Woman's Hour - Helen George, Wimbledon, Met Police and VAWG

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

The most prestigious tennis tournament in the world begins today. But Wimbledon has already attracted global attention before the courts even open, with the wildcard return of tennis legend Serena Williams announced earlier this month, and the shock exit of British number one Emma Raducanu due to a stress fracture in her lower right leg. Nuala McGovern is joined by former British number one tennis champion, Annabel Croft. The Metropolitan Police says that harm to women by London’s most dangerous men has been cut by more than half under their V100 initiative. Over 200 of the worst perpetrators of violence against women and girls have been convicted since they threw out the normal tactics and started employing counter-terrorism techniques, allied with data crunching. Nuala speaks to Deputy Commissioner Matt Jukes about how it works.Long before she picked up a pair of forceps as Nurse Trixie Franklin in the BBC drama Call the Midwife, actor Helen George trained in musical theatre. She’s returning to those roots to play Tracy Lord in Cole Porter’s High Society, a role made famous by Grace Kelly. She tells Nuala about coming back to the stage and treats us to a live performance of a classic Cole Porter song. As part of Radio 4's Once Upon a Time season we're delving into shape-shifting feminist fairy tales, stories which have been constantly evolving ever since the early oral tradition, via the ground-breaking works of writers like Angela Carter to the present day. Award-winning author Kirsty Logan, joins us down the line from Glasgow and the mythologist and psychologist Dr Sharon Blackie joins us from Cumbria. They'll tell us why they believe women need fairy tales now more than ever and, crucially, why we should keep re-writing them for ourselves.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Kirsty Starkey

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Your sales order says one thing. Your inventory says another. Your spreadsheet says, good luck. Odu brings your business together on a single platform, from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing. Visit Odo.com to book a demo. It's ODbolo.com. Let's go to Wet and Wild Toronto. Your ultimate summer starts here. Make unforgettable memories with a over 25 slides in attractions, whether you're chasing thrills on our massive slides, floating through the lazy river or relaxing in the wave pool that brings the beach right to you, there's fun for

everyone all summer long. Buy your ticket online for as low as 4699 each plus tax, a savings of 30%. Your best summer ever is just one splash away. Wet and wild, let's go. Hello, I'm Newell McGovern and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. Well, I had a sigh of relief at the cool breeze this morning on the way to work. And no doubt the break in the heat wave has also delighted the tennis players that are readying themselves for Wimbledon that begins later today. We're going to speak to former champion, Annabelle Croft, on the Women to Watch these weeks.

Emeradu Canu, you might have seen, how to withdraw due to. an injury. It is a disappointing setback after training so hard, no doubt, to play in that prestigious tournament. And although you may not be an elite athlete, or maybe you are, you might also have a story of physical injury that meant that that thing you've been working towards for so long was not going to happen. I'd like to know what was it and what was the impact. Let's share some stories this morning. You can text the program. The number is 84844 on social media. We're at BBC Woman's Hour or you can email us through our website for WhatsApp message. or a voice note, that number is 0-3-700-100-144.

Also today, the police say that harm to women by London's most dangerous men has been cut by more than half by a new approach. Well, I'll be speaking to the Mets Deputy Commissioner, Matt Jukes, who wants to talk about their V-100 programme, so it uses data to identify and target men who pose the highest risk to women. Very interesting stuff, that discussion coming up. And when Trixie becomes Tracy, you will know the actor Helen George from Call the Midwife, but she's now playing the lead in the musical comedy High Society,

and she will sing one of Cole Portress songs for us in the Woman's Hour studio this hour. I'm looking forward to that. Plus, fairy tales, but this time through a feminist lens. It's all coming up. 8444 if you'd like to get in touch. Now, the most prestigious tennis tournament in the world begins today. Wimbledon has attracted global attention before the courts even open, always a lot of anticipation.

There's the wild card return of the tennis legend, Serena Williams, announced earlier this month. Also, that shock exit of British No. 1 Emeradu Canu due to a stress fracture, excuse me, in her right leg. Well, joining me this morning is the former British number one tennis champion Annabel Croft. She's described Serena Williams' wild card return. as jaw-dropping, and she is here this morning to tell us more about that, and Raducana's decision not to play, of course, in Wimbledon these weeks.

Such a difficult decision, Annabelle, I'm sure. Good to have you with us. You will know at least the mindset that goes into preparing for something like this. Oh, absolutely. Well, thank you for having me, and I'm sitting here on the roof overlooking all of the courts here. It's a wonderful scene. And, you know, Wimbledon, in my mind, is the greatest tennis tournament in the world. and for a Brit playing at Wimbledon,

it's absolutely massive. And everything about Emerald upon his year would have been geared around trying to peek at Wimbledon and obviously to try to win her second Grand Slam title here on the grass courts. So I think it would be fairly devastating for her that late last night, I think we all found out at about 10 o'clock in the evening, that apparently a stress fracture, which sounds very serious, and there's absolutely no way that she would be able to run around a court with a stress fracture.

So, as I said, I think utterly devastating and very, you know, quite crushing not just for her, but a big glow for the tournament as well. Because she's had a number of setbacks since that US Open win as well. But I'm wondering, you know, what can you to keep a positive mindset? I was reading a little bit that she feels, you know, surrounded by friends and family to help her get over such disappointment. But of course, it's something that every athlete must come up in some iteration or another. Yeah, I mean, over the years we've seen many, many great players have injury woes. And, you know, some spring to mind like a Juan Martin del Potro who was, he won the US Open, and then he had wrist injury problems.

And he was never really quite the same again. And everything was a stop start. And everything in sport and tennis is all about momentum and building that momentum and building kind of what we call the locker room respect and an aura around you. And, you know, if it's constantly being set back, and you're resetting and you start back at where you or before where you were at, it's very difficult to keep going because, you know, in tennis, you need to play lots of matches to become what we call match fit. And it's very, very different to practising.

You know, if you can practice all hours of the day and night, but once you hit the match court, everything about the adrenaline, the nerves, the pressure, everything kicks in in a totally different way. Your body will react and respond differently to those pressure situations. So you can never replicate that in practice. And so, you know, for Radikarni, we know she suffers losses very heavily. But I would imagine her whole year, as you've said, has been interspersed with lots of illnesses, viruses, lots of injury problems.

And she had appeared to just get going quite recently, reached the finals of Queen's. And we thought, oh, this is looking really interesting for Wimbledon. But now it's another major setback for her that she can't play. I was lucky enough actually to catch her at Queen's there on one of those fine evenings. And definitely that was that. aura that you talk about and that star rising. And it's so interesting to think about how it plays into the full roundedness of a player as they're on their way up.

You mentioned it being a blow also for the tournament. Who else should we be looking out for? And I do love, I'm biased here, I prefer watching the women's game at times. And about to tell me all about it. Well, you're certainly not the only one to say that. But I mean, there's plenty of names. to get stuck into. I mean, we've got the defending champion

in the women's Egos Fiontec. You hasn't had the best years since, but of course there's going to be a lot of pressure on her trying to defend the title. There's a young Mira Andreva who won at the French Open at Roland Garos just a couple of weeks ago.

So it'll be interesting to see whether she can transfer her game from clay onto grass. Sabalenka, the top seed. She has never won at Wimbledon. She's been in the semis, but she's never won. So she's going to be highly motivated.

But of course, all eyes and all of the press attention has been surrounding the return of Serena Williams. So I think she's definitely the one that everybody is most excited about seeing back out there on a tennis court professionally again. It's something I never, ever thought I would see. So that night I went to Queens, Serena Williams was playing on court one. Now, I couldn't get in there, but I was watching it on the screen.

And afterwards, as people filed out from the court, and from their seats. You could feel the electricity off the people who had been watching her just to give people a sense of the reverberations

that a player like her can cause. It is a wild card entry for the women's singles draw that she has, her first appearance there in four years. She has spoken openly

about using weight loss drugs such as GLP-1s after admitting that she struggled to lose weight after having children. And I should say that GLP-1s are not a prohibited substance, nor classed as a performance-enhancing drug,

but they are being monitored by the world anti-doping agency. But back to thinking about how Serena might play from that nibble, that snapshot that we had at Queens, what can we expect? Well, it's such a good question because I think we're all aghast that she's returned. You know, she finished her career at the US Open in 2022, so that's nearly four years ago.

And then suddenly these rumours were happening that she was putting herself on the testing list, you know, where they have to do the doping, you know, whether you do the urine tests and what have you. And that indicated that maybe there were signals that she was going to come back. Of course, as you say, she appeared in the doubles. What can we expect in singles?

It's a really incredible question because none of us can believe it. It's extraordinary to think that she hasn't played a singles match in four years and she's going to make that first singles match on centre court against a youngster in Maya joint. So, I mean, we saw her in doubles. That's very different to playing singles, where you've got to cover the whole court.

So I'm sure there's going to be a lot of rust, but I also think that her aura, her reputation, the CV that she brings on to the court is going to be very difficult for anybody to face psychologically down the other end. Well, this is what I was thinking about, Annabelle, as you were speaking about being match fit, and I kind of understand that sometimes,

even from broadcasting. Like you could practice all you want, but you've actually got to do the thing to be getting more proficient in the thing that you do, aka tennis. For Serena, and it's so interesting to think of being in a bubble or training or practicing, whatever it might be, but not being in front of hundreds or thousands of people that are watching you and monitoring every single move.

So I think we will all be glued. I mean, she very much has the attitude of, nothing to lose, nothing to prove there for the love of the game. And you talk about everybody kind of questioning it as well. Like, did it ever cross your mind after you'd finish to think, I'll go back? Like when you've been at such a high level, I can understand the poll. Yeah, I mean, I think for her, she won 23 Grand Slam titles. And the overall record is 24, which Margaret Court has.

and Novak Djokovic is tied with her. So he's very motivated to try and overtake Margaret Court. But for Serena, she reached four further Grand Slam finals and was never quite able to match Margaret Court. And I can only assume, I mean, none of us really know. She said, as you pointed out, that she has nothing to prove. It's not about winning. She wanted her two children to see her play.

Well, they did get to do that at Queens, and her husband was sitting there as well. But is it that she wants to maybe go out on a high with her sister Venus, who may well hang up for her. at the US Open? Do they want to go out where they started their careers? Or is it that she has sat back and looked at women's tennis over the last year or so and thought, you know what, I can still give that a go and I might be able to add that grand slam title? Because she's such a champion. She's arguably one of the greatest, well certainly in our lifetime that we've ever

witnessed. So is she sitting there? I don't believe she's entering Wimbledon as one of the greatest champions that ever played the game and thinking, I just want to play and see what happens. Have a knock around. Have a knock around on the court, and that might be quite fun. You know, with the mentality that she has and that competitive instinct, which will definitely kick in, you know, she was absolutely phenomenal competitor and the drive and the ambition. I think, I just can't believe she's not entered it to try to win it. But who knows? I mean, it's a very different thing as a mum with two children that you're actually, you know, we know that she has a very full life from what we see on social media and she's very into her fashion.

and lots of events and she's got so much going on. This is a major commitment to come back to focusing 100% on not just your family and your two daughters, but to come back and try to play professional tennis again. But let's find out. I hope she reveals stuff or more stuff to us in the press conference.

But I think she has a great chance to certainly get through the first round. She's up against a young player who is very talented, but there's only one match in I think in 13. So it's a bit short on confidence, has had some injury problems herself and you know I can see Serena actually getting through that one but until we see her in action for the first

time in four years I don't know quite what to expect. We're all going to be glued aren't we? She has I should also mention for fans as she's been handed the wild card in the women's doubles as well she will play with her sister Venus so if you can't get enough of the William sisters you can hit the singles and the doubles

and watch that. Thank you so much for speaking with Annabel really enjoy that as I will watching Wimbledon that gets started today. Now, 844-8-4-4. If you've had an injury, I don't know, maybe this resonates with you when you hear about Emma Raducanu and her stress fracture, something you were working towards,

I don't know, maybe it was a marathon, maybe it was a walk, maybe it was a job you were going for whatever and a physical injury got in the way. 8-4-8-44, I'd love to hear from you. Now, this month, the Metropolitan Police announced that harm to women by London's most dangerous men has been cut by more than half. It's according to a recent study of their V-100 initiative by the University of Pennsylvania.

I want to get into some of the figures since the launch of the V-100 initiative three years ago. More than 200 of the worst perpetrators of violence against women and girls have been convicted. Sentences totaling 676 years have been secured. 157 protective court orders have been obtained. And it's been done by throwing out the normal tactics and employing counter-tenthies. terrorism techniques allied with some serious data crunching. I spoke to Deputy Commissioner, Matt Jukes, and I asked him, how does this work?

Well, we've really applied the learning we've taken from counterterrorism where you have more subjects, more suspects than you could possibly apply your tactics to, your resources to. I looked at how we prioritise that work. And in that work, we'd seen a method for taking the harm caused by individuals or the risk posed by individuals and prioritising them. And that's led us to create V100. It's a focused effort against London's most risky,

most potentially harmful men in relation to violence against women and girls. And to strip that back every year, we look at those who potentially cause that harm. And it's a very troubling number. I mean, that's 60,000 men. We put into a algorithmic process, which looks at their past offending, looks at the harms associated with that

and basically delivers us monthly. It's updated monthly, a rolling list of priority subjects who get very focused attention around their offending. And in many ways, it's an extension of other work we're trying to do to shift the focus from only relying on victims and their courage

and being much more perpetrator-led. So you identify them according to past offences? How are you doing it? Yeah, so the predominant method is based on past offending, but also places where they've been times when they've been named as perpetrators. So it doesn't rely on a history of conviction. But we can see in the case, I mean, I was reviewing the case of one earlier who had been named as a suspect in rape offenses nine times in the previous 18 months.

So somebody who's coming to police attention frequently, often in relation to a number of victims, those are the kind of individuals that will come to the top of that V-100 list. Then they're getting focused attention, whether it's for law enforcement, for the reinvestigation of past offences that have been reported, and we've seen some instances where courageous victims from past events have provided evidence which has been critical,

but also using the legal powers that are available to put protective orders across these perpetrators. The Cambridge Crime Harm Index is involved. Explain what that is. So the Cambridge Crime Harm Index looks at the sentencing, which is typical for an offence, so an offence of domestic abuse-related violence, for an offence of rape,

and it calculates the numbers of years of sentence that a perpetrator might attract. As I say, it doesn't rely on those individuals having been convicted or centres, for those periods, but it's a method of calculating in an objective way, the way courts have treated the harms caused by those offences in the past. It gives us a method to prioritise those perpetrators. And it allows us to deal with volume. One of the really tragic realities of all of this work against the most harmful perpetrators is we have to start with a list

of 60,000 men. 60, 60, 60, 60,000, 10,000 men. every month. And what we, of course, are doing at V100 is the spearhead of our work against those perpetrators of violence against women and girls. So we're taking reports every single day from victims and through a whole range of other interventions to support them, but also to provide evidence through other mechanisms. We're bringing more offenders to justice outside the V100. We've doubled a number of positive outcomes, charges, and those. those type of outcomes for rape offenses over the last years.

Staying with the V-100, how much of the harm is done by how many of these men? So the extraordinary thing when you look and the study looked at 25,000 men and basically found that 10% of those do as much harm as the remaining 90%. So very concentrated offending. I mean, I was again looking at a case earlier where, You've got an individual who is obviously predating on vulnerable women, on girls. So we're focused on violence against women and girls. And for example, had dozens of SIM cards when we arrested and pursued them.

So people who are systematic, serial and relentless perpetrators need us to be systematic and relentless in our approach. The multiple SIM cards? What does that relate to then? So presenting themselves in various identities, no doubt, trying to evade detection, trying to get onto platforms, potentially that they've been banned from, all sorts of ways of trying to evade law enforcement and trying to evade the regulation of platforms. We've found that one of the strongest things we can bring today to pursuing perpetrators is digital evidence. And there's been lots of concern, of course, about the way we treat the digital. digital life of victims as well.

But by being very focused on perpetrators' digital lives, we can make sure that alongside courageous victims and survivors, we have the history of their online behaviour to bring to bear against them. Because I was reading, some were comparing it to like Al Capone, that you might get them on their taxes or a lesser offence, that it may not be the violence against women and girls specifically. Explain that a little further. This again is a lesson really from our work in counterterrorism where we've taken this Al Capone or Achilles heel approach to perpetrators.

So sometimes the thresholds for getting a charge can be challenging. Sometimes it is enormously productive to look at other criminal behaviour. So we might go for, well, let's take him off the road. If he's a disqualified driver, let's take him off the road. That's going to make it harder for him to perpetrate offences. if he's dealing drugs, let's get him to the top of the list for our focus on that and go after that. If he's serially involved in other crime, if he's a thief, let's go after that. So basically take the Achilles Heel approach, take that Al Capone approach,

and involve other authorities as well. So, you know, getting involved with the people who are working on housing, working on benefits, all of those things which can help us basically disqualification. disrupt the life and the offending. So in some circumstances, would it be fair to say that the reduction in violence and harm to women and girls is because you've taken that individual just out of circulation for whatever reason? So we're seeing really impressive prison sentences. So that's part of taking the individual out of circulation.

I mean, we are also occupied in the very wide cohort. looking at programs which are about reducing the risks of, reducing the risk of harm created by men. So programs created on men's behaviour as well, focused on men's behaviour as well. But the one thing which we're using a lot more is protective order. So those kind of things which mean they prevent contact, they prevent certain types of behaviour, and they can be given by a court at a much lower threshold than a conviction and quicker. And that's really, so they may be an individual who's still in the community, but they're prevented by these legal orders

from having contact with a victim or behaving in certain ways. With that woman or girl. You know, I was also wondering, how do you ensure that men who should not be on the list are not there? Because some might see what you're doing as a form of profiling. Of course, you'll know how contentious that can be.

So we're very focused on this cohort of 100 and a large group beyond that, who are the top of a stack of, 60,000. To get there, although I've talked about information which also relates to reports which have not led to convictions, the individuals at the top of that list have got previous convictions, typically multiple previous convictions for sexual offences and so, and offences of domestic abuse and violence against women and girls. So there are, there are known perpetrators typically at the front of this, at the front of this group. I mean, we, we have to pursue.

few our cases then, you know, without fear and favour, there are investigations which go forward just the same. But the focus is critical today and it's critical in this moment, not least because the wider criminal justice system is struggling to deal with these men at a pace which victims and survivors deserve. And that's because of numbers, I think. Coming back to your previous answer, really, and background, I suppose, in counterterrorism, it's just too many. You have to think of a different approach because of the volume of people. So too many cases and a backlog in the overall system. So, you know, we are currently listing court cases into 2030.

Right. And that will give pause for many people. The decision to take this approach in 2023 came amidst a series of scandals related to your own officers. And then a damning report by Baroness Casey, which concluded the force was institutionally sexist and misogynistic. Also, for example, that vital evidence in rape cases was being compromised by overstuffed freezers. Has the Met changed since then? We've made enormous strides and really very focused changes to improve our approach to vance against women and girls in particular. And to give you examples, we were seeing repeatedly language turn up in police reports that was victim blaming. And we've trained tens of thousands of officers in the effect of that, in one.

why they were bringing that forward and what the effect of it was for investigations and prosecutions. We've exited hundreds of officers who could not have a future in the Met. So if you take the panorama documentary of the last year, 10 officers involved in that sacked, but in fact, 1,500 officers have left the Met over the last three years who couldn't have their future with us. So we've changed the people in many places, but we're also very focused on changing systems and changing behaviour. The panorama investigation was into Charing Cross Police Station last year.

There were two more officers dismissed this week after making comments that glorify the use of force against detainees. You mentioned the 10 officers who've been sacked as a result of that program. But why are you letting the BBC do that work for you? Well, we're determined to make this the business of everybody in the Met

and I'm very proud to say the number of people coming forward and raising their own concerns within the Met has trebled over the last three years and we've trained 30,000 people in upstander approaches to encourage everyone to play their part. But we've also been working very hard again on technology and the kind of techniques we've used in counterterrorism. So you've seen in the media some reporting of the work we've been doing on analytics to basically take all of the information we hold about officers and staff in the organisation to join the dots. and to find the problematic places and people and teams and disrupt them. Yes, because we want to get there in one sense before journalists do,

but mostly because we want to get there so that we have rooted them out to make sure that the victims of those crimes that we've talked about in the V-100 have got confidence to come forward to the men. We're looking back as we look forward. It is five years since Sarah Everard was kidnapped, raped and murdered by a serving metropolitan and police officer. Many women questioned whether they could trust the police to look after them. You are profiling, we could say, dangerous men. How well are you profiling people who want to become police officers? We're working hard on our vetting approaches we have done since those

terrible events those years ago and the murder of Sarah Everard, which stays as it does for her family with us every step of the way. We're thinking, again, about how to use data powerfully, whether it's the social media presence of recruits, whether it's their behaviour when they present in selection. And then critically, the way people show up in training and in their early careers. And so I talked about a larger number of people being exited

from the met, many more of those than had been the case in the past, have left during their initial training, where we've been more vigilant than ever. Do you have a specific number on that? Well, as I say, overall, 1,500, which is a trebling of those who've left the Met, typically it would have been, as I say, in the region of about 500 a year. These are people leaving because they don't complete their training. We've decided they won't meet standards or are leaving under misconduct investigation.

So positive interventions via the Met, not just to rely on technology, not just to rely on victims and survivors, but to change our culture. That was the Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Matt Jukes. Thanks very much to him. We were talking about tennis a little bit earlier about Emma Radicanu and an injury that has meant she has exited Wimbledon before it begins.

Some of you're getting in touch. Here's Jane talking about injuries and kind of stopping your progress, I guess. Hi, I'm 52. I had breast cancer two years ago, but after recovery, restarted weight training and was doing so well. But seven weeks ago, I hurt my back. I had an MRI scan and found two bulging discs. No, now I cannot train properly or I cannot run.

It's been very hard to stay positive and allow my body to heal. However, I'm determined to get better and come back stronger. Yes, Jane, that is a good idea. Take it easy for a couple of weeks. It was very hot there as well. So the body will heal. You'll get going again. Thanks for sharing 8444.

if you would like to get in touch. Maybe you'd like to get in touch on this next piece of news that I have to bring you. This is your chance to take the reins of the programme. You set the agenda by choosing the topics and we will spend the first week of August exploring them together.

Now, in previous years, you have shared creative ideas for discussion, fascinating stories from your own lives. One was choosing a life on the road in a motorhome. A lot of you related to that. wanting to do it, if not actually doing it. Maintaining a long and happy marriage while living on opposite sides of the world.

That was so interesting as well. Well, we'd love to hear even more of your unique experiences. Any ideas that you have, you can text Woman's Hour on 844 on social media. We're at BBC Woman's Hour. Or you can email us through our website. Always excited to see what you come up with for our discussions. So you take the reins.

Giddy up. Time to get going. He's widely recognised as one of the greatest footballers in history. He's won the prestigious Ballandour Award five times. He's the all-time leading goal scorer in professional football. And according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he's the first active footballer in history to achieve billionaire status. Guess who we're talking about yet? That's right. Good Bad Billionaire is exploring the life and fortune of football icon Cristiano Ronaldo.

That's Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Now, let us move on. Because we are now joined by a member of High Society. And I mean that literally. Long before she ever picked up a pair of forcips, the beloved nurse Trixie Franklin in Cold Midwife, Helen George trained as a musical theatre actress.

And now she's back on stage in Cole Porter's dazzling musical High Society. It's on at the Barbican in London. I had a treat one evening of going to see it. And Helen is back with us to tell us. all about this role made famous by both Catherine Hepburn and Grace Kelly. Helen, welcome back. Thank you for having me. I mean, fantastic. Catherine Hepburn and Grace Kelly, nice footsteps to be following in. Yes, but you can't think about that at all. You just have to think about the script, think about the part, and, you know, that's it. So this person that you play is Tracy Lord. I mean,

you know, you don't know how many Cole Porter's songs you know until I went to the show and you're like, oh yeah, you know every single one. is an absolute classic. Tell us a little bit about her, who she is, and what you are portraying with her. She's a really fun character. I think what's been so good is to play something, you know, I've been so blessed with Trixie for so many years,

but to play something completely different, American. Yes, she's from high society, but she's entirely flawed, gets very drunk, as my daughter says. She always says to have runs. Come and see the second half. Mommy gets drunk and kisses loads of boys. And it's just there's so much freedom And there's this song where we all sing

Let's Misbehave And it just, it's bringing me so much light and joy And I'm genuinely having more fun on stage than I ever have before It's brilliant to have such a fun character And I suppose also, the night I went And I'm sure it's the same every night Absolutely packed And everybody in the audience

Knowing every lyric to every song And I'm wondering what that's like So for example, who wants to be a millionaire, I love Paris, just one of those things, You have an orchestra, you have this incredible cast, and then you have the audience opposite you that's hanging on every note. How has it been?

I mean, I grew up with this music. My father is really into jazz, so Cole Porter's songbook was, you know, part of my childhood. So I grew up listening to Nina Simone and, you know, Ella Fitzgerald sing all of these incredible songs. So I can't think of them in that capacity. I have to think about the words. And actually what works with Cole Porter,

as musicals and his music within the musicals is the meaning of the words and the songs and the tunes are incidental and add to the emotional state but it's the words that you have to you know I think that's the biggest thing in musical theatre if you don't communicate with the audience on an emotional level it doesn't hit as well you know so I think that's what we're also diligent about

it also for me transports you to a different era and a different geographical place. You know, we're on the northeast, this kind of wealthy, for those that aren't familiar with high society, kind of, I don't know, little flavours of almost Great Gatsby-esque. Yeah, absolutely. They're in this house, you know, surrounded by luxury and money

and they've got little to do but drink all day and, you know, find husbands. That's pretty much the storyline. But within that, there's vulnerability. And I always say it's a little bit like White Lotus. You know, why should we care about these characters because they're disgustingly rich? But actually there's a social, you know, commentary on all of that

with Mike and Liz, the journalists that come to the house. And it is, you know, it's watching these ridiculous characters in this Doll's house, effectively, live out a ridiculous life that is fascinating and you can't take your eyes away from. And, of course, with a great sound drop behind it as well. Felicity Kendall is playing your mother. dream, the dream.

Isn't she quite something to watch on stage? I was wondering what it's like to be beside her or what are you drinking from the well when you're working with her. She's the most professional woman. She is such a role model. She works so hard, looks after her children, her grandkids, you know, everything that I want to be,

she sparkles on stage and she genuinely cares. And she's so funny. I mean, I'm corpcing all the time with that woman. She isn't, I mean, she's just hysterical. You have to explain corpsing as well. Corpcing is not theatrical. I mean, we laugh a lot in this show. It's very joyful.

And also Freddie Fox, who is just wonderful and has this incredible voice which no one knew about. And Julian Ovidon and Michael Sinclair and Nigel, Lindsay. It's just the most incredible cast. You mentioned Felicity Kendall there, mother, grandmother,

something you're aspiring to. It is a demanding role. There is no two ways about it. I didn't, you know, watching 10 minutes in, I realize. I'm naked. That you are going to be by the time you're finished. You can't tell when you're watching it.

But you do, you know, you've young children as well. And I suppose it's kind of funny we're talking with Annabelle Croft earlier about tennis and that, but like playing at Wimbledon. It's a commitment. Yeah. And I'm just wondering about your thought process with that. Is there a way to manage it and this will resonate with many women that are juggling? Maybe not being on stage at the barbican.

but trying to make it all fit and work. It is a juggle and I forget things and I make mistakes and I have to just forgive myself that and tell myself I'm not a bad mother because I'm a good mother. And the way that I tattle it is that I have to bring my children on this ride. They have to be in the dressing room after school. They have to have their bath in my dressing room, be put to bed in the dressing room, then I take them home.

And they are growing up watching me work and understanding how important it is for women to be financially independent and, you know, no one is coming to save us but ourselves, as I like to say. Okay, you're tying the whole of women's hour up together for me because we're doing feminist fairy tales a little bit later and that damsel in distress and is she really

or a heroine writing her own story. And Serena Williams has said the reason she's going back on court is so that her two, that her girls can see her play and work and do what she does so well. You are going to perform for us, which I'm delighted to say, accompanied bomb piano, by Dan McLaughlin. This is, it's all right with me.

Yes, that's right. So what's happening with this song? So Tracy is still in love with her ex-husband. But Mike, the journalist, has come along, who is played by Freddie Fox and sings a wonderful, your sensational song to me. And she has this moment when she's like, I'm not in love with him,

but could I have some fun? And it's really sort of free, but there's pain in it because he's not the man that she loves. Okay. Well, I will let you pop over to the microphone here in the Women's Hour studio. Cole Porter's, it's all right with me. You're doing eight shows a week.

How do you take care of that voice of yours? Well, yeah, there's lots of things that I'm doing to try and keep it safe and protected and not talking as much in the day, which is hard. So we appreciate you coming here. Of course. Exception. But you have this and then you're going, my understanding is, after the Barbican on a straight out 20-week UK tour?

Yes, yes. We are the first few venues are High Wycombe, South End, Belfast. We're going to Manchester, up and down the country. I mean, it's going to be lovely, and my kids are coming along as well for the summer holiday. I'm getting the picture now, and I think it'll be really interesting for people to hear that because sometimes, you know, it's like,

would you ask a man the same question? But so many women have the caring responsibilities still, not in a 50-50 way, so I do think it's a question. Well, I do co-parent, so I have 50. 50% with them, which actually means that I have time to rest sometimes as well. And their father is also on tour this summer with the plays. They were juggling. But we make it work.

They have a lovely life. So I'm proud of us. I'm really glad to you. I'm sure they find it amazing also to see backstage what is happening. Where did it all begin? Because many listeners will know you, as I mentioned, Nurse Trixie, Franklin and called the midwife. But you did start out in musical theatre. I know your father, as you mentioned, HUD.

American songbooks. Yeah. Well, I kind of, I started out doing a bit of ballet when I was younger and then got into performing from that, but I went to drama school first. The acting side was always really important to me, but I really liked the device of being able to sing and the emotional adage that, you know, music brings to a script. And so I trained at the Royal Academy for a year and had the most amazing time, met all my best friends. And then I just, I did a musical first off. I did Woman in White, an Angela Weber musical. And then I kind of just went, you know what? I want to do straight stuff.

So I didn't audition for musicals for a long time, did call the midwife and lots of plays for 15 years. And then Howard Pantor, who is Mr. Trafalgar himself, a fantastic producer. I love him dearly. Came to me a couple of years ago and said, what about the king and I went, no, no, no, no, no, no. And then obviously I ended up doing it.

Yes, he did it. the Dominion, which was wonderful with Dan as well. And then we talked about doing another one and this was High Society. So I'm really enjoying my time doing musicals. Yeah, well, I hope you have a wonderful summer. Glad the heat wave broke as well. I hope that the AC was working well in the Barbican over those days because it is a physical feat as well as a creative endeavour.

Lovely having you in, Helen George and Dan McLaughlin. Thank you very much. I want to let people know that High Society is on a. the barbican until the 11th of July and then, as Helen was telling us, heading out on a UK and Ireland tour. Helen George, thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for your messages coming in.

We were talking about injuries. Eight years ago, says Yvonne and Falmouth. Eight years ago, I suffered a major leg injury. It put a stop to many things I love to do, including sailing. After years of rehab and a team of brilliant physios and fitness professionals who believed in me, I finally got to realise a lifelong ambition

to sail on and climb the rigging of a tall ship in Ant Antarctica this year. The journey from injury may be long, but never give up. You owe it to yourself. So there's Yvonne giving a shout out to one of our former listeners who was saying she's just in the thick of it at the moment. Also another listening from up north in support of Dan McLaughlin. Incredible to hear and play on Women's Hour.

Wonderful music and a wonderful production of high society. So a shout out there as well. Right. Let us move on to cricket. Charlotte Edwards, England women's cricket head coach and one of the most successful. players in the history of the women's game. Along with Tilly Cortine Coleman, 18-year-old spinner, who's the youngest member of England squad

and one of the country's most exciting young prospects, both came to join me in the studio last Tuesday that was ahead of the T-20 cricket World Cup match against the West Indies at Lords. They won that one. Now they are due to play the semi-final against South Africa. That's Thursday at the Oval Cricket Ground in London. Here's a little of Charlotte and Tilly,

sharing a moment which showed just how far the women's game has come in the past few years? The game has changed a lot. I mean, I played my first test match in a skirt and sometimes I sit in the dugouts or sit on the balconies and I'm just so proud of where the game's at because, you know, 30 years ago, probably, you know, 10 people were watching England play. We're now playing in front of packed houses. We're playing at Lords, cricket ground. You know, when I first played at Lords, women weren't allowed in Lord. Can you imagine Tilly having to play in a skirt and blazer?

No, absolutely not. I think, yeah, I think just. kind of hearing that, hadn't really appreciated how far the game has really come. And yeah, the support we get and the fact that we can do this as a full-time job is incredible. But I also feel like looking back at you guys doing your thing and how successful you are when you didn't have all that support and all that kind of investment in the game, it's just, yeah, it's just really inspiring. And if you missed that discussion, you can listen again on BBC Sounds. It's the Woman's Hour episode for Tuesday, the 23rd of June.

Good luck to them. Of course, you can follow it all on BBC Sports. and also on 5 live. Also with tennis, I should mention, every match from all 18 courts is available live on the BBC I player and the BBC Sport website and the app and daily television coverage

on BBC 1 and BBC 2 as well. Lots to watch another summer of sport. Now, to fairy tales. Have you ever imagined a fairy tale ending for yourself? Something akin to the romance of a Taylor Swift song, perhaps, or maybe conditioned by a child's child's, diet of Disney princesses. Well, as part of Radio 4's

Once Upon a Time Week of fairy tales, we wanted to take a fresh look at them through a feminist lens, specifically how they've been told and retold by women ever since the early oral tradition through to the present day. I suppose some of the questions are like,

how can we reshape fairy tales and use them to help us in our day-to-day lives? A couple of people are going to help us with that. I'm joined down the line from Glasgow by the award-winning author Kirstie Logan and from Cumbria, the mythologist and psychologist, Dr Sharon Blackie. Welcome to Women's Hour, both of you. Good to have you with us.

I'll start with you, Sharon. We might be forgiven for thinking that fairy tales are fluffy or infantile or it's a princess in a tower waiting to be rescued. What would you say we are missing? Well, that's not how they were at all originally. So if you go back in the oral tradition, A lot of these stories were told by working-class women to each other and to their daughters. And they're not passive princesses.

They're not insipid. So one of my favorite fairy tales, which is a very typical one, is a Danish story called Tatterhood. And a young girl comes out of her mother's womb, fully formed, riding a goat with a wooden spoon. And as you do, and with a wooden spoon, she then single-handedly drives off a tribe of marauding trolls and their groupy witches and then saves her sister whose head has been swapped for the head of a calf

by one of the witches. So these characters, these heroines are always more likely to save someone else than to be saved themselves. So it's just some process over the years,

I think, of, you know, the way that movies have looked at fairy tales and just put a different spin on them. I'm going to throw the same question to you, Christy. what are we missing in fairy tales as perhaps the way they've been sold to us thus far? I always think it's quite funny when a wedding dress shop says a fairy tale wedding

because those of us who are into fairy tales, for example, know that at Cinderella's wedding, her wicked, so-called wicked stepsisters eyes get pecked out by birds. And at Snow White's wedding, the stepmother has to put on iron shoes, which are then heated, red hot, and she dances until she dies. So I always amuse myself by imagining people having these entertainments that the so-called fairy tale wedding. And I think, you know, I've always been a spooky kid, a little gothic kid since the day I was born pretty much. And I think even as a child, I loved the darkness of a fairy tale. You know, even when we do our best to sanitize them and make them appropriate for children, there's still such a darkness to them that we're maybe so used to that we're not seeing it anymore.

Like I now have a four-year-old, so, you know, we've started reading fairy tales together. And some of the questions make me super aware of the darkness, like in Red Riding Hood. You know, it's hard to say original version, which I'm sure Sharon will get into as well. But the earlier versions, the wolf just eats Red Riding Hood. The end. That's what happens. But even the version where she gets rescued, my kid was saying, why does the wolf want to eat her?

Why? And then, you know, we read Hansel and Gretel recently. And I'm getting the question, why does the witch want to eat them? So even when we try and sanitize them, there's still such a darkness that we think, yeah, sometimes a wolf eats you. Sometimes a witch. And it's really interesting, I'm sure, to see it through a child's eyes as well when you are so immersed in it. I love the idea, Christy, of you emerging from the womb as a fully formed goth.

But let me also turn back to you, Sharon. I want to mention the late great Angela Carter. So some of our listeners might know her as the author of a seminal short story collection, in the Bloody Chamber and the novels, wise children and nights at the circus. I know she's been

an inspiration to both of you. Just briefly, Sharon, for those that aren't familiar, why was her writing so radical? Really, because what she did is she took what is supposed to happen with fairy tales anyway. So in the oral tradition,

they're supposed to shift with the times. They're supposed to change according to the changing times. And as women's lives have changed, they're supposed to change. And what happened when we started to change?

write them down in books as they became kind of fossilised. You know, it's like that's the end of the story. And what Angela Carter did is she said, okay, well, what if we brought this fairy tale into the world today and used the fairy tale form to reflect women's lives as they actually are? So it's not just about changing the ending or anything quite as simple as that. She looked at the whole kind of world of fairy tales and how women today might fit into it in a different kind of way. So your latest book is ripening, why women need fairy tales now. And I was fascinated about some of the questions

that you ask within that book. You talk about, and let me just get this specific term, to create our own inner imaginarium and that that can be helpful to help us think about our lives or redirect, like the opposite of fossilisation, I guess. Can you give us an example of that to the listeners? Yeah, so it's really based on the idea that fairy tale images stick with us for a very, very long time and keep on resonating.

You know, so I never could let go of the red shoes, the Hans Christian Anderson story, and that image of the red shoes where the shoes danced the girl to death. She lost control of them. So this either of an inner imaginarium is the idea that each of us has particular stories or particular images from stories that kind of haunt us and won't let us go almost come to us with a kind of moral claim. and that if we work with these images, if we just hold them in our minds, if we think about what they might mean to us, what they might reflect in our lives, they really can be incredibly illuminating.

I think the one when I was thinking about it, Sharon, that came to me, was the princess and the frog. You know, when she's made do something and particularly kiss this person slash animal that she really doesn't want to and her father is forcing her to do that. and I think it was always like for me as a child like the most horrendous thing

that could be imposed upon you so I was fascinated to read some of those stories that you talk about are questions that you ask and I believe also use within therapy practice Kirsty you wrote your undergraduate thesis on retold fairy tales and you've written retellings of stories

including sleeping beauty why have you been drawn back to that tale in particular? Good question. Yeah I mean obviously see Angela Carter, I read her at a very impressionable age. She had a big, big impact on me. Another writer who was hugely influential on me, who I don't think gets enough love in this regard is Emma Donahue, her book Kissing the Witch. And what drew me to do my own retellings was actually her reworking of Snow White, because she brings not only a female and feminist

sensibility, but also a queer and lesbian sensibility, which was revolutionary to me. As a queer woman, I thought, I want to do that. I want to do that. And at the end of her version of Snow White, when Snow White wakes up, which is not from a prince, it's actually from her glass coffin being jolted as it's being carried and the apple jerks out of her throat, she decides to go back to the castle to forge a relationship with her stepmother. Not necessarily a romantic relationship, but she, instead of following this path of division, she chooses solidarity. And to me, that's what I want to do when I rework a fairy tale is to remove this sense of women being competition with each other all the time, specifically in competition for midmen, whose attention

is not that important and actually not let that divide us. Women can be in competition for many things if we choose to. I refuse to be in competition with other women over the attentions of men. So I was really inspired by that. And I think those ones in particular, it's exactly like what you were saying, it's about this lack of agency. And I wanted to try and address that. Yeah, I suppose it comes back to, you know, we've had very deep conversations at times and women's are about consent, which perhaps we have not always looked at fairy tales through that prism, although I know you and Sharon very much have. But when I think back on fairy tales, I do often think of a damsel in distress instead of a strong heroin. I mean, Sharon outlined

one version of a fairy tale of Danish one at the beginning, who very much is a strong heroine. But how do you see it, Kirsty? I mean, how do you, I don't know, put that across to your child, for example? Well, I think that's a really interesting question. And I think number one, stories don't have to be guides to life. Stories don't have to tell us how to act. They can also reflect the world. So I think writing about someone who doesn't have agency or someone who doesn't get to have a choice, we're not necessarily saying that's how we believe things should be. We can just be saying, unfortunately, that does remain the case in many, many situations. So I do think the fiction, particularly modern fiction, being read written by myself and my contemporaries, it doesn't have to be a medieval morality play that we're telling people how to live. We can also reflect the real world with all its complications and its gray areas.

I certainly don't want people to act like the heroines in my stories. I'm not saying they are exemplary people by any means. It is difficult because I think we want to shield our children from certain things. But I also love the kind of goryness and the morbidness. You know, we talked about the fairy tale imagery. I love there's a fairy tale of the singing bone about bones that sing to tell of who murdered them. There's Baba Yaga with her chicken leg hut.

These are strange, surreal, dark images that I absolutely love. So I think the message that I want to try and convey to my child who's also spooky is that there's beauty in darkness as well. Coming back to you, Sharon, can you give us a tip for those listening for a way to cultivate our inner imaginarium before I let you go? Well, one of the ways that certainly, In my therapeutic practice, I used to find very, very helpful was this idea that we would rewrite our lives as a fairy tale.

And it's one of those things that because every fairy tale heroine kind of, you know, sets off on a journey with catastrophes snapping at her heels, there's always a catastrophe at the beginning of it. And yet she wins through to the positive ending of a story, normally with the help of a, you know, a few hungry mice, always by building community, always in relationship. There are stories that help us get out of the sense of ourselves as a victim. And it's almost like a problem-solving exercise. You know, how can I win through? What qualities of character do I need when I'm facing this time of collapse

or this world in which nobody much seems to have our best interests at heart? So taking a fairy tale, writing yourself into it, using fairy tale imagery, all of those things really can help us reimagine our lives and, you know, a better ending to our stories. And ending on that point, Dr Sharon Blackie, Kirstie Logan, thank you so much. The retelling of tales continues here on Radio 4 throughout the week with once upon a time. Five new fairy tales by leading writers.

Do tune in 1045. You can listen. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello, I'm David Badeal. And from Radio 4 and the History Podcast, I'm hosting 60 Years of Hurt, a series about football and Englishness, in which we try and define

what Englishness actually is via the roller coaster history of the England men's football team. It includes contributions from various English gentlemen and women, Stephen Fry, David Seaman, England sports psychologist, Pippa Grange and many others.

England may or may not win the World Cup in 2026, but maybe you'll find out why it means so much to us as a country that they might do. Listen to 60 years of Hurt on BBC Sounds. How did a boy call or Jimmy become a billionaire from posting videos. On Good Bad Billionaire,

we're going to find out how the world's most popular YouTuber Mr Beast made his fortune. He's buried himself in a coffin for days. Counted to 100,000 on camera. And even recreated Squid Games, all in an attempt to go viral on the internet. But it all started when he gave a homeless man $10,000. So is he a philanthropist re-shaping capitalism?

Or is he just the king of the attention economy? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcast. Thanks.