Woman's Hour - Maddy Prior, Family Therapy, Linda Boström Knausgård

Episode Date: October 30, 2019

Here's Maddy Prior, photographed when All Round My Hat was in the charts in the '70s. She's been performing now for over 50 years and she's done more than 3000 shows. She's made 11 albums of her own and 28 with Steeleye Span. Maddy talks to Jenni about her life and music.Last week we spoke to Cyntoia Brown-Long, who was given a life sentence in America for a murder she committed when she was 16. Today we speak to Jennifer Ubiera who is an attorney at the Georgetown Juvenile Justice Initiative in Washington DC. Her focus is young people in the criminal justice system, especially teenage girls and the poor. She explains how Cyntoia represents the young women she supports. Linda Boström Knausgård is a Swedish writer whose second novel, Welcome To America, has been awarded the prestigious August Prize. It's about a sensitive, strong-willed child who's 11 and has stopped talking. She thinks she may have killed her father. Her brother barricades himself in his room. Their mother, a successful actress, carries on as normal. Linda Boström Knausgård talks about silence, trauma, childhood, mental illness and imploding families.Nicola Dunn is a family therapist. She supports people who have genetic testing for medical conditions. Occasionally, perhaps more often than you think, these tests reveal that the man thought to be someone's Dad, turns out not to be. So what impact do these revelations have on the whole family? Woman’s Hour investigates.

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, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for the 30th of October 2019. In today's programme, following our interview with Cyntoia Brown-Long, the young woman who killed a man 15 years ago when she was 16 and was recently released from a life sentence of 51 years. We speak to a lawyer who works with young women. How well does the United States juvenile justice system work for those who become involved? The winner of Sweden's prestigious literary August Prize, Linda Bostrom-Nausgaard, and her novel Welcome to America about a little girl who stops talking.

And the risks of genetic testing. What happens if an adult is tested and finds their assumed biological father is nothing of the kind. Now, one of the best known bands of the late 60s and early 70s was a group of six who were rather different from the run-of-the-mill rock and pop stars such as the Stones, The Who or The Doors. They were known as Steeleye Span and had come together through the folk tradition. Well this year they celebrate their 50th anniversary. They began in 1969 but it was in 1975 they reached number five in the charts and made it to top of the pops with All Around My Hat. All around my hat I will wear the green willow

And all around my hat For a twelve-month-and-a-day And if anyone should ask me The reason why I'm wearing it It's all for my true love who's far, far away Well, for the 50th anniversary, there's a tour of Europe. There's a new album and leading from the front will of course be Maddie Pryor. Now that is going to be an earworm for

everybody all day, Maddie. What's it like for you to hear it again? Well, it's part of my life. It's been a very useful part of my life I have to say. And for some reason that just comes out of the speakers, that song. I don't know why. Possibly Mike Batt's production.

But it does. Some songs work on the radio and there seems to be no sort of reason for it. What inspired it? Well, it's a traditional, it's two traditional songs actually bolted together. The words of the chorus and the tune, the words of the verses, I wasn't that impressed with. So I just took some from another song. And it doesn't really make much sense, but then they always say, sound over sentence.

Why was that the one, do you reckon, that made it to the charts and got you on top of the pot? I have no idea, because we thought... We put another song out first and thought that would go, but the same happened with the Eurythmics. They put out, they had last chance, saloon as it were, they put out one song and it didn't happen, Love is a Stranger and an Open Car.

And then they put out Sweet Dreams and it just took off. And it's kind of interesting how you never know which one's going to work. How did you actually start out in the business? In the business? Well, I started out, the first thing I did was I had a, I was on holiday with a friend and we ran out of money, so we went to work in a wimpy bar for a week and got £10.

And I'd done a gig on my own with a banjo and I got £8. And I thought, I'll do this for a bit. And that was it. The folk scene in the 60s was really quite big I mean were you trailing all over the country going to upper rooms in pubs? Exactly every pub each town would have two or three quite often folk clubs bigger towns but even small towns had a folk club and we'd go and play in all of them. I mean, we played in every shed in England just about. And it was great.

It was very cool at the time. One has to remember. It was one of the cool periods of folk. Folk goes in and out of fashion and interest regularly. It just does. So what was the atmosphere for women and girls in that folk scene at the time? Well, I think it was pretty even. We were considered mainly singers.

We weren't taken very seriously as instrumentalists, and I never really took... I played the banjo, but it was the wrong instrument because it was American and I moved into English music and there wasn't really a place for it. I didn't think at the time, but that was... But girls were... We were sort of... I don't remember feeling...

The folk world is a very interesting world because it's very nice and people aren't, on the whole, incredibly judgmental and difficult. And they're not looking... It's not a world you go into looking for making money. You just don't go there. You go into it because you like the music. How easy was it then for a record company to know how to pitch you because you were far from the average pop band?

No, well, I think Chrysalis did sort of scratch their heads a bit, especially about America, which was where everybody wanted to go and wanted to be popular. But we were selling out big halls in England. I mean, we did two nights at the Hammersmith Apollo, which was sort of one of the biggest venues because there weren't the big stadiums then. Nobody sort of seemed to be really doing that very much

in the early 70s. So we were kind of a popular band in Britain, sort of thing. But America was much harder. We toured with Jethro Tull and Ian said to me, he said, the Americans have a hard time getting us. I don't think they're going to get you.

And I think he was kind of right in a way. We're too extreme. How did you cope over the years with really constant changes in lineups? There were always new people coming in. Yes, I was always surprised when they left, actually. I think I sort of bumble along in a world of my own a bit. And people have come in from all different worlds. We've got people, you know,

we've never gone just to the folk world to bring people in because it's a very distinctive kind of style that we do, which isn't, the songs are traditional, but we don't approach them in the way that the revival has approached them, really. Did you ever expect it would have lasted this long? Oh, no, I didn't think I'd last this long. You're what, early 70s now, I suppose?

Yes, yes. But it's... No, I mean, you weren't thinking like that. Nobody, I don't think anybody thought about your life as a sort of scanner for a sort of shape. You were just moving from day to day, song to song, as far as I was concerned. Now, there is a new album, as I mentioned, for the anniversary.

We're going to hear part of it. It's a song called Reclaim, and it's written by your daughter, Rose Kemp. It is, Rose Kemp, and it's a lovely one. We'll hear it patience and grace there will be good days and when there aren't your thoughts will make your hands Make things that make others take a stand But until then, please hold my hand And remember This too shall be reclaimed

It all starts with the wheat Between the turnip haze What's it like working with her? I mean, I know you didn't come from a musical background family, but she obviously has. Do you just gel? Yes. Well, I think family voices are always similar.

And Rick and I, my husband, ex-husband, who I get on very well with, I have to say. We sometimes sing together, and it's always very interesting how that voice thing of families is very close. And my son does hip-hop, so they've all gone in different directions. Rose went into heavy metal, heavy rock.

But she's just a great singer, and she's become a brilliant teacher because she's done training in that. And you do courses, which I think she partly is involved in. I know there's one called Singing for the Uncertain. Yes, that's the one. What's that all about? Well, there are people who have been told

when they're nine to 11 that they can't sing. And it becomes their life story. Because they then tell everybody else that they can't sing. And then their children tell them that they can't sing. And on it goes. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. So we've realized that actually what it's mainly about is confidence. Because the constrictor muscles

that are in the throat will lock down if they think you can't do it so and so therefore if you think you can't do it you won't so you teach them how to do it we just give them you know it's actually and they meet lots of other people

who are there who are also saying the same thing and they always turn up saying, well, I don't think it'll work, it won't work. But it does. It usually does. Just briefly, what's it like being on tour now after 50 years? It's great. It's the easiest part of my life, I think, now.

As long as my voice is working and I'm not ill or anything. But it's actually very straightforward. You have the two hours on stage. You don't have to think about anything else. Whereas at home, there are always other things to think about. It's always quite busy and I'm teaching and all those. But actually, touring's great. And to work with great musicians, which the band is, and

they all love being in the band, which is quite unique actually having a band that wants to be in it. Maddy Pryor, thank you very much for being with us. Let's just mention the latest album is called Steel Ice Band, established 1969 and of course

you and the band are on tour throughout November and December. And then on Friday by the way, Jane will be broadcasting from BBC Introducing at Tobacco Dock in London looking at how to get in and get on in the music industry as a young woman. Maddy, thank you very much.

Thank you. Now you may remember last Friday I spoke to a young American woman, Cyntoia Brown-Long, who'd killed a man when she was 16, was given a life sentence of 51 years, but in August of this year was given clemency and released on probation.

It had been accepted by the court that she'd been a juvenile when she was sentenced, and she'd been the victim of sex trafficking. She described the crime she had committed when she'd been sent out by a pimp called Cutthroat to have sex with Johnny Allen. The man that I shot, he had picked me up. And whenever we went back to his house, he was acting really strange. He kept mentioning how

he was a sharpshooter. He had showed off guns to me. And it really just made me feel like he was trying to intimidate me. And I mean, it worked. And I just wanted to leave. And so I started to feel like really trapped. I started to feel like I couldn't leave. And I really didn where I just expected violence from men. I just expected that that was what's going to happen because that had always been my experience. And at the man's house, there was a moment where I thought that he was reaching for a gun. I didn't know what was going to happen. I just remember feeling this fear and this sense of immediacy and I reacted and I shot him. Now you've never denied killing Johnny Allen. The prosecution when it came to court said you were actually trying to rob him. Why did you take money and guns from the scene? So whenever I met him, I had to go out to get money for cut. And I couldn't come back to the hotel empty-handed. If I went back empty-handed, like, I mean, it just wouldn't be good news.

That wasn't even an option. It wasn't on the table. And to be honest with you, after experiencing everything there that night with that man, I didn't want to go out with another man. I didn't want to take another risk. I just wanted to go back to the room. And when I left, that's when I took the guns, and I took his truck so I could get back to the hotel room

just so that I would have something to take back to cut. Well, how many other young girls get into trouble as Sintoya did and end up in the criminal justice system in the same way an adult might? Well, Jennifer Ubiera is a lawyer who works with the Georgetown Juvenile Justice Initiative, running a monthly workshop with vulnerable girls, and she joins us from America. Jennifer, how common are the kind of experiences Cyntoia had among similar young women? Unfortunately, Cyntoia's experience is far too common for girls. Specifically, we know that trafficking victims, which is child sex trafficking, is child sexual abuse, comes at a very high rate for girls here. And how well does America's juvenile justice system work for them?

It doesn't work well. For starters, the system itself is not developmentally appropriate for girls. It's not culturally competent specifically for girls of color who tend to be disproportionately built up for boys. It was made to address their needs. But currently, girls are becoming, and for a good amount of time now, have become a larger percentage of the justice system, but the system hasn't adjusted. Why is that? Why have they become a larger percentage? So what we see from the statistics is that whereas boys are arrested for offenses that tend to be more violent, girls are being arrested for what are more represented in the areas of status offenses and offenses that seem to just violate our view of what femininity and girlhood should represent. And when I say that, I mean an assault. So if a girl has a fight, she is more likely to be arrested than a boy who has a schoolyard fight. And that's because, in our opinion of paternalism, we think that it shows

up in the ways how the juvenile justice system addresses girls and when they do offenses, how they respond to them. Why did Cyntoia's case attract the attention that it did? You know, Cyntoia's case got a lot of celebrity attention. I was on social media at the time that Cyntoia's case became really popular. Although there was a 2011 documentary on her life, a lot of us found out just a few years ago. So the celebrity attention on her extreme sentence of 51 years, the fact that she was 16 years old and charged as an adult.

And then I think just the type of abuse that Cyntoia suffered resonated with a lot of people because we may know someone or have been involved in something similar when it comes to gendered forms of violence. So what significance has her case had on the way minors are treated or beginning to be treated in the criminal justice system? Is it having an impact? You know, I think it still remains to be seen if Centoya's case will have an impact on the juvenile system, because Centoya was given clemency, right? And I don't, and clemency here, particularly where she came from in Tennessee, since 1976, there have only been three cases up there have only been three grantings of clemency. So I don't think that

the governor may have taken her age into account. I'm not really sure what he considered. But I know, at least for the general public, the significance of her case was really important. It showed us that trafficking victims are not all the same. When the significance of her case was really important. It showed us that trafficking victims are not all the same. When we think of trafficking victims, we think of someone who's kidnapped in the dead of night, whereas Centoya's case proves is that the pathway to her being trafficked and abused was something that was a little bit more common, running away from home, having issues at home, not having the proper supports. How many young women would you reckon are in a similar situation in prison to the one Sintoya found herself in? You know, some data from the sentencing project showed that nearly

one in every 15 women in prison is serving a life sentence. And so that's nearly 7,000 women. And specifically around their youth, about 300 of those women received their life sentences before their 18th birthday. And so those numbers are quite staggering. But when you consider that the rates of violent crime for women has been declining, but the number of women serving life sentences has increased dramatically over the last 10 years. And these are women who have experienced physical violence, sexual violence, or witnessed violence in the home before ever entering the system. So I would say the positionality of Centoya is not unique, and it's a constant and common experience amongst women who receive these life sentences for violent crimes despite the fact that they were likely and most times have been

victims themselves. What's involved in your workshops? How can you help vulnerable young girls stay out of trouble and out of the criminal justice system? Yeah, so we focus our workshops around a framework that was developed at the Juvenile Justice Initiative. And so that framework is looking at youth and providing programming and support for youth around racial justice, adolescent development, trauma, and a lens of sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression. And so what that means is we built up a workshop that supports the leadership of girls. And so the racial justice part of it is making sure they have resources to fully participate like transportation, food, childcare. A lot of girls are responsible for their younger siblings. For adolescent development, we make sure that we support them in providing

ways to engage in the arts, in music, and then learning how to advocate for themselves, even when they have been involved in the system. And so when I say the system, I'm specifically talking about both the juvenile justice system and the child welfare system. When we talk about the framework of trauma, we make sure that we establish consent in our programming. So when it comes to sharing out about their experiences, activities that would involve touch, we make sure that we're moving at the speed of trust and let girls know that they're safe and that they can, that they're supported in being able to speak up for themselves, which I think is an important part of their experiences in the juvenile justice system, being able to speak up for themselves when things aren't going well.

And how well are the girls responding to this? So this was our, this was my first year doing this program, which is the Life of Girls workshop. So I created it in partnership with Rights for Girls. But last year, we also had an iteration of this same workshop. The girls do really well. We haven't had any girls leave the program due to involvement with the juvenile justice system further this year. But we still are collecting data and taking multiple attempts at what works to find out how we can help replicate this program for other areas of our city and throughout the U.S. Jennifer Ubiera, thank you very much indeed for joining us. Now still to come in today's program, genetic counseling and what's known as paternity fraud. What happens if an adult is tested and it's found what was thought to be a biological father, in fact, is not. And the serial, episode three of Indigo. Now earlier this week, you may have missed Lisa Simone,

the daughter of Nina, now established in her own musical career, and teenagers seeking sex therapy has trebled in two years. Why? You can find anything you've missed in the live programmes by going to BBC Sounds and downloading us. And don't forget there's also a Woman's Hour Instagram account. Now, Linda Bostrom- bostrom now scared second novel welcome to america has been awarded the prestigious swedish august prize it portrays a sensitive strong-willed child in the throes of a trauma ellen has just turned 11 and she stopped talking. She thinks she may have killed her father.

Her brother barricades himself in his room. Their mother, who's a successful actor, carries on as normal. Well, I talked to Linda about silence, trauma, childhood, mental illness, imploding families and the overlap between fiction and memoir. And she read the opening paragraph of the book. It's a long time already since I stopped talking. They're used to it now. My mom, my brother. My dad's dead, so I don't know what he had to say about it.

Maybe that it was genetic. The genes come down hard in our family Hard and without mercy The direct lines of descendancy Maybe the silence was always inside me I used to say things that weren't true I said the sun was out when it was raining That the porridge we ate was green like grass and

tasted like soil. I said school was like walking into pitch darkness every day, like having to hold on to a handrail until it was time to go home. Now, as far as Ellen, the character in your book is concerned, what lies behind her silence? and the father dies. And who knows what she's thinking, but maybe she's feeling this guilt because maybe she didn't think it would happen. But when it did, it became the real guilt for her to bear on her own. It's a big thing for a so young child. Her father had manic depression, or bipolar as we would call it now. Yeah.

Your father also suffered from it. Yeah. How frightening was it to grow up with a father who suffered like that? It was periods that were really frightening, I would say. He couldn't really be responsible for what he was doing, but in one sense you are always responsible for what you're doing, I think. But he could be really frightening and violent, and you never knew from one day to another how is this day going to be, how is the next day going to be.

It was like I was always checking him out. One of the things I know about your mother is that when your father was ill or he had to be in hospital, she refused help as a family for you. Why did you do that? Yeah, I don't really understand that actually, because it would have been nice if some professional could talk to us and tell us about this disease and even help us with the things that we didn't understand. She had this instinct that we do this in our family. We can solve this here around us, among us. It is the best.

Is it this idea that you reflect in the novel? Yeah. That she wanted you to be a family of light, just as Ellen's mother does. Yes, yes, yes. To my mother, we were. She was this extreme optimist. And she was also protecting the family. No one could say anything about them.

It was very high roof, we say in Swedish. You were given a lot of freedom to do whatever you wanted. A lot of freedom. I think it made me nervous, not really to know what the rules were and anxious and when I was home at my friends I could do things and they were quite shocked how can you do this what sort of thing now like in jumping in their couch with my shoes on and you know those things that you normally don't do. So I was like, I felt my mother's voice. Well, we were just, they are just playing.

We were just playing. This is nothing. A friend of my brother's, I met him yesterday. He said, it was a little bit like Pippi Longstrump at your house. Pippi Longstocking? Yeah. Yeah, he said we could do anything at our house. How does the family survive together when, in Ellen's family, the father dies. Yeah, after he dies, I think the family members, the mother, the brother, and the silent Ellen,

they move to their own world, I think. Before, when the father was alive, they were always together against him, in a way. And now they're more alone in their own world. Clearly, there are lots of elements of your life in Ellen's story. It is. How much easier is it to make your story into a fiction rather than writing a memoir? I changed the frame a little bit so I could be free to write this story.

And it was a joy to write it. I wrote it in a couple of months. I didn't plan to, but I sort of longed for that apartment that I lived in. The apartment is exactly the same in the book. I longed back to that time. So I did some big changes in the characters so I could be free to tell the story. It was very nice to see these family characters again and to play with them a little bit also. And you wouldn't have thought of writing it as a memoir? No, not at that time. I wouldn't, because it's too sensitive, I think.

And it was necessary for me to change a lot of things. My mother, first I read this manuscript out loud to her twice. And she liked it. She started to remember all from these years that I have written. But the power of writing has such a huge impact. So she even thought that this that I changed was true. So she was a little bit annoyed with that after. She liked it first, but when the times were passing, I thought she went a bit angry with me that I was writing about this and my brother was really angry too so then you feel it wasn't my meaning I think it's a beautiful book and I think those characters are nicely portrayed also, the brother and the mother.

But then you feel alone, of course. I was talking to Linda Bostrom-Nausgaard and the novel is called Welcome to America. You may remember the case of Richard Mason, who was one of the founders of moneysupermarket.com. He made a discovery earlier this year when he was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis and found he'd always been infertile, so he couldn't be the father of his three adult sons. So what are the risks of genetic testing and what impact does what turns out to be paternity fraud have on a family? Well, Nicola Dunn is a family therapist and genetic counsellor. Nicola how generally do these cases of paternity fraud or misassigned paternity as I think it's also called come to light? Well in my experience in my NHS experience

it's often around a medical condition and the one that I can talk to is an X-link condition. So in an X-link condition, because men only have one X chromosome, they can only pass that on to their daughters. So all their daughters are carriers. So when these women come in to the department and they're assuming that they are a carrier of the condition, they want to think about their own families and their fertility options. And if it becomes apparent that they are carrying the condition, they want to think about their own families and their fertility options. And if it becomes apparent that they don't have the gene mutation that their father has, that they don't carry their condition, there is a very rare medical possibility which can be investigated.

But if they also have a sister who does carry the condition, then the answer tends to be misassigned paternity. How often does it tend to occur in your work? It's not every day, but it does happen. And I think in the scientific literature, the percentages are about one to three percent of misassigned paternity. And that tends to feel about right to me. How much more common do you suppose it is now than it might have been 50 years ago say when sexual freedom was assumed to be rather less common than it might be now?

Well I think it's interesting because I think in the latter years often the reason for it, the motivation, was infertility within a marriage. And I think because we have other options now, when it happens currently in this generation, it's often a crossing of sexual boundaries. What sort of reaction do you find is common when the truth comes to light? Well, there are at least five people impacted. There's the adult child, there's the mother, there's what I call the nurturing father, the father who's in situ, there's the biological father,

and there's the partner of the biological father. So I think if you take the adult child, the first reaction is deep shock, disbelief, and then a dawning reality of perhaps nuances that they had experienced, feelings that they were different, somehow separate from their family. Then it can go into rage, sadness, grief, and hopefully eventually a level of acceptance of this new identity. What tends to be the reaction of the mother when she effectively has to face the truth coming to light? Yes, well, I've worked with mothers as well in another setting. Initially, it's shame and guilt, often sadness and regret about the pain that's been caused to the child and to their partner, and actually often relief.

Finally, the truth is out. So how do the partners have a discussion about this? You know, the man who assumed he was the father and wasn't, and the mother who knew all along that he wasn't yes so i think there's there's a couple of possibilities sometimes the father does know because he's begun a relationship with a woman who's pregnant and together they've chosen not to tell the child other times the father has an inkling because they've been unable to conceive. There is a miraculous conception and then there are no other conceptions, though they're still sexually active. So sometimes the father knows but doesn't ask.

And then at other times the father has absolutely no idea and it's a bolt from the blue and clearly deeply shocking. And how does he cope, the father who really feels he's been betrayed? Yes. Well, the father is in a difficult position because there's two primary relationships here. There's that with his partner who has lied to him. And there is that with the child. And, of course, the child's done nothing wrong. And so I think it depends on the quality of the relationship with the child. And of course, the child's done nothing wrong. And so I think it depends on the quality of the relationship with the woman and the degree to which she can express a really deep

acknowledgement of what he may be feeling. It depends on how she's told him, whether she's told him in quite a loving way or whether she's told him in a moment of anger and it depends on the age of the child and and the quality of that relationship and what about the biological father who may not actually have known that he had fathered a child yes so i've also worked with biological fathers um i think once again it's deeply shocking um They may have felt they had an encounter a very long time ago, but they hadn't imagined they were starting a family. They have their own situation. They often have a partner. experience for them and one that they need support and time to come to terms with and to make choices about whether they're going to be actively involved or not and of course the child wants the adult child would ideally like both and what's the effect on the children i mean obviously they're adult children if the father who is not the biological father but has been the nurturing father, if he's so angry that he breaks contact?

It's deeply painful because it is a rejection. It's rejection based on who they are. So they feel that who they are isn't good enough. And it's very wounding. What's your actual role then within the genetic testing process? Well, my role is really to support people who mostly, we assume, have the condition and are going to consider fertility options going forward, how they're going to have their family.

And so this is a sort of something which comes up occasionally, but is a whole different part of that. Because mainly it's about moving forward with the condition and making choices about the family that they want to have. And how then do you handle it when this kind of thing does come up? Well, on the occasions that it has, in the situations that I've been involved with, actually the young woman has had an inkling. Sometimes what I've also discovered in all the settings I work in is that often someone will tell the child or give an indication, the adult child, it can either be often a brother or sister of their mother, or their grandmother, or their mother's close friend, because people understand that it's a

very important issue. And that, you know, there's a belief that actually people have a right to know who their biological parents are. Nicola Dunn, thank you very much indeed for being with us. And by the way, if this has happened in your family, we would like to hear from any fathers to whom it's occurred, whether you're the biological father or not. How did it affect your relationship with children you'd raised but then found they were maybe not biologically yours?

You can email womansour it's womansour at bbc.co.uk i was talking to nicola dunn and do get in touch through email if this is something you've experienced it's womansour at bbc.co.uk now we opened the program with maddie prior as she reflected on 50 years of Steeleye span and lots of you got in touch to add your own memories. Anna emailed, I have a happy memory of seeing her perform in the foyer of the National Theatre in the 70s.

The theme was something to do with the River Thames. She was wearing white and was obviously pregnant and looked beautiful. I think it was the first time I white and was obviously pregnant and looked beautiful. I think it was the first time I realised you could be pregnant and still perform. Richard emailed, took me right back to 1973 Worcestershire. So many folk nights in so many pub rooms. Every night of the week there was something somewhere cool indeed. I sang my heart out. Some places let singers in for free and they gave a pint too.

Now tomorrow it is Halloween and Jane will be discussing women and horror films. Who are the women filmmakers to be looking out for? She'll be joined by Aisling Clark, the writer-director of The Devil's Doorway and Lizzie Franke, the production executive at the BFI, and Catherine Bray, an independent filmmaker. That's tomorrow with Jane, two minutes past ten. Bye-bye.

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