time but I'm white and posh I had parents who could afford to pay for treatment and that is not the case for many people so I really want to I think that's the real next taboo is opening it up to how it is different for everyone in your teaching career did mental health feature at all in terms of the pupils or the way they were good question um not as much as it should no um honestly the curriculum doesn't allow for it at the moment

and it should do um there are moves um in terms of from next September. It is now part of the curriculum and actually it will become compulsory that every child in the UK will have an hour a week based on everything that includes mental health and body confidence and a variety of different things. And that has come in in different guises over the last 20 years. In terms of kids lives, did you notice children who were struggling? Were you aware of them? Absolutely. One of the hardest things that I had to deal with as a new teacher and then later on as a deputy had it happen twice in my career was actually a child taking their own life.

And already I can hear my voice going because it's one of the most challenging and devastating things to ever witness. I would say that teenagers are incredible to work around, but the support sometimes isn't there. And the most frustrating thing as a teacher is knowing that somebody needs help and they're being a void

of putting them on a wait list for two years um for cams who are doing the best job but there's no funding behind it and honestly there's you know there's nothing you can do you're trying and you you know you're there at eight o'clock i i you know i've had situations where i've been there at eight o'clock working with the police, trying to track children down. And you go above and beyond because you care about them. But you need the support. Well, you heard those clips of Women's Hour back in the day at the very start of this podcast.

The programme has always talked about women and work and aspirations and careers. And a couple of weeks ago, there was a programme about women in the construction industry. This is a woman called Katie Kelleher explaining why she went into the industry. She's actually a crane operator. I'd never thought about being a crane operator. I didn't think women operated cranes. I wasn't told in school that women

even worked in construction, really. Well, they didn't because weren't you the first female apprentice? I was, yeah. For my company, I came through, i was the first female lifting technician apprentice so we've got five other females now um out 250 we're getting there we're getting there slowly but there isn't a lot of women in general that do crane operating anyway 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 if i was younger walking into that situation 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? Katie Callagher, we should say currently women make up just 16%

of the total UK construction workforce of 2 million people. The presenter there was Tina Dehealy, by the way. Did you ever have, when you were a little girl, were you nailed on you're going to be a teacher Deborah? No absolutely I had no idea what I wanted to be the thing that I do find amazing so I have a story that I had kind of I came up against this actually in terms of my teaching my subject is computer science and um when IT went on to the national curriculum, this was about 15 years ago, suddenly we needed a wave of actually trained ICT teachers,

and I was one of the first girls in the country to train officially as a computer scientist, and I blagged my way into the course. Basically, I think I was the only girl that actually applied to the course, and I turned up on the first day, actually applied to the course and I turned up on the first day and this was at university and turned up on the first day and I walked into a room and there were 18 boys in the room and I walked in about three minutes later there was kind of you know quiet whispering and then one of them turned around and said to me I think you're in the wrong

room and I was wearing a very short, I mean you know I'm wearing a short skirt right now, I always wear a short skirt in High Hills and they said to me PE is down the corridor at that point I literally I didn't lose it, I quietly lost it and I made absolutely certain

that a year later I came top of the class and then went on and kind of was a massive advocate for STEM subjects and supporting and launching certain that a year later I came top of the class and then went on and kind of um was massive advocate for stem subjects um and supporting and launching um kind of initiatives within school like computer club for girls um to kind of get women and girls into into it it's so important I remember a couple of years ago actually having a fascinating if at times for me incomprehensible conversation with a specialist about male bias in artificial intelligence and how it is going to impact on women in the most basic way imaginable. Algorithms.

If you're trying to get car insurance, you're going to suffer. I mean, it's a fantastically complex but fascinating area. But all women need is role models. It's terrifying though and also there's a lot of that even with the invention of the internet and social media i read this i did a minor in computer science so it's working but i read this book and i remember it was about like the history the foundations of the internet and there were i think 50 people that were like the most important people in the foundation of the internet listed and there was

one and a half women on the list one was there on her own and one was a wife so she was listed on the same line and it it's scary that's what you know we all use all the time but yeah you can change it really easily so we ended up um in the schools that i taught in we had one of the largest cohorts of women taking uh girls taking A-level computer science. And people would say, how are you doing it? And companies would come in like IBM and be like, what have you done? It's a revelation. And I'd say, I employed three female IT teachers.

They may be the only ones in the country right now. That was it. We didn't do anything else. We disemployed female teachers if we could find them. And then we trained our own. That's all you need to do is give people one more dose. You make it sound so simple. I've got to say, I've presented Women's Hour for getting on for 12 years and every now and again something brings you,

you just get shocked by something that the programme reports on or by something that somebody says on the programme. And I was walking around the park back in July when I wasn't presenting, it was Jenny's programme, when I was looking at statistics that showed that black women in the UK are five times more likely to die as a result of complications in pregnancy than white women. In this clip, and I should warn you this is harrowing, Candice Brathwaite describes her experience after she gave birth. I was induced which I find to be quite common amongst women of colour.

And it was 19 hours of induced labour to only dilate to two centimetres. By that time, I wasn't allowed to get off the bed or take in any food or fluid. And I was like, I can't physically bear this pain anymore. And they wanted me to do a further 12 hours. And I was like, I can't physically bear this pain anymore. And they wanted me to do a further 12 hours. And I was like, I sign out. And I pushed for a C-section. And as we were being wheeled down, I remember the surgeon saying, let's hurry this one up because I was meant to be home two hours ago.

And that, I only hold that with me as the story develops. So I'm discharged the next day. About three days in, I'm starting to feel worse, not better. And I understand it's a C-section, but I'm sweating through two hour mattress. I'm feeling really dizzy. Different midwives are coming to see me every day and I'm telling them how I feel, but it's being written off as, uh, oh, you're a new mum. You don't understand, you know. This is very normal. One night, we're so exhausted, new parents.

I fall asleep with my daughter on my chest. And I'm awoken by the most horrific stench. And the smell woke me up. That's how bad it was. And I thought, my word. I know they said new babies, poo really stinks. And as I stood up, I felt fluid slide down the top of my thighs. And when I pulled my tracksuit bottoms open, it was black pus oozing from my C-section wound. I'm blue lit back to the hospital. All I'm thinking about is my baby.

She's only three days old. An hour later, surgeons rush into the room. They're like, we're taking you down to surgery right now. I'm like, what's wrong? They're like, you're slipping into septic shock. And if we don't sort you out now, you will not see tomorrow. And I remember thinking, I kept telling you I didn't feel well. That was Candice Brathwaite. That story has not gone away. It won't go away and it will come back again. And there will be much more about that because I know that the NHS is, I mean, not before time, starting to take this issue very, very seriously.

One of the great things about being, and I should say presenting Woman's Hour is one of the great jobs in the media because the range of people that you get to meet and you get to talk to is just incredible. My favourite day on Woman's Hour is one of the great jobs in the media because the range of people that you get to meet and you get to talk to is just incredible. My favourite day on Woman's Hour, and this is not a political statement, but was the morning, it was a Friday. I went to see David Cameron when he was prime minister at the Palace of Westminster, did his interview and his study in parliament, came back to Broadcasting House and interviewed in real life Mary J Blige. I just thought no one else no one else has had that day because nobody else would get the opportunity because no other program

would interview both of those people and put it out put them out on the same day. One of the my favorite people to interview because she's always really she's just lovely company is Nadia Hussain and she was actually she's a TV cook of course and the author and now BBC presenter and she was one of our Woman's Hour guest editors in the summer and here she is telling me about head scarves and hairdressers. I've covered my hair since I was 13 since I was 13 years old you know I used to wear it for religious reasons and now it's as much it's it's religious but it's also habitual it's I can't I don't really I can't I don't see who I see without it without it I'm not it's like my hairdo yeah um yes but well tell me you do have your hair done

oh yeah um it took me a very long time to find a hairdresser who wasn't going to roll her eyes every time I put my headscarf on. Because about six years ago, seven years ago, I used to go to a hairdresser and I would go and get my hair done. And she would get really annoyed with me because she'd do my hair and it looked beautiful. And then I'd stick it under a scarf and she'd say, oh, but why do you wear it? I don't want you to wear it. I've done this lovely job on your hair and you've got wonderful hair you should show it off and it made me feel guilty for wearing my scarf and it almost made me resent my headscarf and I didn't want to feel like that and now I have a hairdresser who I've been going to for four years and she said when I went to her and I felt really guilty I was like and I was putting my headscarf on the first

time around I was like I'm so sorry you've done all this amazing work on my hair and I'm just covering it up and she just said look you do my job is to make you feel lovely and wonderful and great about yourself and if you feel lovely and wonderful and great about yourself and then you put your headscarf on and you still feel wonderful what do I care whether you show it off or not and I love her for it because she's the first person that doesn't judge me for covering it up uh it doesn't matter what you do if you're a woman you're going to be judged um Nadia sort of nails it there doesn't she who else do I like speaking to Mary Berry she's a little bit frightening but I do

and in my experience as well all politicians all politicians are basically okay um you'd be surprised um very few really horrible ones anyway that's for my forthcoming not very forthcoming book uh total number of words written 48 so it's still a bit of progress to be made there um people do still occasionally say that woman's hour is old-fashioned It's generally said by people who have either never listened or don't currently listen. And I am incredibly proud of this programme, of its history, of its listeners, who are just an incredible bunch of involved, interesting, enthusiastic, experienced people. Because we have many, many male listeners as well and we welcome them of course they're kind of eavesdropping though because the program is about women and it's for women we can we're very very free to talk about anything and i think recently

i probably was pushing the boundaries slightly by discussing in great detail with our our guest and colleague emma barnett broadcaster and author having sex on your period um and interestingly though we thought we might get complaints and we didn't i as a 24 year old obsessive women's hour fan good i absolutely loved that episode and my mum also listens every week and afterwards we have a very we had a very nice phone conversation discussing a topic we'd never discussed before so that was to be fair most of us haven't actually talked about it sometimes i'm hearing myself thinking i can't believe i'm saying into a microphone i get quite yucky by it and i'm not approved by any stretch of the imagination you're certainly not i'm certainly not approved you know i can talk about vibrators any day i have a collection but i was going to say you have heard me so

we were discussing the fact that my mum picked it up and thought it was a fancy dress toy and then cleaned it which i think is nice which is quite sweet of her put it in my fancy dress box and then i admitted live on stage that it was actually my vibrator that I'd used that morning amazing thanks for that Debra okay um all best to your mom um thank you both very much for taking part in this Women's Hour will roll on throughout the 21st century and we welcome listeners new and old but stick with us and if you've got any ideas for us if there is something you are absolutely desperate to hear discussed on the radio or on the podcast, please do contact the programme and keep in touch via social media. It's at BBC Woman's Hour on Instagram and on Twitter as well. And of course, the Woman's Hour podcast is available on BBC Sounds.

I'm Sarah Trelevan, 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.