Woman's Hour - Lucy Manning, Women farmers, Zainab Johnson, Robyn Malcolm

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

In Lucy Manning’s words, it started with a phone call... A call from a withheld number late at night in October 2022 where the unknown male caller appeared to be masturbating as he made lewd comments about her. And so began what she describes as a two-year ordeal to get police to arrest and charge the man responsible for making those calls. Lucy joins Nuala McGovern in the Woman’s Hour studio.As thousands of farmers gather to protest planned changes in inheritance tax rules for agricultural properties, Nuala asks BBC Farming Today presenter Anna Hill how this is affecting women farmers, who according to the National Farmers' Union make up a majority of the farming workforce in England and Wales.Zainab Johnson, one of America’s freshest voices in stand-up comedy, is making her UK debut this week at London’s Soho Theatre. She joins Nuala to discuss mining her massive family for material, being a gun owner and her thoughts on the recent US election.New Zealand actor Robyn Malcolm joins Nuala to talk about her morally complex and challenging new drama, After the Party. Robyn co-created the drama and plays the lead character, a woman who has accused her husband of sexually assaulting a teenage boy. She tells Nuala about representing real middle-aged women on screen.24-year-old product design and technology graduate Olivia Humphreys is a Global Medical Winner of the James Dyson Award 2024. Her invention, Athena, is a portable hair-loss prevention device for chemotherapy patients. She explains how the product works and how her mum inspired it.

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.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, this is Nuala McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. Well, farmers, as you may have been hearing there, are getting ready to rally in central London to protest against proposed changes to the Agricultural Inheritance Tax. We'll go to Westminster to hear why some of the farming workforce, which you may be interested to hear is majority female, don't want the changes

and why the government says they have to happen. Also, an anti-heroine for our times. That's what actor Robin Malcolm's latest character has been called. It's in the drama series After the Party. Now, one reviewer has said that this show is the best TV New Zealand has ever made. Robin, coming up this hour. We'll also hear about one BBC correspondent's two-year fight

to get justice following obscene phone calls. And we'll hear from Olivia Humphries. She has invented a newer, cheaper, portable scalp cooling device for chemotherapy patients, which hopes to help prevent hair loss. And the American comedian Zainab Johnson will be in studio. She performed stand-up last night for the first time in the UK. Her comedy is about firsts and fear.

We'll hear all about it. But let us begin. As the snow has been falling all around the country, maybe you've been hit by it this morning, including here in London, there have been thousands of farmers gathering to protest planned changes in the inheritance tax rules for agricultural properties.

So we want to know how this is affecting women farmers who, according to the National Farmers Union, make up a majority of the farming workforce in England and Wales. That includes unpaid and family labour. Now, the same union, the NFU, has accused the Labour government of betrayal. The government's recent announcement

means that previously exempt farms worth more than £1 million would have to pay inheritance tax of 20%. That is half of the usual rate of 40%, but that change would be from April 2026. In a joint statement ahead of the protest, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves and the UK Environment Secretary Steve Reid say they recognise the strength of feeling expressed, but that the changes would mean wealthier states and the most valuable farms pay their fair share to help fund public services. And I want to turn to BBC Farming Today presenter Anna Hill,

who is in Westminster following it all this morning. Anna, good to have you with us. So we've got two protests taking place today. Is that right? Can you talk us through why people are meeting? Hello, Nuala. Thanks very much. Yeah, I'm at Church House in Westminster. Now, this is the centre where the National Farmers Union has gathered farmers today. They're going to have three big events here today where farmers are meeting up and they're arranging meetings with their individual MPs to go and talk to them and tell them exactly how this inheritance

tax will affect their individual businesses. So that's happening throughout the day. The other event that's taking place is a rally, which is forming outside Downing Street, just opposite Downing Street. And that will walk down towards Westminster and back again and that's going to start at about 11 o'clock and interestingly I've been here at Church House this morning talking to many of the farmers here many of them women and talking to them about their individual circumstances there was one lady we talked to from Huddersfield she's widow. She has to pass her farm down to her son. She is extremely worried about her situation because she doesn't have the allowances

that a married couple has because she's a widow and she's really not sure how it's going to work for her. In fact, she got very emotional when we were talking to her. So let's get to the heart of it, Anna. You know, there's acronyms that are bandied about,

APR, Agricultural Property Relief, BPR, Business Property Relief. What is it that the government is proposing that farmers, including the woman you spoke to, are so against? The thing is that since 19, well, from 1984, Margaret Thatcher brought in a derogation, as it were,

an allowance so that farmers didn't have to pay inheritance tax. So they haven't been paying it. And you can get leeway to not pay taxes under APR, which is Agricultural Property Relief, and BPR as well, which is building property relief. So you can, there are several different areas that you can claim under for not paying inheritance tax. It's extremely complicated. And each farm has different circumstances. And what the farmers here are saying is that basically, they have assets on their farm that can reach easily over a million pounds but they're cash poor they cannot liquidate those assets to pay for the inheritance

tax easily that's their problem unlike other businesses the value of their business is tied up in buildings and in land. And that means to pay the money to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs would mean they would have to either sell land or sell buildings to get the cash to pay for that bill. So the government instead has said that this will just affect 500 farmers a year, but there is dispute over exactly who might be affected. Absolutely. And that really is the crux of the matter here, that the National Farmers Union are saying that 66% of farmers will be affected. The Treasury says that 70% of farmers won't be affected. And I think the problem really gets down to that nitty-gritty

of working out whether it's APR or BPR and exactly how the figures work out for you. And I think both sides are basically using the figures to back their own case. That's the problem, isn't it? That you can argue the case either way. Interesting coming to the issue of women on the farms. You mentioned one that was a widow there as well.

Some of the figures, I saw these according to the NFU, the National Farmers Union, that 55% of women make up the farming workforce and some of that unpaid or family. Do we know how many farms are ran by women specifically? Well, I do have some figures from the Office for National Statistics. So 2023 shows that of the 104,700 registered farmers, 22% are female. Now that's the registered farmers. There's a broader category of managers in agricultural services, and women make up 32% of that workforce. But what I

think the National Farmers Union is saying, and this is obviously something we experience every day going on to farms and talking to people, it's often the wives of the farmers who are managing the business, they're managing the back room of the business. You know, they're doing all the accounts. They're out there working in the fields as well. And like farmers, they're not paid. They don't get paid a salary for doing that.

So it depends how you interpret who is a worker on the farm. Is there any way yet to figure out whether there might be wiggle room with the government or, you know, how firm the stances are on either side? We've seen some of those pictures of, you know, tractors trundling in to the centre of London, making their stand. Do you know, I mean, it's really interesting, isn't it? We spoke to Steve Reid before the election. He's the DEFRA secretary. We spoke to him after the election.

We spoke to him after the budget. He is holding the line. I mean, he is not budging at all, really. And then, you know, there was talk about, you know, a rift between the Treasury and DEFRA. Well, in fact, actually, you know, Steve Reid is not budging. And I think there's very little, you know, some people are saying, well, what you could do is you could say, okay, the reason why Labour said they were going to do this is because they want to stop big companies buying up land as a avoidance rather than the farmers. And that's possibly a way forward, but no one has said that they've been looking at that.

The other aspect, I suppose, going forward is government and farmers need to have a good relationship to get, you know, climate change concerns instituted, for example, whether it comes to net zero or adaptation of farming practices. And I suppose that's another part of a larger issue when it comes to goodwill between the two. Absolutely. And, you know, farmers have faced massive, massive change. You know, the changes since leaving the EU

have been the biggest for the last 40 years. So, you know, they have been asked to use their land for different things, for increasing habitat, for wildlife, for mitigating flooding risk, and for carbon sequestration. So farmers have had an awful lot to change on their farms, and they've got to change the way they farm. And they feel that they're being kicked in the teeth while they're being asked to do this. Now, obviously, you know, the government would say that is not the case. But farmers, and you can see on the streets here today in Westminster, you know, farmers are not happy. Anna Hill, thank you very much.

We'll hear more on farming today, tomorrow, at 5.45 and also, of course, on BBC Sounds as those take place. Something resonate with you there? 84844 if you want to get in touch. I want to let you know that we're going to, what we're going to discuss next may contain sexually explicit references. My guest is BBC correspondent Lucy Manning. And this story starts with a phone call.

It was from a withheld number late at night. This is October 2022. And the unknown male caller said he was masturbating as he made lewd comments about Lucy. And so began what Lucy describes as a two-year ordeal to get the police to arrest and charge the man responsible for making those obscene calls. He was found guilty last week. He'll be sentenced in the new year. Lucy is here to tell me more about it. Welcome.

Thank you. So I suppose first, how does it feel knowing that as of a week ago, Amjad Khan is now awaiting sentence? It was a massive relief. I couldn't be in court. It was just another example of miscommunication in this whole two-year saga that I wasn't told the date of the trial. But a colleague messaged me just one word, guilty. felt real relief and I felt vindication because the truth is that over the two years the police were fairly unsatisfactory to put it mildly in pursuing this case and I had to take control of it really and I had to push for it and they tried to drop it and they told me they couldn't get a

conviction and they told me the man couldn't be charged and here we were two years more than two years later with Amjad Khan being found guilty. Let's go back through some of that I mentioned that night in October 2022 you recorded some of what he was saying and I was just thinking your presence of mind to be able to do that do you want to bring us back to that time? Yes my phone rang It was a withheld number. I assumed it was actually the BBC News desk because that's how they get me. And straight away, it was clear that this man was masturbating. And I hung up the call and he kept calling.

And almost immediately, I went into journalist mode and I thought, well, this is a crime. I know I have to report it. I was doing a lot of reporting at the time about violence against women, harassment. And so I ran to get my other work phone and picked up the call on, I don't know, maybe the third or fourth, fifth time that he called and put it on speakerphone and started recording. And I recorded for about five minutes while he said lewd and offensive comments to me and got what I thought was enough evidence and I thought naively this will be fairly simple the police can trace the withheld number they have the evidence his voice comments he was saying to me and I'll make a statement and they'll find out who who it is

and go and arrest him and it proved to be nowhere near as simple as that so what happened well initially it went to the Met Police they took a statement they asked me to go and contact my phone provider to get the withheld number and EE were very clear that that is not for the victim to do that the Met actually have a system in place where they asked for it and the PC then messaged me and said oh sorry obviously working on old information didn't know that and then it got transferred to another part of the Met and they were very clear they said there's very little little reasonable lines of inquiry here because it's a withheld number. Well, that that's not true. So right from the start, there was just a negativity about it.

And then in fairness to them, by this, this was October 2022. By December, they had managed to trace the number on the police national computer. It turned out this man lived in Lancashire, so it was transferred to Lancashire Police. And in January, I emailed, January 23, I emailed Lancashire Police and I said, I want to support any prosecution. Heard nothing. Eventually heard back from Lancashire to say, we don't have any information about this case. We just have a crime reference number. I then had to go back to the Met and say, why don't they have this information? And they said, well, Lancashire, the officer is supposed to approach us for the information. I had to go back to the Met and say, why don't they have this information? And they said, well, Lancashire, the officer is supposed to approach us for the information. I had to go back to him and tell him to go and ask the Met.

So it started off just not in a great way. And then there were just months of delay, really. They went round to the suspect's house. They didn't arrest him. They went round a couple of times. He wasn't there. They told the neighbour that they were looking for him. So I was really concerned.

I kept messaging Lancashire saying, well, why aren't you going round to arrest him? You know who he is. You've got the recording. And I was worried that they were essentially tipping him off so that he could get rid of the phone. And eventually they went round to arrest him. And guess what? He said get rid of the phone. And eventually they went around to arrest him. And guess what? He said he'd lost the phone. At that point though, Lucy, what's gone through

your head? I was just really frustrated by this stage. Really, really frustrated. And in March of 2023, I got really angry because they told me that there was not enough evidence now that they were dropping the case and they were going to drop the investigation. They couldn't charge him. And by that stage, I was angry because I'd given them the phone recording. They traced the number. They knew who this guy was.

And because he was denying it and saying he didn't have the phone, they were saying there wasn't enough evidence. I said I wanted to appeal. I didn't quite know how to do that. But it turns out there is a victim's right to review with the police. If the police don't charge someone after they've interviewed them under caution, you can appeal. And essentially they did that for me and they agreed they would carry on the investigation.

But there was then another load of delays. They did more phone work and they told me, yeah, the suspect's lying. There's a SIM card, your number's on it he called you nine times and I said great you'll go and re-arrest him then two months nothing and I text again to the PC I say what's going on there's no urgency here I speak to a senior officer he admits yes it'salled. And it took until July 2023 for him to be rearrested. And it took until November, so a year after the offence, for him to be charged. And that is really with you with dogged determination to try and make that happen. What were they charging him with?

So they charged him in the end with an offensive, malicious communication. I think probably there were two things going through my mind that made me so determined. One initially was for my safety. I thought, had he targeted me personally, he knew my number, he knew my first name. He'd said my first name in the call. So I was worried was this

someone I knew was this someone I worked with was it someone that lived on my street it turned out it wasn't in the end he was just randomly calling numbers um so initially I was worried about my safety and then more than that because unfortunately I've done a lot of reporting on violence against women I covered the Sarah Everard case I knew Wayne Cousins had had previous indecent exposures that he hadn't been prosecuted for and that they can possibly be a gateway crime I did not want this man to potentially go on and commit more serious sexual offences so I was driven because I was doing so much reporting on this at the time, that I was determined that this man would be prosecuted.

And he was prosecuted, but even then, in the court system, there were issues. He was supposed to appear at Lancaster Magistrates' Court a couple of weeks ago. That case didn't get heard, he didn't turn up, and they didn't tell me that last Monday he was appearing at Burnley Magistrates Court a couple of weeks ago. That case didn't get heard. He didn't turn up. And they didn't tell me that last Monday he was appearing at Burnley Magistrates Court. So I couldn't attend. I couldn't go and see justice being done. happened to you because I'm sure it was a distressing call calls to get but it has kind of opened this window to what the process can be yeah I I wrote about it for the BBC website which should be still online if anyone wants to read it and I've had so many messages and emails from people in similar situations I mean mean, I think this guy, unfortunately for him, made a mistake calling a journalist and I wasn't prepared to drop it. But I think there is an experience that people are having that is similar. I know there are

issues with resources for the police and they can't do everything. But it just seemed that there was no real desire to get this man, and it was only because I pushed and pushed. And actually, the Met Police admitted in a statement, they said our handling of this case clearly fell short. Lancashire Police said our initial handling of the case didn't meet the standard expected. So I'm grateful that they that they recognise that. What if you were advising the commissioner, for example,

on changes that need to be made? Where would they be? That's a great question. I think I think it needs a bit of a change in attitude as well as in system. So straight away, people were telling me, there's nothing we can do on this. And then in the middle, they were telling me, well, we're just going to drop this. We can't do this. But actually, they could. They could get his number and they could find out who he was and they could do further phone checks. So I think it's having a bit more of a can-do attitude. And it's also just not leaving things for so long it shouldn't be getting justice shouldn't be this

hard and getting justice shouldn't be the victim's struggle I think that's what I would say I mean there is a a kind of incredible twist at the end of all this which is when I was last week last week when I was researching to write the article I hadn't known that Anjan Khan was from Blackburn so I typed his name and Blackburn online to see if anything came up and I discovered an article from nine years ago from the Lancashire Telegraph. So nearly a decade ago. And the headline was Blackburn man made 15,000 dirty calls in 91 days to total strangers. 15. Let's just take that number for a second. 15,000. 15,000. And it was the same man. And there was even a quote in that article from a Lancashire police officer, saying the scale of his offending is breathtaking.

And I was absolutely flabbergasted. And I just thought, well, why has it taken so long? And they've put so many barriers in place to get this man to court. And yet, nine years ago, he was making 15,000 of these similar calls. With the Met Police and also the Lancashire Police, you were mentioning that they apologised there and Lancashire added that they hope that the successful conviction gives her, you Lucy, some sense that justice has been done

although we recognise this has taken longer than she may have hoped. Is that enough? I have to say I was pleased that they both recognised that there were issues. I suppose I had a fear that there might be some gaslighting involved in the response, that they might say, well, you know what, it was all fine, these things take time, and we got him in the end. So I'm pleased they didn't do that. I would hope that they are taking,

and I think I know the Met are, in fairness to the Met, I don't know about Lancashire, but taking it seriously in terms of what lessons they can learn from this. One that might be also interesting when it comes to lessons, you mentioned the victim's right to review and that you had like an appeal, basically. But you also looked into how often that has been used and how many requests perhaps that there have been.

So, yes, I knew about the CPS, the prosecutor's right right to review that if the cps don't prosecute you can review i didn't know about the police right to review so i decided to put in some freedom of information requests to see is it is it being used and 29 police forces came back they couldn't give data for all the same dates so it's not enormously comparable but you can get a sort of general sense and since 2015 we found that nearly 14 and a half thousand requests for police to reconsider not charging someone have been made and more than eight and a half thousand were granted so that's around three and five cases so i think the message the message is if you're not happy with a police charging decision then then appeal it and so they then

reconsider charging not that they charge those eight thousand right that they look at it again yeah i think that seems to be it that they reconsider it, I mean, certainly in my case, they said, we will have another look at it and we think we can get a charging decision. As we've come back to, you're a journalist that was looking at this. You're kind of dogged and persistent all throughout it. Maybe with a better outcome

from the police, perhaps, than an ordinary woman who knows would you encourage other women to go forward would be able to kind of push in the way that you're pushing so i've unfortunately interviewed women who have been the victims of serious sexual abuse who say because of the brutal process they wouldn't report. I would report again. I remember listening to the BAFTAs while all this was going on and there was a documentary director who won for a documentary on the murder of Libby Squire and the man in that had also had previous offences so-called low-level sexual offences and her message I remember it very clearly was report so yes report and keep

on top of your case and you can ask why things are not going quickly. And you can question decisions that are being made. And I would still encourage people to report because I think that there is a danger that if women don't report any type of sexual offence, whether they're the so-called low-level ones, then the men get away with it. I think you've just hit on something there. Don't be afraid about being a nuisance. And I put that word in inverted commas. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think I probably drove them mad. But it worked. Yeah, we got an outcome. Lucy Manning, our BBC correspondent, thank you so much for coming in. Her piece is up online as well if you'd like to read more about this particular case and the man who was found

guilty will be sentenced in the new year. Now we want to mention that while we've been on air, Giselle Pellico, the victim in the trial that has shocked France and the world, has been giving her final statement. This is after a 10-week trial in which she decided to waive her right to anonymity. A reminder that her ex-husband, Dominique Bellico, is on trial with 50 other men in the southern city of Avignon. In November 2020, he admitted drugging

his then-wife for almost a decade and recruiting dozens of men online to rape her in their home when she was unconscious. Giselle has told the court this morning that she doesn't think she'll ever feel at peace until the end of my life. I'll learn to live with it. I'll rebuild myself.

She also said society at this point needs to look how we trivialise rape and that it is a trial of cowardliness. That's just some of the testimony. There's a lot happening in the courtroom in France this morning. Dominique Pellicot will be speaking and it's all ahead of the verdict, which is expected on the 20th of December. And just to let you know that we will be coming back to this and summarising everything that's happened in more depth in another programme.

But for the updates as they come in, just head to the BBC News website. They have a live page on this story that is running at the moment. Going back to our earlier story of farmers as some of you getting in touch i'm a solo female farmer and this government has got the rural side of things so wrong another why do farmers feel they should have different rules i would have to sell property to pay an inheritance bill if i was in that position why should they have different rules now I'm going to move on to where I was

last night in Soho watching the American comedian Zainab Johnson who had her first performance in the UK she grew up in Harlem alongside her large Muslim family which included 13 siblings.

She could have been, there's just some of the career choices that she could have had, maths teacher, professional basketball player, but instead found herself on stage all over the world doing stand-up. She's also an actor. You might have seen her in the sci-fi comedy Upload. That was some series that kind of made my brain, I have to say, do a few somersaults. It was on Amazon Prime. Right now, she is opposite me in the Woman's Hour studio. You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.

So how would you describe your comedy for those not familiar with you just yet? I would definitely describe my comedy as personal, specific, and very much a storyteller. Like I'm going to take you on a journey and you should feel like you're just having a chat with a friend. Well, Zainab, why don't we hear a little bit of your comedy? Zainab is a very popular Arabic name. It's so popular. Like everywhere else in the world, but not here. Here, people act like they can't say it. They make it the name closest in their mind.

I'm like, hey, I'm Zainab. They're like, Dana, nice to meet you. Sometimes the mispronunciation is egregious. This one lady called me Zimbutu. I was like, this is the last time I come to this Starbucks. And then also written on the cup, of course. That is from your Amazon Prime special, He Jabs Off, which is on at the moment.

But let's talk about what happened last night. Yes. Soho Theatre. I thought it was a very warm and welcoming crowd. It was your first time performing in the UK. What do you think? Yeah, it was my first time and they were lovely. There's no other way to say it. I thought that they were just the perfect audience. They seemed very familiar with your work. Did you get that feeling? Yeah. They all feel like my friends, right? I think it's because they watch me online and they've seen a lot of my stand-up. And so

to a degree, they are familiar with my work. There was a bit of a queue to get their photograph taken with you afterwards. It was a fan club. Yeah, yeah. That that that is my way of saying thank you for anybody that purchases a ticket and comes out. I will try my best to personally thank them. Was the audience different, the UK audience to the US for stand up? To do to do to do. It didn't seem like it. No. And there are some references that, in my opinion, are very U.S. specific. And the audience rolled with it. Like they, in my opinion, I'd call them like a savvy, fun audience, you know? Were you in the U.S. during the election as we made comparisons?

Yeah. Your thoughts on the result? Oh, I was very disappointed. Yeah, I was very disappointed and quite shocked. Although I realized that I realized that I just had like a residual affect from 2016. So 2024, I kind of woke up and it was confusing. But then I was like, wait, why am I? I thought it was going to be like the purge. I thought we were going to wake up the next day. And if Trump won, that we would be, you know, locking our houses and putting on masks and protecting ourselves.

But then I realized, like, no, we already got got hit with this before in 2016. And so it kind of felt like a scab that had been reopened. I was just about to ask you, what is the feeling that you, but that's the way you describe it then. But not that mass movement, shall we say, that we saw after Trump in 2016

when Democrats pushed back quite a lot, particularly women. Yeah, yeah. I'm very interested to see how what the response is, the response will be this time. Yes. And of course,

Donald Trump this time not only won the election and the electoral college votes, but won the popular vote and is a very, has a mandate, has the House and Senate as well. Yeah, he has the Senate,

the House, he has everything. And so definitely was the people's choice, if not yours. Yeah, it was not. I mean, if you if you look at the numbers, the group that overwhelmingly voted for Kamala Harris was black women. Ninety three percent of the Democratic voting bloc for Kamala was black women. 93% of the Democratic voting bloc for Kamala was black women. Yes. Although I suppose some were also thinking with this particular election and Donald Trump that he made inroads with black men and Latinos in a way that he didn't previously. How do you

understand that? You know, I don't really. To be honest with you, I'm actually perplexed. I know that he does not make our economy stronger. I know that he does not unite people. I know that he does not make people feel safe. So all the people that feel like he was the better choice, I actually don't get it. And the economy did come out as a number one issue for so many immigration, often at number two. But we will talk about parts of that feeling safe and fear as well, as I speak to you about your stand up. How did you get into it? I was working for a person who a manager who managed comedians. And one day when I quit that job, I just went to an open mic and I just started.

Well, you think that looks like something fun? Because for me, it looks like the most terrifying thing in the world. And I think so many people say that. And I don't know what I thought. I just knew I am a person that follows my instincts. And I never thought about it a day before that moment that I did it. This was not like, oh, when I get here, I'm going to do this. I saw Eddie Murphy when I was two.

And now I have to be a comedian. That is not my story. I decided in the moment, I think I'm going to try this thing and see how it goes with full expectation that it would go poorly. But it went great. And now I'm here today. And what is so attractive to you about stand up? I think I can look at that two ways. Like one is like I'm a middle child of a lot of people, right? Oh, yeah. 13 people. 13. Yeah.irteen. Have you. It's twelve of us all together. Yeah. So twelve siblings. Right. And so I think that there is this desire for me to have a stage all to myself.

I'm also a middle child, so I understand that. Yeah, I think that I think that's really, really deep in the subconscious, but I do acknowledge it. But I also, as I was always a fan of stand-up comedy, that was my pregame. You know how people go to bars and things before a nightclub? I would go watch comedy shows. And what I did notice was there were never many women on the show. There were never many repeat women, although the audience is made up of mostly women most times. And then even within that, I knew a very few women of color. And so I felt like, well, if I am looking to hear my story and no one's out there telling it, then I guess I have to do it.

So we have mentioned that you are black, that you are female. Also came up in your show last night that you are a gun owner. Yes. People might be surprised by that. Oh, I'm surprised. You are surprised by that. Why did you get a gun? You know, I dive a bit deeper into it in my show, but really fear, really, especially this was the year that I got it. It was it was maybe 2020 or 2021. And there was a lot of fear mongering. There was the pandemic was happening. A lot of people were scared. We in the States, we had just we were seeing back to back, like aggressive police brutality and, you know, police killing like innocent black American people. And there was a dialogue nationwide for our community to heighten our desire for protection, especially for women. And so I had a lot of the men in my life that care about me that felt like, well, if you are a single woman, we have to set you up to be able to protect yourself. And so not only did I become a gun owner, but we were taking martial arts class. We were taking defense classes just because it was an environment at the time that did not feel supportive or safe.

And that time, to remind our listeners, was the time of George Floyd, who was murdered. Such heightened tension within the country. Yeah, Breonna Taylor. So many names, actually, that I should mention when we speak about that. But to drill down into it, did you think you would use the gun? Because you will know

you're from New York, you will know the arguments against guns in the States that guns are rarely used in self-defence, that the presence of a gun makes a conflict more likely to become violent, that armed civilians are unlikely to stop crimes and more likely to make a dangerous situation more deadly. Yeah, I agree with all of those facts, actually.

And my hope is that I never have to um and it doesn't actually make me feel safer and I think sometimes you know in life we do a lot of things to shut people up you know like oh I'm gonna go to school because this is what my parents want me to do and then when I fulfill what they want then I, then I'll journey into my own desires. And I think that the community of people that I had around me were pressuring me. And it was like, okay, I'll do this for you guys. So you feel better about it. But it hasn't made me feel any more safe or less safe at all it hasn't changed my predicament oh that's interesting and that is being a single woman that you don't feel safe a single black woman that you don't

feel safe what's behind it well here's the thing in my day-to-day life i feel pretty safe you know i feel i i've walked through life, I think, with certain privileges. I'm a really likable, attractive person that is tall and thin and has personality. And now I can afford certain things. So my environments aren't extremely difficult, you know. But yeah, I think that my plan, to be very honest with you, if anybody ever breaks into my house is to run, of course, is to run and call the cops. But the people in my life are like, you need another plan just in case running isn't an option. But we're going to have to talk more. You're going to have to come back.

Zainab, really good to have you on. Zainab Johnson, she is performing at the Soho Theatre there until Saturday the 23rd of November and her debut special, I should say, Hijabs Off, is on Amazon Prime now. Thanks so much for coming in. Thank you.

I want to turn to a 24-year- old product design and technology graduate. That is Olivia Humphries. She's a global medical winner of the prestigious James Dyson Award 2024. The awards celebrate the next generation of design engineers. She's the first Irish winner of the global competition. And her invention is Athena, a portable thermoelectric hair loss prevention device for chemotherapy patients that uses scalp cooling. And she's on the line to tell me more. Congratulations, first off. Hi Nuala, how's it going? Thank you so much. So tell us about your product. How does it work? Yeah, so in simple terms,ena is a cooling case that cycles water up and around a headpiece and it's

lightweight it's portable it's low cost and it means that a patient can manage this side of the treatment themselves and take control over a time of very little control during a chemotherapy infusion day so what's the difference with your project compared to what's available right now what currently is available is a quite large stationary refrigeration technology. I saw this from when my mum went through this treatment in 2019. She underwent treatment for breast cancer and the whole project is inspired from her experience and from looking at what she received.

Athena's response to that and trying to make it easier and more accessible for patients to get their hands on this kind of treatment. Do we know how much it can help prevent hair loss? Yeah, yeah, like for mum it was huge. For mum she managed to retain about 60% of her hair and you didn't know the difference which was incredible for her and it meant that she was stronger going through the treatment itself. So success is considered if you can retain 50% of your hair and up and statistics currently show that the 50% of people are keeping 50% of their hair and up but with new technology and trying

to make this easier to use and that people have more time to set it up and things like that efficacy rates could potentially go up which is really exciting and of course it can be a hugely emotional part of a cancer diagnosis going through chemotherapy that very visible part of losing your hair absolutely like it doesn't just affect us physically it affects us mentally and it's not just us as a selfish thing you know to look good but it's to protect the people around us a lot of people i spoke to when I was researching this project mentioned that they have kids or people that they wanted to protect or that they have jobs and things like that. So it's trying to keep that sense of normality throughout the treatment and improving quality of life through the treatment rather than trying to improve it afterwards.

Let's talk money. Yours is going to be much cheaper if all goes to plan explain that to me the differences of the price yes it's really exciting um current technology is refrigeration technology as i mentioned so that means that it's very expensive the machines are costing upwards of 20 to 30 to 40 000 for the machine alone and then on top of that the implementation is in the hundreds of thousands so that's that's what makes it so difficult to get your hands on it. For mum, she was one of 30 that received treatment in her infusion ward. So trying to make something that was low cost to get into the hands of people was the key thing and the key goal for me. So Athena uses very, very low cost components.

It uses semiconductors, which are euros uh cents pounds um and the battery itself is the most expensive part which is 115 euro so in terms of what's inside of it it's very limited but you know in terms of r&d and stuff it could cost inwards of around a thousand euros which i would love for it to be along the lines of buying a wig and even at that you know it would cost a thousand euros or aim to be, but it could be out on a rental scheme. You know, patients shouldn't have to pay for this kind of treatment.

So a couple of thousand to, let's say one, two, three, as opposed to 30,000, perhaps as it is currently. It sounds wonderful. Do you have a timeline or when something like this might be rolled out

after winning the Dyson Award? What happens? I'm so lucky. Yeah, the Dyson Award has given me funding, which is hugely going to accelerate this kind of stuff. And I'm very, very lucky. I've just come out of university and I'm working with a startup now in Ireland and we're amalgamating and getting it out as quickly as possible. We're working on testing, we're working on developing the prototype and the clinical trial is booked for the end of this year, which is really exciting. So we're getting it out as quickly as possible with the hopes that it could be on the market in the next year or two. What does your mum think about all of this? She's delighted. We're dragging out the celebrations every week. We go to a new place and have a new celebratory dinner. It's great.

It sounds great. And I'm so glad she's doing well as well. And I know it's something that's very important. So I want to wish you all the best with it. And let's hope to it all being rolled out at that cheaper cost and reaching more people when it comes to chemotherapy and preventing hair loss. That's Olivia Humphries, Global Medical Winner of the prestigious James Dyson Award 2024. Now, my next guest is Robin Malcolm. And she is well known for so much of her work. For example, Jane Campion's TV series, Top of the Lake. You might have watched that.

But I want to talk about After the Party. So this is a six-part drama. It's about to air on Channel 4. It's a lot of kind of morally complicated and challenging in lots of ways. Robin co-created the series, also plays the lead role. That character is Penny Wilding. She's a teacher.

She's a mother. She's a grandmother. She's a feminist. She's an environmental activist. I could add another word maybe instead of activist. Some might say also vandal. But she is also called the anti-heroine. In the story, just to give you a little bit of backstory, Penny has accused her husband of sexually assaulting their teenage, their daughter's teenage friend at a party. And so the drama is all about the fallout from those accusations the former husband returns to town after five years away um robin you're so welcome

you're from australia whereabouts are you exactly i'm in a i'm in a production trailer uh just outside of a very small town in Western Australia. I'm actually in the middle of a logging mill, an old dilapidated logging mill where we're shooting a few scenes. So I'm amazed that we've even got a good connection here. I can even see headshots on the wall behind you, but I won't go into that. You know, this character, Penny penny i have to say i was hooked from the first scene um i mentioned the word anti-heroine she's compared to mayor of east town or all of kittredge some say like they're not the most likable woman and you see this as a pushback to some other women that you see on screen tell me about your creation early on, and this is sort of the early

inception of it, we were, Diane and I, the writer, we were looking at a lot of the particularly Western representation of women over 50. And because it seemed to us that because women over 50 are kind of slightly unpalatable on screen screen and you've got to push them into certain directions to make them palatable, you know, you've got to, they're either the villain, but they're highly of white laugh a lot and there was always quite a lot of kitchen porn you know and we sort of we looked at each other I thought I don't know one 50 year old woman who wears a lot of white and laughs a lot most women in their 50s 50 to 60s are furious about something. They're usually in the middle of a massively complex life. They've got a history, you know, that's as long as your arm. They've still got potential.

And they're going through a massive hormonal change as well. So white and giggly and smiling and in red lipstick and wearing lots and lots of clothes whenever they have sex. Because who wants to watch, you know, a woman's body naked when she's over 50? How awful. So there was a lot to push back on. And we got to know each other because Di had written a film and there was a central character in it who was a woman in her 50s and the director, a male director, cast a woman in her 50s, and the director, a male director, cast a woman in her 30s. And Di was furious about that. And she rang me up and she said, I want to write something that can only be played by somebody, you know, in our age group.

And that person was you. I want to play a little bit of Penny in action for our listeners. Come on, it's the 21st century. I would have thought as a modern woman and mum that you'd be really happy talking about everything, especially with the kids, wouldn't you think? I mean, you know,

back in the day, women weren't allowed to talk about anything and that's what made us kind of victims, right? There we go, the Penny lectures. I like talking about sex. Suddenly, every second woman's a victim. Are you saying that no woman is a victim? I'm just saying that I think a lot of women make false accusations that completely destroy innocent men's lives.

OK, shall we move this conversation along? Hold on, Bridget. How do you know they're innocent Sarah just because you're a woman doesn't automatically mean you're telling the truth I mean sometimes they have ulterior motives so speaks the resident misogynist how can I be a misogynist I'm a woman okay I think that gives us a really great flavour of kind of the ping pong dynamism of the series and this character that you have created. How did it feel to play her?

Oh, so liberating. So wonderful. I mean, you know, we're, as New Zealanders, I think we have a very particular relationship with femininity and feminism, and it often is a pushback from, you know, what we perhaps see from bigger countries who create a lot more entertainment. And we've always functioned on a kind of a, we call it a sort of farming wire mentality. You know, you can make anything without anything. And if no one else is doing it, then you've got to do it yourself. And because Di and I were driven very much by trying to create a woman that felt really credible to us and real to us and representative of all the women that we knew, actually being able to put her together and put her on screen and put her in the middle of a complex family story where no one's a hero, no one's a villain. It's just life.

And there's a lot of mess. It was deeply, deeply liberating. And as we moved through it, you know, I felt so proud of it. I was so proud of it. Let's talk about liberating. Maybe you found this liberating. Maybe you didn't. But it's not too long before you see you, Penny,

naked life modeling for an art class, also having sex at another point and I'm wondering how that was for you as an actor of a certain age you were voted New Zealand's sexiest woman four years in a row was it? Did I get my facts right? A number of years ago

but I'm just thinking so there's like this persona that has been created whether it's by you or the media and then you're showing your public something completely different. Yeah, yeah. So that came from the fact, actually, that when I was at drama school and I was trying to earn money to pay for my way through drama school, I was a life model. And I was quite a roundy girl

and I didn't have a particularly good relationship with my own body. And I just, somebody suggested it to me. And I, so I became this life model. And what really struck me was that I was sitting naked in the middle of a room with a bunch of artists. And I was being looked at as a kind of an aesthetic shape. Like I wasn't being judged in any way.

But there's a very strong political reason why we've got this for Penny in there, is on one hand, it's a way for us to look at a middle-aged woman's body through the eyes of artists, art students. So we're not being asked to sexualise her, we're not being asked to judge her, we're just looking at her. But it's also the only time when penny stops it's the only time when she actually

can sit quietly within herself and be seen you know i mean years and years ago i um in my mid-40s i was asked to sign a nudity clause for a television show i was doing and uh as a joke i said to my agent well no I'll definitely sign this nudity clause and can you tell these people that if they want to put a woman in her 40s on screen naked I absolutely celebrate them and I will be there bells you know bells going but you just need to warn them that I'm less playboy and more National Geographic and I think that horrified them so much when I turned up they had a surgery this lingerie for me to wear. At the time I thought, okay, there's a thing about our bodies

that terrifies us. You know, when the beautiful Emma Thompson took her clothes off for Leo Grand and the world went mental. And I'm like, God, that's curious, isn't it? Do you think it can be changed though? Because I feel I'm beginning to see at least a representation on screen, even if not what it should be. I think so.

I think so. And that just becomes about how you do it, how you present it, and exposure and getting used to it. And I honestly think that's all it is is as and you know it's a bit of a cliche but but changing the conversation around it but also finding ways for you know because there's and I you know I mean I'm I know I'm using this phrase right but the male gaze thing it's always about sexualizing the female form when in fact like there's another scene in it where penny and one of her pals is in a spa pool and they're both

naked in the spa pool and again we're just two women with our clothes off drinking you know margaritas in a spa pool you're making we're not asking anybody to judge it, you know. Yeah, because what I'm actually thinking as well, of course, is that we do see those bodies in real life when we go to the swimming pool or we go to the beach or we go wherever we do, go to the gym, but we don't see it on screen. That's right. That's right. And so what we're kind of saying is that, you know,

like when we zoom in close onto Penny's body is we're kind of asking an audience to go, seriously, what's wrong with this? It's so normal. There's nothing wrong with it. It's only coming to us now. But what has the reaction been in New Zealand? I did see it called the best TV that New Zealand has ever made. Do you agree? Well, of course I would.

And I've had a career in New Zealand television, New Zealand-Australia television, but I'm proud of it. We smashed it in New Zealand. We smashed it in Australia. The Australians keep trying to say that it's theirs and it's not because they always do that. And it's not. And I won a Best Actress award france and then another one in spain and we got these so it it's sort of got it getting its little tentacles out everywhere and it's just this little low budget show from new zealand i can't tell you how proud i am of it

well robin malcolm after the party starts on channel four this wednesday uh robin thanks for joining us you might want to listen to woman's Hour tomorrow as well because we have Gillian Anderson on the programme, the actor best known for The X-Files, The Crown and Sex Education is joining me to discuss her book Want, a compilation of sexual fantasies

sent to her by anonymous women from across the world. You won't want to miss it. Thanks for listening to Woman's Hour. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts.

In 1984, an IRA bomb planted under a bath in Brighton's Grand Hotel came close to killing Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. It was the biggest direct assault on a British government since the gunpowder plot. From BBC Radio 4, I'm Glenn

Patterson, and in The Brighton Bomb, I tell the story of the deadly attack, unravelling the threads that brought all involved, often by heartbreaking chance, to that place and time, 2.54am on the morning of the 12th of October, and I reveal how the police only just averted a follow-up bombing campaign aimed at England's beaches. To hear the Brighton bomb and many other great history documentaries, search for the History Podcast on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year,

I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this?

What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.