Woman's Hour - Katie Brayben, Maternal deaths, Fangirls

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Katie Brayben is a two-time Olivier award winner for Best Actress in A Musical for Tammy Faye and Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. Now she is reprising the role of Elizabeth Laine in Girl From the North Country currently on stage at the Old Vic in London. Katie joins Anita Rani to explain what has drawn her back to this role.A third of women who died during or in the year after pregnancy were known to children’s social care, according to new research. The study by Kings College London, Oxford University and the charity Birth Companions, examined the data of nearly 1,400 women who died between 2014 and 2022. In particular, they looked at the 420 known to social services, half of those women died by suicide or from substance-related causes. Anita discusses the research with Kaat De Backer, Researcher King’s College London and Amy Van Zyl, Chief Executive, Her Circle.From Frank Sinatra to the Beatles, many of the biggest male stars built their early careers on the romantic appeal to young women. Bea Martinez-Gatell is author of Swoon, Fangirls, Their Idols And The Counterculture of Female Lust – From Byron To The Beatles. She joins Anita to explain that far from passive consumers, fangirls were actually tastemakers, visionaries and cultural disruptors.Actor Jane Birkin's original Hermes Birkin has sold for £7.4 million pounds - becoming the most valuable handbag to ever be sold at auction. What makes the bag so iconic? Justine Picardie, writer and former editor in chief of Harpers Bazaar, and Marisa Meltzer, who has written It Girl: The Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin, join Anita to discuss the story behind the bag and what makes a fashion accessory so alluring.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. deal ratings and price history. So you know a great deal when you see one. That's cargurus.ca. Cargurus.ca. BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani 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. Good morning and welcome to the programme. How much have you, would you pay for a bag? How about £7.4 million? Of course, this is no ordinary bag. This is the original Birkin bag designed by Hermes for singer and actor Jane Birkin, which was auctioned in Paris

yesterday, becoming the most expensive fashion accessory sold at auction in Europe. We'll be hearing the story of the Birkin today. We'll also roll out the red carpet for musical theatre royalty, two-time Olivier Award-winning Katie Brabham will be with me, telling me why she's back playing Elizabeth Lane in Girl from the North Country which is on at the Old Vic in London. All the music from this excellent play is by Bob Dylan and as an extra treat for us on this sunny Friday, Katie will be singing live. And then we're going to be discussing fan girls. Far from being silly, swooning, screaming teenagers, they are today, thanks to writer Bea Martinez-Gatell's new book Swoon, firmly taking their place in feminist history. So this morning I'd like you all to think back and tell me who your teenage

obsession was and what lengths you went to to feel closer to the object of those raging hormones. Did you get the Beatles haircut? How many times did you see Wham! Did you faint at a brass concert? Did you wear tartan and stripey socks for a year in honor of the Bay City Rollers? Come on, how many of you out there have got a tattoo that your mother still knows nothing about? Get in touch with the program in the usual way. The text number is 84844. You can remain anonymous.

You can also email the program by going to our website. And the WhatsApp number is 03700 100 444. And if you would like to follow us on social media it's at BBC Women's Hour and feel free to get in touch with us to share your experiences and stories of anything you hear on the programme today. That text number once again 84844. But first, a third of women who died during or in the year after pregnancy were known to children's social care, according to new research. The study by King's College London, Oxford University and the charity Birth Companions examined the data of just over 1,400 women who died between 2014 and 2022. And when they looked at those women known to social

services, half of those women died by suicide or psychiatric causes, including drug-related deaths. The authors say urgent changes are needed to prioritise and improve mother's care. Well, I'm joined by Kat DeBacker, a researcher from King's College London, the first author of the study, and Amy Van Zeel, Chief Executive of Her Circle, a support service for women in the North East, which supports women who have or are at risk of experiencing child removal. Kat and Amy, welcome to Woman's Hour. Kat, I'm going to come to you first. Why did you want to carry this research out?

So, when I was working as a midwife before I became a researcher I could see from clinical practice when I was providing midwifery care for these, for women in general, that those women that had particular vulnerabilities at the start of their pregnancy had subsequent involvement from children's social care just to make sure they had the right support in place by the time they would give birth to their baby. But I could also see having lots of professionals becoming involved in pregnancy was often very stressful when they already had stressful lives. And that led me to apply for some funding to do this piece of research. And then the shocking figures that you discovered.

Indeed. How many women? So we included women who died between 2014 and 2022, where we knew whether or not they had involvement from children's social care, either in pregnancy or the year after giving birth. What does that mean? They're known to social services so they have involvement. Who are we talking about here?

So when a professional in pregnancy identifies an indication that there might be a safeguarding risk to that baby once it's born, you have a duty of care as a professional to refer that unborn baby to children's Social Care at that stage. And then it's up to Children's Social Services to make an assessment whether or not that sort of identifier risk and that safeguarding risk is a realistic one and whether they need to come with interventions after that baby is born. And so that's why in pregnancy there's already a referral to children's social care for a number of women who have particular vulnerabilities

and that's what we mean with known to children social care. So these are women who are at risk of having their baby taken away or indeed did have their children taken away, babies taken away. So I think it's important to having your baby taken away is the far end of the sort of scale of interventions that can come. The vast majority of women who need support will have lower levels of support during pregnancy and postnatally. And I suppose the most shocking figure that comes out of this is those women who are known to social services in the system, half of them died

within a year. What were the causes of their deaths? So when we looked at the numbers, so we could see a third of all the women who died in the UK had involvement during pregnancy or the year after birth. And if we then looked at the causes of death amongst this, it was 420 women, we know that half of them had psychiatric causes of death, as you said, suicide or substance related deaths. And then we could also, for instance, see that they were more likely to die from homicide, from being murdered, than women who didn't have involvement. So if you look at all the causes of death amongst these women, the most common causes of death were preventable deaths, psychiatric causes

and homicide. I've got to ask the question, because I think some people might be thinking it, are you saying that there is a link between their deaths and being in contact with social care? No. So it's really important to make that clear. There's no, from what we've studied, we're not saying at all that involvement from children's social care is leading to the death of these women. Children's social care involvement is an indicator of vulnerability. These women have very vulnerable lives, very complex lives, juggling a lot of things. And those things and those complexities predate the pregnancy. These things don't

happen all of the sudden when women get pregnant. There are issues with poverty, housing, domestic abusive relationships, they all predate the pregnancy. But we also know pregnancy is a particular vulnerability for any woman. We all know that. That doesn't take rocket science to understand that in pregnancy those vulnerabilities are compounded, and particular for this group of women. I'm going to bring in one of your fellow authors of the study, Amy Van Zeel, who's chief executive of HerCircle. Amy, you run a support service for women in the Northeast who experience this kind of complex motherhood

that we're talking about. What would you make of the research? Thank you. Well just to say I'm not one of the core authors though I have worked with Kat in the past. Yes but we have worked together. I would say that this is representative of the women that we see in our service. We see women who experience complex motherhood and although this report doesn't say that social service involvement is causing the deaths, what we see is women become involved in social services, hear messages like, we're here for you, we want to work with you. And the women think that those messages mean that they are going to fix their problems.

So they attend meetings and they go to appointments and they wait for this fix to arrive, that never does. And actually what women need is the need other women, peer support, who can actually show them how to do this. And there's a real loss in those messages where women are in services. What we would like to see is more women in voluntary sector organisations in maternal commons where they are supported and they can get their needs met because currently what we have now after austerity is an assessment, social assessors.

What support do you provide and can you provide? What is it that they need? So we provide them with the space as an opportunity to make friends with other women who've already gone through the process and overcome the challenges that they're experiencing. We'll have domestic abuse programs, yoga classes, craft, art, so all holistic well-being. We also have advocacy that we can offer to the women to give them a real professional voice in these meetings and get their needs met because all of these meetings come from the perspective of risk to the child and not well-being of the mother. So we balance the process and really work

for her well-being. And you can understand why the child has to be important. Oh absolutely. At no point do we say that these processes do not have to happen. There's a reason why children's social care becomes involved because they're worried about that baby. I think Amy's absolutely right that the mother tends to get lost in that story and in that assessment and just like Amy said what we've seen with when when we did a deep dive in the medical records so that was we did one part of the study was the number crunching looking at who these women are. Yeah. Another part of the study was where we did a deep dive in

anonymized medical records of 47 women who had died and had children's social care involvement prior to their death, either in pregnancy or in the postnatal period. And when we looked up their medical records, it's like Amy said, there's a lot of expectation during pregnancy where lots of people become involved, part of that assessment. Every person and every service comes with their expectations of, well you need to attend XYZ mid-review appointments and XYZ number of scans and XYZ number of appointments with an obstetrician. A lot of these women have other medical problems where they need to be seen for. Add that on top of then meetings with the social worker or any other sort of mental health support that they need and those appointment schedules during pregnancy become incredibly crowded and setting

up a really high bar to keep up with almost sometimes daily appointments when they have little money for instance to travel to the hospital on the public bus and what tends to happen postnatally, especially when a child is removed, is that that support almost vanishes. Is that, Amy, just disappears after having almost too much going on? Yeah, that's coming. Once the child is taken away. So what kind, what effect does that have on these women? It's devastating. It's a devastating effect. and I asked our women who attend this service how many women do you know who have died after this process and

there's at least 12 women in the last 12 months that our women can identify just from their circle of friends and associates. This is far more common than people think it is because the women who it happens to can't speak out about it because they feel like it's their fault. If you've had your child removed, it's under the banner of abuse. And so no woman wants to say that she's a child abuser, even if what she had her child removed for was multiple unmet needs that weren't met. Well, can you tell me, obviously without revealing any of the names, about some of the women that you've been able to help in their circumstances?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I talk far too long, so I would probably ruin the show if I tried to tell a story, but about 18 weeks ago, we were called in the A&E for a mum who had done everything I asked about. I had a plan to come home with the baby, but they tried to remove the baby from hospital, and it was only our intervention. We stepped in with a very strong response that meant that mum came home from hospital and that baby's now 18 weeks old. We celebrated a christening in service last week with that baby. Mums thrive and completely abstinent. Women do recover. If they have the right support and is that what's missing from this particular group, this very vulnerable group of women that we're talking about, Kat, like who's advocating for them? Exactly, absolutely. I think that big contrast between crowded, antenatal journeys that are

really challenging and really difficult to meet, and then all the support stepping away, whether it's midwifery support that is currently on there's so much strain that it is very hard to get enhanced postnatal midwifery care, but also mental health support services that don't always know how to meet these sort of enduring complex mental health needs that a lot of these women would present with. And we're talking about incredible, I mean, if you could tell us what's the demographic we're talking about. We're talking about what we've seen from the what's that who's the what's the demographic we're talking about we're talking about what from what we've seen from the number crunching part of the study we're looking at women who are living in the most deprived parts of the country half of them live

in the one fifth most deprived part of the country and particularly young women who also have had multiple children so we're looking at a particular demographic often unemployed and so that means women living in poverty in areas that are not having the best setup to provide opportunities in terms of education, employment, to make sure that they're thriving. And with partners we know that 65% of these women were known to be in abusive relationships and if you think about the underreporting of domestic abuse that figure will probably be a lot higher. So what Amy is doing is that what good support looks like? Is that what needs to happen more of this?

The strength of the support that Amy is providing is that that is continued. It's not tied to a specific timeframe and it brings women together who can learn from each other, which often is giving a more positive message than a professional comes in to sort of point out this is what we're expecting you to do and if you don't do that there will be repercussions. So there's so much evidence around the strength of peer support and I think the services that Amy is providing is a brilliant example of that. But I don't think that takes away from the responsibilities in universal services to

really step up to the plate. What needs to change, Amy, to make the system better? Because this is a really shocking report. If we can't protect the most vulnerable in society and it really feels like these women are not getting any kind of support, almost forgotten in the system, if you hadn't done this research, you know, we wouldn't be sitting talking about it. What has to happen to protect these women? I think it is the voluntary sector, it is services like ours who are best placed to support women and I think the thing that we could do to rebalance that is we could give more power

to the voluntary sector. It's completely optional whether or not social services and other statutory services decide to listen to us and take us seriously and invite us to meetings. They don't have to and actually what I would like to see government do is give us more power at that table that we can hold people to account and expect more and have a more equal footing for the women. Thank you both for coming in to speak to me about this. Kat de Backe and Amy van Zeel, we do have a statement from the government who say keeping more children safely at home with their families and making sure parents get the right support early is vital to our plan for change. That's why

we're investing over 500 million pounds to help local authorities deliver family help through multi-disciplinary teams ensuring families including birth parents can access support when they need it. This includes earlier intervention with promising early signs of fewer children entering care. We're also rolling out new best start family hubs in every local area by 2028. Once again Amy and Kat thank you very much. 84844 is the text number. Now, on Wednesday's program, Kruper spoke to the TV presenter and autism advocacy campaigner Christine McGuinness, who's the mother of three autistic children

and was diagnosed with autism herself as an adult at the age of 33. Kruper asked her how she came to realise that she might also be autistic. It was after the children's diagnosis. I didn't understand why they were considered different because they were just like me. So when they got their diagnosis, then yeah, I kind of had to go, okay, well, we've got this and similar, we're common in that area. And I thought it was just because they were my babies babies so of course they're going to be like me. But they were areas of quite difficult times and challenges like when it came to socialising, sensory food issues, sensory just being out and about, you know, in busier places. I always struggled with and I just thought that was me and part of my personality and I suppose in some ways

it is because it doesn't completely define us. You know, yes, we are autistic. I'm autistic and ADHD, but I'm still me and it's just a part of me. And I accepted that and I accepted it with my children. So when I realized that it was because of autism and ADHD, then it kind of answered a lot of questions but it also opened up a load more of... Changed your outlook? Yeah, yeah completely, but it's helped me, it's helped me massively and it's, I always understood my children anyway, but it's

helped me, you know, keep that strong bond that we always had and it's helped me reassure them that everything's gonna be okay and mommy is capable of doing things and you're gonna be capable of doing things too. So it reassures them as a parent who has autism, parenting children who are autistic. So it reassures them, are there any times when it's extremely testing for you as someone who has the condition

to be parenting children who have the condition? Yeah, of course, of course, my priority always is going to be pushing my children, but not pushing them too much. I think it's probably a really good positive thing that I'm autistic to because I can understand where that line is. You know, there's encouraging them to go out and play and to try different foods and even textures with clothes. And it can sort of go too much sometimes and it will make them step back. And I know that because of me and my own experiences.

And I think knowing that has been an absolute blessing and it's helped so much. And I love how much I understand the children. And I do feel like more and more as they're getting older, especially me twins, Liam, Penelope, they're 12, our conversations now are some of the best conversations I have because I feel understood. That's Christine McGuinness there. And you can hear that full interview by going to BBC Sounds and search for the programme from Wednesday, the 9th of July.

And we're talking about fangirling a bit later. And we're going to firmly put fangirls on the feminist platform and you're getting in touch with your own experiences. Jane says, I've been a big blondie fan since they exploded on the scene in the late seventies when I was 18, but I didn't get to see them live until I was nearly 40. Three of us were down in the mosh pit. There was a huge surge towards the stage. I threw myself forward and launched a single red rose like a javelin towards Debbie Harry.

It landed at her feet, she picked it up, bit the head off, spitting the petals back down onto the stage. Unforgettable. I'm very jealous. That's excellent. 84844, your stories of your teenage obsessions please. Now, a musical treat for you. Katie Braben, two-time Olivier Award-winning for best actress in a musical in 2015 and 2023 is here in the studio with me along with four musicians ready to accompany her in a live performance which we'll hear shortly. But Katie is here to discuss her reprisal of the role of Elizabeth Lane in Girl from the North Country currently on stage at the Old Vic in London, a

musical which weaves the iconic songbook of Bob Dylan throughout the production. Katie, welcome to Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for having me. There was a bit more to this intro, but I thought I'd make it my first question. So here we go. It's 1934 in Duluth, Minnesota. Actually Bob Dylan's birthplace and the Great Depression is chewing through the soul of the town.

At the centre of this dust bowl drama Is the lane family struggling to keep their guest house and each other from crumbling under debt loss and the weight of time? and then and then Step forward elizabeth. Yeah. Um, it's all right. The question is right., okay, good. So she's... That didn't work, did it? Sorry, that's me just not picking up my cues. Yeah, so Elizabeth is an amazing creation of Connor McPherson.

She's a gift to play. She's a woman, as described by Dr Walker in our show, as someone who's not been well lately. She is, you know, she's not well, she's not coping very well at the moment. And so, Nick, her husband has to pick up this lack of running the boarding house. But what it means is that she, sort of like the Shakespearean fool, she's able to kind of cut through and see things as they really are. And say things as they really are. Which is a bit of a gift to play. And you've gone back to play her a second time. Yeah, because I think when you get to play a role like that in such a magical piece, like, and it ends,

it finishes, you think, oh, I'll never get a chance to relive that again. And so when I got the phone call, I thought, well, what an amazing opportunity, like five and a half, six years down the line as somebody who's grown up, I've had a child, like things have happened creatively in my life. And I've just learned a lot from those experiences and I wanted to bring that to the role like a sort of a deepening I suppose of my connection to her. You've just described it as a magical role and I've heard you talk about it having a magical power. What do you mean by that?

Well I think the thing is when you've got Bob Dylan and you've got Conor McPherson, and these are two artists that don't deal in absolutes and nothing is black and white or fully, truly explained, there is a massive freedom, exploratory freedom to that as an artist and being able to live in that type of work. So you've talked a bit about Elizabeth, but you never really explain what was happening with her. I suppose you just allow the audience to see what they want to see in her character. That's exactly it.

I wouldn't want to, as Connor doesn't either, put into, you know, be absolute about anything, about what she's going through. And that allows the audience to see her and really experience her just as a fully formed character, but also for them to see her and perhaps it resonate with them, with things that they might be going through or have been through. And so I wouldn't want to say exactly. She's one of a group of people who blow in and out of the guest house. So tell me about the others, what unites them and what divides the characters? Well it's interesting because it's the Great Depression and that is sort of as a great leveler in terms of people at the time. You have Mr. and Mrs. Burke who

had money, now they're really struggling. You've got people like the Reverend who, you know, can sell a couple of Bibles to survive. But essentially, and obviously Nick and Elizabeth trying to keep this boarding house going, but essentially they're people that wouldn't have necessarily even spoken to each other before, and you've got them all in this boarding house sort of like mucking in together trying to survive at a very difficult time. I went to see this when it first opened and I went on my own and it was a matinee and knew nothing about it and I can only say I had quite a profound experience. I've never wept alone. And I heard that one of the cast described this play as about what it means to be deeply human. I think I know

what you're saying. Could you explain? Yeah. Well, again, it is hard to explain, but I think that there's just so much humanity in the piece. When you see people struggling as they are and making do and making connections and trying to live through this time. And also, you know, with the music working in the piece as it does, you know, it's sort of instead of like necessarily pushing the action on like you would in a normal musical, it actually lets you sit with these characters in their emotional lives for two minutes, three minutes. And I think that allows the audience,

if they are able to let go, to bring that into themselves and their own humanity and their own experience of life. And it worked, it worked with me for sure. You're going to sing for us, aren't you? Yes. Can you tell us what you're going to do? Forever Young? Forever Young.

Tell us where it comes in the production. It comes almost at the end. Yeah. So it's, for me, it's a sort of, it's a prayer and it's a wish for of it's a prayer and it's a wish for everyone but you know for the audience is a little gift to them I think at the end of the piece. Oh and a little gift for everyone listening to Woman's Hour this morning. Take your place as I introduce the rest of the amazing band you brought with you Forever Young accompanied on piano by Alan Berry, Tom Coppin on guitar, Don Richardson playing the double bass and Claire Taylor on violin and Katie Braben singing live.

Oh, breathtaking. Just going to need to wipe my tears. Come and join me again, Katie. It did it, worked. That was unbelievable. Absolutely. To see that and experience it, that was truly an incredible experience. What a voice, what a performer you are. And, you know, two times Olivier winner for Tammy Faye and in the same category for your portrayal of Carole King in Beautiful in 2015, but I saw a video of you receiving in 2023 the award for playing Tammy Faye, very pregnant. Yeah, I was like, I was two weeks off my due date. I think I did have him two weeks later. Maybe I was a week off my. So it could have happened on stage.

Yes, yes. And I thought I was actually going to inter... So it could have happened on stage? Yes, yes and I thought I was actually going to interlabor at one point because it's, those evenings are quite stressful as it is but I just needed to eat a cracker and then I was fine but I did think I was going to give birth. I've got to ask because I fully experienced what I experienced listening to you perform that. What were you feeling when you were singing that? Again, it's a very special prayer, I think, that song. And certainly, normally we have two hours of a play before we get to that point. But as I say, it's hard to describe when you're inside it, but it's something that we give out when we perform. The reason I came back to Hat to Ask You is because I can see your eyes have changed.

Something in you has changed after singing that, and so I had to come out of talking about the Olivier's, but I have to ask what's happened. It's a very emotional... This play is very cathartic, I think, for people who watch it, but also for us who perform it. And so, yeah, we can't fail to be moved by it. Yeah, it's beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you. It's beautiful and we can feel it. Were you always going to end up on stage? I always knew I wanted to be an actor. I don't know where it came from. But I mean, well, we spoke earlier about my mum and dad dad. Yeah I thought it was a deep dive into your mum I'm absolutely slightly fangirling over your mum Fran. Yeah. So tell us about mum and dad. So Fran McGilvery and Mike Burke

they're my parents and they have a band called Fran McGilvery Band and they'll be thrilled that I'm over to shout out to them and yeah so I've had music in my in my upbringing since I was born, you know, and so I've always been surrounded by music They're blues musicians. So Just been very lucky with my musical education from them But doesn't necessarily mean you were gonna end up where you ended up is did you think that you thought TV was gonna be? Yeah, I don't know I just I think because I'd never really watched anything on stage when I was little so I just

Watched television like most kids, probably my age now. And so yeah, I thought, oh, do more TV, which I have done now, but I think, you know, a majority of my career has been on stage. Yeah, which is amazing. I, you know, once I fell in love with theater, there was no turning back really.

And, and stage where you'll stay? I would love to do all forms of the art because I adore TV film performances, I adore stage performances, I still get very excited by performances, I think that's why I'm still doing it. Yeah, yeah, we need to see more of you, all the time. How different are you playing Elizabeth now post having a child and

coming back to it what's different about the character just back to Elizabeth? As I say I think it's um I think it's deeper I think I also without I don't know if this sounds ridiculous but I kind of let her lead I let her I give into her more I think than I did before. And that is, you know, that's a trust that's come with time, you know, and it takes a long time to trust yourself as an artist, I think, so. I let her kind of do her thing.

What does that feel like as someone who's sort of got to that point in your craft, where you can just trust yourself? Well, I mean, I wouldn't say I always feel like that, but yeah, I think it, you know, I'm lucky to have worked the way I have worked in order to be able to trust myself more, but it is hard, you know, and there's a lot of judgment out there and, you know, we have to kind of navigate through all of that. And at the end of the day, like having such an extraordinary

cast and crew around us and musicians, you feel held, you know, and actually you can't do this thing on your own. You do it with your pals, your friends, your compadres, you know, who you are working with on stage with and also held by Bob Dylan songs, you're held by Conor McPherson's script, like it's like all of those things playing to the trust that you that you inevitably will hopefully have playing a role. Katie it's been such a pleasure speaking to you. You too. Don't leave it so long next time. It's been 2015 was the last time you were on. No actually I was on talking to Emma Barnett. Oh okay fine. Yeah all right Tammy. Wonderful. Well, best of luck with all of it.

Thank you. I cannot wait to come and see you in it. Girl from the North Country continues at the Old Vic in London until August the 23rd. And thank you to the Vanderswaal for coming in. That was astounding. Now, I'm going to read out a couple of more of your messages coming in because there's so many. As a teenager, this is about your fandom, your teenage obsession. As a teenager I was obsessed with Donny Osmond. I had an iron on transfer, an iron on transfer of his face put on one side of my pillow so that I slept next to him many years later when my new husband and I were staying with my parents. My husband turned his pillow over and yes you guessed it there was Donny gazing back to him. Lynn, excellent message. Another one here saying,

when I was a teenager, I was a huge fan girl and I adored Ed Sheeran and his music. I saw him several times in concert. I now can't listen to his music because I think I saw him way too many times and have now moved on from his music. I don't mind hearing his songs occasionally and adore the songs he did with Taylor Swift,

who I now am a massive fan of. Oh, Swiftie, big fan girls. I saw her twice on the Eris tour. Ed is definitely part of the reason I love music so much, but I think my days of claiming to be the biggest Ed Sheeran fan are over. So who was on your bedroom wall? What posters? Who was your favourite idol? Maybe you spent hours daydreaming about them or screaming your lungs off at their concert from Frank Sinatra to the Beatles. Many of the biggest male stars built their early careers on their

romantic appeal to young women. Just one fan's experience, I'm reading lots of your experiences, but far from passive consumers. These fangirls were tastemakers, visionaries and cultural disruptors. That's according to Bea Martin as Gatel, author of a new book, Swoon, Fangirls, Their Idols and the Counterculture of Female Lust from Byron to the Beatles and Bea is here to tell us more. Welcome. Why did you want to write the history of the Fangirls, Bea? So I am a fangirl by nature. If I like something, I love it and probably want the t-shirt. And so my my teen obsession was Leonardo DiCaprio. I ended up all these teen obsessions, data's like I'm

not even going to mention who my teenage obsession was. But yes, yes, Leonardo DiCaprio. It was Leo. There were five of us. I don't know how many times I watched Titanic. When I went to uni, I ended up writing about Leo. That was my dissertation. And while I was researching that, I started reading about the early history of fandom. I think we think it started with the Beatles. It really doesn't. It goes way back to the 19th century. And I was kind of surprised that I think we today we understand the power of fans. But when we think about the fans of the past, we do they're sort of dismissed as silly hysterical maidens

Why why do you think they were dismissed as that? Tell me what's going on? Okay, so Because we're so used to seeing sites of crowds of teenage girls screaming and crying In the early days of pop culture. It was completely new and people were really panicked seeing women expressing themselves in this way. Young hysterical women. Exactly. And people losing their minds. But the way you've planned the book is, it's a great book by the way, you've given us six main men, well not main men, six moments where fandom was at its peak. Tell us about the six people. Okay so these are the six moments, I picked the six where there was

kind of mass hysteria about one person, the six most famous moments where there was mass hysteria and there was mass panic about the hysteria and it turned out they were all women basically obsessing over men, which is quite interesting. Female stars had fans as well, but people weren't so panicked. About women obsessing over women. So we start with Lord Byron in the 19th century, Franz Liszt, rock star pianist, and we go all the way through until the Beatles in the 60s. So let's start at the beginning. Let's talk about Byron mania. What was going on? Why

was it so important? What had happened to change society? So women had just learned to read. Women had just learned to read and romanticism was happening. So poets were writing about their feelings in this way that no one ever had before. And kind of just like Taylor Swift, he was putting Easter eggs and autobiographical stuff in his poems, and people suddenly felt they knew him. My favorite story, possibly in the whole whole book is a girl called Isabella, she's writing fan letters to him kind of saying I don't know what this feeling is, I feel like I know you, it's not

love but I think about you all day long. So she's kind of processing this idea of fandom even before fandom exists. So Byron got lots of love letters. Did he respond to any? He was getting the love letters? And some pubic hair in the post. Okay. Yeah. I mean, he didn't respond. I mean, he did a little bit. I think his most famous fan is Caroline Lamb, who is kind of, she's gone down in history as really a crazy stalker, when actually she was a writer who sought a lot of herself in Byron. So female fandom back then would be more of a private matter

if they were writing their sort of innermost feelings to him privately, they weren't out in the streets of- In fact- 19th century women were supposed to be passionate. You weren't supposed to even have emotions, let alone be writing them down, let alone be sending them to a lord. So fan mail seems so everyday now, but at that time it was really shocking. Isabella, this girl, she would, she snuck to the post office and wouldn't have told her parents.

One of my favourite little bits also from your book being a bit of a bronty fan girl is that they were also part of the Byron fandom. Right, exactly. Would have been, obviously. Heathcliff, hello. Connect the dots. Lord Byron fan fiction, right? And then List, tell us about him.

So he was kind of the first rock star pianist. He was doing concerts in person, so he had merch, crowds. So what's really interesting about him, I think he's one of the people that, if people know about him, there are urban legends about women's crazy behaviour, stuffing cigar butts into their cleavages and collecting his coffee drugs. They did do those things. However, it was a lot more meaningful to fans when you read their diaries and hear their experiences of actual women. Seeing this man with long hair play the piano. The piano was a women's instrument at that time, really. So they were, he meant a lot more to them than just, you know, sex. What did he mean?

He was sexy too. He meant freedom. When women's lives, I mean, you could hardly leave the house, your life was so completely... Yeah, enclosed and trapped. Yeah. Right. To come to a concert, be in a crowd, this is a huge deal. And then later as we move on in time, women coming together in groups at times when women didn't really do that was a big deal. And also, back to Byron,

not that I want to obsess over Byron, but okay, let's do it a little bit. It wasn't just so much the outrage of it, like what is this man doing corrupting women? It's the writing, the fact that women can read read the liberation of their ability to read they were worried about that. Completely and there were lots of fears about women's access to books what would happen which kind of also overlaps with the fear of enthusiasm. So the French Revolution had

kind of started because everyday people could read, read some revolutionary books and people who feared revolution thought that part of it was this enthusiasm. If charismatic leaders influenced people through writing, they might lead to some sort of civil unrest. When it comes to the story of Elvis, because you have looked at Elvis, the fandom is a little bit more complicated, isn't it? It is. I think the 50s, it happened a little bit earlier, but the 50s are when fans start being able to meet their heroes in person. And Elvis is really complicated because his fans were teenage girls and he liked spending time with 14 year old girls. So yeah it's pretty sticky.

And then the Beatles is where the fan girl reaches its critical mass. So I think that... And we've all seen the screaming... Right, and if you look at scenes of Beatlemania, even me, who's been writing about this for years, every time I see a video of Beatlemania, these like oceans of fans and street, someone said once, if you didn't know what that picture was, you'd think it was women's lib or something like that.

And girls who were there, often, like many women have talked about how that sense of self-expression and female togetherness was their first taste of something that would become their feminist awakening later on. You see, and actually, I mean, you say, look, could some, if you, all you need to do is sort of change how you look at it. Because actually, you have looked at it or I've looked at it, it just looks like a load of hysterical teenage girls. And now you've completely reframed it for us, Bea. So thank you for that.

You've called the book Swoon. Yeah. So we've got to talk about Frank Sinatra. Yes. They were known for, his fans were known for swooning. Where did the idea of swoon come from? What is a swoon? I mean, should I?

Yeah. I guess it's like a half fainting. I'm not going to do the sound. But yeah, and I think this was the first time that they started vocalizing. Like in this time, they sort of sighed and maybe shed a little tear. But in the 40s, they started being loud. And just think of it, when you've been raised to be a good girl and be quiet, and your whole life is set up around basically

preparing yourself to find a good husband, to be in public, making noise with your friends. Girls would practice swooning at home before they went to a Frank Sinatra concert. And there's something about that power of the collective. You've just heard Katie talking about how empowering it is to have her band around her and the people that are on stage with her, that power of all those teenage girls who all just understands that feeling. Right, and it's finding your people. And even I look back at my Leomania days and it was more about my friends. It was what we were doing together than it really was about Leo. He was just kind of a useful reason to be bonding. But the question is, where would Leo be without you?

Exactly. Not at the Oscars. It's been such a pleasure speaking to loads of people getting in touch with us about their own. Shall I read a couple out whilst I've got you here? Alison says, my parents let me go to a Thin Lizzy concert in Manchester only because I told them that Thin Lizzy was a lead singer in a country band and has a lovely voice. Mum found out, but it was worth it.

And Sophia in Nottingham says, as a young teenager, I had a huge crush on Martin Shaw during his stint as Ray Doyle in The Professionals. I read an article in one of the magazines devoted to the show which said that Martin Shaw lived off the beaten track in London. I visited my local library for weeks, poring over London, max look, looking for the beaten track, obsessed for months, not sure what I was going to do if I found out. Joyful, absolute joyful. It's been joyful speaking to you as well

and best of luck with the book. It's called Swoon and it's by Bea Martinez-Gatell. Now, onto another obsession. If you're into such things, handbags. Actress Jane Birkin's original Hermes Birkin sold for 7.4 million pounds pounds becoming the most valuable handbag to ever be sold at auction. The original Birkin named after the British actress and singer is now also the second most expensive fashion item to ever be sold after it went under

the hammer at Sotheby's in Paris on Thursday. What makes the bag so iconic? Well I'm joined by Justine Picardy, writer and former chief and editor and chief of Harper's Bazaar and author of several books on fashion and Marisa Meltzer, writer and author who has written It's Girl, the life and legacy of Jane Birkin. Marisa, I've got to come to you first because you were at the auction yesterday. You were in the room. What was it like? Tell us everything. It was pretty electric. I don't spend a lot of times at auctions in my day-to-day life as a writer, so it was a treat. And before they were serving little Birkin-shaped cookies,

and there was this kind of talk all week in Paris of, will there be celebrities there? Who's going to bid on it? Will we know how much will it go for? It was kind of a parlor game. And so there was just so much kind of like excitement and momentum. We didn't even know what the starting bid would be. And so as soon as it went up and they said bids will start at I think 1.3 million, there was literally a gasp in the room like something from, you know, a 19th century novel or something like that. And the bidding went on for about 10 minutes, you know, with people cheering and, and, you know, moments of tension and it was all very exciting. Do we know who bought it?

We just know it was a Japanese collector. There's all sorts of speculation, isn't there? I'm sure. Like, why are all these women in Paris right now? Who's going to get it? Nine people, I think it was between the end. Yeah, there was a big, I think, nine person bidding war at the end. Let me bring Justine in.

Justine, £7.4 million. What do you make of that sum? Well, it's extraordinary, but I suppose what it tells us is the power of a story. And fashion is inherently is disposable, 99.9% of the time. But very occasionally, there will be something that becomes literally iconic. So it could be Chanel's little black dress, which the original is, you know, in a museum now, or the kind of pieces that you might see, say, Christian Dior's original bar jacket and the new look collection. And I think that fashion is always trying to, especially luxury fashion, is trying to persuade consumers that they are buying something of great value that will be an heirloom. But most of the time, it isn't. But every so often when the emotional resonance of the story is strong enough, then it transcends its transience.

And the way that, and the Birkin bag, there were so many layers to why this particular handbag and what they, what Hermes have done to make it that iconic. But let's start at the beginning. And Justine, you started, everything needs a good story. This is the story of a chance encounter isn't it on a plane what happened? Yes well Jane Birkin was on a flight, an Air France flight I believe and she had a sort of bohemian you know wicker basket and things kept falling out. And the man sitting next to her turns out to be a member of the Douma family who own Hermes. And he said to her, you need a better handbag. And she said, oh, well, I can never find a good one. I need something that's bigger. And so legend has it, and I'm sure Marissa will know better than I, that he drew a

prototype of the original Birkin bag on the back of the airline paper sick bag. I don't know if that's true. I love this story for so many years and now finally we can find out is it true, Marisa? Is that how it happened? And also it was the kind of, it's not just about two people meeting on a plane and designing a hamburger, it's? And also it was the kind of, it's not just about two people meeting on a plane and designing a handbag, it's the fact that it was Jane Birkin and Hermes and you've got to put all of it into context who they were at the time and why, first of all, is it true? And then fill us in on why those two people coming together was so vital. It is true. And yeah, it's kind of like a meet-cute in a, you know, romantic comedy or something like that.

What I wish they would auction is that drawing on the air sick bag. I don't know if anyone has it or if it still exists. But Jane Birkin was actually pretty good at drawing. And if you look at some of her diaries, she used to do little sketches all the time. So why was she so influential? She was kind of indicative of all of these different decades

and eras. She had grown up in London, and she was in blow up and married to the composer John Barry from the James Bond films and was kind of like a swinging 60s London girl. And then she moved to Paris in 1968 after getting a role in a movie and met Serge Gansbourg, who is kind of this famous French troubadour. And he was fresh off a bad breakup with Brigitte Bardot.

And they fell in love. And then they were in this kind of artistic power couple relationship. And so she was a singer and she was an actress and she wore the kind of clothes that still look really good today. And then, you know, later on in the 80s around the time when she was turning 40, she helped design this bag that became, you know, without really much on her part, the most famous bag in the world. Yeah, most famous bag in the world. How does that happen, Justine? How does, I mean, now we live in a bag of so many designer handbags, but what was it about that

and Jane Birkin carrying it that made it so desirable? Well, just it's every so often an object in fashion, but of course it works in other ways too, can have a sort of a resonance. I know this sounds a bit pretentious, but almost like a kind of line of poetry. It just captures a moment. And the moment it seemed to capture was of this incredibly cool woman. She was no longer the ingenue girl. She's a woman. And it was so evocative. There was this phrase that, in fact, was used about Chanel in the 1920s, Le Styl Anglais. So that fusion of French and British style, which Jane Birkin has. But then the other thing I think which was pretty remarkable about it is that she never looked

like she was trying too hard. And there's something so uncool about trying too hard and flashing your designer handbags or your designer jewels or whatever, whereas she would carry her battered bag, you know, she'd be wearing a pair of jeans and she stuck stickers on it for the causes that she supported, like UNICEF, for example, and when the bag was sold at auction, the stickers are no longer on it, but you can still see where they were. So it seemed to express that she had a heart, it wasn't all about the sort of surface style. And that's when things become really resonant, when there seems to be a kind of hidden depths beneath that veneer of beauty. And somehow, it was Jane Birkin and the bag, the combination of the two of them, that gives it a heart.

Yeah, and I think you're absolutely right, and that's exactly where my mind went. It wasn't just the bag, it was the woman and how she carried it. Maybe there's something about the fact that it happened in her 40s. She had a confidence and probably didn't, she doesn't seem to care. She's like, this is me and this bag chucked over my shoulder. I love the stickers on it. But why are they, Marisa, so expensive? Tell us what they start at and can anybody buy one of these? No, you have to be sort of you have to kind of earn your

place as an Hermes client. They start, I don't think you could get one for much less than you know maybe like 10,000 pounds maybe like you know $15,000 in the US when all said and done. And you have to be offered the bag. You have to be someone who comes in and sort of proves yourself as a Hermes customer. And, you know, you can't really just walk in on the street and get one. And that adds to the allure, of course, because, you know, it's not just about having enough money or having the desire to buy one. You have to sort of, there's that kind of air of chance, I guess. And it's also money.

And money. Yes, but there's a lot of people with money that still can't just walk into the bag and get one or into the store and get one. And would you like to own one? So no, is that a no brainer question? Sure, why not? Absolutely, who wouldn't? Yeah, I'm not really in a place to, but yes, I'd be happy. I'd happily have one because also I think that's part of the bag's popularity. Like you said, the adultness of it,

it's not a tiny bag. It's not a bag that's just for a lipstick. It's a bag that could carry your laptop and she put, you know, nappies in it and a book and you know, it's a bag for an adult. Sensible woman. It's also, it's a bag for life. It's a bag for life and the ultimate bag to have. You know, I certainly don't have a Birken bag but the one I would want. We've run out of time. One we would all want if we could only afford it and get on that list. Thank you for joining me for Woman's Hour. Join me tomorrow for Weekend Woman's Hour. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time.

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