Woman's Hour - Nigel Slater, Woman's Hour Corona Diaries, 'County lines' drug gangs

Episode Date: April 24, 2020

Food writer and cook Nigel Slater says that one of his great joys in life is going out to shop for ingredients, but how has that changed during lockdown? What is he yearning for that he can’t get, and how is it altering the way he thinks about food? His most recent book is Greenfeast.Hope High is a new BBC Sounds podcast, which takes listeners inside an area in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire that is fighting to protect children from being groomed by county lines drug gangs. The presenter and producer Annabel Deas spent a year finding out how young children are tricked into selling drugs, and why some are removed from their families, and placed in care for their own protection.Elaine Hall from Bath has been telephoning her 91-year-old aunt Olive, who’s blind, since the beginning of lockdown. But what started as a general daily catch up has blossomed into a joyous conversation including stories, literary discussions and games of Just a Minute. Elaine and Olive talk to Jenni for the Woman’s Hour Corona Diaries.The writer Holly Watt's new book, The Dead Line, follows investigative journalist Casey Benedict on the trail of a surrogacy racket - involving a Harley Street doctor, a British Ambassador, and a Bangladeshi camp. Holly, who is also an investigative journalist, joins Jenni to talk about the inspiration behind the story. The writer and broadcaster Sali Hughes has been talking to women about objects in their lives that are important to them. We hear from the comedy actress Margaret Cabourn-Smith about her snow globe.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Dianne McGregor

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 Friday the 24th of April. Good morning. There's a podcast on BBC Sounds called Hope High which investigates the phenomenon of county lines where young children are tricked into selling drugs. Annabel Deese explains how she

spent a year in Huddersfield in a community that's trying to protect children from the drugs gangs. Elaine and Olive join us from Bath and Romsey to describe how Elaine has made her calls to her 91-year-old aunt interesting and entertaining for them both during lockdown. And the Deadline, Holly Watt's thriller, takes an investigative journalist from London to Bangladesh where she uncovers a surrogacy racket which exploits young women and girls from the refugee camps. Now there are so many pleasures of which we are deprived during this ghastly lockdown, but I can't think of anything worse than inviting Nigel Slater onto the programme and knowing he can't come into the studio and bring us something wonderful to eat. But rules are rules.

So I'm here in Broadcasting House and Nigel is at home. His most recent book is Green Feast, and there will no doubt be a recipe for us to try, which will be delicious and not too difficult to put together, even if in this case, I have to do it myself. Nigel, how are you coping with the lockdown? Oh, Jenny, I'm fine, thank you. I mean, I've been taking it quite seriously, because just prior to the lockdown i was in korea and they had just started there with with um with coronavirus so uh every hotel i checked into i had to have my temperature taken i had to wear a yellow sticker to show that i'd been um i'd been checked so i knew that something very serious was about to happen when i came home and I went straight into self-isolation and I've been

I've been here in the house for weeks now um cooking for myself uh and doing uh doing as much writing as I as I can but it is a very different very different world I know you love shopping in small shops and finding unusual ingredients so how are you coping with stocking up? You see, one of the bits of my job, one of the part of the rhythm of my day that I enjoy almost more than anything is food shopping and is going to look for, you know, something that's just come in,

something that's really fresh that I can take home and use that day. And I can't do that, partly because I'm going out as little as I possibly can. And what it's done, yes, it's a bit of my day that's missing, but I'm really missing this. But what it's done is encouraged me to look at what I've got.

And it's surprising what's lurking in those cupboards. All those jars of beans and dried pulses, all the tins of things and the jars that were in the food cupboard that I probably, I know they're there, but I've never really needed them. They are suddenly treasure to me. And I'm looking at them with very different eyes. Now, I know so many people have been saying, actually, that they've put on quite a lot of weight during the lockdown because meals have become so important. They've so looked forward to eating in the evening. How much more important do meals become to you when you're confined at home? You see, everything has become illuminated.

Everything is bigger. I'm wallowing in the details of just everyday life, you know, of a flower opening outside the window where I'm looking out of, the leaves unfurling. Everything is becoming so much more interesting. And with my daily, sort of my dinner, I'm starting to think about it much earlier in the day, almost as soon as I wake up. What will I eat tonight?

Also, you know, can I have my little cocktail at six o'clock? Looking at my watch. The food that I'm cooking has changed in as much as I'm having to make the ingredients I've got go much further. Because I don't want to go, I don't really want to be out in the shops. Everything I've got, every vegetable, every little bit of meat that I've picked up, I'm making it go further. So each meal has become almost a challenge. How far can I make these chicken thighs go? Can they go for two or three days?

And how can I pad things out? And what can I use? The sad thing, Jenny, though, and it really has been getting to me, is this house is a busy house. There's always somebody here. There's somebody to cook for. It might be a meeting. It might be a photography session. And suddenly there isn't. And I'm not, I don't have anybody to bounce ideas off anymore. I'm just cooking for myself. All right, well, bounce some ideas with us. A lot of people are finding that they are just cooking for one

because they're self-isolating alone. What are the best things to make that might stretch safely over a couple of days or maybe more? Well, I've been finding that there are certain things that they're not just okay to eat the next day. They're actually better. They seem to improve overnight in the fridge. I think they sort of mellow

and all the ingredients get to know one another and they just seem to be richer and more interesting. And that is things like the bean stews and anything with chickpeas, with dried beans that you've soaked and boiled and then cooked with onions and tomatoes and all the spices that you've got in the cupboard that you don't normally use.

I'm finding that any vegetable casserole will be better when it's heated up the next day. Also that thing of making, I was cooking couscous the other night. I was trying to make some chicken that I got actually go a little bit further and I was padding it out with couscous and I had, I made enough for two days and I found that when I put it into a frying pan the next day with a little bit of garlic and some olive oil, so there's chicken in there, there was couscous, there was olive oil, a little squeeze of lemon, there was a little bit of thyme. I got not just a leftover meal, but I got something that was

actually as interesting as it was the day before. What I'm trying not to do is to cook something that I'm just going to have the same thing three days in a row. I can tweak a little bit. Jazz it up the next day. I have to say, I've suddenly rediscovered pearl barley, which my grandmother used to use in all her stews to pan them out. And it's very effective. I merely throw that one in with no culinary expertise, really. What sort of things have you found difficult to find that you really want? I would kill for cake.

I love baking. And the idea of making a loaf and putting it on the table, of making a crumble, of making a pudding for somebody, even if I've got to eat it myself, I can't do that. I could get hold of flour.

I've had a few people whisper, you know, I've got yeast or I've got bread flour, but I'm not doing that. There is no flour in this house and it is driving me mad because this is the moment that you want to make something that is a treat, that makes people feel very special. And I can't do that because I can't bake. there are the this is the odd flourless cake recipe but no i want to make a loaf and i'm missing that so much but you know i'm cherishing other things other little details the seeds i planted for pumpkin and for courgette i'm now watching them grow literally by the hour and i don't normally have that luxury of time to wallow in these deep so so there are

things that I am you know there are things I'm taking away from this experience that are actually good okay let's have a suggestion for an easy supper with stuff that you would have around well I'm using a lot of rice at the moment so i'm frying off a few onions until they're very soft and really taking my time so that they're really golden and in a few spices a little bit of cardamom a little bit of a little bit of cinnamon and then cooking rice separately then putting it in with the onions and then any vegetables, any meat I've got that I've cooked and then folding it through so that I'm taking the beautiful chard or the spinach or something that's arrived in my vegetable box that I've cooked, that I fried in olive oil or with a little bit of lemon. And then I'm sort of patting it into um the rice and the

onions so i'm making a sort of pilaf if you like um i'm making all the all the ingredients go further you know i'm cooking like my mum did um every ingredient is precious you can do it with pearl barley you could do it with with um any really of those dried things on the shelf that i've been looking at for weeks um all of those grains all of those pulses what's on your shopping list for the next time you go out on my shopping list on my shopping list is all my baking ingredients is fruit for for a crumble fruit for a pie All of the ingredients that are in the tiny shops that I'm not going in because I can't distance myself from everybody else in there,

they're going to be real treats. Chocolate, I'm desperately, I've eaten all the chocolate far too quickly in my house. And that I'm really looking forward to going out and getting. It's the treats. It's the little things that that um are really special in the course of the day that's what's on my shopping list what are you making for lunch today for lunch today i've got some chicken thighs that i cooked yesterday that i roasted with some thyme

from the garden so olive oil and a little bit of butter And then I ate a couple of them as they were. But then today for lunch, I'm going to cook the extra ones. I'm going to slice them up and I'm going to fold them into some pasta because I know I've still got a little bit of pasta in the cupboard. I've got a little bit of cream. I'm going to have chicken, thyme, pasta and cream. And that will be such a Friday treat for me. Nigel Slater, enjoy your lunch and thank will be such a Friday treat for me.

Nigel Slater, enjoy your lunch and thank you very much for joining us this morning. Thank you, Jenny. Take care. Now you may have come across a podcast on BBC Sounds called Hope High. It's a seven-part series recorded inside a community in Huddersfield where families are fighting a war to try and protect their children from being groomed to sell drugs by county lines gangs.

Annabel Dees is a journalist at BBC Live, BBC Five Live, and she spent a year following the lives of four families there. Annabel, why were you drawn to this subject? So at the time when I started recording, there was a real peak in youth knife crime amongst young people. And there were increasing stories about children as young as 10 selling drugs and picking up knives. And when I read these reports in newspapers, it would say a child has been found of a knife or a child has been stabbed or a child has stabbed someone and then comma the child was believed to be in a gang and often that was the end of a news report and to me it seemed perfectly obvious that very few

children would choose to pick up a knife let alone use it to hurt someone um for no reason at all so there was clearly a lot more to it than that um so i decided i wanted to go out and meet the children who were affected by these issues what did you find out how the situations came about so what did you find out about how the drug gangs operate so they are extremely sophisticated these people um they're not going to pick on a child who has everything they want in the world they're going to pick on a child who comes typically from quite a deprived background lives in poverty and who if you bowl up to that child and start sort of making friends with them um trying to you know pretend to be a nice guy offer them a hugo boss tracksuit offer them money

offer them jewelry and sort of pretend that you are someone who's looking out for them you have then got that child unknowingly feeling that they're in debt to you and that's the first way that the gang will start grooming someone by making them feel in debt to them and from there it goes on to at the end of the line forcing that child to travel around and sell drugs for you because the children don't know how to say no. Now, you tell the stories of four boys whose lives were affected. One of them was Daniel. What happened to Daniel? So he was a very sweet, artistic, sensitive 13-year-old boy.

He lived with his mother and several several siblings the youngest of whom was two um i first met him um at north huddersfield trust school which is a school where all these boys at some point um attended or had been in attendance in the previous couple of years and was still linked to the school daniel um was in a session with a youth offending worker he was there because he picked up a knife and brought a knife into school. And the reason that he'd done that is because a couple of months previously, a friend of his had been stabbed

just outside Daniel's house. And when the friend was stabbed, quite brutally, I must add, the friend staggered into someone's house, dripped blood all over that person's carpet, and then was then charged by the person for dripping blood on the carpet. And Daniel and his mum say after that, they were never questioned by police as key witnesses. And then the person who did the stabbing then went on to take part

in a triple stabbing in a nearby supermarket a few weeks later. And all of this was taking place within a sort of mile radius of Daniel's home. And he, understandably, felt incredibly scared, picked up a knife and decided to, you know, start carrying it to protect himself. Now, you also spoke to his mother. And let's just listen to her describing what happened in her own home. Daily, I'm finding something else. Last night, my 11-year-old at nine o'clock went in the kitchen to get his supper. He's running to my bedroom saying, Mum, have you seen that massive tree branch full of weed in the kitchen?

And there's three lads that I've never even seen before. One of them, God knows how old he was, he was towered over me, and the other two did look around at Daniel's age. And all my work surface was full of cannabis. It was his friends, and that's what they were doing. I think they'd come here to bag it up. I found a black and white bandana in his bedroom, which tells me that he probably is joining a gang now.

They all went off to do some trap video the other night. I've had to get up this morning early to make sure I can go into that kitchen and clean it all up because there were cannabis and THC all over the work surfaces. If one of my kids had got up and made some toast this morning, they'd have been out as a kite all day. How difficult, Annabelle, is it for the mothers to protect their children and escape the gangs?

It's extremely difficult. I mean, obviously, there are thousands of single mothers out there doing a fantastic job, but when you're a single mother coupled with living in an area of high deprivation and poverty and surrounded by dangerous criminals, you're in a really, really vulnerable position, which is where Karen found herself to be. As one of the other parents, a grandmother who I was working with, whose grandchild was in a similar position, pointed out to me. She said, if these bad men come at you and you haven't got a man to back you up who can physically throw people out the house you're powerless and that's that's how Karen and all the other mothers found themselves to be there was nothing they could

do and in the case of Karen her house became cuckooed which is a phrase you know which basically means that a group of criminals in this case case drug dealers, move into your house, as you heard there, and start operating their business from there. And there was very little that she could do about it, tragically. What have the police been doing to help? So the police said that they were treating every case individually and there was a lot going on behind the scenes. They were sort of tracking and trying to get evidence on these people but the difficult thing is in communities

that karen lives in people do not want to snitch on their neighbors for fear of retribution so in another episode karen outlines um the shooting that's taken place on her street she gets home and she says um that she expects to find you area taped up, etc. But she actually discovers that not a single neighbour of hers has bothered calling the police because they're worried that someone will then come and hurt them in some way. So the police have actually got quite a difficult job to do in gathering evidence. No one wants to be the person putting their hand up saying, you know, that's the guy that did it and pointing the finger. So it's's very tricky situation which in fact makes it even easier for the dealers to prey on these children um who i just say are

as young as seven in fact i spoke to a primary school head um who was just down the road from these people um but i was working with and she told me that she found a four-year-old in the playground at break time carrying a knife and I'm not saying he used that knife, but that was the sense of fear in the community led to a four-year-old carrying a knife, which to me is extraordinary. How important have the teachers actually been in supporting the children? The teachers were a lifeline for some of these children.

Tragically, the threshold for social care in this particular area seemed to the teachers to be remarkably high. So despite Daniel, at the end of the year that I was working with his family, going in and telling his teacher, the safeguarding lead of the school, that he had felt threatened in the community, that he had been shot at, that he was carrying drugs, that he was selling drugs, that he'd been advised of a safe house that he could go to in case things got too hot, in inverted commas. He told her all of this.

He also brought a knife into school several months previously. The teacher rang social care, she says, seven times in a week, but were told that none of this met the threshold for intervention. So he carried on as he was. But, yeah, it's a very confusing situation. But the teachers were the ones who were calling police, calling social services and flagging these issues continually to try and get the necessary support for the children. And what are the fears, Annabelle, for the children during this period, the lockdown? Well, I was speaking to some social workers last week and some teachers

as well who were telling me how incredibly worried they are because obviously those teachers that are flagging those issues and now not seeing the children on a daily basis the school i was at some of the teachers were essentially acting as in-house social workers providing sort of one-to-one support for the children telling them you know to let them know what issues were going on at home and in the community all of that has gone away now. The teachers are not in contact with the children in many cases. Social workers are unable to access some of the families, obviously due to lack of PPE, not as many social workers around.

They say that they believe some families may be using self-isolation as an excuse not to let people do home visits. So it's incredibly worrying. Annabel Deese, thank you very much indeed for being with us this morning. I'll just mention again that the podcast is Hope High. It's on BBC Sound. And I think you can now actually get the box set.

It's seven episodes. And Annabelle, well done. Thank you very much indeed. Now still to come in today's programme, The Deadline, a thriller by Holly Watt where an investigative journalist uncovers a surrogacy racket involving a Harley Street doctor, a British ambassador and refugee girls in Bangladesh, and the serial, the final episode of Curious Under the Stars.

And I'm reliably informed that Aristotle believed that the first time a baby laughed was the moment its soul entered its body. Well, next week, we're going to discuss a new book called The Laughing Baby, which investigates the science of why babies laugh. We'd like to hear from you about what makes your baby laugh. Is it tickles, peekaboo, funny faces or something completely unexpected? You can email us or send us a tweet about what makes your baby laugh. Now, today's Woman's Hour Corona Diary takes us to Bath and Rumsey in Hampshire. And Elaine Hall and her aunt Olive Cowley, who's 91, lives alone and is blind. Elaine hasn't been able to visit since the lockdown,

but she's been making regular calls to Olive and finding ways of making their calls a little more interesting and amusing than a simple, hi, how are you doing? So, Elaine, how did the calls begin? Well, I regularly rang my aunt uh when the corona virus lockdown began um we were always regularly in touch but obviously i rang every day um and uh initially we would talk like everyone about what they're eating and whether we've got any loo rolls and um uh who's not obeying the rules you've seen people out when they shouldn't be, etc. And obviously we talked about the statistics and became quite low when talking about corona

and what's happening to the wider population and the world. And this became repetitive. So after a while I said, do you fancy playing a game over the phone? And we did the equivalent of just a minute for a little while. I don't know whether other callers will know that program. Everybody knows just a minute. That's right. Where you talk for a minute without hesitating or deviation, repetition.

Well, we cheated on all of that because my aunt, when I gave her a topic, I might just say a few of my favourite things and she would talk, you know, quite lengthy and interestingly and I didn't want to stop at the minute and I didn't mind if she repeated. But after a little while, that became repetitive day by day and I said, how about a story and she said oh that would be lovely so I very

fortunately had a pre 20th century book of short stories and we've been doing a few of those over the last few weeks Okay Elaine you have just filled the minute I don't think you've been repetitive.

Let's bring Olive in now. Olive. Hello. How did you cope with having to do just a minute on the phone? Oh, I loved it because it made me think and on most of the subjects I was able to speak and I did go over the minute. But it also opened up my mind

to think about the subjects afterwards, which I found very, very good. Can you remember what you did just a minute on, what the subjects were? Well, all were on different things. One was on the circus, you know, and then I remembered about circuses because of my age, so I could speak on that.

And that was one of them. I forget, one was about wartime, and I spoke about that. And how important, Olive, has it been to have Elaine read to you? Very important. I hope other people might do it because it is something simple. But when you live alone, like I do, and I'm isolated, it's conversation. It's speaking because when you live alone, you are not when you live alone you are not speaking and these books and these things have been absolutely wonderful and the stories i can't wait to hear the next chapter

and then i think about what might be going to happen in the next chapter so it's really, really good mentally. I love it. I absolutely love it. Elaine, what's your relationship been over the years? Have you always been really close? Yes, we have. My aunt was the middle sister of three. My mother was the youngest. Sadly, my mother and my other aunt, are no longer with us. We are always a close family, but Aunty Olive has very much become our mother.

I'm one of five, and we all love her dearly. She's very special to us. So, Olive, what have you learned about each other during your phone conversations? Well, I've learned because my sister sister their mother elaine's mother was my younger sister we were left very young when we my mother died when we were very young and so we were always very close and i've always been very close with the elaine when they were little you know i had a lot because they lived near me then and I helped with them quite a lot

because they were five in family. And she's very, very close to me. I can't explain it. It's something we seem to connect so well together and I so look forward to seeing them when this is all over again. And Elaine, what have you learned about your aunt through the phone conversations? What have I learned? I've learned a lot about the social history of the time,

but that's very much connected with the stories I've been reading, because although they're pre-20th century, sort of Dickens and Thomas Hardy, and their settings are... Well, Thomas Hardy particularly is in Dorset at the moment, which is not that far from where my aunt was really brought up. And the background is... This particular story, The Withered Arm, is the background is the particular story the withered arm is the background is the

farming parlor it starts there and um my uh family my father was a farmer so it we all can feed into that but but the change you know they're they're sort of milking by hand and the poverty, women's roles. And so we afterwards discuss this. She will tell me what it was like for her as a woman growing up in the war. And, you know, I compare it to today and we compare it to what Thomas Hardy said or Charles Dickens for that matter. So the characters in the short stories are connecting all of us, you know, myself and my aunt. And, you know, we think about things like witches because they're in there and dreams and what they what they mean and we talk about superstition so it just opens up a whole uh new world and so i'm learning about her and her uh childhood and growing up um and thinking about my own and we're also thinking you know pre-20th century as well and how things

have changed and olive let me just ask you one last question. Living by yourself with no help, which you used to have but don't have now. No, I don't have any. Very poor eyesight. What are you able to do to keep yourself amused? I think you've been cooking and gardening. Yes, and I try to keep the house clean. I don't know if it looks all right, but I do one room each day.

I live in a bungalow, and I've got a garden, which I love to sit in. I can't see to do it now, but I do love the garden. And I do every morning. I do cook. I always make sure that because that occupies my mind and I like cooking you have to be very careful but I mean I can still do that and I can no longer read cookery books so I try to remember recipes and I find it it gives me simulates really, because otherwise I become very bored. Olive Cowley and Elaine Hall, I do hope you will continue to have these phone calls,

even when the lockdown ends, because they sound really great. And thank you very much indeed for getting in touch with us. Bye bye. And so to the next in our series of objects, the ones that may have no financial value but mean a lot to the women who've acquired them. Sally Hughes has been talking to the comedy actor Margaret Caborn-Smith. I was asked out on a date, a first date, which I agreed to. But in the way of the Edinburgh Fringe, we then ended up spending that date with a lot of random people until three in the morning. So we didn't actually manage to have that date. We just had a

sort of evening with some people and then a snog at the end of it during which I mentioned during the sort of meandering conversation I don't I don't think it was even to him I said it your suitor's name my suitor's name is Dan and uh so this is before anything had happened between us and uh yeah I mentioned that i collected snow globes and um at the end of the date post snog or whatever we said well we'll have the proper date tomorrow but before that happened i ran into him and he handed me this uh the next day this was a paper bag with this item in it and i um and i honestly was quite overwhelmed i I mean, I was in my 20s, so anyone spending any money on me was exciting. It's a snow globe.

It's a thoroughly plastic, made in China, small Scotland snow globe with a bagpiper in front of some really quite vague scenery. It's, you know, it's not a bad idea. Some generic Scottish scenery. It's, you know, it's not a... Some generic Scottish scenery. Yes, yeah. I collect, or I did collect snow globes, but I took it back to the group of friends I was with and I showed it to them. It was two men and two women.

And the two women were both immediately excited and saying, oh my goodness, that's so sweet, look at that. And the two men were appalled and bemused at this tacky bit of crap. That this man had spent 99 pence. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that we were all, yes, exactly, that we were all swooning over this. And they were looking at us and saying, really? This?

Really? And almost in unison, the three of us said, he was listening. And I really, it felt like a really lovely lesson to those men sitting there because I think that they'd been taught that spending a lot of money and huge bouquets of flowers and expensive chocolates and whatever, that was the way to win a woman's heart. Whereas just showing that you were paying attention when, as I say, it was sort of in passing.

I didn't talk for hours about my snow globe collection um and he and he'd done this thing and it really it's and I a few years later when I was moving I got rid of all of my snow no I kept my Anthony Gormley snow globe which is a much nicer item and uh this piece of tap because every time I look at it it makes me smile and um yeah and just reminds me of the importance of feeling importance of feeling understood and and listened to have you always been somebody who can become more sentimental about the sort of perceptive gift the creative and thoughtful gift than the grand gesture definitely and that's possibly because I haven't had that many grand gestures actually actually in than the grand gesture. Definitely. And that's possibly because I haven't had that many grand gestures.

Actually, in truth, the grand gestures slightly alarm me, particularly if a lot of money has been spent. I remember my mum wanting to buy me a really nice coat when I was 16 and I was like, oh, I just can't stand the responsibility. I'll leave it in a pub or in a puddle of lager or something. And I've got a bit better about that. But no, my husband, before he did go on to become my husband he said to me, your ideal

present is some chocolates I found in a bin because I like the thrift element as well as the thoughtfulness Margaret Caborn-Smith talked to Sally Hughes and do get in touch with us through Twitter or Instagram if you have a picture of a treasured object.

Now, Holly Watt used to be an investigative journalist. She worked for the Sunday Times, the Telegraph and the Guardian and then her first thriller, To the Lions, introduced a character called Casey Benedict, who's an investigative journalist. It won the 2019 Crime Writers Association introduced a character called Casey Benedict, who's an investigative journalist. It won the 2019 Crime Writers Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award, and now Casey appears again in The Deadline.

She finds evidence of a surrogacy racket where refugee girls in Bangladesh are being used to effectively grow babies from the embryos of rich couples in the UK. A British ambassador and a Harley Street doctor are involved. Holly, to what extent is Casey based on you or people you've worked with? Well, good morning. There are autobiographical elements, but it's not autobiographical, if that makes sense. I sort of took a lot of parts of my life in my old job, you know, sort of undercover work, the people I worked with, you know, some of the stuff they came up with, some of the fun, some of the chaos, some of the adrenaline and sort of put it all into a novel. And what inspired the idea of a surrogacy racket using refugee girls in Bangladesh? Well, I was originally, I was writing a book to the Lions, which looked partly at

inequalities between people in the West and people in Libya in that story. And I just happened to read an article about surrogacy. And at the time, I was in my early to mid 30s. And I wasn't sure if I wanted children. I wasn't sure what I wanted at all, really. And I read this article, and there was this tiniest split second of thinking, oh, that would be handy. You know, I was a very sort of aggressive workaholic type person. And, you know, I didn't really want to tie up my life with being pregnant for that long. And so there was just a split second of recognition. And I was like, God, that's such a terrible thought to have. You know, I'm writing an article about inequalities and everything else.

But even so, there's a split second of thinking like that. But and I just thought it was interesting. And that sort of stayed with me, that thought. But then, of course, I sort of developed into something completely different in the novel. And how familiar were the camps to you where the Rohingya escaped to from Myanmar? Well, I was an investigative journalist, but I also did a lot of foreign work. So I traveled all over the world and I went to, I saw camps, encampments in Libya, Lebanon. I went to the Zaatari refugee camp in North Jordan. And I also traveled down to southern Bangladesh, where there are the huge refugee camps at the moment. Some of

them have been there for well over a decade. And some of them, obviously, was a huge movement of people a few years ago. Now, what you were just saying about that idea of the excitement of, oh, that'd be a good story. And what are you trying to express in the book about that morality of the investigative journalist's work? The kind of picking and choosing the stories that, you know, will appeal to readers and make people think I'm a really good investigative journalist. I think all the way through my career, I was intensely aware of this sense of, you know, what are you actually trying to do as a journalist? Is it, you know, is it a form of entertainment? Is it selling newspapers? Is it wanting to sort of create a form of justice? You know, then you're into sort of Stanley Baldwin's quote about power without responsibility. You know,

who on earth gives you the right to kind of make these moral judgments? And I really struggled with that. I found it sort of very bizarre that as an investigative journalist working at these brilliant newspapers, you know, that you were sort of making these decisions and sort of crashing into people's lives. And okay, you can say they, in quotes, deserve it, they've been doing something terrible. But I always had this sort of weird sense that on your best day professionally, it was somebody else's absolutely worst day. And I just found that sort of backwards and forwards. I found it very odd.

So what was it like for you when your story hit the front page? I loved it. I mean, that was the thing. That was the weird thing about it is I absolutely adored it. But I also would go home at the end of the day feeling kind of oh I'm not you know I remember for to the lions actually the title comes from during MPs expenses when I was working on a very small team at a telegraph um for weeks or months even um and you know my news had to sort of sat back in his seat and going through his news list and went down oh remind me who were throwing to the lions today

and you know these were MPs and they you, a lot of them had dedicated their lives to public service and doing for years. And yet, and others of them had done sort of really dubious stuff and end up in jail. But it was a completely sort of bizarre time professionally because I was, what, 27. And it was undoubtedly the biggest story of my career. But at the same time, it was people who were having their lives completely thrown in the air. There is clearly horror in this novel about the people who are involved in the surrogacy and exploiting these young women to breed children for couples in the West. But it seems to me also that you found it important to explain how desperate people like Emily, the woman who is longing for a child, how desperate she was for children.

She's using a surrogate, but you seem to want us to pity her. I think it's hugely, I mean, I think the law commission's looking at the rules around surrogacy in this country at the moment. And it is an enormously challenging area. You've got to sort of put together one size fits all laws for people who are doing things for all sorts of different reasons that you choose to go through surrogacy. You know, from suffering from cancer and unbearable diseases like that to, you know, there are some people who just think, well, I don't want the stretch marks. It's sort of a huge range of emotions and feelings that feed into this decision. And of course, there are people out there who do it, you want to be surrogates for altruistic reasons, you know, and that's an extraordinary thing to do. You know, so I've obviously had friends, you know, because I'm in my late 30s, I've had friends who've been through IVF or other fertility treatments.

And it's brutal. It's really, really hard emotionally. And, you know, you need a PhD in medicine to understand really what you're getting into because it's so complex. And I think that's an industry in itself, which, you know, has huge complexities around it. So I just found the whole area fascinating. There's so many different things sort of playing into each other. Now, obviously, you want people to read this book and think it's a good story.

But what else do you want them to take from the novel? I think I never write books in a kind of like you should think this at the end. You know, I write in a kind of maybe consider these options. And I think international surrogacy is a hugely complex area and there is the capacity for people to be taken advantage of enormously and horrendously I mean a lot of what's in the book is based on real life examples or examples of you know people sort of going to countries and taking enormously advantage of the situation but at the same time there are people who are suffering through things that you can see how people are

driven to desperation um so no i think read the book and see what you make of it all i was talking to holly watt now lots of you enjoyed nigel slater's cooking ideas and his reflections on the lockdown. Emma tweeted, wallowing in the detail of everyday life, the leaves unfurling. I'm starting to think about my dinner much earlier in the day. How soon can I have my 6pm cocktail? Nigel Slater on Woman's Hour, the voice I didn't realise I needed to hear. Edna Cloud added, yep, dinner at six is very important.

Many men don't understand how difficult it is to plan. Well, my husband doesn't realise. And Liz from Manchester has some advice for Nigel. I've just been listening to Nigel Slater talking about his yearning to bake. There are some things you can make without flour. Hugh Fernie Whittingstall has some recipes for polenta cake and cornbread in his Light and Easy cookbook. There are also recipes using buckwheat flour, chestnut flour, rye flour and ground almonds, which may be easier to get hold of than wheat flour. Porridge or jumbo oats and nutty muesli make good crumble toppings And if you've just a little flour, Delia Smith has a recipe for fruit bran loaf

Made with equal quantities of all-bran and whole wheat flour Hope this helps, and Liz, you have now got a cheek telling Nigel Slater how to cook Oh, how warm is our Corona Diary today with Elaine Hall and her 91-year-old aunt. Olive inspired you to share what's been keeping your phone conversations interesting. Carol said on Twitter, my mum is 93 and locked down in her flat 100 miles from me. So every morning we decide where we're going for a fantasy lunch. We go separately. We have a private jet at our disposal, have lunch and come home. Yesterday, she went to Hiroshima to say sorry. Today, it's Venice. Amazing. Well, thank you for

all your contributions to this morning's programme. Do join me for Weekend Woman's Hour tomorrow. We'll talk about sewing and mending your clothes. Dr Jessica Taylor, a research psychologist and founder of Victim Focus, will tell us why victim blaming is endemic. We talk about the impact of death and dying during the pandemic and hear from Sarah Tully, whose father died from COVID-19. And the young actor Daisy Edgar-Jones, on playing the role of Marianne in the television adaptation

of Sally Rooney's best-selling novel, Normal People. Join me tomorrow. Stay safe. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered.

There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this?

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