Woman's Hour - Preet Chandi/'Polar Preet'; 'Collector culture'; Playwright, Nell Leyshon; Drones & night street safety; Novelist, Nikki May;

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

British Army officer and physiotherapist Preet Chandi has made history as the first woman of colour to complete a solo expedition in Antarctica. 'Polar Preet' trekked 700 miles in 40 days, facing temperatures of -50C, poor visibility and fatigue along the way. She used skis, and dragged a 90kg pulk (a sled) for between 10-12 hours a day. Preet catches up with us from the Union Glacier camp in Antarctica.'Collector culture' - the swapping, collating and posting of nude images of women without their consent - is on the rise. But unlike revenge porn, it is not a crime. Now survivors are demanding a change in the law. To understand why Anita is joined by Professor of Law at Durham University, Clare McGlynn and Zara Ward, senior practitioner at the Revenge Porn Helpline.Cecil Sharp is known as the godfather of English folk music. In a bid to preserve the English folk song at the turn of the twentieth century, when many in the musical world didn't believe England had a musical tradition of its own, he collected and memorialised thousands of traditional English folk songs from rural communities in England. However, less is known about the people he collected these songs from. FOLK is a new play at Hampstead Theatre in London written by Nell Leyshon, the British dramatist and novelist born in Glastonbury, Somerset. She tells us the true story of Louie Hooper and Lucy White, two half-sisters from Somerset who Cecil Sharp collected hundreds of songs from.A UK tech company is pitching to provide security for women out alone at night who fear for their safety. Drone Defence is hoping to secure government funding to deliver AI drones fitted with spotlights and a thermal camera which would be summoned on an app by an individual who are concerned a predator may be near by. Could this be a solution to a recent survey which showed one in five women fear going out at night alone or does it present a serious privacy risk without tackling the underlying issue of violence against women? We talk to Richard Gill the founder of Drone Defence and to Silkie Carlo the Director of Big Brother Watch.Born in Bristol and raised in Lagos, Nikki May is Nigerian-British. At 20, she dropped out of medical school, moved to London, and began a successful career in advertising. Now aged 56, her debut novel Wahala has just been released and is already being made into a six part drama series for the BBC. It is the story of three thirty-something friends living in London - Ronke, Simi and Boo. Their bond is tested and their lives start to unravel when glamorous high flying Isabel explodes into their friendship group.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Preet Chandi Interviewed Guest: Professor Clare McGlynn Interviewed Guest: Zara Ward Interviewed Guest: Nell Leyshon Interviewed Guest: Richard Gill Interviewed Guest: Silkie Carlo Interviewed Guest: Nikki May

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, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. A very happy new year to you all. I'm already looking forward to that fungi programme that's coming on straight after us at 11. But anyway, it feels great to be back steering the good ship Woman's Hour into the weekend. We're only seven days into 2022. And today I'll be talking to two women who've already broken boundaries and achieved a huge amount. Preet Chandi, who some of you may remember we spoke to

at the end of last year, ahead of her epic expedition to the South Pole. Well, she's only gone and done it. She's become the first woman of colour to solo trek, I'll repeat that, solo trek to the South Pole, an immense 700 miles in 40 days. And to all those aunties who thought she was trekking to South Hall, yes, she's made it, not to South Hall, to the South Pole. And then imagine writing your first ever novel. And before it even comes out, the BBC are turning it into a six part series

because they think it's that good. Well, I've read it and it is that good. The author, Nicky May, will be on the show to tell us all about her debut novel, Wahala. Two women who maybe a few years ago would not have believed what they were capable of. Well, as you know, this show wouldn't be anything without hearing from you. So I'd love you to tell me about your achievements this morning, the things you've done that you didn't think you were capable of, the times you've surprised yourself with something you've done, whether it's learning a new skill later in life,

facing down your fears and doing something adventurous or extraordinary, or being organised enough to get your tax return done on time. Whatever it is, let me know. The text number is 84844. You can also contact us on social media. It's at BBC Woman's Hour. Or if you fancy dropping me an email, just go to our website. Let's shout about the times you've surprised yourselves. We're also talking to playwright Nell Lyshen this morning about her new play Folk. And we've talked a lot on this show about how safe or rather unsafe women feel in their daily lives. Well, could drone technology be the answer?

All of that coming up. Remember, 84844 is the number to text. Now, on Monday, British Army officer and physiotherapist Preet Chandi made history as the first woman of colour to complete a solo expedition in Antarctica. Polar Preet, as she's known on social media, trekked 700 miles in 40 days, facing temperatures of minus 50 degrees C. I'm cold just thinking about it. Poor visibility and fatigue along the way. Preet used skis and dragged a 90 kilogram pulk pulk, or a sled, for between 10 to 12 hours a day. Well, I spoke to Preet earlier this morning from the Union Glacier camp in Antarctica,

and I began by asking her how it felt to have achieved her goal. It feels a little bit surreal, to be honest. I mean, it was tough, don't get me wrong. And I got back from the South Pole to Union Glacier like two days ago. And I'm a little bit cut off from the world. So I've just had messages from my partner saying, call these people for some interviews over the next few days. But, yeah, I feel good. I feel like I'm going to have a little bit more of a shock

when I get an internet connection and I get back to Chile and see what's been going on. Where are you right now? I'm in a dome tent in Antarctica in Union Glacier, which is the base for the logistics company Ailey. So what can you see out of the tent then? What's around you? So, I mean, it's pretty white,

but this is some mountainous terrain here. And then there's a few of the dome tents and things. And basically this is the base for other expeditions as well. So there's expeditions that go and climb the nearby mountains. Preet, massive, massive congratulations to you, Preet. It is such an achievement. Now, when we spoke, you said you were going to take 45 days to do it. You completed it in 40.

Now, I've been following your updates on Instagram, and I know that you were getting messages through to your family who were updating your social media. But was it easier than expected? It wasn't, no. It was difficult. So I took 48 days of food and fuel. And the thing is, you took 48 days of food and fuel. And the thing is, you want to have enough food and fuel because for any reason, if I ran out, that's it, I need a resupply,

you cannot survive without the food. It's not like I could stretch my food a day or two longer, for example, especially not the fuel. So I have to melt snow to get water. So if I had, you know, used it all, then actually I don't have any water. And what I started to do towards the end is keep the stove on for a little bit longer.

So it heated up the tent, which was quite nice because I had so much additional fuel. Whereas at the start I was literally just using it to to cook my food and to get water and and that was it and and it was tough to be honest yeah there was some pretty difficult days and I I just kept going um you know I didn't sleep a huge amount while I was on the on the on the expedition um and I just said to myself you know if I'm feeling good just keep going and and that's what I did um yeah what was the toughest part I mean I know you got sick on a couple of days didn't you yeah yeah I did yeah so it wasn't

that actually there was um there was a part like in the second half where the terrain was just so hard it was um so there's there's the strugia which are like these um wave-shaped ridges uh which like can be a few meters high um and they were high in that area and it's particularly windy in that area and it was just bitter cold and and the conditions were just difficult i remember falling over a few times and I fell into some of these wave-shaped bridges and I fell down one of them and I fell quite often, but I didn't hurt myself or anything, but I just stayed down.

I just had a few minutes and it was just relentless. It gave me kind of a brief break from the wind because it shielded me slightly and I just stayed down there and I was like, oh, my God, this is just unbelievable. What do you say to yourself when you're there? You're in the middle of nowhere on your own. You've not had any contact.

You're exhausted. What keeps you going? I think I just take one step in front of the other. Just, you know, take one day at a time. And by the time I put the tent up and I was a bit more sheltered and I'd had some hot food you know I think to myself I've done that day now it was tough yeah it was really tough but I've done it and then I had about 50 voice notes on my phone and on the tough days I would listen to some of them uh and I had a mixture of like poems I had some memories I had some like inspirational quotes uh and they and they were

great you know it's great just to hear like the voices of like those closest to me uh and then other times I would remember why I'm here in the first place like and how long it took me to get here and you know people always asked was the South Pole a lifelong dream and you know you always dreamed of getting here and I'm like well not no it really wasn't you know it wasn't even in my radar until a few years ago and and that's pretty amazing I think so like I've incurred yeah sometimes I was a bit tough on myself towards the end and because I you know I had some hard days where I didn't do very much mileage and I was like oh come on Preet and then I was like Preet you're way ahead of schedule you know it's we're generally our own worst critics but yeah I had I was a bit tough on

myself towards the end um when when it was becoming quite hard and uh I was like look I'm ahead of schedule just just keep going just you know forget that last day that was tough and just concentrate on the next one and it's like I think you can relate that to everything you know forget that last day that was tough and just concentrate on the next one and it's like I think you can relate that to everything you know just breaking down bigger challenges into stuff that's more manageable and that's why I concentrated on each degree sort of 10 degrees and just concentrate on like you know each degree at a time. Well it's probably that psychology being a bit tough on yourself that actually got you to achieve this incredible feat. Every single one of your posts talks about your day, how you're feeling, but also you dedicate a post to somebody, you know, who supported you and that you wanted to thank.

I mean, how important was that? And also you talk a lot about inspiring the next generation, about how this wasn't expected of you, that you were always told that you were a rebel for wanting to do something different and how important it was for you to break boundaries it was really important you know like i i at the start when i first wanted to do this it you know it was just me i just had this idea and you know where do you start to get support and at the at the start it was difficult you know you're just so you're especially trying to get sponsors you're saying to people I want to do this huge thing um by the time I started emailing people it was pretty much COVID um so a lot didn't respond and then you know those that did respond it wasn't exactly the right time and then I remember getting you know just you know my first sponsor on board or people who like the company that would give me food or just people that would, you know, say, yeah, you know, anything I can do to help.

And that meant so much for people to believe in me and think, yeah, you know, I believe that you can do this. Having my kind of, you know, those closest to me support me. And the reason I talked about, yeah, you know, not being encouraged to push boundaries, because I think there's a lot of people in similar positions. And, you know, I think it's actually quite common for those that are closest to us, you know, sometimes to hold us back because people want to do things that aren't the normal in their community or their societies. And, you know, when you want to do things that aren't the normal in their community or their societies. And, you know, when you want to do things that aren't necessarily the norm, people are like, well, why are you doing that? Like, you know, and a lot of the time in certain communities, I think people think that success is what they think is normal. So, for example, well, you know, why haven't you settled down and have kids yet?

Because that's a normal thing to do. You know, why are you doing all this other stuff? I think it's important. And I finally feel confident to talk about my experiences as well. And that it's okay to speak out. And, you know, it's not disrespectful to be talking about it. So I think I've learned a lot in this journey. You know, I remember getting to the South Pole.

And it was almost like I got there and I felt to myself, you know, you're not in the wrong, like, you know, what you've been doing and, you know, this is good. This is, you know, this is really powerful. And I think that, you know, I hope that I can help so many more people, you know, inspire them to achieve whatever they want, you know, and I've always said it doesn't have to be anything to do with the polar world or Antarctica, but just whatever it is. And it's okay to dream and want to do something that you might not know anything about at the moment.

But, you know, we learn and we start somewhere. Preet Chandi, the first woman of colour to have successfully solo trekked to the South Pole. And she's right. We dream and you can achieve things. And lots of you are getting in touch to tell me about the things that you've done where you've surprised yourself. Twelve years ago, overcoming and beating leukaemia, still living in total awe and amazement that I did that. And please give me your name if you would like your name read out on the radio. Barbara says, when my father was dying i recorded his life story this was more than 30 years ago four years ago i decided to train others to do what i did and now we've trained and recorded so many stories ever

since uh someone else has been in touch to say i've just completed day this is good 663 of learning italian on duolingo and in the eighth month of recovery from foot surgery, learning to walk again. 84844, the things that you have done that you never thought you'd be capable of doing. I'd love to hear from you. You can also email us via our website. Now, on to collector culture,

a term that doesn't really give much away about what's going on and how sinister it is. Collector culture, as it's been called, is the swapping, collating and posting of nude images of women without their consent, and it's on the rise. But unlike revenge porn, it's not a crime. Now people who have had their images shared without their consent or knowledge are demanding a change to the law. To understand how big an issue this is, I'm joined by Professor of Law at Durham University, Claire McGlynn, and Zara Ward, a Senior Practitioner at the Revenge Porn Helpline.

Welcome to you both. Zara, let's come to you first. Can you start by explaining what's going on? Yeah, of course. So collective culture is something that we've been seeing at the Revenge Porn Helpline the last couple of years. And firstly, the sharing of intimate images without somebody's consent with the intent to cause distress is against the law in the UK. The issue is with this collective culture is it's usually shared for sexual gratification. so images can be shared on image boards they're anonymous but they are broken down by country by county sometimes even by town and they are there specifically to gain images of people that are in that area so they could specifically ask for somebody's name or they could use their facebook profile picture and ask for more images of them. So it has an extra layer of objectification and humiliation for women. But the goal is mainly for that collection and that sexual gratification.

So who is it that's collecting the images? And where are they posting them? So the images could be kind of taken from many different sources. So images could have been shared by a previous or current partner, or the images could have been hacked from phone accounts. The key thing is, is once these images have been shared on these boards,

then people can then re-download them, re-share them. But they are shared onto these kind of, they almost look like the old chat rooms at the forum board rooms. So you kind of comment on posts. That way there's no kind of uh you don't have users you just kind of you ask for a name and then somebody could reply to that post with the images um so it does leave this extra layer of anonymity for the people who

are doing it but obviously not for the women who are subject to it their names are out there their images are out there their location is out there. So yeah, they have no anonymity. So it could be a photo of you on there, your name on there, and you may not have any knowledge of it being there. Exactly so. And even more worryingly is that there could be an image of you and a friend and somebody would say, oh, have you got any images of this person and they'll know them by name which shows that that person has some kind of affiliation with them because else how would you know them um and one of the most chilling comments that i i saw when i was doing my reporting was that i love to know that i've seen this person naked whilst talking to her boyfriend which just goes to show this is people that these women could be seeing in the street.

They could be seeing them in the pub. And so, yeah, that offers another layer of fear for women, not just opening their phones, but opening their doors. How is this different to revenge porn? It's kind of, it's very different in the sense of the intent there, even though there is still the intent to cause harm and distress. The main intent could just be for sexual gratification. So rather than there being one potential perpetrator, there's a collection of potential perpetrators and they are anonymous, but it could have been incited from intimate images being shared about their consent,

or it could be, as I said, a phone hacking. So it does have a little bit of different, could have a different starting point. But revenge porn is illegal and this isn't. So this is illegal if it's with the intent to cause distress. But, you know, the words intent to cause distress is really hard to kind of nail down. And in most cases, there is a lot of geography terminology, the way that they speak about women on these boards,

but they are there most of the time for sexual gratification to kind of collect all the images of the women in their local area. I'm going to bring Claire in on this to sort of explain why this isn't what we'd like to see change and why the language around this is so murky and why it's not just the same as revenge porn. It's illegal. So the current law, as Zahra says, is that sharing sexual images without consent is only the offence if you can prove that perpetrator directly intended to cause that victim distress. And in lots of these cases, as we've just heard, the perpetrators don't even care what the victims are doing

and they often don't want the victims to even know. And the issue is also wider than just these very specialist boards. There's lots of groups of men and boys, you know, private WhatsApp groups, private Facebook groups, who are taking and sharing images amongst themselves, largely to boost their status as well. So it's not just about sexual gratification, it's about boosting their status, it's about proving themselves as a man. And that's not covered by the law either, because the law just focuses on this one type of intent. So we need the law to shift towards just focusing on consent. The point here is these are images taken and shared without consent. And that's enough. And that should be it. And that's what the law needs to change to focus on. So exactly what would you like the law to do because campaigners want it changed in England

and Wales and brought into line with Scottish law what's going on in Scotland how is it different? So Scots law is slightly broader in the sense that the the threshold to prove this motivation to cause distress is not as high as in England and Wales. But across the UK, we need a more comprehensive, clear law that just focuses on non-consent. And that will make it also easier to prosecute these cases because we know that getting the police to have to find the evidence of an intention to cause distress is significant and it's what puts police off investigating and prosecuting these cases. And it also means that lots of these types of cases are...

Oh, we just cut you out there. I mean, has the focus on, let's see if we can get you back, Claire, has the focus on revenge porn helped awareness? We can't hear you. Maybe you have put yourself on mute. I don't know, but we'll come back to you in a moment, Claire. You probably haven't, but we'll figure out what's happened there. Zara, I'm going to come back to you. Are women getting in touch with you? What are they talking to you about? What are they telling you?

Have their images shared without their consent in 2020 over 60%? Sorry, Zara, I'm just going going to get to start again because we missed we missed the beginning of that so tell me what's okay because i know that you have uh your uh revenge porn help your awareness line and people call into you to talk to you about this so what are women saying to you what's going on so in 2020 over 60 percent of uh victims who came to us were women and in most cases they had reported intimate images being shared. So we had over 3000 cases last year or 2020. And over 1000 of those were images shared. So they were finding out?

Yeah, these are where women have found out. Yeah. And what impact was it having on their lives? It has a lifelong impact. People want to change their name, they need to change their job, they need to change everything about themselves. And they get blind messaged by people on Twitter or Instagram. And it just, it unravels their whole existence. And, and yeah, that's the worst part of it. But people then contact them in real life, what to tell them that they've seen them naked? Yeah, so they can have messages from random people online that's found their images or a friend of a friend of a friend find their images online um so people may not know that

the images are even out there until they're alerted to them and that's obviously another layer that they have to then process um before coming to us or before getting support something that claire mentioned as well zara zara weara, you were talking about how, you know, there's websites that you can go to and some of these are now behind paywalls, but actually these are WhatsApp groups as well, and much smaller groups. And people are specifically requesting to see certain groups posted and certain pictures posted, aren't they, of certain women? Yeah, it can really happen in these kind of little groups and especially if they're kind of closed off it can really incite that kind of behavior if a couple of people are

asking for that kind of content then it will could encourage other people to do it um so yeah always blow a whistle if anybody's in those kind of groups and call that behavior out and and report it um because it's not okay to be happening in any kind of space even in what you think is a private messages so sinister isn't it just thinking about it i mean claire has has the focus on revenge porn helped awareness let's see if we can hear you now claire i think it has because people are realizing that uh sharing sexual images without consent is harmful and, you know, it's really distressing. But unfortunately, this limit in the law here, we're seeing being applied across lots of these areas. So there's new laws being proposed around things like cyber flashing.

And I know you talked about the breastfeeding law earlier in the week. But each of these laws has these motive requirements. So they'll only be applying in very specific and limited circumstances. And it's really important to say most criminal offences don't require motives. And most sexual offences don't actually require motives. It's just a trend with some of these harms and abuses that women are experiencing predominantly are being given these higher thresholds and making them much more difficult to prosecute.

And that's what we need to change and just focus on consent. Zara, over 62% of reported cases in 2020 had female victims, but do men get in touch with you as well? Yeah, men do get in touch with us. And we have had male victims that have had their images put up on these on similar kind of boards that are designated for men but the main proportion of it is women so um uh in our helpline for an average victim who's a man it could be 1.5 images that we report whereas for women it's 41.9 so there's just a huge there's a gendered issue here there's you

know women are more likely to be victims and there's also more content of women shared i mean technology has improved but how realistic is it to expect um it to protect women you know how realistic can the sort of technology that we have now protect women from getting their photographs put up without them even knowing? We could be taking much more steps to support women in this regard. And for example, the government is putting forward the online safety bill at the moment that's supposed to be addressing online abuse and supposed to be getting these um large companies social media porn companies to take more action and we really need a robust online safety bill and that could help women to get their images taken down faster and to get those images not being spread as fast

on the internet but we really need specific measures in that bill which the bill at the moment does not address women's particular harms and cl Claire, it opens up a minefield, though, doesn't it? Because a lot of these sites are being hosted in countries all over the world. Well, that's right, they are. But we can also tackle the ones that we can do something about, the Facebooks, the Twitters, the porn hubs and all sorts. We can take more action against them, even though you're right, some of the other sites are much more difficult to get to. So what can you do right now, Claire,

if you find that an image of you has been collected? Even that term, collector culture, is just strange. Even revenge porn is a strange terminology. We'll talk about the terminology in a minute. But what can you do? Should you report it to the police? Will it go anywhere? What can you do about it? So what most victims, as Zahra would say,

want first of all when they find out about this is to get their images taken down. And that's why the Revenge Porn Helpline provides such a vital service. But it's doing so on a very tight budget and we need to really support victims more to get those images taken down. If someone wants to report to the police and they feel that's appropriate, then yes, absolutely, please do so.

The response from the police is sometimes mixed, but there are positive responses out there. But it's sometimes mixed, unfortunately. But that's also because the police need far more resources to tackle these sorts of issues. Yeah. And what do you think about the terminology that we use, collector culture and revenge porn, Claire? Well, revenge porn is a deeply problematic term. And partly we're in this mess of the law not covering all these forms of intimate image abuse because of the focus of this language of revenge porn, which just focuses on a malicious ex-partner sharing an image. We need to talk about things like intimate image abuse or image-based sexual abuse, which covers

all forms of taking or sharing these sexual images without consent. Because victims also find this language really harmful to them. It hinders their own recovery. And so just like we don't use lots of terms and words that people find offensive now, we need to stop using those terms like revenge porn. It harms the victims, but also limits what the police and what the policymakers are doing. Azara, I mean, we can understand why, but you've given your helpline the name Revenge Porn Helpline, but obviously it's open to anybody who's the victim of any of this and it is is we know that the term revenge porn is is not kind of suitable and we don't see it we don't call it revenge porn in any of our kind of discourse we always call it intimate abuse

because it's not pornography it's always abuse um but yeah we know that the term revenge porn can be very you know headlining and catchy but we appreciate that there is a huge amount of abuse that happens here. And very quickly, Zara, if anyone thinks that a picture of them is out there, they can contact you and talk to you about it right now. Please do. Or you can say go to the police. Yes, please do. And we have a really good success rate and we're just a really friendly team. Just give us a ring and we can give you some advice and support um thank you both very much for speaking to me this morning about this uh claire mcglynn and zara ward also this morning we're talking about um things that you've achieved uh where you've surprised yourself someone has been in touch anonymously says i cycled 400

kilometers across zambia in 2018 with a group of fundraisers in 40 degree heat is something i never thought i'd be able to do. I'm sweating just thinking about it. And Joe says, I swam in the sea this year on Christmas Day for the first time in my life. I'm 69 and it was wonderful to join the shoal of swimmers dipping and diving in the water. Good on you. Now, Cecil Sharp is known as the godfather of English folk music. For a long time, the musical world didn't believe England had a musical tradition of its own.

However, with the turn of the 20th century, the musician Cecil James Sharp made a bid to preserve the English folk song, and that he did. He managed to collect and memorialise thousands of traditional English folk songs from rural communities in England, but there's less known about the people he collected these songs from. Well, Folk is a new play at Hampstead Theatre in England, but there's less known about the people he collected these songs from. Well, Folk is a new play at Hampstead Theatre in London, written by Nell Lyshan, the British dramatist and novelist born in Glastonbury in Somerset. And she tells the story of Louis Hooper

and Lucy White, who are two half-sisters who also grew up in her home county of Somerset over 100 years ago. Cecil Sharp collected hundreds of songs from two of them, but till today, their stories have been untold. Well, before I talk to Nell about the play and about folk and the story of these women in English folk music, let's hear a clip from the production. Here's Mariam Huck. She's playing Louie Hooper. She's explaining to Simon Robson, who plays Cecil Sharp,

how she learns and memorises the hundreds of unwritten folk songs her mother taught her. I placed a kiss on her sweet ruby lips, a tree spread its branches around. Now we go up into the hill field, we'll sing as we climb, and I finish the last line at the top. So when she did arise from the green bush, she drove in the meadows, we wandered away, and I placed my true love on a primrose bank as I picked her a handful of May the very next morning I made her my bride soon after the break in the day the bells they did ring and the birds they did sing as I crowned her the queen of sweet May so we can look down over all the land we're looking down over the whole song

all the fields the gateways the five acre the two acre the hayrick and the hillfield that's how it is mr shark uh well i am joined now by uh nell leishan who uh wrote this what made you want to write it now oh gosh um it's been a long time in the making long time in the writing I went to an exhibition in 2009 of uh folk singing in Somerset um and I've written a lot about Somerset it's my home county and it's where my imagination was born and uh I saw photographs of the singers and there was the first person who sang to Cecil Sharp then there was a singer who lived I think it was two or three doors away from my own house and Cecil Sharp had collected a folk song from there and then there

were these photographs of these two women and I really thought about you know they knew over 200 songs themselves and they had instant recall to those songs and And I thought, my goodness, what must it be like to be a walking jukebox, you know, to have all of that at your hands. And they kind of haunted me. And the idea came immediately. You know, ideas are just born in this sort of firework moment where you just think, oh, goodness, there's a play. And that's where it began. But then it became tricky. It's a very complex subject matter. Well, the play is written from the perspective of these two sisters, Louis Hooper and Lucy White. So who were they? So they were half sisters who lived in Hambridge, which is a village down on the Somerset levels. And they were very, very poor. They came from an incredibly modest background. You know, they had a sort of lived in a squatter's cottage,

a bit of a shack. And their mother had been the sort of famous folk singer in Somerset. She was known for it. And she taught her two daughters to sing. And that's who they were. And Cecil Sharpe came down to Hambridge. His friend was the vicar there, Reverend Marsden, who told him actually that he thought there were some English folk songs. Because until then, we really did think England had absolutely no folk songs of her own and she was known as dust land on music which

means the land without music and he came across this extraordinary thing with these two women and the very first week he was there which is you know where the play begins he suddenly discovered that not only did England not have its own folk music, but it was there in the village where he was staying, you know. And it has gone, actually, because when I lived in our village, I sort of went to the last of those very traditional haymaking. And there was certainly no singing, no traditional songs left at all. Well, wonderfully, we've managed to find a BBC archive clip of the real life Louis Hooper doing a BBC radio interview in 1942. And I can't wait to play this for you. Have a listen. On next you dig me a great long widened day

And stew it all over with flowers so sweet That I make of air and take my long sleep In a beautiful love forever That's the poem, actually. And I was always, you know, listening to singing. I always loved singing. Isn't that wonderful, Nell? Amazing, isn't it?

And I found, actually, before I realised the recording was still in existence, that was the BBC in 1942. And before I knew that existed, I found a transcript. And in it, she talked about her love of music, this woman who came from nothing and was really pretty much unknown. I mean, you know, in the folk music world, they knew that he collected songs from her. But she had this extraordinary love of music where she'd listen to birds and try and compose music in her head and hear raindrops on the iron roof of her bedroom and made up music. And then she'd actually I mean, you know, she couldn't afford an instrument or anything. She'd actually made herself musical instruments out of sticks and wire. So I started to think, well, what happens if you have an utter brilliance with music, but you don't have that background? And in comes Cecil Sharp, the very sort of upper middle class man coming down from London, who's a head of a conservatoire, who's classically trained and is utterly, he really, really understands his classical arts music world, but he doesn't have her gift. And that's really what it is. It's like a reverse Pygmalion in a way.

She teaches him. He thinks he's teaching her. She teaches him. I want to talk to you, but there's so many different themes in the play that you pick up on. It's set in Somerset, which is where you're from, as you've said. And did it change the way you feel about where you're from and your county? It did, actually. I mean, I've written about Somerset quite a bit and I think it's probably my best work. And it's taken me to the age of 60 to kind of say that publicly and accept it. You know, if you live in Somerset and in a Somerset village,

it sort of takes quite a lot to ignore all of the town and country stuff. So in a funny way, I feel very akin to Louis in a way in the play. But yeah, the sort of richness of how I feel about the landscape and the county where I was brought up. And that really gave me another massive, you're're right there's so many themes in this play and it gave me another sort of insight into another really big theme and I think that's why it took me so long to write which is that it is about Englishness absolutely about identity and Englishness and how we feel about England because Cecil Sharp was going to use the folk music to write a new sort of national music that would purify us

as a race. I mean, that's probably an exaggeration of his exact words, but that was the idea. And they were looking for a new English classical musician. And he thought that it would give us great pride in our country and that we didn't say that we loved England enough. So I really had a very long hard thing for a few years about how I feel about England. And I think that the play is really me working through some of those issues through Louis and her feelings about England, as well as Cecil Sharp and his feelings. And how did you feel about it?

How did you feel before and how did you feel after? Well, I think I've always felt the same which is uh how do you how do you say that you really love your country without without becoming very nationalistic about it and rejecting other countries and what I sort of came down to is Louis realizes and she's the one who sort of says that countries are bits of land and wherever you're born you're going to love your country, you know, whichever country that you're born into, because it's the stories and the songs. So it really is a sort of cultural connection to the land. And that's what she's doing in that lovely clip that you played at the beginning, Miriam's beautiful singing. And also the other thing that we did, Roxanna Silbert, the amazing director at Hampstead Theatre we we talked about the casting at the beginning one of the things we were very keen to do was to make the play reflect contemporary England not a sort of past romantic notion of England which

is actually what Cecil Sharp was reaching for and we cast as the two sisters uh women of colour, these extraordinary women, Miriam Huck and Sasha Frost. And that, I think, adds a whole other layer to the sort of question of English identity. Absolutely, and what it is. And it is everything. And being able to say you love your land, you know, you love your country, where you come from. And it's, you know, you can say that, but not without thinking about it, I think.

One of the other themes that I want to quickly ask you about is grief, because the play opens with the death of Louis and Lucy's mother, who is a well-known folk singer from South Somerset. And you lost your own mother at the start of the rehearsal process. So how do you think the grief from losing their mother shaped them and also your own grief shaping the making of this play? Yeah, I think what was extraordinary was when you write a play, you do have to bend facts. You need to know what the facts are so that you know what you're bending. And I did actually bend that fact and decided to do it straight after the death of the mother,

not realising, and I wrote all of this material quite a while ago, but writers are very strange because you have to do sort of thought experiments and imagine yourself into positions. And obviously, you know, I had to imagine myself into these two sisters' point of view of losing their mother, not realising that two weeks before we went into rehearsal, I would lose my own.

So that actually was quite difficult. And when we started, the very first week of rehearsals was the week of my mum's funeral, which was very difficult. But she absolutely loved the play. There had been a radio version on Culture in Quarantine and Radio 3, and she absolutely loved the play. And the last thing she ever said to me was, I'm going to come and see that play.

But she didn't. I have to say, I'm putting a request out to the BBC bosses. Can we put that back on Radio 3? Because I tried to listen to it and it's not available on BBC Sounds anymore. Because lots of people might not be able to make it to Hampstead to watch Folk, but it'd be great to be able to listen to that. So Cecil Sharp, here he is, this kind of heralded folk hero.

And then these two women that you've written about who we know nothing about. So was he a folk hero or was he a villain for never celebrating the people he got the music from? Yeah, this is this is the really big question. This is what made the play so juicy to write. And it's a sort of dissonance at the centre of the play, which is if we hadn't had Cecil Sharp and he hadn't gone and got those songs and he was so driven, he collected nearly 5,000 different songs, which is just extraordinary. If he hadn't done that, most of those songs would probably have disappeared. But what he did do was go and write those songs down. He rearranged them for piano. He put his own name on, he copyrighted

them and he made a really good living out of it. it's very very hard to uh because if you say he shouldn't have done that we wouldn't have the songs well you have now written this play and it's there at the hamster theater until the 5th of february for people to see thank you so much now for joining me to talk about that um and 84844 is the text number if you want to get in touch. Felicity says, five years ago, because we're celebrating your achievements, with a 10-month-old baby, I decided to become a solicitor. Then in September last year, through a pandemic, and now with two children, I qualified as a solicitor.

Look back and can't believe that I did it. High five to you. Now, a UK tech company is pitching to provide security for women out alone at night who fear for their safety. Drone Defence is hoping to secure government funding for the AI-operated drones, which would be fitted with spotlights and a thermal camera. The drone would be summoned by an app by an individual who fears a predator is nearby in an effort to deter would-be attackers.

So could this be a solution to a recent survey which showed one in five women fear going out at night alone? Or does it present serious privacy risks without tackling the underlying issue of violence against women? So to discuss this, I'm joined now by Richard Gill, the founder of Drone Defence and Silky Carlo, the director of Big Brother Watch. Let me come to you first, Richard. Tell me more about this drone and what could it do? Good morning and thank you for having me. That opening piece really encapsulated why we sort of developed this concept, is that we looked at the perception of people going out at night,

and one in five women and one in ten men just simply don't go out at night by themselves because they feel it's unsafe. And then we looked at other different things like the prevalence of street crime and where that type of crime takes place. And we felt there was a gap in response time. So for an incident starting, the police turning up is about 15 minutes typically, and the police helicopter takes about 20 minutes to turn up. We thought that if you could press a button on a phone,

we could get a drone there filming that situation in minutes. So explain how you see this technology as protecting women. So specifically is that we looked at the perception of women not feeling safe on the street, particularly at night. So during the day, it's one in 25 women,

according to this YouGov poll, do not feel safe walking by themselves. That massively increases to one in five at night. And it's basically, so light has an issue to that. People walking through the street by themselves,

they just don't do it. So when people felt vulnerable, we felt the BT888 Walk Me Home app was something that we addressed. The Hollyguard app and looked at different mechanisms that are available to address these issues now. And we thought in the drone industry that drones could enable a faster response

to provide that assurance to the would-be attacker much, much more quickly. So that's how it would benefit women. Do you think it works, Silky? What do you think? No, not at all. And this sounds like sheer opportunism to me. I mean, this is a company that's been selling surveillance drones for a while. I don't think this is a realistic or even really a useful contribution to the problem of male violence against women and girls. And it is also incredibly intrusive privacy altering technology that currently may not even be lawful in the way that the company suggests using it. But what about improving women's confidence in their safety? Surely this

is what they're thinking about. And that's a good thing. I don't think it's what they're thinking about, but that's obviously what we need. And the problem is that, you know, this kind of technological solutionism is orientated around tropes of what male violence against women looks like. You know, a woman walking down the dark street, a man jumping out of a bush, this kind of thing. That's not the reality. The reality is that a small proportion of male violence against women happens in that way. And also that often these crimes are being detected, but they're not being policed. Let's not forget that only 1% of rapes are even being charged at the moment. So the problems that we have with policing violence against women and girls to make us feel safe when we go out, whether it's at daytime or nighttime, or even to make us feel safe in our relationships and in domestic settings, that all comes down to policing.

And the problems with delayed response times also comes down to policing and resourcing and how police and how the government, frankly, prioritise or currently don't prioritise the problem of violence against women and girls. And Richard, I'm going to bring you back in. Are you being opportunistic here? Well, I don't think so. I'm a father of three girls and I don't want to see them growing up in a world that they don't feel safe. We were in the drone industry. We understand how drones could be helped. And I saw it. I was in the army for 10 years before setting up this business. I saw how drones being used to gather mission critical and lifesaving information really quickly. And and we we feel that, as Silky pointed out, that response time is an issue and how we resource that.

And we looked at the police helicopter as as a reference as a reference point because of it's in the public domain. The police helicopter currently costs three thousand3,200 an hour to fly. So we can do the same type of thing with a drone for £100 an hour. And we feel that democratises access to this type of technology, providing we can deliver it safely, respecting individual privacy and engaging with the public to not say we're expanding the surveillance state. I personally feel that this could have a really positive impact

because I've seen how drones can have a positive impact, but also recognise the fact that drones, the primary purpose of our business is actually to protect people from the harmful use of drones. We don't sell surveillance drones to people. So that's not right. And if you look at the website, it does that.

We believe in a future where drones can have a really positive impact on society. But we recognise the fact that drones are being misused. But is there scope for this technology to be misused? I think there is scope for this technology to be misused. And that's why we need to have this public dialogue to talk about these issues. I would argue that the stuff that we're doing and the proposal with Aeroguard, it doesn't have much scope to be misused. And if people were intent on misusing drone technology, then they would just go and buy a drone and just use it anyway. And I think the other point, as I say, is all technology has the potential to be misused. We saw that in that previous segment about how illicit images can be shared to harm

individuals. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have digital cameras or the internet or message boards, because the overwhelming positive impact of technology is playing for everybody to see and I think we can do the same with drones and if we can do it respecting individual liberty then I think that's a wholly positive thing and I think our concept does that. How exactly is it just to explain it to me Richard is it going to make a woman feel safer I mean we've got cameras already people have mobile phones there are various apps you can call the police you can tell so how is your drone technology going to actually make women feel safer or so yeah so i think the problem with all of those different technologies is the response time so all of those apps and all of those different things you press

999 or you press the button on the app it tells your emergency contacts and they phone the police then it's 15 minutes at best before somebody turns up onto that location to try and sort that out. We think a lot of quite a lot of stuff can happen in that 15 minutes. And for most of these incidents, you looked at some of the statistics that we picked up from last year. So 600,000 sexual offences reported to the police in 2020. 15 percent of those 90,000 were committed by a stranger. Now, of course, the vast majority of these types of offences are committed by a known person, 70-odd percent,

50% in the household, so a partner, ex-partner doing it. And 10% are in a public place. So 55,000 events that were reported to the police, that were investigated, were in a public place. Now, we think... But the vast majority are within homes, aren't they, Silky? The vast majority is someone you know. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, this is, I have to be honest, this is quite infuriating to hear a company getting basically free PR on the back of what's been a year of a national conversation about just how serious the problem of male violence against women and girls is. I've read articles about this company's drone that have photos of Sarah Everard in them. I mean, this is actually offensive. This is not a serious solution. It wouldn't even be lawful. At the moment, you need to have someone operating a drone who is within 500 meters of it they're talking about having a citizen app where anyone can command a drone on demand and then put a floodlight on the woman by the way the drone tracks the woman i mean and a lot of this kind of surveillance technology

that's been proposed in the last year in the wake of uh the awful events of march last year um have been about tracking women. There's an app on your phone. Why don't we get cameras to track you? Now it's drones to track you. Richard, I'm going to just get Richard back in to talk about that because, you know, Silky has just said you've used images of Sarah Everard to promote this.

So I would say that wasn't us. We didn't do that. That was the newspapers. We don't have control over those articles that go out. But you did tell them that you came up with the idea in the wake of her murder? I actually said that it was in the wake of a number of high profile incidents that have taken place that we thought we could try and address the issue with our knowledge. OK, well, at the moment, it's still in the very early stages and is a discussion I'm sure we will be talking a lot more about on Woman's Hour. But for now, thank you very much, both of you,

Silky Carlo of Big Brother Watch and Richard Gill. Your thoughts? Someone's just messaged in to say, great drone spying on females, lots of fun to be had there. And another one's saying, drone security to mass observation by the state. The company wants to make money on the fears of women and men. Your thoughts?

84844. We're also talking about achievements today because we are talking to, we've already talked to Pola Parit, who trekked to the South Pole and now born in Bristol and raised in Lagos. Nikki May is Nigerian-British. At 20, she dropped out of medical school,

moved to London and began a successful career in advertising. Now aged 56, her debut novel, While Hala, has just been released and is already being made into a six-part series for the BBC. It's the story of three 30-something friends living in London, Ronke, Simi and Boo.

Their friendship is tested and their lives start to unravel when glamorous, high-flying Isabel explodes into their friendship group. And Nikki joins us now. Congratulations. You're a published author. How does that feel? It feels amazing, Anita. It's dream come true stuff. Why did you want to write this book? I wanted to read a book that had people like me in it. I'm mixed race and middle class. A lot of books written by black people centre on struggle, but it's not a universal experience.

I wanted to read about characters whose lives include jollof rice cornrows and carjacking in the same breath as ubers for catcher and soho house and you do it brilliantly i've read it and honestly i couldn't put it down it is it's one it's a proper page turner give a summary um of the lives of the three main characters without giving it away because there's a real twist so they share they all live in in London, living their best lives and they have a mixed British Nigerian heritage in common. Ronke's a dentist. She's dating Kaede and is desperate for him to be the one. Her friends, however, are not convinced. Then there's Boo. She has everything Ronke wants. Gorgeous child, kind husband, huge kitchen, but she's

frustrated and unfulfilled. Simi is the golden one on the surface at any rate, but she's frustrated and unfulfilled. Simi is the golden one on the surface at any rate, but she's crippled by imposter syndrome and keeps that well hidden. Isabel is the Wahala of the title. Wahala means trouble and her motives for causing Wahala propel the narrative all the way to a rather dodgy twist at the end. I mean, and it is, there is, and that's what it's all about. You're just building to this twist and you're desperate to know. That's why you keep turning the pages to find out what the twist is. Where did the idea come from? Well, I'd always wanted to write a book

that had people like me in it. And one day after a long, loud lunch at a Nigerian restaurant in London, I admit there was alcohol involved. As I boarded the slow train home, I started doodling these characters. They came to life in my head. And by the time I got to my stop, I boarded the slow train home, I started doodling these characters. They came to life in my head. And by the time I got to my stop, I'd written the first scene, which remarkably is still very much like the scene I drafted in that train. It is brilliant. And like you say, you know, you wanted to see yourself reflected, middle class, mixed race.

They're multi-layered, they're complicated, they're flawed, multifaceted and we don't see characters like that. We're going to see them on TV which is going to be amazing. Just how important was it for you to talk about those experiences because there's so much in there, microaggressions, the immigrant experience, specifically about being mixed race? I think a lot of the issues facing my women are universal. The world pulls on us. There's expectations on our hair, our bodies, our

careers, our relationship status, even our reproductive organs. But when you refract that through a biracial lens, everything gets slightly more complicated and the pools are even tighter. I think a lot of mixed race people have a sense of not belonging. I know personally, sometimes my sense of belonging is concrete. Other times it's really fragile and elusive. And I wanted to reflect that. But what I didn't want to do was bang people on the head with issues. I wanted that to be the backdrop, because that is the backdrop to my life. It's not front and centre. Really, I just wanted to write a really entertaining book that hopefully shows how alike we are. Oh, yeah. I mean, the story is so universal. There's so much we can relate to. And there's so many big themes that we can get into. But I've got to talk to you

about food. Because you are, I mean, that is just you were going to be so hungry once you've read this book. And thankfully, you've given us recipes at the end. But why was food such a big theme? I think one of the best things about having two cultures is having two cuisines, two national dishes. I can love jollof rice and I can love roast dinners. I also think Nigerian food needs to be on the map. I love Nigerian food and it's such a big part of our culture. We have this saying in Nigeria and Yoruba, ewa jom, and it means come and eat. And I think it's our way of showing how much we care. If a stranger walks in mid meal, you say ewa jom, and you mean it

literally, come and share my food. Come, let me care for you. Yeah, please, can we go for a Nigerian meal together? Can I just put that out there? That's going to happen in 2022. And I'm going to make your recipes as well. One of the other themes in the book is about women and the choices that they have, these middle class women. And Simi's husband thinks they're trying for a baby, but she doesn't want to get pregnant. What made you want to explore that particular storyline? I think in the West, when a woman says she doesn't want to have a child, society balks. In Nigeria, society is outraged. You must be barren or mad or cursed or possibly all three. And I think that really weighs on Simi. She was born and brought up in Nigeria. She knows what

the expectation is. And she's just too scared to admit the truth. I'm not sure if I want kids. I know it's happened to me when I go back to visit my dad in Lagos. A few years ago, I handed over my passport, my Nigerian passport, because I have two, and the customs official welcomed me home with a smile, asked why I hadn't brought my children. When I said I didn't have any, the disgust on his face when he threw the passport back at me just reminded me I was home. Is there a bit of you in every single one of these characters? I'm afraid so Anita it's autobiographical but I couldn't stop little bits of me creeping in so Simi dropped out of medical school tick Boo trying so hard to adapt and blend in tick I straightened my hair I tweaked my. But I promise there's no Isabel in me.

At least I hope there isn't. Well, look, you know, like you say, Simi dropped out of medical school and was a big disappointment to her parents in the book. But now at 56, you are a published author. I mean, how does a family feel about how the aunties, I know your mum and the aunties are listening. How proud are they? I think they're finally totally proud. And my dad, who was horrified when I dropped out of medical school, now says it was all his idea. And he knew the best thing for me would be writing a book.

My mum's listening now. Hopefully she's proud. Me on Radio 4, she will be. Yes, absolutely. That was just like fist bumping the air. There's a beautiful word in the book, Alabama. I want you to tell me what Alabama means and who is your real life Alabama? Alabama is the person who brings out the best in you. It's like your closest buddy, your rider. And I have to be honest, my sister Victoria is my

Alabama. She thinks I can walk on water. She thinks I can do no wrong. She's completely deluded, but it's lovely to have this pom-pom waving person that you know thinks the sun shines. Well, you are brilliant. And this book is out now, Wahala, and it's already being turned into a six-part series on the BBC. So what a wonderful way for you to start 2022. Thank you so much, Nikki, for speaking to me.

And good luck with everything. And let's get a date in the diary to go out for that feast thank you Anita see you at lunch yes looking forward to that and thank all of you to get for getting in touch as well someone's just said when I was a child went swimming with my brother he would duck me underwater and hold me underwater so I'd half drown it was traumatic and terrifying I love to swim but would only ever do breaststroke keeping my head above water at 51 years of age I finally had a one-to-one lesson and learned to swim, but would only ever do breaststroke, keeping my head above water. At 51 years of age, I finally had a one-to-one lesson and learned to swim front crawl absolutely over the moon. Join me tomorrow for Weekend Woman's Hour. Have a great weekend.

That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Beating climate change is a tough job, but we've got a famously tough guy on our side. I think that we have to go and button up and work together in order to really conquer this problem. 39 Ways to Save the Planet is the podcast from BBC Radio 4 that meets the sharpest brains with the best ideas to cut the carbon. And it's a podcast with a famous fan, Arnold Schwarzenegger. One of my favourite chapters was when you talked about the things that we can do right away, the nuclear power, when you talk about the smaller reactors, or for instance, the dry rice, or, you know, the carbon capturing and all of those kind of things. There's so many things that we can do technologically.

If you want to hear more from Arnie and a host of inspiring innovators all taking the fight to climate change, then subscribe to 39 Ways to Save the Planet on BBC Sounds. We've terminated problems in the past. I think that we can do it again. It's the bottom line. 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.