Woman's Hour - Olive Thomas, The End of the Office Romance, Senior Women in the NHS, Parents Guide to Keeping Kids Suicide Safe

Episode Date: September 9, 2020

From flapper to femme fatale: Olive Thomas was the wild-living sex symbol of the jazz age and one of Hollywood's first starlets - but ended up dying in agony from poison in Paris Ritz 100 years ago. Suicide... or revenge of a jealous husband? Pamela Hutchinson, Film historian and critic specialising in silent cinema joins Jenni to discuss the story.The NHS in England employs more than a million women, who make up 77% of the workforce, but that is not reflected in its senior leadership. In 2016 a target was set of 50:50 women to men on NHS boards by 2020. This has been missed, but the figure has risen to 44.7%. The NHS Confederation estimates that another 150 women need to be recruited overall, with some trusts having much further to go than others. Jenni speaks to Sam Allen, Chief Executive of Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and Chair of the Health and Care Women Leaders Network at the NHS Confederation, and Prof Ruth Sealy from Exeter University Business School, who authored the report.Suicide is the biggest killer of young people under 35 in the UK (ONS figures). A new guide for parents who are really worried about their children has been put out by Papyrus, an organisation which aims to prevent suicide. It encourages parents who might be scared to talk to their children, to make sure they do. It’s been over five months since many of us sat in an office with a collective of colleagues. The work parties and special occasions are happening behind a screen. And more people than ever are thinking about permanently working from home. Is this well and truly the death of office relationships? And why do we love the idea of one so much in the first place? Anna Smith is a film critic and a host of the Girls On Film podcast. Ellen Scott is the Lifestyle Editor at the Metro UK. She met her partner at work four years ago.CLIP CREDIT: The Office. Written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.Presenter Jenni Murray.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for the 9th of September 2020. Good morning. In today's programme, wither the office romance. Few people meet at work in the midst of the pandemic, so is falling in love by the water cooler a thing of the past, or can passion be ignited technologically? From flapper to femme fatale, Olive Thomas was one of Hollywood's first starlets. We look back at the short life of the woman who died 100 years ago in the Ritz in Paris. And as suicide is found to be the biggest killer of young people under 35 in the UK, a new guide for parents who are worried about their child's state of mind.

The NHS in England employs more than a million women who make up 77% of the workforce. But when it comes to chief executives, chairs, chief finance and medical officers, there is nowhere near that level of women in senior positions. In 2016, a target was set of 50-50 women to men on NHS boards by 2020. It hasn't yet been reached, so what progress has been made and how might such a target be achieved? I'm joined by Sam Allen, who's chief executive of the Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. She's also chair of the Health and Care Women Leaders Network at the NHS Confederation. Professor Ruth Seeley works at Exeter University's Business School

and is the author of the report Action for Equality. The time Is Now. Ruth, what progress has been made towards 50-50 since the target was set? Good morning. So since our last report, which was in 2017, which was the first time we benchmarked these figures, there has been a five percentage point increase in the average figure for women across all of the NHS boards. So that's gone up to 44.7%, which as an average is pretty good. The challenge, though, is then if you look across the 213 NHS trust boards in England, that female representation figure ranges from just 15% to over 70%. So in actual fact,

only just over half of those trust boards have hit the gender balance target that we've set. Sam, why do you suppose the target hasn't been met across the board? Good morning, Jenny. I think the 2016 report that Ruth has set out set a really clear target, 50-50 by 2020. And there are a number of recommendations in that report. I think it'd be fair to say whilst we've made good progress, and I think the Health and Care Women Leaders Network as part of the NHS Confederation, we really recognise that and support that. I think one of the challenges has been the fact that we have not been tracking the data. So actually, even in writing the most recent report, and we were incredibly grateful that Professor Seeley has undertaken this further research for us, tracking down the data on the composition of boards, not just in terms of gender, but other markers of diversity has been challenging for us and I think if you're

not measuring the data if you're not tracking it it's very difficult then to develop a culture of accountability where inclusion and gender balance is recognized as an important issue for boards and it's something that is prioritized. But if, as Ruth says, in some areas it's all gone really rather well, in some areas it has not gone so well, what's going on there in the boards where representation is very low? Is there just resistance to wanting women on the boards in those areas? I think there's a variety of things going on Jenny when we as a network of held events working across the service and of course

the NHS and the challenges that we've been facing around diversity inclusion are not unique to us they are issues for all institutions and businesses there is what we see in leaders is some that prioritise this. They understand it. They recognise that for every board member, it's important that they can explain and understand the importance of diversity. I think also it's a mindset issue. I often hear senior colleagues say that we've got a supply issue. There aren't the people out there. There are many, many competent and capable people across the service who, with the right support, with the right support to scaffold them through the transition to take on these roles, would take that step. So I think

actually we need to see that this is a demand issue, that our chairs and our chief executives across boards need to be clear about their recruitment objectives. But most importantly, be supporting talent management across the service to prepare and support people with these career paths. The report really highlights, particularly for medical directors, and sadly we have taken a step backwards also in chief finance officers, through the interviews that Ruth did, you know, people talking about the step up and the transition into these roles and the support that is required for them in order to do that. Hence the recommendations we've made in the report. Ruth, you were the lead researcher on the Davies Review, which led to a big increase in women's representation in FTSE 100 company boards. What's been learned from the private sector that could be taken across? So interestingly, I think there's a number of similarities with this data. So the point that Sam made about the necessity for

regular disaggregated data. So I gave that example of the average figure is fine, but actually, if you start to unpick it, you can see that in certain regions or in certain types of boards, and in particular in certain roles, that aren't, that that is where there are blockages. So the requirement for data is really key and that's something that I know the NHS Confederation are really pushing with the findings of this report. I think the other thing that we see and this comes out really clearly in the interviews with the chairs of trust boards who have really successfully diversified their boards is how to do it and I think often that's people may have a sort of general sense of oh yes I'd quite like to have more diversity on my board but there's often a question of I'm

not really sure about how to make that happen so one of the key findings that we get from this report is not only have we got very clear benefits articulated by our chairs of why they would want to have diversified boards, but also a series of action points that we list in the report that chairs and chief execs can look at and see what changes they need to make in order to get the results that they want. Now, as Sam said, some of the senior management roles in finance and medical seem to remain stubbornly male. Why is that? That's a really interesting question. And as Sam also said, we know that this is not a supply issue. So, for example, two thirds of the NHS finance workforce is female, but only a quarter of the chief finance officers are female. And we've had the majority of medical school graduates being women consistently since 1992.

So that's over 28 years of talent coming through the pipeline. And yet these medical director roles less than 30% are held by women. We did some interviews with both current medical directors and also aspirant medical directors around what they felt were some of the challenges and again from the interviews with the chairs what came out really clearly across all of those interviews was this need for better talent management. The talent is there and the willingness is there, but these careers are really not being managed terribly well. Sam, I know you had some time in the private sector before senior management in the NHS. What helped you get to chief executive?

I think a number of things. I'd say a fair degree of luck, some really great mentorship along the way, a dogged determination when doors are closed to keep pursuing all available opportunities. And I think the wonderful thing about a career in the health service is there are many many avenues to go down and our report also shows that a linear fast track route to a board role or a chief executive role is not the only way to do it you know taking some sideways steps but I think one of the things I really benefited from about three or four years ago the NHS invested in a course called the aspiring chief executives program i think for me and also as a woman and it's a trait that we often hear our network members talk about the imposter syndrome that self-belief and confidence that you can do these roles having the opportunity to do

the aspiring chief executives program it's a particular talent management program 12 participants on each cohort and now I think just over 20 of us have moved into chief executive positions and actually a very inclusive cohort of people women black and minority ethnic colleagues we've we we had the support so I think that sense of peer support the training the preparation these can be really tough but you know hugely hugely rewarding jobs but they're very exposing and I think that support to take the step I was I was really struck Ruth by one of the chief finance officers that you interviewed talked about moving into the role being like a baptism of fire and the hell you know that you'd be working till midnight and you didn't know what was really coming so I think having that support

Jenny has been incredibly important and you know it's one of the things through the Health and Care Women Leaders Network and the NHS Confederation with its variety of networks that we seek to offer that support to colleagues right across the service with their careers. I think the other thing I would say is that when I look back in my on my career in the health service every job that I have done exists today and I could still be doing that job. My very first job in the health service was as a receptionist in a community mental health team. It still exists exists it's still there so I think having leaders who've got the mindset where they see the potential in everybody and everybody in

the health service is afforded the same privilege is incredibly important which is why inclusive diverse boards are key because we know the health service if you're black or from one ethnic group you're less likely still to be shortlisted for jobs you know we we know that the last several months has shone you know an absolute spotlight on the major health inequalities we need diverse leadership to lead our health service for our communities. Ruth, I think of Black, Asian and minority ethnic background staff, they make up only one in five of the workforce. So what targets are there for women of colour on board? Well, at the moment, there isn't anything specific on there. And I think this goes back to our point earlier about data. We need to be able to track the data very much more clearly.

But I think one of the things that came out from the chair interviews was just how proactive some of the chairs are being in terms of approaching the diverse communities, both for sort of non-executive roles, but then also just managing their talent better within their own organisations to make sure that people from black and Asian ethnicity and women do progress through the ranks and up to those board level decisions, because they were really clear about the benefits of this taking a more sort of holistic view towards diversity on their boards, rather than a sort of tactical approach of compliance to a target. It was a much more strategic inclusivity approach, so that they could benefit from better board processes leading to better decision making, representation of community leading to greater legitimacy and better patient care outcomes, and also this representation of staff leading to better talent management.

Sam, I'm sorry to end on this one, but how much of an issue is equal pay? Jenny it's a great question I think the gender pay gap and unfortunately we did have the reporting stalled that was a national issue this year obviously with Covid-19 hitting there are issues with the gender pay gap and we know there's a forthcoming report on the gender pay gap in medicine so I think there's there's an issue with the gender pay gap still where on average we've got about a 12% difference between the pay for men and women when it comes to the gender pay gap, which is, as you know, looks at the median. I think equal pay, this is an area we haven't looked at yet on boards. And I think, again, forms part of why we need to collect the data on our boards. Good luck with that one, Sam Allen and Professor Ruth Seeley.

Thank you both very much indeed for being with us this morning. Now, Olive Thomas was once the world's most famous sex symbol, the Marilyn Monroe of the First World War. She began in New York in the Ziegfeld Follies and became a Hollywood superstar. But on the 10th of September 1920, a hundred years ago, at the age of only 25, she died from poisoning in the Ritz in Paris. Well, who was she and what caused the death that became one of the first heavily publicised Hollywood scandals? Well, Pamela Hutchinson is a film historian and critic who specialises in silent cinema. Pamela, who was she? What were her beginnings? Good morning. Nice to be here Olive Thomas

was uh an actress we know her that way but she started as a model really so she um was born in Pennsylvania in 1894 and her father was a steel worker but he died when she was young and she dropped out of school she got married young at 16 But the crucial thing she did was she ran away to New York City after two years of marriage and entered a beauty contest. She was crowned in 1914 the most beautiful girl in New York City. Now The Flapper was her most famous film. What was she like in that film? Oh, she's delightful in that film. It's a really witty and kind of lively, youthful comedy. The name The Flapper is a little bit misleading, because I think if we think of a flapper in the 1920s, we think of

these very sophisticated women with the short hair and the short skirts and the modern way of living. She plays a schoolgirl. She plays a very bouncy, lively schoolgirl in this film with long, tumbling hair. She's got an eye for the boys, she's got an eye for adventure. So she tries to pass herself off as an older, more sophisticated woman, what she calls a woman of experience. So there's a theme that comes up in quite a few of her films of young girls, young girls acting a little older. That's really, she was playing teenagers. How had she made it to Hollywood?

Well, you know, she says that she walked up to Florence Ziegfeld and demanded a job. And, you know, having been known around New York City as a model, that was a good way to go about it. And there is a path from Ziegfeld Follies to Hollywood. You know, you get known as a beautiful young face. And she was one of the sort of stars of the Follies in many ways. She was featured in a very racy late night show they used to do called the Midnight Frolics, where the costumes were a bit skimpier, where the girls in the show would walk

on glass walkways over the audience, where their balloon costumes would be popped by lit cigars, all this kind of thing. And it was very soon after she was doing that that she started appearing in films. Her first feature film was for the Triangle Company, which is a very big studio, and it was very soon after she was doing that that she started appearing in films. Her first feature film was for the Triangle Company. It's a very big studio. And it was in 1917. How successful was she compared with Mary Pickford or Clara Bow?

Well, Mary Pickford is just the perfect comparison, actually. Mary Pickford was the biggest star at this time. And Olive Thomas was not really in the same league as her. She started a lot later. But of course, while Olive Thomas was being promoted with her name over the movies, all her movies, she was promoted that way. And she secretly had married Jack Pickford, Mary Pickford's brother. Had she divorced the first one? Yeah, just about.

Yeah, just about. I mean, it was very very quick and actually um she married him in secret uh she was already being promoted by her new studio as a girl next door innocent young thing and she was married to one of hollywood's most notorious drinkers and playboys jack pickford and what was their relationship like if he was a drinker and play thing, they liked to party. The screenwriter, Frances Marion, said that they were more concerned with playing the roulette of life than concentrating on work. But when they were together, it was tempestuous. There were lots of fights and there were lots of extravagant makeup gifts. They were the kind of people who would buy each other sports cars and then immediately crash those sports cars. How did she die at only 25 it's a terribly sad and grim story so in 1920 just after the flapper had come out which would always be her most famous

film i think uh her and jack pickford went to paris for a second honeymoon we hadn't really had a first one but this was their sort of chance to spend some time together. They didn't spend that much time together. And there was one night in September when they came home late at night or early in the morning, depending on how you see it. And Jack went straight to bed. But Olive stayed up a little and she, we don't exactly know how she managed to do this. There are many theories. She went into the bathroom and she swallowed something called bichloride of mercury it's incredibly corrosive it's it's basically a kind of

disinfectant but worse um she it took her about four days to die in hospital in paris um and she destroyed her vocal cords so she couldn't speak and that really is quite poignant when you think that we still don't know exactly why she took such a terrible dose, a lethal dose, and she couldn't tell anyone then either. So what were the theories? Because I know the French police delivered a verdict of accidental death and delivered that verdict very quickly after her death. Why did it become such a Hollywood scandal written about in the press all over the place? Well, I think, you know, there would have been a lot of people that knew that things between Olive Thomas and Jack Pickford were not as they should be. The most famous theory,

perhaps, is possibly the most ludicrous, which is the one put forward by Kenneth Anger in his Hollywood Babylon compendium of gossip. And he says that she killed herself on purpose because she'd been out all night trying to score heroin for Jack and couldn't find any it's much more likely that she accidentally took it um it still implicates Jack for a lot of people because it could have been present in the hotel bathroom as a kind of cleaner a cleaning product but it could have been there because um as was very strongly rumored he had syphilis and it would have been used to treat his syphilis sores so a lot of people say you know it would have been him that had left it out in a place where a person stumbling around in the dark might drink it by accident so what what do you reckon was it

suicide or did he kill her or was it an accident i i obviously i couldn't possibly say but i feel like it with the late night and the darkness i feel like it's most likely to be in a terrible terrible accident and the sort of problem is she was married into the pickford family and we don't know whether the pickford family really tried to cover anything up but we know that they could have done they were so important to hollywood Hollywood that the newspapers and magazines would have printed whatever they wanted to say. So quite soon, the story of Olive's death shifts from, you know, a Hollywood star has died horribly to something terrible happened in Paris,

and there was a lot of coverage of how sordid the Paris nightlife was, as if the American press wanted to blame anything but Hollywood. Given her fame, why has she been forgotten? Well, I mean, you know, one of the sad things about silent cinema is that so many films are lost. So of the 20 or so films that Olive Thomas made in her very short film career, eight I think are definitely lost and several are hard to see. The only one I think that is actually available on DVD is um The Flapper which is available in America so people don't get a chance to see her as she was

so young and vivacious and charming on on screen and she was so beautiful she had these really dark eyes and fair skin um what people remember if they do remember her is the sordid details around her death I mean Hollywood Babylon uh Babylon has really associated her with that instead of the work she did and how sort of stunning she was to be around and to look at and to see dancing. Well, Pamela Hutchinson, thank you very much indeed for being with us this morning.

And I should mention there is a photograph of Olive Thomas on the Woman's Hour website, so you can see how beautiful she was. Still to come in today's programme, the demise of the office romance. Why was it so common to fall for someone at work? And will opportunities return when the virus has been beaten? And the serial, episode three of Prostrate.

Now, earlier in the week, you may have missed Lissy Harper, the widow of the young police officer Andrew Harper, and Stephanie Yeboah, the author of Fatterly Ever After. And a question. Are you always a little bit late for everything, even when there isn't a reason? Is it a source of stress for you and others? You may be a time bender. We'll be discussing this and solutions for how to be on time on Friday's programme. So do email us through the website with your experiences and questions. And don't forget, if you've missed the live programme earlier in the week, you can catch up. All you have to do is download the BBC Sounds app.

Now, it's been established that suicide is the biggest threat to life for young people under the age of 35 in the UK. We also know the difficult months of the pandemic have been harsh on the young, and now we're heading for more restrictions on meeting friends in private and in public places. An organisation called Papyrus, whose purpose is the prevention of suicide, has published a guide for parents who may have become seriously worried about a child who appears to be expressing suicidal thoughts. Dr Rachel Gibbons chairs the patient safety group at the Royal College of Psychiatrists and is on the National Suicide Prevention Advisory Group. Helen Coleman's daughter has had thoughts about suicide since she was 14 and she's

now 26. Helen, how did you discover your daughter was thinking about suicide? Good morning, Jenny. The first I knew was a phone call from the school nurse. I had no idea. I knew that my daughter had mood swings. I was aware that she was struggling with some bullying at school, but I really didn't know. And I would never have guessed that something like this could happen to my family, to my daughter. So what was your response when the school told you what she was going through i think for myself personally um immense shock um fear worry um you know that panic of what do i do how do i deal with this um we we had an appointment with the doctor within a few hours the doctor was brilliant but then suddenly it was up to me to keep my daughter safe and I was in unknown territory I didn't know what to do

how do you deal with this we had a good relationship and we talked a lot and obviously once the word suicide had been mentioned, it suddenly became something that needed to be talked about. And so, you know, I needed to listen. I needed to hear her. How did you approach the question with her? In my complete ignorance, I just talked. I just asked her directly, how are you feeling? Is there something that's caused it? Is there something we can do? I think I reached for every possible answer to solve it. I wanted to remove this from her. If I could have could have done i'd have taken it off her um what what

did she say to you helen what what what how much did she understand of what she was feeling oh crumbs that's a that's a good question um i think she had been battling in her own head for a long time and it had got to the stage where she couldn't keep it in any longer um there was a sense of she'd had enough she couldn't cope it was all too much she just wanted to die and when you hear your child saying that um that's hard and i'm going to, Helen, I'm going to bring in Rachel now, because we can all hear how incredibly hurtful it is for you, for your child to say such a thing. Rachel, that must be the common parental response to such a dreadful shock yes good morning jenny thank you helen for talking about common response um i mean any parent who hears that or hears the word things i wanted to say is don't panic and then i was thinking that that's actually quite a

not very sensible thing. Rachel, we're having some difficulty with your line. We keep losing you a little bit. We're going to try and get you on the phone. Helen, this is the problem with having everybody down the line, I'm afraid. But if I can come back to you until we try and get Rachel back. Yes, no problem. I know your daughter is now 26. She's a high achiever.

How can you continue to help her when she's no longer living with you and close to you all the time? Well, one of the things is about listening being available um to talk and um and as rachel said yeah don't panic i think that that was my initial um very brief reaction but um and also don't judge um it's really important to have an open mind to listen and keep communication open. And at any point when behaviour seems a bit odd or they seem a bit quiet to actually ask directly, say, how are you feeling? Are you feeling suicidal? And not be frightened to ask that question because at best

they'll say no i'm fine and at worst they'll say yes i am but if they say yes they're feeling suicidal then it it means that you then have the means to be able to to try and support them and and that obviously helps helen thanks thanks very much for the moment. Rachel, I think we've fixed the problem. I mean, Helen, as I asked her about helping now that her daughter is no longer with her and she obviously is keeping in touch. But I wondered how common is it for young people to express these kind of thoughts i think that's what i was trying to say is um is don't panic is that actually suicidal thoughts and we call them sort of suicidal ideation is a very normal part of the human condition we all

have if we're honest with ourselves and if we um really look to what's going on in our own minds, we'll be aware that at times of loss or stress or sort of challenge, we might have fleeting suicidal thoughts. So suicidal thoughts in themselves are something to be concerned about and to take very seriously, but not to think that having suicidal thoughts will naturally lead on to a death by suicide or losing your child. How easy is it for a parent to talk to a child if the relationship is not as good as the one Helen obviously has with her daughter? Well, I think that's one of the key messages I was also wanting to think about is actually this can give the family an opportunity because

when someone is talking about suicide or thinking about suicide it's because they're thinking they can't put into words their distress they want to act as a way of escaping distress. If you can put the words into, if you can put your distress into words the chance of acting is much less

so in a way this is a point of perhaps alerting the family of acting is much less so in a way this is a point of perhaps alerting the family of concern of alarm even to to bring the family together and bring the relationships together and to start to learn to talk together and to develop those skills and there are lots of different services that can help families develop these skills you're not on your own it is actually very difficult to sort of engage with your emotions and talk about them. You know, it's a challenge for all of us. Now, some children we know tragically do go through with it.

What would you say to parents who have suffered a child's suicide and are wracked with guilt? I am. I say I'm very sad and sorry in that situation. I think I would probably say the same, a similar type of thing, which is stay with it, talk through it. We are very, you know, there's been a lot of development in postvention, in support for families after a death by suicide over the last 10 years, driven very much by those bereaved. And I think the work has helped them process their own losses. So there is a lot of support around now if you access it.

And if you sit with it and if you work together and carry on trying to talk through it, there is a path out of this. And guilt and the feelings of guilt and blame are very, very normal after a shocking, traumatic death of this nature for everybody

because it leaves you in a state of total uncertainty you don't know why it's happened and in a way it's easier to believe you do know and that somehow you're to blame or someone else is to blame than to to be able to sit with a total uncertainty of it dr rachel gibbs and helen coleman thank you both very much indeed for being with us this morning. And we would like to hear from you on this question. If you have had experiences like Helen's or indeed have suffered a terrible tragedy like this, please do contact us and let us know how you dealt with it. You can obviously contact us on Twitter or on email. And we

don't have to use your name if you don't want us to. Now, the office romance has long been a staple in drama. Two people spend eight hours a day brushing up against each other. And in the classic example of Tim and Dawn in the office, it all gets a bit flirty. Are you getting it? Yeah. Timely bit, my love. Sorry.

Oh, can I have this? When you're finished? Yeah, you can have it. When will you be finished? Today? I don't know. Maybe we could share it. OK, then.

I'll just have it on weekends. OK. And then, of course, the inevitable happens and true love follows. But what about now? Hardly anybody meets in an office. Increasingly, people are choosing to continue working from home. All communication is done via the screen.

Is it possible to have a technical office romance or is it all over? Well, Ellen Scott is a lifestyle editor at the Metro UK and Anna Smith is a film critic and host of the Girls on Film podcast. Anna, why does the office relationship make such a good storyline? Well, there's so much tension, isn't there, in being in a confined space with people, as we well know. But in terms of the office romance on screen, when you think about the opportunities of culture clash,

you know, personalities clashing, which brings lots of comedy as well as tension. And we see it as, you know, something that's quite identifiable. I mean, most of us can relate or have been able to relate to being in an office with someone as opposed to being stranded on a desert island with someone. So it's really the staple of a lot of great rom-coms. And I always think of, for example, Hugh Grant.

He's been in so many of these films. And it's to do with partly fantasy, like, oh, what if my boss was so handsome and charming and we fell in love? And partly reality, like, for example, the Bridget Jones films, where, in fact, that boss really isn't very suitable at all. So what are the other classics, apart from... We just heard Tim and Dawn in the office getting very flirty with each other. What are the other classics?

Well, for me, on film, Working Girl is a great example, which really plays with that trope, because, of course, there's a lot of deception involved in the storyline behind Working Girl because she's posing it, being someone that she isn't. But that kind of really ups the ante, I think, and that's a classic for me. But, of course, another Hugh Grant film, Love Actually, is not one of my personal favourites, but that really plays with the trope of workplace romance because there's at least five or six different kinds

of workplace romance within that film. You've got the prime minister and the tea lady, and then you've got extras on a film set who are drawn together. And there's all sorts of different office romances, some forbidden and some OK. And that really that really charms people, that one. Now, Ellen, I know you met your partner in the office. What happened? So we are still together and still working together so we met about two years before we even really spoke because we're both awkward and British but finally started going to kind of work pub trips started becoming friends and then eventually

formed a relationship. What do you think it is about the office that maybe encourages romance? I think number one, it's that you have this shared common interest. You're clearly interested in the same kind of career path. You're doing the same work. But also you have this easy conversation starter. You can both kind of complain about a specific, you know, the office air con is on too strong or the microwave is smelling of fish or something like that it's not such an easy kind of common ground and then obviously you're spending so much time together it's much easier to form a relationship at work than it is to you know trawl through tinder and other dating apps and find someone outside of the

office how careful did you have to be to keep it all a secret because I know some officers are now saying nope no office romance here it's not acceptable. We were very careful and we kept it secret for about five months before finally kind of telling my manager at the time and posting on Instagram announcing it. But yeah, it was really important to keep it secret just so we didn't get any kind of judgment or if it had gone horribly wrong and we were actually not a good match, I would have been glad that no one knew that we had then broken up. Anna, what will happen to the storylines as a result of the current situation? It's a very interesting question.

We've already seen kind of horror movies and thrillers and some kind of rom-coms on TV hastily thrown together in the pandemic, which sort of revolve around people who are meeting or interacting on kind of online and conferencing systems and such. So I would imagine we're going to see film adapting. It's going to have to do that. It's going to have to do that. It's going to have to look out people who are in different circumstances and perhaps then exploring the sexual tension that comes from not being able to actually touch each other,

because there's something really in that, which has actually been explored in the teen genre, for example, in Twilight and a film called Five Feet Apart, which actually came out last year. So I think it's going to adapt. And how much do you reckon the secrecy that Ellen was talking about is part of the story? You just keep it to yourself. Well, that's a wonderful dramatic element, which of course has been exploited on film and TV before. And I suppose there is potentially more opportunity for that when you think about people having online romances.

And I can envision some kind of romances on film coming to the fore which are about people kind of sticking to each other's dms after being on a conference call I mean that's the kind of realism that people are going to start to be able to relate to what Ellen do you reckon happens when passion is not reciprocated oh that's a huge issue and I think that's why it's so key to kind of establish a friendship before you even think of going flirty because there is such a risk of it becoming uncomfortable for the person who's not interested and especially in a work environment for women especially it's really difficult to say I'm not comfortable with this flirting or you're taking this too far

it's very difficult to challenge that could you have developed your relationship ellen if you'd been working from home i think it would have taken us twice as long which is saying something because it took us about two years to talk to each other anyway um i think we would have talked on slack and maybe on zoom but yeah it would have just taken so much longer without having those kind of in-person pub trips, you know, bumping into each other in the kitchen and also the Christmas party, which was a huge thing. Yeah, Christmas parties. We don't think there will be any Christmas parties, maybe even this year. Anna, how are the dramatists going to cope with that? Well, that really is actually going to change the face of the romantic comedy as we know it, because that's absolutely the staple.

It was the staple of The Office Christmas Party where Tim and Dawn finally kissed properly. And then, of course, in many films like Love, actually, you've got the mistletoe at the Christmas party. That's not going to happen anymore. They're going to have to come up with something new, aren't they? What do you reckon they could come up with? I mean, you can't get, I suppose you can get drunk at the other side of a Zoom party, can't you? I know many people who have. Yes, so it'll probably be, yes, the kind of flirting in Zoom parties with your own

bottle of punch and wearing a silly hat. And yeah, sexting, I suppose. Is the office romance dead now? Or can it revive itself? I think romance will always prevail, in my view. And I think certainly according to cinema and TV, there is always a way in the romantic storylines. And I think they will find a way. What would you have picked up, Ellen, from your chap?

When you saw him through a screen, what would have attracted you to him oh he's going to be embarrassed listening to this but I think that's all right no just just flatter him like man exactly I always thought he was you know good looking from across the room even when we weren't talking so it's you know his beard his um tattoos and the fact that he has a sense of humor and I think even across zoom that is something you can kind of get across is you know facial expressions and like witty remarks in the middle of a meeting and how they respond to things so how ellen would you advise those

with a workplace crush in the current environment i think the onus has to be a bit on managers to make sure that socialising is still possible if we are going to be working from home more. That might mean doing weekly, you know, workplace Zoom pub quizzes or anything like that, just making sure that there's still a social aspect so you can talk. But on a personal level, it is very much about chatting on Slack, not immediately going for the flirting, because like I said, that does have the opportunity to go wrong. But starting on a friendship basis, just chatting about how work is going, how things outside of work are going. And also you can start on the very common basis of we've all been in lockdown. This very weird isn't it that's a good conversation starter and i know what would your conversation starter be that's very quick probably ask them what kind

of films they've seen lately which is this is how as a film critic i would start but yeah i mean talking about something outside of work that as ellen says isn't too inflammatory but something where you have some common ground i was was talking to Anna Smith and Ellen Scott. Lots of you got in touch about the women in senior leadership in the NHS discussion. Margaret said, my daughter entered the NHS through the graduate training scheme, which is highly competitive. She progressed quickly and was successful in every job interview and thus her career progression. That is, until she had children. The NHS appears to be helpful with flexible working hours. She works four out of five days, but as with other careers, nursery and school times,

encroach on the working day. Job shares at a senior level are perhaps the answer. Catherine said, we need a better definition of good leadership that encompasses types of leadership behaviours that are more commonly seen as feminine traits. Paul said, Samantha Allen notes that every role she's had in her NHS career so far still exists. So we need leaders who see the potential in everyone

and support their progression. Again, lots of you responded to the discussion about the Parents' Guide to Keeping Children Safe from Suicide, and no one wanted to be named in this. So there was an email which said, hearing the speaker right now has reduced me to tears. My 15-year-old daughter had two very serious suicide attempts last year while in the throes of anorexia. The pressure of having to keep her safe was and still is so overwhelming. I suffer from horrible anxiety and exhaustion from being hypervigilant.

The mix of emotions, resentment that she's doing this to me, the terror of losing her, the isolation you feel. Someone else said, I sat by my teenage daughter's intensive care bed for five days two years ago. She survived but afterwards everything becomes a threat from the medicine cupboard to the knife drawer to the train journey to college. We tried for ages to get her help. We tried afterwards. Help for us and her, practically non-existent. And another anonymous email. This programme immediately brought back the feelings I experienced 12 years ago when school informed me out of the blue that our 15-year-old daughter was going to be seeing a psychiatric

nurse the next day. My absolute panic and adrenaline-filled fear lasted for many months. She was cared for with psychosis and depression. As parents, we looked for all the mistakes we must have made and why our beautiful, accomplished and loving daughter was suffering so badly. We'd always had a good relationship and talked so much, so how did we miss this? It took four years of work and recovery. She has gone on eventually to become a children's nurse with a first class honours degree. And then on the death of the office romance, Katie said, I've experienced an office romance. We met at a previous company, worked together on a project, didn't want it to

stop and started dating. Now married with kid and running our own business together. And Sarah said it's 19 years on and my office romance is still going strong. I was the TV editor, he was the picture editor and it was mad. I was getting married and did and he was single and three years younger and my colleague's younger brother's best friend. We were a dramatic office group and it just became part of the machinations of the office environment and they all much preferred him to my fiancé. I don't take what happened lightly but it was so worth it. We have two beautiful teenage boys and we both followed our heart. Now do join me for tomorrow's programme, when I'll be joined by Laura Bates of the Everyday Sexism Project.

She'll be discussing going undercover for her latest book, Men Who Hate Women, in which she traces the roots of extreme misogyny across a complex network of online groups, extending from men's rights activists and pick-up artists to men going their own way, trolls, and the incel movement. So join us tomorrow morning, two minutes past ten if you can. Until then, bye-bye.

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 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.