Woman's Hour - Nell Mescal, Professor Hazel Smith, Jean MacKenzie, Fern Brady, Claer Barratt, Stella Creasy MP, Lauren Moss

Episode Date: February 14, 2023

Nell Mescal is a singer songwriter from Ireland who writes Indie Folk songs. She’s a rising star whose featured in Rolling Stone Magazine, has been named as an artist to watch by NME and is preparing for a summer of live gigs. She joins Nuala McGovern to talk about what inspires her songs, being a young woman in the music industry and performs her single ‘Graduating’ live in the studio. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been photographed five times over recent months alongside his adolescent daughter. The latest photos show a beaming Kim Ju-Ae, who is aged between 9 and 10, standing with her father at a lavish military parade, where at least 11 intercontinental ballistic missiles were shown. So, why is Kim Jong Un revealing his daughter now? There is speculation that she is to be his successor, but is there any truth to that claim? Nuala talks to Professor Hazel Smith is Professorial Research Associate in Korean Studies at SOAS, University of London and BBC Correspondent Jean MacKenzie who is based in South Korea. Fern Brady is a comedian and writer who has appeared on 8 Out of 10 Cats, Live at the Apollo, and the most recent series of Taskmaster. She has also co-hosted three series of the Wheel of Misfortune podcast for BBC Sounds with fellow comedian Alison Spittle. In 2021, Fern received a diagnosis for autism. In her new book, Strong Female Character, she explores how this has impacted her life, and what it means to be an autistic working-class woman. We talk about plans to regulate the buy now pay later credit industry with Stella Creasy MP and Claer Barratt from the Financial Times.And BBC LGBT & Identity Correspondent Lauren Moss reports on a new book which claims that 97.5 per cent of children seeking help at the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids) based at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, had autism, depression or other problems that might have explained their unhappiness. Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Lisa Jenkinson Studio Manager: Gayl Gordon

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.

Hello, this is Nuala McGovern, and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. It is indeed. Welcome to Woman's Hour. Good to have you with us. And we're going to have some music for you a little later in the hour this Tuesday morning. Nalmeshgal, a rising Irish talent, will be in the Woman's Hour studio. And if that surname sounds familiar, yes, she does come from a very talented family. But we want to talk about 19-year-old Nell. She'll be playing graduating her single about the conflicting emotions leaving secondary

school. Rolling Stone describes her music as indie pop that offers solidarity with outsiders. Also, the comedian Fern Brady will be with us. Her book is called Strong Female Character and she explores the impact of autism on her life and also the lack of a diagnosis from her childhood

until to just two years ago. She was 34. It is wickedly funny, the book. It's also sad. It investigates why it can take so much longer for a girl rather than a boy to be diagnosed with autism and also how autism helped her go into stand-up comedy. So that's all coming up.

There's also autism coming up in claims this morning. Maybe you saw this, about how the NHS's Gender Identity Development Service did not explore the complex needs of patients at their Tavistock clinic. We're going to speak to our LGBT and identity correspondent and also a young North Korean girl. Have you been following this?

Kim Joo-Ae. She, some speculate, is a potential successor to her father, Kim Jong-un, the current leader of North Korea. She's apparently nine or 10 years old, not confirmed her exact age, but she does have an increased presence by her father's side at public events.

So we will be in South Korea to talk about that. And yes, it's the 14th of February. Happy Valentine's Day to you. Have you given or received any gifts so far today? And I have a quick question for you.

What is the best or the worst gift that you have ever received on Valentine's Day? Let's share this Tuesday morning. 84844 is the number to text the programme. You will be charged at our standard message rate have ever received on Valentine's Day. Let's share this Tuesday morning. 84844 is the number to text the programme. You will be charged at our standard message rate.

On social media, we're at BBC Woman's Hour or you can email us through our website or leave us a voice note about that gift. 03700 100 444. That's also the number for WhatsApp. So start bringing them in. I'll start telling our listeners what you did get and what you liked or what you didn't like. But I want to talk about

buying things actually a little bit now as well because ministers have launched a long-awaited consultation into the buy now, pay later credit industry, which is at present unregulated. Now they say the sector poses potential harm to consumers

without thorough affordability checks by offering on-the-spot, interest-free, short-term loans that spread out for retail goods like clothing, for example. According to Equifax, that's a credit bureau, at least 15 million people currently use the Buy Now, Pay Later. You'll sometimes see it called BNPL. And a third of them are 20 to 30 year olds and the UK is facing a cost

of living crisis as you know. Consumer groups worry that cash strapped people are getting into debt using BNPL to buy food or pay energy bills. With us are Stella Creasy, MP Labour MP for Walthamstow who's campaigned on better protection for customers for years. Also, Clare Barrett,

FT Consumer Editor and author of the forthcoming book, What They Don't Teach You About Money. on better protection for customers for years. Also, Clare Barrett, FT consumer editor and author of the forthcoming book, What They Don't Teach You About Money. So Clare, let me start with you. The proposals, what are the government saying? Welcome. Compared to the booming nature of Buy Now, Pay Later, the pace of regulation has been glacially slow,

I have to say. Now, the biggest obligation the Buy Now Pay Later providers is to ensure that loans are affordable. Now at the moment the barest of credit checks are done on lenders. We've quoted Responsible Finance, a trade body in the FT today, saying they've come across customers who've got as many as 30 outstanding Buy Now Pay Later loans. It's really easy for these debts to build up and for people to overextend themselves so part one affordability checks make sure that people aren't

borrowing more than they should be secondly clearer information about how buy now pay later works especially the way it's advertised the risk of missed payments and the fact that you can have them be fined for those is not very clearly understood by some consumers. Thirdly, the sector is going to be regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, the UK's main financial regulator, and they'll have the power to crack down or punish, even ban firms who don't stick to the new rules. And finally, the financial ombudsman is going to provide an avenue for consumers to complain. If they've had a problem with a buy now, pay later provider, they can go to the ombudsman who will adjudicate between the consumer and the provider and decide on the best way forward. But this has been talked about, Nuala, since 2021, regulating this sector.

It's an eight-week consultation that's been launched today. The earliest we're going to see actual legislation come into effect to protect consumers consumers sometime in 2024 at the earliness. I mean, who knows how many more tens of billions would have been borrowed by then? And my other question for you then, Claire, is who is using it? Well, all the surveys show us it's younger shoppers who are more likely to shop online anyway. One survey found that millennial shoppers were 69% more likely to buy an item if they could pay in installments. It stands to reason young people, they've got less money, this is going to be more attractive instead of one upfront payment doing four payments split over four months. Interestingly, since the cost of living crisis really took off,

statistics that I'm seeing are showing that more older shoppers are turning to buy now, pay later. Because let's face it, if you can split the cost of something and it is interest-free and you are able to manage those payments, it could be a better option for you than using a bank overdraft or a credit card where you would be charged credit. And if it's something that you really need, like a winter coat or shoes for your children, we all know how quickly they grow out of those, it could be a lifesaver for you. But also often it's being used on things that are perhaps not so essential. There's one press release in my inbox today, a slightly spurious looking survey saying that £435 million could be spent using Buy Now, Pay Later

to buy Valentine's Day gifts, which if true, is a shocking statistic. My goodness, well, I'm seeing a lot of Valentine's gifts coming in on the text at the moment, which I'll get to because I was asking people about the best and worst gifts they've received or given. Maybe they're doing it on Buy Now, Pay Later. I don't know.

Stella, welcome. So you see these proposals that have been put forward I know Claire is saying it could take a long time before they come in but you know at least they're moving in the right direction. I'm incandescent Nuala because over three years ago now parliament agreed across the house that we should do something about these companies the financial conduct authority did a very worrying report. And that was before the pandemic, before people got really into shopping online with these companies, because often what the challenge is, is it pops up at the checkpoint, and you don't realise that you've just lined up to a buy now pay later loan. What the government has announced today, the only thing good about it is they've ceded the principle

that the financial ombudsman should be there. Because most people don't even realise if they get into trouble with these companies, the only people they can complain to are these companies. They're not covered by other forms of credit regulation. The pace is far too slow. And you think about how this has exploded. You know, 17 million people are using this kind of credit. It's expected around 23 billion pounds is going to be borrowed this year in this way. And we're talking about going through another set of Christmases. People have too much month at the end of their money. They're desperately borrowing to pay. People are being offered buy now, pay later for food. It is an extraordinary form of

legal loan sharking. And I hate to sound like a Cassandra because I tried to sound the alarm on payday lending. I've been trying to sound the alarm on buy now pay later for years now. And I worry about how many more millions of people are going to be caught up by these vultures before we finally get the regulation they need, because it's still unprotected and it'll be unprotected for some time as a result of these proposals. Yes, I mean, you call them vultures, but others are saying, of course, that as Claire mentioned as well, people can use it in a canny way. They can, in fact, be able to perhaps provide in a way that they may not be able to with the lack of cash in their pocket at that particular time. I'm curious, though, I have read that young women have been using the services of Buy Now, Pay Later with some of the reports. Clare, does that jiive with what you're seeing?

Yeah, very much so. And I think anyone who does clothes shopping online, this is the main area where you're likely to see the Buy Now, Pay Later signs pop up at the checkout. And I think the way it's presented, it doesn't really feel like debt often. It feels like a way of getting something at a bargain rate. And that's what I don't like about it. It's like a convenient source of free money to a lot of people. And I do worry,

like Stella, that a lot of younger consumers just don't realise how much debt they're building up with different buy now, pay later providers. Certainly debt advisors who I speak to say that people are tipped over into overdrafts they're tipped over into having to resort to credit cards to pay for essentials because the size of those buy now pay later is like that example that Responsible Finance found and somebody who had 30 different loans I mean if you did for example use buy now pay later to get a valentine's day gift today you'd still be paying for that in June so being able to manage all of these little amounts of money being debited from your account is hard. Can we make sure that

Women's Hour doesn't perpetuate the myth that this is about women in the years that this industry has been allowed to expand uncheck the average age of users is now 44 and one in 10 people using it are buying basics such as toiletry and food. But women are being offered to buy pizza. So we have to be really careful because frankly, one of the reasons I think people have been so slow is the idea that this is being used to buy fripperies. In a cost of living crisis, millions of people in our country

are now relying on buying our pay later and they are unprotected from being exploited. And that's the challenge here. Nobody's saying people don't need credit, but this is an unprotected form of credit and that's why it's so dangerous. But why I also brought it up is women can often be in charge

of the household spending, for example. And as we're hearing, that is where it's now being used, where it would have been once upon a time, perhaps for fripperies, as you use that word, but it is something that can be real essentials and we're talking about a cost of living crisis

and that's why I'm also bringing it up on Woman's Hour. I want to thank you both so much for starting us off on Woman's Hour. Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow and Clare Barrett, FT consumer editor and author of the forthcoming book What They Don't Teach You About Money. Also I have a statement that I do want to read. Bear with me for one second. This is from Clarny UK, which is one of the main buy now, pay later companies. His name is Alex Marsh. We're not waiting for regulation, so they say. In the two years since the Woolard review,

we have continued to build the fairest and best value credit products in the UK, saving our 18 million customers hundreds of millions of pounds of interest charges each year, but a cost of living crisis raging BNPL, so that's buy now pay later, and credit providers must follow our lead and make changes now to protect consumers but you have heard the other sides as well of

this story this morning. Actually, why don't I just read let me see, the best Valentine's gift that I ever received. My husband bought me red shoes for Valentine's one year. They were Crocs, says Jenny. I don't know whether that was good or bad. Jenny, follow up.

Yes, I received a bag of bird seed to feed our birds. It's something I like to do. That's from Colette, so I think she was happy with that one. Keep them coming. 84844. Right, I want to move on to Korea now. The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, has been photographed five times over recent months

alongside his young daughter. The picture is making headlines and all these various pictures that have been taken because so little is known about the children of Kim Jong-un. The latest show, Kim Joo-ai, whose age we think between nine and ten, she stands next to her father and mother. It's at a military banquet, so a public event,

beaming towards the camera. A day later, she's pictured standing with her father watching a military parade celebrating North Korea's, the Army's 75th anniversary. And there's intercontinental ballistic missiles shown, so very much kind of a government type scene. So why are we seeing these pictures now? There is speculation that she is to be his successor,

but it's impossible to know whether there's any truth to that claim. Let me bring in Professor Hazel Smith, a professorial research associate in Korean studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Good morning, Professor. Good morning. I also want to bring in, talking to

us from South Korea, Jean McKenzie, BBC correspondent. Hello, Jean. Hello, good morning. So let me start with you. I mentioned her name there, Kim Joo-ae. I mentioned a couple of details. Do we know much more? We really don't know much more than this at all. And actually, funnily enough, we only think we know this about her because when the former basketball player Dennis Rodman visited North Korea years back, when he left, he said that he had held Kim Jong-un's young child and that she was called Jue. And that's where this name has come from, because actually the Kims have never released any information about their children. It's thought that they have three, but piecing together the information that Dennis Rodman gave us when he left North Korea, we assume that this girl is

Kim's second oldest child, that she is Jue, and that she is, as you say, about nine to ten years old. But this is the kind of first that we've seen of her. She first emerged back in November at this big missile launch by the North Koreans. And it was massive news. You know, all the North Korean watchers were speculating, you know, what could this possibly mean? Because the Kims have been so private, they haven't ever mentioned their children before. Now, there were whispers back then, you know, did this mean that possibly she could one day be the woman that was leading North Korea? But it was just deemed far too early to tell. But then she's had these multiple appearances in quite quick succession. And the interesting thing is, is that during these appearances, she's almost appeared to sort of grow in stature. So the first time we saw her,

she was wearing a white puffer jacket, she had her hair in a ponytail, and she was holding her dad's hand. She looked very much like his daughter. But these last two appearances that we saw last week at the military banquet and then at the parade, she was dressed up very smartly in a suit, she had her hair pinned back. And as you say, she was very much taking centre stage right there in amongst military generals on top of the balcony next to her father. So these things are certainly fuelling this speculation that maybe she is going to have a formal position within the government one day. Professor Hazel Smith, what do you make of these pictures that you see? Well, I'm sorry to say, I think it's completely irrelevant to what's really going on in

North Korea. And it's an example of how the small amount of information that becomes visible out of North Korea gets a disproportionate amount of time on the airwaves compared to the real issues going on for the 26 million people, including the resurgence of starvation, which has happened since the sanctions, the UN sanctions turned from targeted sanctions to comprehensive sanctions in 2016 and 17, which has disproportionately hit food production, which is about 30% of the economy. So although nobody's been able to go in since early 2020 because, well, outsiders, well, even North Korean diplomats abroad,

because of the COVID, the country's government cut off the border because of COVID restrictions. We've got enough, even the internet and telephones getting to North Korea these days, information to know about what food's being produced and what imports are going in and out and about the resurgence of starvation. In terms of these pictures, this is just, you know,

this is a 10-year-old child who's at this stage, nobody is certainly not being groomed to be anything as a 10-year-old isn't in any country. We don't know anything about the purported two other children. South Korean intelligence services know the most about North Korea's first family, so to speak. And even they don't know very much about three children. And if anything, if it signifies anything, it's to restate what we already know,

which is that the North Korean government is family-based and they are intending to continue with what has become a political institution of the Kim family as and when that becomes clear. But certainly it's nothing to do with a 10-year-old being groomed for leadership. It's what that 10-year-old will work out as. Because I suppose thinking back to Kim Jong-un and with his father before him,

I suppose people are thinking, because they saw him come up through the ranks, whether that could be repeated. You're shaking your head. No, they didn't. What happened was, Kim Jong-un, it was not clear until within a very few years of when his father died, which was in 2011.

And it was not clear until about 2008 when his father had a stroke, which one of the few children was going to succeed the then leader, Kim Jong-il. And it was not at all clear that Kim Jong-un was going to be. In fact, there was lots of quite reasonably founded understandings that the father himself was not keen on any of his children, didn't think any of them had the capacity to take over the leadership, which is why, one of the reasons why he promoted his brother-in-law, who was then executed after Kim Jong-un came to power, to be a guardian, basically, for this new leader when he came to power. So it was not at all clear who was going to be the new leader right up until just before Kim Jong-un died. Thank you, Professor.

Jean, I'd be curious, are people watching these pictures in South Korea? You know, what fascination there may be on looking north? Look, I mean, certainly, you know, the government here and the intelligence services are watching them and trying to work out what they mean as well. But I think Hazel's right to point out that, you know, we just really don't know. And there is such speculation involved here.

I mean, there are so many other theories that the North Koreans could be showing her at this stage, and they are masters of strategy. You know, they do everything with such clear purpose. You know, the North Koreans, whenever they do anything, they have two clear audiences, right? They have their internal audience, so their people, and then they have their external audience, so us, the rest of the world. And there are things that Hazel's mentioned there that we can think they might be doing. So one thing they could be doing to the people at home, to their domestic audience, is really kind of justifying the use of their nuclear weapons, showing their people that this nuclear weapons program that they have spent so much money on at the sake and the cost of their people is necessary. It's necessary to protect their children. And that's what they're trying to kind of show people by

pushing Jue into the spotlight. They're saying to people, look, we know maybe you're going hungry and times are tough, but it's all worth it because these weapons, they are there to protect our future generation. The other PR message perhaps they're trying to send here is to the outside world, you know, that this is just a PR stunt. People have become and the world has become increasingly desensitized to these North Korean missile launches. They have become more and more frequent and the world is, you know, frankly looking elsewhere and looking at other crises going on and putting this girl at, you know, the centre of the stage while these missiles are being paraded and are being launched is a way to focus people and the media's

attention back on it. And let's be honest, you know, it's worked. Hazel, let me just turn to you briefly. What is life like for women in North Korea? I know both of you have brought up, of course, food insecurity to the point of starvation. But just in, I suppose, a gender relations way, there's so little we know about the country. Do we know anything about that? Well, actually, we've got extremely good quantitative and qualitative data about the population in North Korea

going over the last 25 years, disaggregated by sex, age and geography, whereabouts in North Korea going over the last 25 years disaggregated by sex, age and geography, whereabouts in North Korea people live. And that's because all the major international humanitarian organisations, WFP, FAO, UNICEF, have been collecting at the very microscopic level, but also on a national level, data particularly related to women, because a lot of their programmes relate to women, for the last 30 years. So we know, for instance, that there's no discernible difference between boys and girls going into education.

A lot of poor countries' girls don't go into education. We know that in terms of maternal mortality, up until the expansion of sanctions in 2016 and 17, maternal mortality up until the expansion of sanctions in 2016 and 17, maternal mortality was reduced. We know that literacy was statistically, as in many of the old socialist countries, 100% for women and men, boys and girls. We know about employment. There were two censuses in 1993 and 2008. Everything, again, disaggregated down to quite small levels by age and sex. We know about disease. So actually, we do know quite a lot about what's happened to women over the last 25, 30 years.

These sort of quantitative surveys have all been done by the international organisations in cooperation with the bureau of statistics um in in uh in north korea i mean one of the things we know is that north korea which unlike china has a a labor shortage and has had or since it was uh inaugurated in 1948 um depends upon the labor of all adults in the population and so for for a time, at least in the 90s, and it's probably true now, North Korea's had the highest participation of adult women in the workforce in the world. So we know a fair amount, actually, but it's all hidden away in the stats,

which not a lot of people take a look at. I have learned. I have learned some of them now this morning. Professor Hazel Smith, thank you so much for joining us. Also to Jean McKenzie. You're so welcome. And Jean McKenzie speaking to us from South Korea.

Lots of you getting in touch about your worst, best Valentine's gift. Where was one I saw a moment ago? My husband, this is from Jane. My husband once bought me an ironing board cover decorated with red hearts for Valentine's Day. We don't do Valentine's Day anymore. I'll leave that one out there, 844.

Get in touch. I want to turn now to a new book. A lot of reports this morning, you might have seen this, claiming that 97.5% of children seeking help with gender identity issues at the Gender Identity Development Service, also known as GIDS,

based at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust had autism, depression or other problems that might have explained their unhappiness or perhaps some of the issues may not be considered a problem for some. Time to think the inside story of the collapse of the Tavistock's Gender Service for Children by Hannah Barnes, a BBC Newsnight journalist, is based on more than 100 hours of interviews

with clinicians and patients. Now, the Gender Identity Development Service will close later this year. That is following an independent review by Dr Hilary Cass and will be replaced by regional hubs. Here's Hannah speaking to Justin Webb on the Today programme this morning, and he asked her about how the clinic approached patients with more complex needs. What happened was that as the service became so overburdened with this rapid rise in referrals,

it couldn't cope and it couldn't give each of those individuals with their very complex needs the care that they needed. There was only one treatment pathway, which was a referral for puberty blockers. That's not to say that the majority were referred, but there was no other treatment and often no long-term talking therapies. And actually, the treatment that was being offered was being applied by JIDS to a very different cohort of young people for whom, albeit a very limited evidence base existed, but for a completely different group of people. You know, these were very complex individuals, often with many co-occurring sort of problems, mental health difficulties, eating disorders, anxiety, depression, all sorts of things. Their gender incongruence had only started in adolescence and often, you know, sort of chaotic living arrangements.

It was designed for lifelong childhood gender dysphoria, you know, stable psychologically and in supportive environments. So not only was... There was also a kind of capture which you write about, a sort of ideological capture, wasn't there? An extraordinary amount of homophobia, which is just bizarre within the organisation. Is that right?

Yeah, I mean, clinicians have told me they saw homophobia everywhere. It was a daily occurrence that they would hear homophobic comments from both the young people themselves, from the family. And they felt that as a clinic, JIDS wasn't dealing with sexuality at all well and that everything was viewed through this prism of gender. So that, you know, behaviours or preferences in childhood would always, for them, sort of point towards a potentially trans outcome, whereas exactly those same behaviours would point towards a gay, lesbian or bisexual outcome as well.

But that was ignored because everything was being looked through this prism of gender and so many of the young people were same-sex attracted. That is in the very limited data that JIDS have published. You can't deny that. And many of those young people didn't want to be. But what those clinicians were saying is that often by transitioning,

these young people weren't just changing their gender, they were changing their sexuality as well, and that deserved attention and asking questions. On ideology, yes, the influence of certain groups is well documented, it's in the book. It doesn't explain everything though, it's complicated. It's complicated, so says Hannah Barnes. And to discuss further, I'm joined by Lauren Moss,

the BBC's LGBT and identity correspondent. Good morning, Lauren. Good morning. So the Gender Identity and Development Service, or JIDS as they heard it referred to there, is being closed following the Dr Hilary Cass review. Can you remind us of its key findings? Of course, yeah.

So this was an independent review carried out by Dr Hilary Cass, a very well-known paediatrician into the gender identity services and care for young people in England. And the interim report came out last year. The full report is expected later this year now the clinic um as Hannah was mentioning uh there in her interview with the today program has had well-documented difficulties it was high patient referral numbers the care quality commission had rated it in inadequate in 2021 long waiting times of two to three years and essentially

what Dr Cass said was that the current model of care, as it was in February and March last year, the single model from London and with another centre in Leeds, just wasn't sustainable long term. She said there needed to be more data about the young people referred, the outcomes through the service. And she also pointed out how quickly the service had evolved over 10, 15 years or so to meet demand and that

potentially the quality controls that would be applied to other services hadn't been applied there. And this report is more than 100 pages long and it's only the interim report with the next one due later this year. But what came as a result of it, like you mentioned, is Dr. Cass saying a fundamentally different service model is needed that must include support for other clinical presentations that patients might have. And that resulted in NHS England announcing that the clinic would be closing, announced that in July, moving to a regional centre model with focusing on all needs that patients may have with a focus on holistic care based in the northwest of England and in London and that is meant to be happening in spring 2023 this year. Meant to be up and running and they are what you're mentioning there some of the recommendations to not repeat what happened at the Tavistock clinic? Yeah so it's basically this new model is supposed to take into account the complex needs that some of the young people referred may have and not be simply looking at one or two presentations. And something that's mentioned in the report and is also featuring in Hannah Barnes's book is that Hillary Cass is approximately one third of children, young people referred to have autism or other types of neurodiversity, different numbers to what

Hannah found in her book. But this is what is in the independent reports. And another term used in the report around the care here is diagnostic overshadowing. Now, this is a very technical term, but basically what Dr. Cass has highlighted is how many of the children, young people may have complex needs but once they're identified as having gender-related distress other health care issues may be overlooked and what these new services are meant to do is take a look at a combination of factors incorporating closer work with GPs and mental health support with with links to you know children's hospitals and so on. I understand interesting they'll get going in the coming months it sounds. Lauren Moss

the BBC's LGBT and identity correspondent. Thank you so much. I do want to read a statement from the Tavistock Clinic. It's a GIDS, that's the Gender and Identity Development Service, works on a case-by-case basis with every young person in their family, working thoughtfully and holistically with them to explore the situation with no expectation of what the right outcome for them might be. Only the minority of young expectation of what the right outcome for them might be. Only the minority

of young people seen in the service are referred for any physical interventions. At the Tavistock and Portman, that's the trust, we wholeheartedly support our staff to raise concerns

and have recently strengthened our mechanisms for doing so. Concerns relating to young people's well-being are taken seriously and investigated. So also, as Lauren was telling us,

that's the interim report that she was referring to. So we'll also watch out for the next one. I want to turn 844. You keep bringing your Valentines. Let me see. In 1917, your Valentines gifts, best and worst. 1979, my then boyfriend, a trainee butcher, arrived at the Village Hall disco

with two pounds of freshly made sausages for me wrapped in newspaper. So says Jill. Is that good or bad, Jill? Tell me what the user like in these presents or I don't know, thinking it wasn't the thing to continue the romance. My next guest is the comedian and writer Fern Brady. Good morning, Fern. Hello. How are you? You're so welcome. Now, that voice is probably familiar.

She's appeared on 8 Out of 10 Cats, Live at the Apollo, the most recent series of Taskmaster. She also co-hosted three series of Wheel of Misfortune podcast for BBC Sounds with fellow comedian Alison Spittel. In 2021, so not so long ago, Fern received a diagnosis for autism in her new book, Strong Female Character. She explores how this impacted her life

and also what it means to be an autistic working class woman. Why did you decide to call the book Strong Female Character? Well, there was a lot of talk about, I remember people talked about the manic pixie dream girl tropes, things like Kate Winslet's character in Eternal Sunshine or Summer in 500 Days of Summer. And if you haven't heard of it, it's a woman observed from a male perspective

and she's all sort of scatty and a bit of a weirdo. She might have multicoloured hair. And a lot of autistic women were saying, well, that's actually an autistic woman misrepresented by a man. And autism is so often spoken about from the outside. We're described by outsiders and we're described as disordered and our traits are pathologised.

So I wanted to describe it in as much detail as possible from the inside because although I'm meant to have a communication disorder, I communicate for a living and I do it quite well, I think. And I have to say, I was totally pulled in by the book. Oh, I'm glad. Yeah, through your eyes was so interesting to me. I learned a new word, I'm an aliastic, am I? Alistic, yeah, a non-autistic person.

Yes, which was a new word for me as well. But you first suspected that you had autism around the age of 16. And then you don't find out or have it confirmed, should I say, until a couple of years ago. Yeah. How do you understand that lack of diagnosis? Particularly as a girl. I'm constantly impressed by how little doctors know about it. And one of the reasons I wrote the book,

I don't want to criticise doctors too much, but I remember doctors were listening to the Wheel of Misfortune podcast that I did with Alison and I couldn't believe there were surgeons and stuff contacting us saying they liked our stories about pooing ourselves. So I thought, if I can write something entertaining that doctors read in their downtime, that's going to educate them more effectively than haranguing them or telling them they don't know stuff about

autism. So how did it take so long for me to be diagnosed? Well a lot of the time people say that women show their autism differently to men. I don't think that's true. I think that medical misogyny affects us a lot and we're seeing how women are done a disservice with the menopause and things like that. So it's the same with autism. So for example, a lot of autistic people don't have any regard for hierarchies or social status.

So I used to go and speak to doctors in this way as if we were all doctors together and if you can imagine a 16 year old girl talking to a psychiatrist well I can because I read the book yeah well yeah so I was put in a CAMHS unit a children and adolescent psych unit when I was 16 and very quickly I got labelled as manipulative and disruptive because I was doing things like constantly studying for my Italian exams all the time and then I corrected one of the staff on their pronunciation of tagliatelle so they were like who is this precocious like she's awful but that was a sign of autism. But also you were not being treated for autism no i was being treated for ocd which many many autistic women are misdiagnosed with because we're really preoccupied

with uh routine we really need routine and then i was also when i went to get diagnosed in 2020 this gp who had never met said to me over the phone, oh, maybe it's not autism. Maybe you have a borderline personality disorder, which is such a damaging label. And also lots of autistic women are misdiagnosed with BPD. So when that happened, I was like, right, I'm going to write this book and I'm going to set everyone straight and I'm going to go into as much detail as possible. Yeah, the detail is fantastic to help people understand. But at the beginning, you know, you talk about when you got that diagnosis, which I, in my, what would I say, ignorant way,

would have thought that it'd be a massive relief. But that wasn't what you felt. Yeah, I thought it'd be a massive relief. But I was actually so depressed when I got diagnosed. I thought every achievement that I've worked for and trying to be good academically it's all going to be undermined because people still think of autistic people as less than I mean only last month the journalist Julia Hartley Brewer dismissed Greta Thunberg as autistic she used autism as a slur

and then she quickly backtracked. I was about to say, if I remember correctly, and I don't have Julie Hartlebroer here to defend herself, she deleted that tweet, I think, afterwards, but I cannot remember

the exact wording of what she used. It happens plenty and she used it as a slur. It happens all the time. So people still, because I get a lot of ADHD people trying to relate to me, it's not the same as autism

people still use autism as like people say someone's a bit on the spectrum as a way of it's synonymous with being difficult I have a quote from the book I'm going to say it in your words I began to see that autism could provide an escape

route from the traditional paths laid out for women, Fascinating. In what ways did you find that your autism gave you a freedom, perhaps at times, from social expectations? Well, I definitely think autism led me into stand up because I speak in a very honest, direct way, which was, I mean mean neurotypical view neurotypical people view autism or honesty as some sort of superpower they don't view autism as a superpower um but I I feel like the way I think the book will appeal to non-autistic people as well because I'm obsessed with the disordered way in which women are taught to communicate like women are often passive aggressive instead

of aggressive aggressive because we're taught how to suppress our anger. So in social situations, if women want to be mean to another woman, they'll exclude them and they'll do that through a lot of non-verbal cues or saying mean things in a soft way. Which you were really picking up on. and the other aspect I think struck me was how much non-autistic people can speak in couch language. Oh my god yeah and I mean living in England, England

are the champions at it I find But that you're trying to interpret what somebody means when they say one thing but really mean another and I think you laid that out very clearly for me, for things that we do that I don't even realise that I and others do. This is what I mean about autistic people being pathologised as we're so often described as

speaking in this blunt, rude way. Whereas for me, when I speak to other autistic people, I find it refreshing that you just say what you mean all the time but yeah in terms of womanhood as well I always felt quite free from the way women eat together and the way women monitor what each other, what they're

all eating, I remember that happening at uni a lot and I just felt completely oblivious to it, like I went to a posh university, a lot of girls had gone to boarding school and had eating disorders. And I just, I remember them sort of making fun of me because I ate enthusiastically and I didn't look at what other people were doing. So it's that sense of constantly being out of step with other women is so pervasive when you're autistic. It's great it brought you to stand-up,

great for us, that it brought you to stand-up and to comedy. You also spent time as a stripper. And in the book, I know you said something like people always ask you about getting naked. They never ask you about the people you met in the club. So I'm going to ask you,

who did you meet in the club? Oh my God, I met all sorts of men. I always knew when I talked about stripping, it wasn't going to be some old male Scottish journalist that was all pervy. I always knew I wanted to talk about it on my own terms. Stripping radicalised me towards feminism. It got me into feminism because you met all men and every man in a strip club thinks he's not the type of guy that goes to a strip club. So that really opened my eyes. And it meant that when I went into comedy, the scales had really fallen from my eyes

about how the world works with sexism. Good material. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, that's the other thing, is people always think of a strip club as this sort of sexy, sultry place with all these women who are mysterious but oh my god the things that I saw in strip clubs Scottish strip clubs are the most ridiculous places well two of

our most regular customers I mentioned this in the book the club I worked in was empty a lot of the time apart from one guy that had a brain injury and a guy that had down syndrome that just would walk around shouting at us asking us if we'd had a good injury and a guy that had Down syndrome that just would walk around shouting at us, asking us if we'd had a good time. So you'd just sit watching Channel 5 documentaries with these two disabled guys. And I thought, this is not what I signed up for when I went into stripping.

But you did say it was one of the more honest workplaces that you've ever been in. Yes, and that's not to say that I'm saying if you've got an autistic daughter, she's inevitably going to end up in stripping. But I use that experience to talk about the fact that autistic people are massively excluded from employment. I meet other women who are autistic all the time who are self-employed because reasonable adaptations aren't made for us. When I worked in offices, I wasn't allowed to wear noise cancelling headphones because it didn't look good.

And a lot of working in an office is about looking like you're busy and you have to go to work social events because it's the done thing. But for autistic people, that can be quite hard for us. I was also watching your appearances on Taskmaster. Loved it. Best job of my life. This self-portrait that you made of yourself with a sausage in a toilet seat. We had somebody giving sausages as a Valentine's present. They could make lots of pictures. Also writing a diss track set to classical music.

You said it was the thing that made you the most profoundly accepting of your autistic self. Why? Well, because before I would watch myself on screen, before I really knew about my diagnosis and I knew that there's no look to autism right but there's definitely a way that we move and speak sometimes that is just slightly off kilter and it's enough for people to sense that something's different about us and exclude us so I'd watched myself on tv programs before

and I'd actually seen other people that I'd been on shows with kind of sniggering at me, like, what's wrong with her? People think that you're less intelligent quite a lot of the time. And when I watched myself on Taskmaster, I chose to be my unmasked autistic self. So there's clips. If you go to my Instagram, you can see clips of me like jumping for joy, clapping, twirling around, moving in a very free autistic way and just saying whatever comes to mind. So when I watched myself back on Taskmaster and saw people enjoying it and had parents of autistic people get in touch to say my child is so happy that they're seeing someone who looks and speaks like them, it was so so gratifying because the thing that helped me get over my depression after my diagnosis was seeing other autistic people

with a platform who I looked up to. I understand. And I think I just saw when I was coming on this morning that you have been nominated for the National Comedy Awards. Oh, yeah, because of Taskmaster, yeah. Yeah, which is wonderful. So that even gives more of a platform to the work that you're doing

to kind of show yourself as you fully and truly are. And before I let you go, I was also interested that you're finding a lot of understanding from women that are a lot younger than you on social media platforms like TikTok or others

that have embraced autism? Yeah that's the thing I realised this when I was writing the book because there's so there's hardly any post-diagnostic support after you get diagnosed so a lot of the resources I found were coming from young women on Instagram who are sharing really detailed information about being autistic that just isn't out there. Or there's a great podcast called Square Peg Podcast that's hosted by an autistic woman interviewing other autistic and non-binary people. And that was when I realised all the change is going to come from autistic people themselves. So I'm hoping that if people read this book, the change is going to come from autistic people themselves. So I'm hoping that if people read this book, more people are going to get diagnosed and we'll feel empowered to start helping other autistic people.

Well, your book is Strong Female Character. It's out on Thursday. I believe the awards are on Friday night. Good luck. I'll be watching out for you. I think you'll find something. Friend Brady, a total joy to have you in. Thanks so much I'll be watching out for you. I'm not wearing a dress yet. Oh, my God. I think you'll find something. A friend, Brady, a total joy to have you in. Thanks so much for joining us on Women's Hour. Thank you. And let me turn to the woman sitting beside her, Nell Meskell. Because we have, she's an up-and-coming Irish artist.

She's a singer-songwriter from Maynooth in Kildare. And indie folk music is her thing. Is that fair, Nell? Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of people will say indie folk, indie pop, indie alternative. I think it's just a mix of a lot of them. I'm not too sure. We don't have to classify too much, right? But you did start performing at a young age. You were singing with your dad in talent shows, I believe.

And you've been called though now someone to watch by NME. Rolling Stone magazine featured you. Summer of live gigs coming up. So a bit of a departure from the football club gigs of your youth. Yeah, definitely, for sure. So tell me about performing with your dad. How did the whole singing thing start? Yeah, I just grew up doing lots of singing in different kind of ways

and clubs and glee clubs and stuff like that. But yeah, me and my dad would sing Caledonia a lot. So we did it in Scorn and O growing up. So yeah, it's just always been a part of my life, which led me to here. But what about moving into, right, this is going to be my career? How did that happen? Yeah, I think in the back of my mind, this was always going to be something that I was drawn to. But when I was like 13, I listened to a song by Birdie. And it was one of those things that

kind of catapulted me into, oh, I really need to do something that makes me feel the way this song just made me feel. And then I had a back surgery when I was 14. And I really just like threw myself into writing because I wasn't able to go to school for a little while. And then it kind of just went from there. Gosh isn't that fascinating that something that was a difficult challenging part no doubt led to this? Yeah it was a bit it was such a strange time because I was kind of my only person I had really was my mum because she would take time off work and we would just sit at home and I played the piano and I could sit up and yeah it's really I'm really lucky that I had that time to kind of start writing and there was no pressure to do anything else. Well let's talk about your mum because I was very struck I was following you on Twitter I think I saw you on the

Late Late Show which is one of the Friday night watching in Ireland and you had been performing and then I was looking at you on Twitter and you had a tweet saying my mum got a haircut today in prep for her chemotherapy and then Paul brother Paul Mescal got nominated for an Oscar life is so crazy your life is a little crazy at the moment yeah it's a bit bizarre yeah it's been such a crazy crazy few years but um yeah it's just great that kind of we get to spend a lot more time together now. But yeah, it's been mad. How's your mum? She's good. Yeah, she's doing good. I saw her yesterday and yeah, I love her a lot.

She's great. Hopefully she's listening in so she can hear you now as well. But I want to turn back to your music. There is tweets, for example. It's a crying, listening to Nell Meskell kind of day. Or I'm on the train crying to Nell Meskell. How do you feel when you read that? It's just really cool. I think that was the reason I write music and the reason I put it out in the world is so that people can have those reactions

and that people can feel things that maybe they didn't have a word for or something like that. So yeah, it's really nice and it makes me feel really good when I can see that and talk to people about it you are a young woman in the music industry it's something we talk about often here on Women's Hour the Brits controversially had no women nominated for artist of the year uh your thoughts on that I mean it was shocking like and it's it's crazy I mean there were so there were so many albums by incredible women last year and non-binary people. And for that to be unrecognized is crazy and appalling, really. But I saw Charlie XCX saying, I don't think it's our problem.

I think it's someone else's problem. It's definitely not ours as women or non-binary people. So, yeah, I think whoever made that decision has to have a look at themselves. And see see exactly. I know some people are trying to go outside of the confines of it and trying to forge their own way, perhaps even away from awards industries at times. But this may all be ahead of you. Let us see. Also, I'm thinking about this particular tweet as I keep popping through the tweets. Tony Cudahy. If this went viral,

he says, a reminder that Paul Mescal may not even be the most talented member of his own family. And there was a video of the two of you playing piano together

singing Nothing Has Arrived by Villagers. Maybe we can play a little bit of a clip of that. I love it. I've listened to it a number of times. And so people do bring up your brother, of course. We mentioned that he's Oscar nominated in After Sun.

But there was even that reference to you at times as a nepo sister. So talking about nepotism, talking about coattails. How irritating on a scale of one to ten? Fifteen000 billion. It's just one of those things that I think I'm going to have to get used to for the next while. And the way I kind of see it is if Paul wasn't doing what he's doing,

I'd still be doing what I'm doing. And I kind of always question it being like, I don't know what people who have to bring it up want me to do about it because it's not like I can tell Paul to stop acting it's what he's meant to do and I'm not going to stop singing and writing so yeah it's just one of those things but you have to learn to laugh at it. You have another brother? Yes Donika. Does he sing, write? He doesn't but he did recently say he wants to get into DJing so we we'll see. Oh, OK. I like it.

Now, I believe you're going to perform a song for us today called Graduating. Yes. About leaving secondary school, the emotion. Yeah, I dropped out of school when I turned 18 right before my leaving cert. So, yeah, it's about that. Well, let us listen to it. I'll let you get over to the piano as you get settled up to play Graduating. I know also there's the song Homesick, which I've been listening to, which I really like as well. And I know you're a little bit over a year in London now. You still homesick? No, I'm not, thankfully. Okay, good. Why would

you be? You're in the Women's Hour studio and you're about to perform. Okay, I'll let you get to it. Nell Mescal, thank you so much for that. It's so lovely. Thank you so much. I've been reading a couple of the texts that have been coming in about Valentine's Day, just while you were also playing for us. And I want to read one that came in from Andrew

in Canterbury. He says, Dear Nuala, the best Valentine's present I have ever received was last year when after three weeks of not being allowed due to Omicron, I was granted a visit to my partner David in intensive care. I was left alone with him for an hour and I was able to thank him for all the wonderful times we had together on the previous 18 Valentine's Days. He died 10 days later and I remain very grateful to the staff at the Royal Free for giving us that time together. Today is my first Valentine's Day alone for 20 years.

So thanks for keeping me company. And that is Andrew. Thank you so much for messaging us. I hope you're all right. I hope Nell's music was a lovely way to spend a little part of your Valentine's Day as well with us. Back with you again tomorrow. We will be talking about high blood pressure as a result of exposure to air pollution particles. I do hope you will join me for that

and thanks so much for all your messages that you've been sending in throughout the programme. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello, I'm John York and I want to tell you about Opening Lines, a new series from BBC Radio 4 in which I'll be looking at books, plays, poems and stories of all kinds that have made a mark and asking, what makes them work?

I mean, this stuff is jaw-droppingly shocking. I'll be asking lots of questions. What's at the heart of the story? How does it achieve its effect? What makes it special? History is usually written by winners, but he wants to give a voice to people who are not usually heard.

I'll be hearing from people who know and love these works. Writers. We do have an orgasm evoked on the page. Dramatists. Biographers. It's worn better as a book about England than it has as a book about sex, I think.

And directors too. In the end, I'll be asking, what makes this work worth reading now? Join me to find out in opening lines from BBC Radio 4 and available on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Trelevan, 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's faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know.

It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in.

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