Woman's Hour - Helen Mirren, Childhood vaccinations, & music from Celeste

Episode Date: November 9, 2019

Helen Mirren tells us about her new film the Good Liar and why even she has fallen for a scam.We talk about a DIY home urine or swab test currently being trialled as an alternative to the cervical smear with Imogen Pinnell from Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust Line.We hear from two female police officers about their difficulties reporting allegations of domestic abuse against their partner who also works for the police. The human rights lawyer and founding director of the Centre for Women’s Justice, Harriet Wistrich talks about launching an official Super-Complaint where repeated allegations of 16 cases of domestic abuse where made only for the cases to be dropped.We discuss the safety of vaccinations with Professor Helen Bedford from UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, Professor Adam Finn a Professor of Paediatrics at the Bristol Children’s Vaccine Centre and from Dr Tonia Thomas from the Vaccine Knowledge at Oxford University.Rising soul artist Celeste talks about her music and the support of BBC Introducing. She performs her new single, Strange.Father and daughter Mark and Emily Simmonds talk about overcoming mental illness and their book Breakdown and Repair.

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, good afternoon, and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour. Now, this week, we've got Helen Mirren on being scammed. We'll discuss whether the smear test is about to become a thing of the past and domestic violence in the police force. How difficult is it when allegations of sexual violence and domestic abuse are made against serving officers? If this particular officer who's alleged to be an abuser is a credible chap and is seen as a good police officer in the work that he's doing and then suddenly someone comes forward

and says actually he's been abusive towards me, there's an inclination amongst some of his colleagues to cover up. Also today we'll answer questions about the safety of vaccines like MMR and the flu jab and a young woman called Emily Simmons talks about her recovery from mental illness. I just went completely into myself and I would come home from school and I would go upstairs and just sit by the radiator and I had no idea what was going on inside my head. More from Emily and from her dad as well later in this edition of the programme. First of all, Dame Helen Mirren is currently co-starring with Sir Ian McKellen in a new film called The Good Liar, based on a novel by Nicholas Searle.

Helen is a retired teacher, recently widowed, who's trying a bit of online dating. Ian plays the con man she meets. But it's not that simple. A film that starts behind the neck curtains of English suburbia takes you to post-war Berlin and you're never entirely sure who is scamming who. Something I put to Dame Helen. On the face of it, this is a film about scamming and about women being had. Turns out not to be as simple as that. But are you right? You couldn't be scammed, could you? You're far too savvy. I have been scammed. I was scammed. I was so embarrassed about it. And that's that's a terrible thing, isn't it? When you're scammed, you're so mortified

that you really don't tell anyone because it's so embarrassing, humiliating. There's hardly anyone listening. So you can tell me. Yeah, Of course. Oh, it was one of those things when they... It was to do with so-called... It was in America, and I had won a prize, you know. And they did it brilliantly, and I was suspicious. And they said, oh, you know, and they said, I've got her, I've got her.

And this is the phone, when I picked up the phone. They said, I've got her, I've got her I've got her oh we're so excited to tell you you've won this prize I said if I how the only caveat why didn't I realize was was in order to get the prize I had to send the money ah you know and in return they would send and did, it wasn't like I didn't get anything. They sent these things, weird things, like a 3D camera, I remember, and a sort of fake diamond tennis bracelet. Just sort of weird things. But I was suspicious and I said, where are you phoning from?

And were the units, the company, or where is it based? We're based in New Orleans. I said, oh, what address? And they gave me an address. I said, oh, that's interesting, because I know it was true. I happen to be coming to New Orleans next week. So I'll pop in and see you, sort of thing. And they sort of went all a bit pear-shaped when i said that but did

they know who you were they didn't know it was you no no you could have been anyone i could have been i was sort of anyone if you yeah yeah no absolutely but yes i was scammed definitely so you know and i think one is scammed more often than one realizes as well well i was going to ask you about that um as we go through life we discover that perhaps there were questions we ought to have asked a long time ago that we are now asking about the way women are treated for example. Like pay. I mean it was sort of notorious and well known in my industry that women were paid a fraction of what the men were paid. Meryl Streep has always often talked about it quite rightfully. The explanation was always, well, cinema is driven by men, boys actually.

And it is true to a certain extent. It used to be anyway. I don't know so much anymore. But the people who get up and go out to the cinema are boys between the ages of 16 and 26. So the cinema industry to a certain extent, not everything, of course, a young couple are going out on a date, sort of 18, 19-year-olds, they're going to see the movie the boy wants to see. They won't go and see the movie that the girl wants to see. And I found that very depressing. And apparently that's still the case. So anyway, that was always the explanation for why the male stars always got paid more than the female stars.

Do you know when you were last ripped off? Financially, no. No, I don't, because the other thing is you don't know how much your co-star is being paid. Well, that means I've got to ask you about Sir Ian McKellen. He's a knight, you're a dame. You're a big star, he's a big star. You're both great actors.

Who got paid more? I have no idea. I suspect we both got paid the same, honestly. Could you ask him? star, he's a big star, you're both great actors. Who got paid more? I have no idea. I suspect we both got paid the same, honestly. Could you ask him? Yes, I could. Yes, I could. Absolutely. Can you go and ask him now?

I will, but honestly, I can't remember how much I was paid at this point. Brilliant. So, you know, certain films, honestly, you don't do in that way for the money. And I suspect, do you remember, there was that very cataclysmic moment when Michelle Williams was paid literally something like $1,000 to do a reshoot on a movie. And her co-star was paid a million. Because that was all to do with her looking at the work as work.

How can I say this? It was an act of generosity on her part, it seemed to me, of I want to support the film. And there's nothing wrong with that attitude, is there? There's nothing wrong with that attitude, exactly. I think there's something wrong with the attitude that says, you need me, I've got you over a barrel. Pay me.

Pay me. And, you know, so I don't want to criticise her. I'm not criticising her for that, but it was a shocking disparity. But as much as anything, it was a disparity of attitude. See, people listening to this will think, well, you'd be the first to admit it, a very well-paid woman. I am a well-paid woman. What are these two old biddies witching on about money for? This isn't relevant to real women's lives. But it is because if women like you the huge disparity in the appreciation of women's expertise and you know just think of making a shirt i i sew i i love to make my own clothes

very badly incidentally i'm a terrible um useless but I love the process. But, you know, it's very difficult to turn a collar, to put in a placket, to put in a zip. It's really expertise and why that incredible, agile expertise of women is so undervalued. Women have a part to play here, don't they, in supporting other women in their work. Men are great at supporting other men. Women sometimes, well, we know this, can be unnecessarily carpy. What would you say about that? Women being carpy. About each other, not supporting each other to the degree that perhaps we should do. It's tough when you're in a world that is where you're constantly unemployed.

You know, it's not like you're in a job and you've got a job for even for five years. You've got it maybe for three months, maybe for two weeks. You come in, you do the job and you're off. And now you're looking for the next job. So it's quite hard, A, to get a grip on what's going on in general on that job. And I think women, as soon as they were given the opportunity, if you like, to support each other, they started doing it. But, you know, it's really hard to say I support women, camera women, when there are no camera women. And there still aren't. Well, it's coming. That's definitely coming it's really that's a huge change that i've seen um how many female directors have

you worked with actually very few i've only worked with one and that that's an enormous change that's happened both in the theater and in film huge Huge, huge change. I mean, when I was in the theatre up to not that many years ago, there were very, very, very few, if any, sort of female theatre directors. And it's fantastic to see that change. And I know you've talked about women like Phoebe Waller-Bridge who appear to be absolutely in charge of their own destiny and their own careers and calling the shots right from the start. You wouldn't have seen that either, would you, 20 years ago? No, no, absolutely not.

And I think that was, you know, to a certain extent, our failing, my failing, and our, you know, me as a part of a generation and a group of people who, as much as we might, as you say, carp about it, it's very difficult to carp, isn't it? When the culture is against you, you're shouting into a void. But I believe in shouting. I didn't think I did believe in shouting when I was young honestly but I've realised getting older that shouting is very important

and it's those women who make themselves Greta you know young Greta it's the girls and the women who stand up there and they shout and we saw it with the suffragettes actually shouting matters you have to make yourself unpopular and unattractive stand up there and they shout. And we saw it with the suffragettes, actually. Shouting matters. You have to make yourself unpopular and unattractive and annoying and irritating and everything.

Would you have thought, when you first got the DCI Tennyson job, because it's actually against the law to interview Helen Mirren without mentioning prime suspect, so I have got to, and it's much beloved of many of our listeners. Might you have imagined when you got that role, because I gather there was a certain amount of disquiet about a woman detective being at the centre of a big TV show, would you have thought that you'd have been... You are the draw in major Hollywood films like The Good Liar. Me and Ian.

You and your friend Ian, yes, and you both are the same. But you know what I mean? You might not have predicted that, might you? your friend Ian, yes. And you both are the same. But you know what I mean? You might not have predicted that, might you? No, no, absolutely. And Linda LaPlante, you know, Linda has done a great deal for women in drama, women characters. Before Prime Suspect, she wrote Widows. And she was out there um the disquiet if you like was the powers that be at granada or itv who were not at all sure that a woman led a single woman led drama would that

the audience would buy it and in the end you're in an economic world you know what you're putting out there has got to be bought but of course course, as is often the case, the powers that be, the bureaucracy is a few steps behind what's happening in the world. Dame Helen Mirren, and if you'd like to see her new film, it's called The Good Liar, and it's out right now. Is this the end of the smear test? There were lots of headlines this week about the new DIY home urine or swab test that could potentially help more women discover whether they're at risk of cervical cancer. This new method could be used as an alternative to the smear test and you wouldn't need to go to the doctors. Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London, asked 600 women to

provide self-collected samples for screening. I talked to Imogen Pinnell, who is a health information manager at Joe's Cervical Cancer Trust. It's great that everyone's getting so excited. We're obviously really excited to see these advances as well, but I think what's important to remember is that this is brand new research that's come out today about the urine testing. We need to have further research to make sure that the evidence is as robust as possible to make sure it is the right test. So for now, we're going to continue with the traditional way of cervical screening. But in the future, certainly we hope to see self-sampling come in. So 600 women have already done this. What precisely did they do?

So what researchers were looking at was whether a urine self-sample, so weeing in a cup essentially, could then be tested to show if there are cell changes in the cervix. So if they can detect that someone already has those cell changes, which means we then know which women are at higher risk of going on to develop cervical cancer. And that test obviously can be done in the comfort of your own home. It doesn't need to be done in a doctor's surgery because you can send that sample off yourself. Now, I don't know whether you've seen the front page of the Mail. Their headline is, is this the end of smear tests?

And then underneath it says, new procedure will let women send off swab to check for cervical cancer, avoiding ordeal of going to the doctors. Now, for me, that is for a start. I've had a smear test relatively recently. Not pleasant. I don't think it would come into the category of an ordeal. What do you think about the language? I mean, look, we do need to be mindful of the language we're using around any kind of health test, really, because the most important thing is that it's beneficial for people and it could be beneficial for their health.

And it's for them to decide if it's right for them. But we do need to big up the benefits of this test. So using that kind of language may not be so helpful. The thing that we want to make sure of is that the people who haven't already been invited, they're not immediately put off. And for people who do have difficulties with the test, we're not kind of saying, yes, it's going to be awful. Instead, we should be focusing on, okay, if you find the test difficult, there are ways to make it better. And how can we at Joe's Cervical Cancer Trust particularly support you in making that test better for you? Are you concerned, though, that when people see headlines like this they might think well I won't go for one of those very painful sounding smear

tests because I'll just hang on and in the end I'll just be able to pee in the toilet at home it won't be a problem? Yeah we are definitely concerned and I think that's why we need to get the message across that this research is brilliant and it's so promising. And we do hope to see self-sampling in the future, whether that's a vaginal swab or whether that's a urine sample off the back of this research. But right now, the test that we have is very effective. And there are ways, if you find it uncomfortable, which we know a lot of women do, there are ways to make that better. Yeah, we should say as well that sometimes you have to acknowledge

the person carrying out the smear test. Some of them, quite simply, are brilliant at their job and it's as painless as it could possibly be. Absolutely. And we hear all sorts of experiences. Look, we hear from women who have no problem with it and would go automatically every time because they've always had that great experience. We hear from other women who, you know, maybe they've had a previous bad experience. Maybe they've had some trauma in their past. Maybe they have another condition that makes it more painful. And so it's these people who do find it difficult that we want to reach out to and say, well, let's have a think about some things that might support you. Maybe it is a smaller speculum. Maybe it's just taking

someone that you trust to calm those nerves. And there are a number of things that could help. Imogen Pinnell from Joe's Cervical Cancer Trust and her points there are echoed by a listener called Angela who says if somebody is peri or post-menopausal a GP or nurse practitioner can prescribe some local hormones to be taken the week before a smear and it does genuinely help it to be much more comfortable. Also from experience says, choosing somebody you trust who's kind and will talk you through it makes a world of difference. Thank you for that, Angela. You are lucky, I know, if you have your smear test carried out by someone who is just really good at their job. It certainly helps.

Kate says, ordeal is the right word for cervical smear tests for some of us. The past three for me have been really painful and I have got a high pain threshold. It's due, I imagine, to early menopause and dryness. It is an invasive procedure and absolutely it is an ordeal. I am thrilled at the prospect of an alternative. Thanks to everybody who contacted us on that subject. 700 cases of alleged domestic abuse involving police officers and staff were reported over a three-year period up to April last year. This comes from a Freedom of Information request made by the Bureau of

Investigative Journalism. A super complaint is now being launched against the police looking into the culture in certain forces that may allow officers to abuse partners without fear of arrest or prosecution. Harriet Wistrich is a lawyer and co-founder like the Centre for Women's Justice, to make a complaint about a trend or a pattern in policing. In particular? Yes, so across the board. So normally complaints against the police are directed at misconduct or issues about individual officers and this is really looking at a policing matter as a whole,

an issue across the board that raises concerns about the way in which policing is dealing with an issue. You say you have 16 cases where women have made allegations of domestic abuse and sexual violence against an officer only for the case to be dropped and on occasion for the alleged victim to be arrested and intimidated. Can you tell us more about these women? We started off with one or two cases and then gradually others emerged. Some of the women

have been married to or in relationships with police officers. Others were police officers themselves who form relationships with police officers, usually more senior police officers. All were subjected to different levels of domestic abuse, ranging from sexual violence, coercive and controlling behaviour, or sometimes after relationships break up, stalking and harassment. Those are the sorts of different allegations that the cases that we have been looking at involve. It doesn't come as the greatest surprise to me that police officers investigating themselves or any organisation investigating itself is problematic. with getting police to investigate properly. And victims are also sometimes manipulated in a way in which abusers kind of present themselves as the more, you know, if police officers called out

to a particular domestic abuse incident, the alleged perpetrator appears calm and sometimes the police end up arresting the victim. Now, where that person is also a police officer, they kind of often are able to use their credibility as a police officer to be even more convincing that they're not the ones. It's this woman who's completely mad and is kicking off that that's that's the problem. And so that that's one of the patterns that we see and also we see that within a police culture, particularly within certain police forces we've seen, the officers who are friends of the officer, if this particular officer who's alleged to be an abuser is a credible chap and is seen as a good police officer

in the work that he's doing, and then suddenly someone comes forward and says, actually, he's been abusive towards me. You know, there's an inclination amongst some of his colleagues to cover up and to believe him rather than the woman who's been making the accusations. Which would embolden that person. Yes. We are going to hear from two women. Both were police officers in this case, although one's now left. They are part of your super complaint, but they're also fundraising to take a civil case against Gwent police.

Why? Well, they were two of a number of women who made allegations of abuse against this particular police officer in Gwent. He was a very experienced police officer who specialised in training probationers, and it appears that what he did was use his position as a sort of kind of charismatic leading kind of trainer to kind of form relationship with young rookies. And then once they were in the relationship, his behaviour turned abusive.

And it seems that he continued to do that. And there were officers who were concerned and even warned, you know, one of the women off getting involved. But at that stage, at the early stage, they were very enamored with him. And it was only once they were drawn into the relationship. It took many, many years before eventually this officer, he was never actually charged with a criminal offence, but the pattern of behaviour was such that eventually the professional standards, new professional standards came in and he underwent misconduct proceedings. So he resigned from Gwent Police, didn't he, before the hearing? The hearing went ahead. He didn't attend the hearing.

In his absence, yeah. And he was found guilty in his absence. And he appealed, didn't he? And that was unsuccessful. Yeah, OK. The evidence was very strong. We are calling these two women Sarah and Jodie. They've been voiced by actors and the interview you're about to hear

was recorded by Rory Carson, who is a Wales reporter for Five Live. Here it is. It was relentless. It felt like I was just being stalked and watched. And then again, he would do something really nice for me and I would think, oh, he's not that bad. And he was just switching between this monster. Was there a point when you felt scared?

There were lots of occasions when I felt scared. This is a man who had a gun at his house. When I told him I didn't want that gun around me, he then decided to keep it out in the house. So one night we were actually sat watching TV on separate sofas and he was looking down the side of the gun, pointing it straight at me. He would also then put it in the bed so when I'd pull back the covers the gun would be in there. It was almost as if it was like just a warning, like I've got this. He's held knives to my throat, he used to swish a knife across my face. He would just look me straight in the eye and be doing that as if, as if I could do this to you right now, but I won't today, you know? It was May 2012. I couldn't take it anymore. I tried changing my mobile number. He was contacting me via email. He was turning up outside my house.

Every single day I had something in the post, something different. Poems, CDs that he had made with a description of every song and why that song related to me. I was in the middle of a shift and I went back. My sergeants weren't expecting to see me. So when they said, oh, how are you back? I just broke down. And that's the first time I disclosed to my superior officers,

who were fantastic. And when we discussed what I wanted done, and I said I wanted him to leave me alone, let me do my job in peace. I wrote a report. I believe that went to professional standards. I then received an update when my inspector called me back in to report that he'd been given a harassment warning. Didn't hear anything from that.

What does that harassment order state? So basically that would state that you're not going to contact the victim directly or indirectly. So that includes via third parties. And the consequence of breaking that is? Well, they should be arrested. Should he not have been suspended while an investigation of this severity was conducted? Absolutely. He wasn't suspended until years later, when the other allegation came out. Your relationship begins, and it starts off quite well, quite normal.

When did things start to change? Only a couple of weeks in. What happened? A lot of things. If I wanted to get out of the house because I was scared of him, he would pin me down to the point of I'd have bruises on my hands. On the occasion I tried to leave the house, I was just going to get a taxi home.

I'd had enough that night. I needed to go. He literally grabbed hold of me, threw me across his bed, pinned me down, had hold of my face and was just holding my head down on the bed to the point where I was screaming at him, get off, get off, get off. He wouldn't budge and I hate spitting but I had to spit in his face to get me off him and that kind of made him even angrier but I was like, I can't deal with this anymore. We had finished in the September of 2014.

That's just under two years. So then you get to a point where you say that this can't happen to anyone else. So then who do you speak to? I speak to my sergeant and my inspector. What happened then? He was suspended on this occasion, but they didn't interview him for a year. And that was on a voluntary basis. This investigation went on for four years.

Is that a normal amount of time for an investigation like this? It is. And he was on full pay the entire time. And if, for example, a woman or a friend came to you and told you some of the stuff that you've just told me, as a police officer, what would your response be? The first thing you need to do before any thought of prosecution is safeguard the victim. So whether that be remove her physically from where she is, take her to somewhere safe. And then we're looking down the

lines of the criminal prosecution. So we would be looking to arrest the perpetrator. And at any point, did you think that your rights were safeguarded, as you put it? No, we were both victimised and bullied. We were both walked past in the corridors of the police station. I was called liar by colleagues, again, inverted commas. If he'd been dealt with properly when she put a y sefydliad polis, roeddwn i'n cael fy nghyfrif gan fy nghyfrif cydweithredol, eto, os oedd wedi cael ei ddelio â'i gilydd pan roedd hi'n rhoi'r cwmniant i mewn a gael ei ddelio â'r cyhoedd yn fath o unrhyw un o'r cyhoedd, byddai wedi cael ei ddysgu ac ei ddysgu o ran y ffurf yma yn blynyddoedd a chymryd, a byddai'n cael ei gael ei brynu. Ac yn realistig, byddai'n debyg ei fod wedi gwneud rhyw bryd y tu ôl barau i breidio'r ordd ymarfer, a byddai'n ddim wedi fynd i

ddynnu'n ddyn nesaf, oherwydd byddai wedi cael ei ddysgu, ei ddysgu y tu ôl barau time behind bars for breaching that harassment order, which never would have led me to become his next victim, because he would have been arrested, prosecuted, behind bars, and not have been a police officer allowed to be in that position of responsibility, training young women who had just joined the police force. Rory Carson there, Wales reporter for Five Live, talking to two women we're calling Sarah and Jodie, who are voiced by actors. Gwent police say,

we expect all our officers and staff to act in accordance with the code of ethics and the standards of professional behaviour at all times. It's right that anyone who doesn't adhere to these standards is held accountable and the appropriate action is taken. Harriet, essentially, is this to do with systemic problems about how the process of reporting police officers for abuse and this, if I can call it a boys club that protects officers? Yes, I mean, that's essentially what we're looking at in this super complaint, which we're currently compiling.

So we haven't submitted it yet and we haven't drawn all the conclusions from the evidence that we're looking at. We've heard from these two women who were themselves police officers and a number of the women we're hearing from were also police officers, but we also hear from quite a number of women who weren't police officers who had relationships with police officers. And one of the huge issues for them, and some of the stories the woman has never complained to the police because she's fearful that she won't be taken seriously. And he's used his position to say, no one will believe you.

I'm a police officer. Those that have, have experienced, you know, sometimes they've gone to somebody and said, look, he's behaving like this. And they said, well, you know, don't worry, I'll have a word with him, but nothing changes. Or, you know, they're not investigated. They don't feel confident in one of the cases which i have dealt with it's it's over some time the woman reported it but she was too fearful to take the allegations forward but wanted the evidence recorded that evidence a number of years later just disappeared but because of the way that she had been dealt with by the police and afterwards, he also got his mates to harass her and her boyfriend, like stopping a subsequent boyfriend when he was driving and so on.

So there was a sort of a wider kind of harassment campaign after she split up with him. But she then went on to suffer a further rape, a date rape by somebody else. And she was too fearful to report it. So it has longer term consequences. To end on a positive though, the fact we are talking about it now and the fact that the Victims Commissioner has written to the Home Secretary about it. We heard this yesterday. It sounds like it's being taken seriously now. This is something that has to be looked at and it's an issue that has been has arisen before. We hope that the super complaint will look at and make recommendations for changes so that reporting can be done with confidence and so officers can be held properly to account.

Harriet Wistrich talking to Tina Dehealy and you also heard from Sarah and from Jodie and we had this email from a listener called Pauline. My experience is that police officers know how to get away with this behaviour. My two daughters, aged four and nine at the time, and I were taken to a women's refuge because of the behaviour of my husband, their father, who was a police constable. He's never been held to account for his violence, coercive control and psychological threats. I know he used his police uniform to hide behind. I want my name to be used as I feel that we should stand up and be counted or how else can this disgusting behaviour be stopped unless we expose the truth instead of

allowing it to be another cover-up. Well obviously Pauline you did supply your full name but I'm sure you'll understand why we are not able to use it, use your name in its entirety. But we know who you are. And thank you for contacting the programme. Now, this is Women's Hour, weekend Women's Hour. And you might well be listening to this live or you could be listening to the podcast version. If you're listening live on Radio 4 on a Saturday afternoon, you don't have to miss out on a whole week of Women's Hour. You can just get Women's Hour via BBC Sounds in handy and very attractive podcast form. You can just subscribe via that app. BBC Sounds is the place to go. NHS data for 2018 to 19 showed that the uptake of the first dose of

MMR fell for the fifth year in a row. During 2018, there were nearly a thousand cases of measles, and that's more than double the number in 2016. On Thursday, Marnie Chesterton from the BBC Science Unit presented an edition of Woman's Hour about vaccinations. Helen Bedford was a guest. She's a former nurse and health visitor, and now Professor of Child Health at University College London and Great Ormond Street Hospital. Adam Finn is a Professor of Paediatrics at the Bristol Children's Vaccine Centre and Dr Tonya Thomas is from the Vaccine Knowledge Project at Oxford University. Adam was asked why the MMR is given as a combined vaccine and not as three single jabs. The truth is that with the vaccines that we have and give combined, we've far more experience of using them that way

than anyone has of giving them singly. And the more you use a vaccine, the more you can be confident about its safety. Once we've got to the point that countless millions of children have received a vaccine, it's almost impossible for there to be a side effect that we don't know about. And the threshold for safety in vaccines is very, very low. We're giving these drugs to healthy people. We can't afford for them to be making them sick. My children are all grown up now, but if I was in the position now of having my children around

the age of one year, on safety grounds alone, setting aside any issues of practicality, I would definitely be giving them combined because I would know and I'd be very confident that that was a safe thing to do just because it's been done so much before. So why was a lot of the research done into combined vaccines? Why not give them separately? Well, it's a much more efficient way of protecting children as young as possible. If you separate all these vaccines out, children will be very much older by the time they're protected. And one of the things you want to do with vaccination is not only have high uptake, but make sure children are protected as young as possible before they reach the age when they're at risk of severe disease.

Donya, do you know if there's any research into whether single or combined makes a difference? So there is in terms of the combined vaccines that we use more commonly, there's much more research to assess whether there are any side effects more likely by providing them in a combined form. One thing that I was going to mention is this is a common question that we get through our inquiry service at the Vaccine Knowledge Project. And I think it's important to understand why people are asking this question. You know, why do people think that it is safer to have single vaccines compared with the combined ones?

Babies and children are exposed to many, many different germs every day, you know, often millions, and actually giving them all of these vaccines, it's only a fraction of, you know, the viruses that they would be exposed to. So around a thousandth of the germs they'd be experiencing every day. So we're not actually overloading the immune system at all. And there is lots of scientific evidence to show that. And I think it's important that we find out the reasons that the people are asking these questions and address these concerns with them. And can I move on to the contents of these vaccines? So it's not just an attenuated form of the disease. There's a number of our listeners were quite concerned about additives. So listener Dorcas mentions mercury, aluminium, formaldehyde, and the substances that vaccines are cultured on. That doesn't sound good. What's going on there? Additives may be slightly the wrong word.

It sort of suggests they've been added in for no good reason. Vaccines do contain, for example, aluminium salts, but they contain them for a very good reason. And that is that the aluminium salts greatly enhance the immune response that the vaccine provides. So it makes the vaccine much more effective. It's a very deliberate additive, if you want to call it that, because it's an adjuvant, which is a compound that makes the vaccine more effective. And just about all of the non-live vaccines that have been given around the world for decades now to countless, countless millions

of children contain aluminium salts. They're extremely safe. By giving something a chemical name, you can make it sound spooky and make it sound dangerous. But actually, the truth is that these are deliberate ingredients, which I think is the right word, that either make the vaccine more effective or make it more safe by making certain that it's not contaminated with other infections that could make the child sick or they're part of the production process that enables the vaccine to be consistent and effective these are not sort of accidental things that are in there that are contaminating the vaccine their ingredients just as you have the ingredients when you make an apple pie they're all there for a reason can i focus in on the aluminium just for a bit? Because I mean, I have friends who've changed their deodorant because they didn't want aluminium in their deodorant. And yet when I

was reading up, I was surprised to find how much aluminium is actually in everything and out in nature. Tanya? There is aluminium in everything in, you know, the food we take in the drinks around in the environment. And I think one thing that we need to remember with the ingredients that are contained in vaccines is the amount and the context. So, you know, there are lots of things that we encounter in our day to day lives that could be a risk to us if we were to have too much of it. Water is a good example of that. But we need to remember that the amounts contained in these vaccines are very, very small. So, for example, one of the ingredients you mentioned was formaldehyde, and that's used in the process of actually making the vaccine itself. And sometimes there will be remnants left in the vaccine. But formaldehyde actually occurs

naturally in the body and also in other things that we eat. So, for example, a pear contains about 50 times the amount of formaldehyde than is contained in any single vaccine. So it's about, you know, the context and making sure that, you know, we're talking about the amounts rather than just the ingredients themselves. That is my new pub quiz fact. Thank you very much. What keeps coming up again and again is this sense that people either weren't told about the side effects or they weren't given a full picture of the negative consequences, or if they felt their child had had a reaction, they just weren't taken seriously. You can kind of understand why people sort of feel there might be a conspiracy going on.

You know, it's in the pay of Big Pharma or whatever. It's very dismissive of their concerns. Adam? Well, there isn't a single answer to that question because it's a complicated set of situations. I mean, the first thing to say is that everything bad that happens after a vaccine is not necessarily the cause of the vaccine. Sometimes there'll be a causal link and sometimes it's something that is unexplained. But the vaccine really wasn't responsible. But I think we're all very narrative. That's how the human species works. And until the 18th century, that's how we understood the world. And so when your child gets sick after a vaccine, it's logical to assume that that was the cause. But that aside, I think the other, this is more in Tonya's territory than mine in a way it's around communication i think some people really want a lot more information around the potential side effects before they

make a decision and many people don't they really just want a trusted person to to get to advise them what they should be doing they say well this is not something i'm an expert on uh i trust you you're my doctor you're my nurse uh tell me what you think I should do and I'll follow that advice. And they don't want a whole lot of additional information that might, I don't know, just make it more difficult for them to decide what to do. Tonya, is this just a problem with the setup of how we give vaccines in this country? I think in an ideal world, we'd have a longer appointment for giving vaccines so that, you know, healthcare professionals have the opportunity to be able to have these conversations with patients. But unfortunately, that's, you know, it's not possible with the current system that we have. So we have to provide the information in other methods so that people can find out this

for themselves. And that's one of the reasons we have websites like the Vaccine Knowledge Project, which tries to explain all of this scientific evidence in a way that people can understand. And I think we need to try and encourage people to access this information before they make the decisions. And we have to respect that people do want to see both sides before coming to the decision themselves. Tonya Thomas, Adam Finn and Helen Bedford. Now last Friday we broadcast a programme from BBC Music Live Introducing about getting in and getting on in the music industry. And on Friday, yesterday if you're listening on Saturday afternoon, we heard a live performance from one artist who's had great support from BBC Introducing, rising soul star Celeste. Phil Taggart was one of the first DJs on BBC Introducing to pick up one of my pieces of music and since then the support has been quite overwhelming and I'm really grateful for it.

Annie Mack has been supporting and DJ Target from One Extra has been one of my biggest champions too. And you need champions, don't you? Because you can't kick-start a career in music unless you've got people who are on your side 100 it helps a great deal to have people who are respected to say i like this and this is something i actually listen to and also once you get that encouragement that must bore you up and give you much more confidence to keep going 100 i think the acknowledgement just kind of encourages you and motivates you to carry on.

And yeah, something I really appreciate. And when did you first start performing? Well, there were different points growing up where I realised I could sing. I think as young as 10 years old, I went to a dance school every weekend. And one of the teachers... You sound faintly embarrassed about that. Yeah, it was embarrassing. We've all been to dance school. It's all right.

Yeah, one of the teachers, she was called Miss Ross, and she was the singing teacher. She sort of heard my voice, I think, in the corridor, and she mentioned it to my mum, and then a few months later I went there full-time on a scholarship. And so that was one of the moments where I realised that maybe my talent was different to some of the children around me my age. But still, it wasn't something that I really pushed until I was about 18 and I could make that decision by myself really.

How old are you now? 25. Right so and what have you done in the intervening years then? Well initially I just was writing by myself and I would put my music on YouTube and I'd put it on SoundCloud and all those places which were sort of my era of music and making music. And I started to collaborate with other writers too and during that time some of my songs were picked up by some other producers which was really cool for me actually because it just gave me a little bit more time to work out what I wanted to be for myself. And then in the last two and a half years, I started to release more of my own music.

What I noticed about the track that you're going to play for us live was just how you are very young. How world-weary you sound. Sort of as though you've been really emotionally, you've been through the mill. I've always sort of written from that place from a really young age. But I only really started writing from a place of heartache and yeah so that's kind of the way it carried on. Have you written any upbeat jaunty stuff? Yeah there is some but I mean. You're a companyist Dominic is having a laugh at that. Because he plays all my shows with me so he knows there's really not that much.

OK, I'm going to challenge you to write a happy tune or song at some point in the next decade, if you can. Yeah, yeah. See if you can. Just tell us a bit about this song. This is Strange. I wrote this around this time last year, and I was actually working in America at the time in various different

studios and one afternoon we were driving from Silver Lake to Westwood so it was quite a long drive about an hour and a half and I was really thinking that day about what I should write about and what I wanted to write about and on the way as we were approaching the studio we saw this huge plume of black smoke in the sky and it was from all of these wildfires and forest fires and we turned on the radio to hear a bit more about what was going on and we heard all of these stories of people that had sort of had to move from their homes and possessions that they'd owned for generations that they'd lost and I think that kind of made me think about my own experience of loss and I went into the studio that day and wrote this song so yeah

I tried for you tried to see through all the smoke but As he threw out the smoke butt He wouldn't move Quite a privilege to be actually in the room with Celeste performing Strange on Friday's edition of Woman's Hour. Now back in June, Woman's Hour did a series about teenage mental health. We talked to

young people, to their parents, teachers and to health professionals. You can hear all that via BBC Sounds or just search for Teenage Mental Health and Woman's Hour in any browser. On Tuesday's programme of this week, I talked to Emily Simmons and to her dad, Mark. Mark has written a book called Breakdown and Repair. Mark had been a very high-flying Unilever executive and then he had a really serious period of poor mental health. His daughter Emily became anorexic just after she'd done her GCSEs. It was a really stressful time at school and things had in my head got got more serious at school and I was studying um a close uh dance teacher who I was very close to passed away quite suddenly and it was almost like everything in my life suddenly

became out of control um and I I didn't know I didn't know what to do and I think I kept everything quite bottled up in my head and I found something that I could control which was my eating um and it it was strange it kind of came from nowhere. And I hadn't ever met anyone who had had an eating disorder before. So for a long time, I didn't know what was going on. And I didn't really know how to express myself and how to talk about it. And it quite quickly became much more serious. And yes, I just started reducing my intake and and one thing led to

another and it got got very serious quite quickly I know you now understand the impact of all this on the rest of the family your mum Mel has already been mentioned you've got two brothers one older and one younger how how was it for them it was really tough um my my older brother was when I started to get quite bad he was was away at university, which was a blessing in disguise. I think it meant he wasn't around it. He wasn't around the arguments and he didn't see my decline. But my younger brother, he was, you know, he must have been 14 at the time. And he was at home and had to listen to everything and I think for him at the start he really didn't understand what was going on and he'd seen me so happy and full of life and playing sports all the time and suddenly just a complete change in my personality and I remember we just stopped talking. I mean, I stopped talking to everyone really.

Including your dad? Yeah, including dad. I just went completely into myself. And I would come home from school and I would go upstairs and just sit by the radiator. And on my own, I had no idea what was going on inside my head. Something, it was... Did you, sorry to interrupt, but did you know how unwell your dad had been? At the time, no.

I was quite young when dad first went through um his breakdown I think I must have been about four and I think I now know and I now understand it obviously a lot better but at the time I just remember I remember him being very quiet and very reserved and we we kind of would go on family holidays and we would all laugh around and we'd all be chatting. And then it got to a point where this dad was locked away in his office. And that was just something that I guess I didn't really understand at the time. And, you know, as the years went on, I learned more about it. But even only more recently do I really know how tough it got.

I mean, I think the good news was that the kids were quite young at the time. So I think it was Jack, two, Emily sort of four or five and Will was seven and I remember about sort of six months ago when I started sort of finishing off the book I went to Will and said Will I'm just intrigued to know do you have any

recollection of that time because as a dad I just almost wanted him to say no I completely have no recollection whatsoever and Will said because he was the eldest said actually I'd hardly remember a thing to be honest dad so and I kind of breathed the big sigh of relief at that time. Because of your own experience of mental health did you believe that gave you a special connection to Emily in some way or even a responsibility for her? Well I think I mean to answer the second bit for even a responsibility for her? Well, I think, I mean, to answer the second bit,

for sure a responsibility because there was no more space in the house for any more mental illness, so to speak. So I had to look after her along with Mel and Will and Jack. But I think that what I could bring to the party, so to speak, was I had an understanding of what Emily was going through. So when I looked into her eyes, I could sort of understand the feelings of desperation and of complete lack of hope. And so what it gave me was an ability to empathise with what she was thinking, what she was feeling,

and in a sense, sort of speak the language of irrational, if that makes sense. Well, I have to say, the person who emerges from this book although she she doesn't feature all that much is mel your mum your wife mark um and i if i was going to categorize myself i'd probably a bit of a mel i too am from planet rational um and you obviously go along with your dad's thinking here do you i do sadly but also i suppose that's a good thing but no we um mum mum is very rational and that made things really difficult for us um for for me to be able to speak to her which is so sad because before I got unwell we were as close as you can get as mother and daughter um talking all the time I'd come home from school and we chat about anything and everything and when I started to get unwell

because she was so rational and she could see what was happening to me but couldn't understand why, we just clashed. And our relationship went through a really tough time. And I think she just wanted me to understand it, but I was in a place where I couldn't. And I couldn't understand what I was feeling, so I wasn't then able to talk to her about it and she would say things like if you're not you

know if you if you don't gain weight you're going to die and in my head there's just I couldn't I couldn't understand that and I almost didn't care it was at a point where she would say things and it would just make me angry and then we would have arguments and we just clashed and it was it was really tough. We have talked a lot in the past about anorexia on this programme and other eating disorders. They are awful. And when you are in the midst of what you were going through, you are in the grip of something over which you have absolutely no control.

You are here, you are 23. You had some ups and downs along the way. How would you assess your own situation right now? I couldn't tell you how happy I am right now. It was a really tough journey and it was something that I would never wish upon anyone. But I have learnt so much about myself and I'm a much stronger person because of everything

that I've been through and it is something it completely as you said it just it takes over your whole life and you are engulfed by this horrible thing that is controlling you but it's something that now I've learned to live with and I am living my life to the full and I've got a really great job and amazing friends who stuck by me through everything and I am living my life to the full and I've got a really great job amazing friends who stuck by me through everything and I think my relationship with my mum and obviously with dad as well is so much stronger because of it Well can I ask about the role of the mother in particular because this is Women's Hour obviously

what could a mother do in those circumstances? It's hard because you can tell you can see what our mom wants to do she wants to just cure and wants to fix and make everything better so you know telling you to eat and telling you all the things that you should hear but actually for someone who is going through inner torment it's just basically being there to offer support and to give you a hug and basically let you cry. And I suppose just giving emotional support as well as guidance and making sure that the daughter knows or son knows that everything is going to be OK, because it really is. And you can come through it. I hope that really encourages anybody listening who's going through a tough time.

Emily and Mark Simmons. And Emily is now working for ITV in daytime telly. And honestly, she claiming to be ill, but you're not absolutely certain they are. The Art of Copping a Sickie on Women's Hour on Monday morning. Have a very good weekend. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. There was somebody out there who's 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.