Woman's Hour - Rhianon Bragg, Women of Substance, ultramarathon runner Allie Bailey

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

Rhianon Bragg was held hostage at gunpoint by her ex-boyfriend, Gareth Wyn Jones, for eight hours. He was sentenced in 2020 for stalking, false imprisonment, making threats to kill and possession of a firearm. Now, despite a parole board panel saying they are not satisfied it would be safe, he is being released from prison. Rhianon speaks to Emma about how her relationship with Wyn Jones developed, what happened at the end, and how she feels about him coming out of prison.The Prime Minister has upset some people by seeming to take a bet with TalkTV presenter Piers Morgan over his Rwanda policy. Rishi Sunak told presenter Rachel Burden on BBC 5 Live that he wanted to show his commitment to his immigration policy. Rachel joins Emma to discuss what the bet tells us, alongside Isabel Hardman, Assistant Editor at the Spectator.Ultrarunner Allie Bailey is the first woman to have run the length of the Panama Canal and she’s completed more than 200 marathons and almost 80 ultramarathons. She joins Emma to talk about her new book “There is No Wall” which details how she was doing a lot of her running at the height of her struggles with alcoholism, depression and mental breakdowns.What can women artists’ work tell us about their addictions? Sally Marlow is a Professor of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London. She’s been looking at five women artists for a BBC Radio 3 series, Women of Substance, to find out what their work can tell us about their addictions. She joins Emma to discuss researching Billie Holiday in particular, and what the lyrics of Billie's songs reveal about alcohol use in women.Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Lottie Garton

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 Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast. Good morning, welcome to the programme. While much has been made by some over Rishi Sunak shaking hands on a £1,000 bet with Piers Morgan that migrant deportation flights to Rwanda will take off before the next general election, I'll be joined by the most recent person to interview the Prime Minister, Rachel Burden, only two and a half hours ago on her show on BBC Five Live Breakfast. Interestingly, no bets were laid during that particular interview, but they did cover what

some have called that out of touch, heartless and macho exchange. Rishi Sunak, for his part, says he was taken by surprise by the bet and wanted to show his commitment to the policy. We'll discuss that handshake in more detail shortly. Also on today's programme, an ultra runner trying to outrun her own demons, but has she managed it? And women of substance in the creative world, but not quite as you imagine. All will be revealed. But first, an insight you don't often get. My next guest is speaking out ahead of her ex-boyfriend being released from prison in a matter of days.

This is despite a parole board panel finding in November that such a move would not be safe. Now Rhiannon Bragg, a woman living with her children in rural North Wales, is in a situation where she's placing her safety, her life really, in the hands of the authorities, all of them, but namely the probation service and her local police force. She's trying to trust them to keep her safe from him. You don't usually hear from people, and usually women, in this moment in their lives, the in-between, the moment before, and she's worried, very worried

indeed. I'm grateful to Rhiannon for talking to me and trusting Woman's Hour with her story. And in just over a week's time, with her ex, Gareth Wynne-Jones, being automatically released from prison after stalking and threatening her when she ended their relationship, Rhiannon explains how this happened and how it came to be. She reported him to the police and he was arrested for harassment and menacing behaviour. In fact, he was arrested three times, but no further action was taken. Then a few months later, he returned to her home in rural North Wales and held her hostage at gunpoint for eight hours. Finally, after he

allowed her to go to a doctor's appointment, he was arrested. In February 2020, Gareth Wynne-Jones was given an extended determinate sentence of four and a half years in prison with an extended licence period of five years for the crimes of stalking, false imprisonment, making threats to kill and possession of a firearm, having pled guilty. Worried about his imminent release, Rhiannon's situation was raised with the Justice Secretary in Parliament by her local MP, and she's also met with Edward Argar, Minister for Prisons, Parole and Probation, to address her safety concerns, including how licensing conditions will actually be managed living rurally. When I spoke to Rhiannon, she started by telling me how their five-year relationship developed.

I was incredibly vulnerable at the time, and I feel very much now I was targeted. He'd have been able to assess very quickly, I think this is how this sort of perpetrator tends to operate, how vulnerable I was. And the more vulnerable you are, the easier the target you become. And to start off with, I honestly thought it was just friendship. I thought he was being supportive,

just wanting to help out for all the right reasons. And it was only after several months that I realized that he was interested romantically, which for me, with incredibly low self-esteem, was really flattering. So if I tell you that part of my decision to leave the children's father, my ex-husband, was that it was a case of I'll be on my own for the rest of my life bringing up the children. I honestly thought no one would ever be interested in war-torn mother of four. So as things developed, it just seemed to be an almost ideal scenario. He was very kind, very helpful. After several months, things became romantic.

And be careful using the phrase too good to be true, because that's exactly what it turned out to be. And then as time went on through the relationship, things started to take a downhill turn. But because of how the manipulation, the coercive control, how your works psychologically and combined with low self-esteem and really feeling I needed to make the relationship work. I honestly didn't see it for what it was. I didn't recognise I was in an abusive relationship. Why did you decide to end it or what gave you that insight that something wasn't okay? Things had got really bad. I'd got used to his violence. I'd got used to his massive mood swings. I'd got used to the threats.

What brought it to a head for me, he'd got into the habit of ending the relationship and then starting it the next day, ending it with an explosion and then starting the next day. So telling me how awful I was, how terrible everything was, he didn't need the stress. It was never his fault, never takes responsibility for any of the behavior.

And then the next day coming back and saying, you know, you can't survive without me. You absolutely need me. So you get this really massive, confusing situation. I remember thinking, well, if he doesn't want to be in this relationship, why does he keep coming back? You know, I wasn't stopping him from leaving at any point. And it got to the point where that on off situation was happening so frequently. And I was beginning to ever so slowly, the penny drop, realize that he was lying wildly to me and about me and also about my children. And I just thought, right, enough is enough. And what the final thing that made me able to draw the line completely

was he absolutely lost his temper in front of other people. And he'd come up here and smashed a sheet of Perspex whilst he was kicking off over a child's football goal. And he then stormed off across the field. And I remember turning to my friend who was with me at the time, and she went, that was awful, Rhiannon. And without thinking, I said, oh, it's nothing. I'm used to it.

And it was then that she said, no, this has got to stop. You've got children to protect. Because I'd become so used to the abuse within the relationship. I'd become so used to the level of violence. Him coming and screaming in my face and shouting at me and blaming me for everything and then smashing things in front of me was absolutely nothing. My honest reaction was to look down at the ground and think, I really must pick those shards up because the children will cut their feet. So having had that

friend say that made me think this has got to stop now. It didn't stop. He kept going. And what prompted you to report him to the police? So I put up with his stalking for a few weeks after I'd ended it. I mean, I can see now I was being stalked throughout the relationship. And I think that's something which is really important when it comes to understanding these issues and how victims become used to this sort of behaviour. But the stalking ramped up incredibly. But the final thing that did it for me, it was about two to three weeks after I'd ended the relationship.

The children were away and I'd been out for the night just in the local town, got back late, got a taxi home. I'd been drinking, but I wasn't inebriated. Walked up the track. We're on a small holding surrounded by fields on Open Mountain. When I put my foot on the cattle grid that's the entry into here, he vaulted out from behind a stone wall on our place. So for me, being ambushed at home was the trigger. I'd asked him for weeks to leave me alone. I'd asked him to not come up, and I was just being continuously ignored. And I can remember thinking he got a hip level three

quarter length coat on and thinking, oh, he could have the shotgun, the poacher's shotgun folded and hidden in there. And so I felt incredibly threatened, incredibly threatened, incredibly frightened and decided to then go to the police. And just as an example of how much you're worked in these situations and how isolated he'd made me feel, I didn't tell anyone else I was going to the police. I didn't tell my friends locally I was going to the police. I didn't tell people in the village I was doing it because I'd been made to feel that, oh, he was so integrated, so popular. And I felt if people know I'm going to the police, they're going to turn their backs on me and be angry that I'm reporting this. And that's all because of how he had worked and manipulated me.

Because in actual fact, what happened when I went to the police was quite the opposite. I mean, you've made numerous complaints about the way North Wales Police handled your case. They did arrest him for harassment. He was, I believe, arrested three times. It went to the CPS, but it failed to charge him in May 2019. They told us in a statement the decision in May 2019 not to charge Gareth Wynne-Jones of the harassment was wrong. We've apologised to the victim for the profound stress this has caused. What impact did that decision have on you at the time? The impact's massive.

I think there are two main issues. One is that even if it was only harassment, then he could have been sentenced for it. But I think my main thing to raise there is it's down as harassment. It was blatantly stalking. When I look back now, some of the emails I've sent in during the period of me going to the police before he was arrested the first time, it's absolute text book stalking, red flags throughout it. And yet this wasn't

picked up on, it wasn't alerted. And there's so much There's so much more knowledge now about how lethal stalking is and where it ends up. Because, no, no, no, please don't apologise. I was going to say because the stalking did continue, as you're mentioning there, and a few months later, he returned to your house and held you at gunpoint. It's just awful. He never stopped. I knew he was getting worse. I kept reporting he was getting worse.

And the bottom line is I didn't know what he was going to do, but I knew he was going to do something. And what happened in that instance? Were you able to leave or how did that play out? Oh, there was no, yeah, no option whatsoever. Again, the children, thank goodness, were away. I had come home late. I'd been at a neighbour's and I pulled up in my car, got out and was just walking down towards the house when he jumped out in front of me, full camouflage gear, shotgun, a shotgun I've used for clays before up at my chest. And I screamed, which is an involuntary reaction because there isn't anybody around here to hear you scream. I remember saying, Gareth, put the gun down. And he just said, he just said, no, I'm not putting the gun down. He absolutely knew what he was doing from the outset.

And as I said, it was a shock, but it wasn't a surprise. I knew he was getting worse and something would happen. How did that particular episode end? So I had absolutely no control in the situation. His finger was on the trigger. I know he's bigger than me, he's stronger than me, and I cannot outrun what comes out of the end of a gun. I was held hostage, obviously against my will,

threats to kill for eight hours, and trying to survive minute by minute what I could do to literally to stay alive, to try and appease him and get through it. Towards the end of that eight hours, and this is just mind-blowing, it became apparent that he had decided we were back on. Despite five years of abuse, despite stalking me, never respecting my wanting to end the relationship, despite the fact that he just held me at gunpoint for eight hours

and threatened to kill me on numerous occasions, he had decided, look, we're back on. You're not going to be with anybody else. So during the night, it had come up that I had an appointment at the doctor's the next day, and he allowed me to go to that. And I can remember walking away at that time and thinking, he's going to shoot me in my back. He's going to shoot me in my back. And I was trying to think, what could I do? And I knew that I couldn't I couldn't stop to phone the police because the signal here is not reliable enough.

And I thought, I'm sure he'll be following me. and if he knows I've done that, I'm done for. I can't drive down to the town to the police station. I know by then I knew it wasn't open at that time anyway. It was about 8 in the morning, and I thought he'll know. If he's following me, he'll know that I've gone the wrong way and will stop me and I'm done in. So I went to the doctors, to the surgery, and when I went in, I asked if I could see my GP.

The surgery were amazing. I went in and sat down with her and disclosed what had happened. And this is a real reflection of my experience to that point with the police and how the police had chosen to act then. As I remember sitting with her and saying, I don't know what to do, because if I go back to the police and they don't do enough again, I'm dead. But if I don't go to the police, I've got to lead this weird twisted lie life and I can't see how I can protect my children. So even having gone through all of that, because of how the police had acted with him up until that point. I honestly thought it was a serious risk to engage with them. And at that point, she was the absolute professional and said it was totally out of my hands. She had a duty of care. The surgery was locked down and she called the police.

When they arrived, he was arrested in the car park. You know, I'd been right. He had followed me down. And that was then the beginning of involvement with the police from the middle of August, yeah. Rhiannon, I'm so sorry on every level. I mean, I can't hear a story like that and not have that sort of reaction because of how terrifying and then, as you say,

your response and how you'd become trained to not respond in some ways or to be scared to respond. And I should say, we're talking as he's due to be released from prison in just over a week's time. Yet the parole board in November stated the panel was not satisfied that release at that point would be safe for protection of the public. How are you dealing with that? What impact has that had on you since hearing that? For me, it's actually been really validating because I've been saying since the outset, this is a really dangerous man. He's going to do this again. He doesn't think he's done anything wrong. He doesn't accept responsibility for what he's done. And I honestly feel that for the majority of the time, I have not

been listened to. I've been dismissed, brushed off. Professionals know what they're doing. So when the parole hearing went ahead in November, and the outcome was what it was, saying he doesn't accept culpability, he's minimizing the offending behavior still. He cannot be safely managed. For the sake of public protection, he mustn't be released. It was really validating. I'm fully aware that because of the sentence structure, legally, nothing can be done to stop his release in the middle of February. Of course, there's fear, fear of the unknown. I know he'll be released with licence conditions for five years. But will they actually prevent his offending? Will they actually stop him?

Will it, whatever the licence conditions are, will it enable my children and I to live in our home, fear-free, and actually to have some chance of our own recovery from his abuse? They're massive questions. They're important questions. I know politically your case has been put on the agenda. Your local MP, Liz Saville-Roberts, brought your case up in Parliament a few weeks ago with the Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor, Alex Chalk. He said there's no legal power, like you've just said, for him to be held longer than at the end of the custodial sentence but he faces years of strict supervision

by the probation service as you mentioned strict license conditions and will be returned to prison if he breaches them. I know you've also spoken to the minister for probation Edward Argar and explained your worries about living in a rural area and your concerns about the the licensing conditions actually being monitored and adhered to. It'd be good to hear his response, but also if any of that has done anything to allay your concerns. One thing I'd like to flag up is, you know, we're told strict license conditions. You know, he's going to have to adhere to these.

And if he doesn't, there are severe consequences for him. But my point's always been the consequences for the victim are so much worse. So it does feel slightly like not just me, but any victim in this circumstance is a guinea pig. I do have concerns about how probation will manage him. The more you learn about how overstretched they are, how underfunded they are, realistically, what level of checks there may be on him. And this ties in with what, in my opinion, that mental health issues where he doesn't think he's done anything wrong. And if he doesn't think he's done anything wrong and feels he's been locked up incorrectly

for four and a half years and doesn't take responsibility, I suspect it's much more likely to re-offend. And you're quite right, I had a very useful and constructive meeting with Ed Agar last week and Liz Saville-Roberts, who's been the most incredibly supportive and is a really hardworking MP. signal coverage, how long it will take for somebody to actually get here, how easily they will be able to actually monitor him. And it's all sorts of things. It's the, you know, the roads, the networks, the infrastructure, as far as it looks beautiful. I think it's really beautiful place to live. But actually, there are challenges that come with living rurally, that won't necessarily be faced by people in other environments. And, you know, you've also got the complexity, I suppose, of the police not being happy about how it's been handled as your case over his access to firearms. Complaints have been investigated and stand by the Police Standards Department and the Independent Office of Police Conduct.

We have a statement from North Wales Police Chief Constable Amanda Blateman said since I became Chief Constable I've had regular discussions with Rhiannon and listened carefully to her comments. We have thoroughly reviewed the case and understand her experiences are ones we do not want anyone else to go through. We fully appreciate the distress Rhiannon has suffered and have undertaken a full review and independent scrutiny of our firearms licensing procedures. The force has invested in a dedicated stalking and harassment officer and we provide domestic abuse training to all frontline officers. I have made tackling violence against women and girls a force priority and we will continue to strive to give the best possible service to anyone who reports such incidents to us.

I suppose taking a step back from that and the big question, having been so engaged doing this interview, having spoken to who you've spoken to, do you feel safe? I, and this in many ways is wrong, I feel safer because of everything that I've done than I would have done before. And I fully appreciate what the Chief Constable said. She and I are working together on these issues. And I strongly feel that her arrival in North Wales has brought with it a correct change of attitude. But the reality is when it comes down to it, as and when he breaks licence conditions, which I fully expect him to do, how quickly will there be a response? How quickly will he be picked up?

And just living with that uncertainty is incredibly hard, incredibly hard. And you've done what you've done, and I suppose that is all you can do. You have to try and lean into our systems and the services that are around you. I don't have any option. I don't have any option. For me, the biggest change, for the Victims' Bill in the House of Lords, the biggest thing that they could really do is focus on protecting the victims. It just doesn't happen. What would that look like in your case? And taking, there'll be many victims in rural areas and you can provide a voice perhaps to them. What would that look like?

I think recognising the issues that are hit rurally, I think too many of the decision makers have a one size fits all attitude, which is totally unrealistic. You know, we don't have the same level of support. We don't have the same infrastructure. so a lot of what I've been doing when I meet with people as they make various suggestions about how things will happen how it'll be you know how he may be monitored what safety measures there may be is point out what holes there are in those. Rhiannon Bragg talking to me there quite remarkable to hear what she's going through and the steps that she's taken thank you very much to her for sharing her story this morning quite a rare voice at a rare moment in somebody's life.

For help and resources on any of the issues discussed in that interview, do head to the Woman's Hour website where there are links under today's programme. Now, you may have seen two men betting on TV last night

on whether the government's hotly contested Rwanda deportation policy will happen before the next general election. Quite a niche bet, and some would say also perhaps one lacking in humanity. Others would perhaps react to the wager, £1,000. The two men in question, one of whom is the man behind the policy,

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and the other, Piers Morgan. Have a listen to this. I'll bet you £1,000 to a refugee charity you don't get anybody on those planes before the election. Will you take that bet? Well, I want to get the people on the planes, right? Of course I want to get the people on the planes. £1,000.

Right, I want to get the people on the planes. That was the Prime Minister speaking on Talk TV last night. You couldn't hear the handshake. We are on radio, so I'll describe the fact that it did happen the two did in fact shake hands following pierce morgan's bet offer a move that has faced a strong response well another interview another day only a couple of hours ago rishi sunak joined my colleague presenter rachel burden on bbc5 live this morning and she asked him about that moment now yesterday you shook hands on a 10001,000 bet with Piers Morgan over the Rwanda scheme. When people are struggling to pay their food and fuel bills in this country a lot of our

listeners are saying they found that pretty offensive. Well if I'm being totally honest I'm not a betting person and I was taken totally by surprise in the middle of that interview and the point I was trying to get across. Was it a mistake to shake his hand? No well the point I was trying to get across I said I was taken totally by surprise. The point I was trying to get across. Was it a mistake to shake his hand? No, well, the point I was trying to get across, as I said, I was taken totally by surprise. The point I was trying to get across was actually about the Rwanda policy and about tackling illegal migration, because it's something I care deeply about. Well, in a moment, I'll be talking to Isabel Harbin for her take,

the assistant editor at The Spectator, a keen follower, especially of conservative politics and politicians. But let me talk to Rachel Burden. A joy to be able to say that this morning. Good morning. Hello, how are you? Well, we've been listening to your interview, as I'm sure many others have, on Five Live.

And I just wondered in the room when you asked the Prime Minister about that, it is quite the moment. People have been talking about it, even if they didn't watch the whole interview. What did you sense from him? Well, I think he knew it was coming, that it was going to be unavoidable. And he obviously saw it as an opportunity to move it straight away onto his Rwanda policy,

which is something he's very comfortable talking about. So that was how the conversation went. And each time I obviously, as you heard there, tried to pull it back to the handshake, he moved it back onto that. And when I said, was it a mistake? He sort of almost went to say yes, but no, but then didn't really want to sort of say definitively either way. And then just went on at length about why this was an important policy for the government to pursue. So I sense, obviously, you know,

if he was completely honest, he will have regretted being, as he said, kind of caught out like that. Also, the point that someone made to me on social media, as he said, kind of caught out like that. Also, the point that someone made to me on social media when he said very quickly, I'm not a betting man. Well, he was a hedge fund manager for many years, wasn't he? So he was taking bets in the city. I didn't think of that quickly enough to put it to him, I'll have to be honest. But as you suggest, that whole thing about flinging around £1,000 bets when people are struggling to pay their bills, I think the Five Live audience on the whole found it pretty insulting. Well, there is that angle, but there's also the angle of two men sitting in a room talking about betting, as some have put it, around people's lives.

There's that element as well, which I don't know if that came up in any of the listeners' messages to you about the, as some would say, the cavalier nature of that and perhaps that blokeishness between them. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, we were getting that on our text messages this morning as well. And I think it's been such a topic of difficult discussions, this whole Rwanda policy. And our listeners are really divided on whether they think it's a good idea. But the fact that it can come down to, as you suggest, a kind of frivolous gimmick

on a TV interview that will then just kind of get multiple hits. I mean, in some ways, Emma, you and I talking about it this morning are, of course, playing into that, aren't we? But yeah, it's unavoidable in the world that we live. It's about trying to get some, you know, these interviews, especially in an election year, you're trying to get to the heart of the man, trying to get, in this case, a man running for Prime Minister again, you know, wanting to be there, who they are, what they do in those

moments and how they come across and I suppose, you know, having just been with him overall, coming away from that particular topic while we do have you, Rachel, I know you'll be, you've come to London for it, you're in Downing Street, I should say, where you were doing that interview, you'll be heading back up north soon, but you got a sense of what from him? How is he? Is he energised? Is he in a good place? What did you feel?

Look, I don't know. I don't know the man personally. This is the first time I've met him face to face. When he came into the room, he was very upbeat, very chatty. You know, on the face of it, you'd say, here's a man who's kind of going about his business and seems reasonably comfortable about his prospects, which is surprising when you look at the polling data and when you look at the enormous challenges this country is facing. I think one area where he does definitely appear to be less comfortable is when you talk to him about real life experiences. So, for example, we've had feedback at Five Live about vulnerable families facing rising costs of things like baby milk and resorting to diluting baby formula to make it go a bit further. We talked to another woman this morning who was saying she was having to take out a credit card to pay for her basic

travel bills and travel costs. costs so when you start to talk to him about very specific examples like that and a query does he really get it he can tell us inflation keeps coming down he can tell us that they're cutting taxes but actually when that doesn't tally with what is actually happening in people's lives i'm not sure um i'm not sure it's a it's a it's a foolproof enough answer for them rachel thank you very much for talking to us and giving us a bit of you know insight behind the interview always good to hear it and they it's a foolproof enough answer for them. Rachel, thank you very much for talking to us. You're welcome. And giving us a bit of, you know, insight behind the interview.

Always good to hear it. And they can hear more with you each morning on Five Live. Rachel Burden there. Isabel Hardman listening in, assistant editor at The Spectator. A criticism or a piece of praise, depending on your viewpoint of Rishi Sunak, is that he's a technocrat. And that speaks perhaps to what you were just hearing there about talking about inflation coming down when you are raised with the prospects of a mother having to dilute formula

milk. What is your take, just to go back though, to the idea of the technocrat, as he is described sometimes, shaking hands with Piers Morgan on £1,000 over a bet over whether people should be in this country or not? Yeah, I mean, it reminded me slightly of what happens when a um slightly less cool school child is challenged by the sort of the um uh the cool jock character of the uh classroom uh to do something to you know to do a dare or something like that and um i thought it was significant actually at the start of that particular discussion that he and Piers Morgan were having about whether Rishi Sunak was going to meet his pledges. Morgan described it as being quite a ballsy move. So it sort of set it up as being this kind of macho sort of, you know, are you man enough discussion?

And I mean, he could, you know, he could say, well, you know, I was slightly ambushed. Suddenly his hand was coming towards me and I just shook it. But actually, I think it's just the sort of wanting to live up to the presence of Piers Morgan, who I'd say is quite a, he'd probably say this himself, quite a sort of macho character. I'd say Rishi Sunak probably doesn't give that impression, certainly not initially. Well, there's a couple of messages here. One saying, for instance, why can't Rishi Sunak say it was a mistake? If he can't do that, then he can't be forgiven.

But another one, why are you putting the best on Rishi Sunak's shoulders? It was Piers Morgan who backed him into a corner. The point is you're the prime minister. I suppose that would be the pushback there. And you have a choice in that moment. And it can be quite a bold choice to reject the interviewer's question, reject the interviewer's advances. That is the choice.

And I was struck by actually a former BBC colleague here, Gavin Esler, wrote on Twitter saying, can you imagine Margaret Thatcher doing this? Shouldn't any prime minister simply suggest he or she is not willing to bet on people's lives? I don't know what your response is to that, Isabel. Yeah, and I mean, I think that Rishi Sunak is somebody who is quite happy to turn down the premise of a question.

And he often, you know, gets a reputation for being touchy in interviews, partly, it turns out, because he doesn't eat for half of the week. But also, I think, you know, he's quite happy to spar with interviewers. I mean, I can't really imagine an interviewer being comfortable enough in Margaret Thatcher's presence to advance that kind of question. They get a very disapproving look. But part of your job when you're in an interview, or indeed actually when you're leading a country,

dealing with foreign leaders, is to work out how to avoid being backed into a corner. And that can lead to quite boring political interviews i think because yes politicians try to avoid uh these traps that broadcasters are setting for them so that's the kind of interesting thing is that that sunak didn't stop morgan and say no this isn't about betting this is you know this is about a policy that works. Maybe that was because he was in broadcast mode, which he can end up going into quite easily.

And we've seen that, you know, there was a clip a few weeks ago of a woman talking to him about her mother's experience waiting for NHS treatment. And he, you know, did continue to talk to her, but he was very much broadcasting what the government was doing. And I think that's one of his weaknesses. I just wonder what we take from that then, that he wasn't in that moment able to not be put into that corner, because that clip will be played and played again during this election year, I predict.

Maybe I'll be wrong, but I can imagine it will be something that is certainly weaponised by the opposition and also linked to this policy that he is so linked to? I think the problem is, as Rachel was saying, most people don't have a thousand pounds to bet. And because you've got the polling showing that, you know, even voters who want Rwanda to succeed as a deportation policy don't think it will, then their immediate response to this is well i don't have a thousand pounds why does he think he can burn a thousand pounds like that so it's a very tangible amount of money it's not the sort of it's not actually the figures we normally talk about in politics where we're saying oh that's only 350 million pounds or oh that's a billion actually

everyone knows what a thousand pounds means to. And I think the instinctive response of most people, you know, myself included, if somebody said, I'll bet you £1,000, I'd immediately be like, I don't have that money. But that's the kind of, you know, you didn't see that kind of bridling from the Prime Minister. And voters already know that he's rich and they don't care. But what they do care about is people who don't connect with them and who don't have that immediate emotional response to a thousand pounds. Oh, my goodness, that was the money I was putting towards a new car or, you know, that was the holiday of a lifetime or something like that. So there are many levels of why this may be a situation that does come to repeat and also is

revealing for potentially revealing about the prime minister and the choices that it may. Do you think, I mean, we've talked about this in some senses before because of, well, not least as being women's up, but you know, I wonder because of that whole, it's two men together, the way it was set up is a good spot as well around the word ballsy and bringing that to light around this macho trying to impress element. I mean, there has been criticism of him in the past, you know, with, yes, a lot of female staff around him, but is he really able to connect with women and how he does that and that particular background in the city? Do you think with female voters this sort of thing has an impact?

We might not know at this point. Yeah, I mean mean my personal reading of him is is not that he finds it hard to connect with women i mean he's not gordon brown whose small talk was football or nothing um you know he goes to spinning classes uh which i'd say tend to have more women in them than the men and you know he's i think actually part of his problem is that he probably senses that he's not a kind of piersiers Morgan macho figure and a lot of people would find that quite comforting because you know there's only so much room for uh for Machismo for Machismo in in politics but I think possibly being in the presence of somebody of sort of silverback gorilla character like Piers Morgan probably

made him want to play up to that I I don't know. But I don't think he has a connection problem with women per se. And I think it's just that, you know, sometimes when you're in a room with someone who has a big presence, you can end up playing up to that presence in a way that's not that helpful. Yeah. And I think what's interesting about that, the reason I said that is because of some of the early polls have shown women going towards Labour. So it might not be that they're not going towards him, but they're going towards Labour and the different reasons for that. So it's interesting to try and unpack that. It's very early days, although we still don't yet know when this is going to be. I'm sure we'll talk a few times in between. But there we go. Trying to pull apart why and what and how people may feel about that moment.

Isabel Harbin, thank you to you, assistant editor at The Spectator. Sarah says, the only good thing that could possibly come from this is that Sunak goes and gives a refugee charity a thousand pounds. The bad taste of this bet is unbelievable or should be unbelievable,

but nothing this government does surprise me anymore, reads her particular take on this. Keep your messages coming in if you'd like to contribute on anything you hear as always it's 84844 that's the number you need to text the program or on social media we're at bbc woman's hour now my next guest is the ultra runner ali bailey she's the first woman to run the length of the panama canal and has completed more than 200 marathons and almost 80 ultra marathons she She's even run the entire length of the UK from Land's End to Toronto Groats to try and outrun her demons and struggles with alcoholism,

depression and mental breakdowns. But did she do it or what did? Her new book is aptly called There Is No Wall. Ali joins me now. Good morning. Morning, Emma. Thank you so much for having me. Well, thank you for being with us. And you talk about the idea of running not saving you, actually. But I wonder what what it has done and what it does do. Yeah. So when I started running, I thought, you know, like a lot of people who start kind of an exercise regime, that it would save me. I was told by doctors that it would help my mental health. I think there's a big message coming from, especially running actually,

because it's so accessible to people that if you do this, you know, it will suddenly cure your depression or cure whatever sort of ills you've got going on in your life. And I kind of went out with that hope. And when it didn't, because obviously, you know, external factors cannot make us happy, I just chased it. And I chased it to the point where it was actually,

I think, detrimental to my mental health. So I kind of wanted to get that message out there, that it is an incredible thing to be able to go and do these things. But it's important to remember that those things alone cannot save you from your own kind of issues. Let's come to that in a moment. What does it give you then? So for me, it gives me like an immense feeling of gratitude it gives me community you know um I'm an ultra runner which means I will run distances over marathon which is uh 26.2 miles usually in places that are quite remote um and difficult to get to um in a car so I get to see these incredible places on foot I get to meet people and there's

an element of kind of um humanity there that I don't think we get um nowadays with phones and social media there's people supporting people just because we're all humans together you know feeding us like looking after us medically so for me it's it's that genuine human connection I think I was missing that a lot in in my life before the length of the panama canal these places that you've been to is there a place with i know there are many you could pick but is there a place you'd like to take our listeners to this morning that you could paint for us so i got asked this the other day and it's it's quite strange because i've traveled the world doing this but it's it's the

fans in um brecon which are quite easy to get to it's on the beacons where you can walk up them but if you walk up the kind of fans and stand at the top you have this 360 degree view of Wales and on a good day you'll get like every element of weather you'll get like snow sleep sun wind rain and it is just one of the most beautiful spots and I think you can probably walk up there in a couple of hours but um and I'd say I run up there in a couple of hours as well because it is breathtaking. And one of those places that you kind of really feel alive. So would recommend. Oh, there you go.

And not too far for a lot of people. It might be very close indeed for some of you listening who are already in the know. Putting this out there then, this book together, I imagine was difficult in some ways, also cathartic. You really have battled an awful lot. What would you say helped you? So I worked in the music industry for a long time. I'm 42 now and I worked in the music industry for about 12 years. And I believed from the age of 15 that that would save me.

You know, I was a depressed teenager, I put it that way, in the sort of 90s. And it wasn't dealt with then like it is now. And and I used alcohol as a as a kind of fun juice. You know, that's what happened in the 80s. My parents were drinking a lot. It was always fun. There was never any bad stuff that happened. But, you know, I realized that when I drank, I could mask these feelings that maybe I wasn't good enough or I didn't fit in. That rolled on like throughout my life to the point where obviously it's a self-fulfilling prophecy with alcohol. It is a depressant. I would do things that were terrible when I was under the influence of alcohol and then have to deal with them the next day. So I usually dealt with them with alcohol. So it got to the point with me where I was like, you know, I was in such a massive amount of denial I was using running and ultra running to try and prove I was well because I was thinking like everyone else you cannot be a endurance runner if you're an alcoholic you have to be super fit to do this stuff it's actually completely the opposite like people who have troubled relationships with alcohol whether you want

to describe yourself as an alcoholic or not they hide in plain sight and we are everywhere we walk amongst you and I was so desperate to prove to myself I didn't have a problem and prove that it wasn't the alcohol it was something else that I tried everything changing my job my relationships my um the people I surrounded myself with my hobby and nothing works because ultimately it's about you like there's a really great quote in this uh Laura McEwan book about drinking. The book's called We Are the Luckiest. And she says, you cannot do this alone, but only you can do this.

And that was one of the things when I was really ill, I read and thought, do you know what? I need to make this decision for myself. That's why I wrote the book, because I was like, I just want to explain how I feel, because I didn't feel like I was seen at all in any way. And it was only in kind of writing down my experience that I managed to kind of wriggle out of it. So writing was a key part of that, as well as I presume becoming sober.

So writing, even when I was drinking, I would write blogs and I would hide them on the Internet. So I'd put them out onto the internet, but I would hide them where my family, friends couldn't see them. Even I couldn't see them. That way I felt like I'd put what was going on in my head out somewhere, but it wasn't in my house. It wasn't lurking under my bed in a journal. And I used those blogs when I came to write the book.

I got them out and it was horrendous reading them really bad because I was like, you are in such a state, Ali. It was like reading somebody else's words. They were my words and that's frightening and I put those in the book there were little excerpts of those in the book to try and illustrate exactly how horrendous I felt and I think this is this is a strange thing to say but the best feedback I've had from people is that I have written how they've never been able to verbalize it before how how wretched they felt they feel like this book has really helped them to be able to explain to their loved ones explain to their partners and even explain to themselves how that feels and I think that helps people to feel like they're understood

because there is a stigma around mental health there is a stigma around you know saying certain things that you might want to do to yourself that it is that it means that you're mad and it doesn't mean that you're mad we are all human beings mean that you're mad. We are all human beings. We all struggle. Being a human hurts. And I just wanted that message that you are heard, you are seen to come through that book. I think it is helpful to people. Where are you now? Where am I now physically?

Where am I now like... With all of it. You've put it out there in the world, I suppose, but you're also, I imagine, in a very different place. I mean, I've actually found it... I thought I'd find it cathartic I thought I'd it would draw a line under all of it but it hasn't it's kind of putting it out as has sort of pulled it all up again so it's a case of really looking after myself in this process of putting a book out there also I get a lot of people messaging me

which I absolutely love but sometimes it's a lot so I have to you know be super careful with my own mental health um and yeah I'd love love to say, oh, I love it. And this is great. I'm going to go around telling people how to get better. But I'm a human. I go through peaks and troughs. We all do. So I have found it a very difficult process.

I'm not sure I'd want to repeat it. I'm sure my publisher is going to love that. But the other thing I found is that that warmth of community, especially in the ultra running world, people who are like, I felt like that or people are like, thank you. I appreciate that, you know, that you put this down and it was hard. The support, the love, all of that stuff has been really incredible. So right now, I think I'm in a pretty good place, but I'm always hyper aware that that could change. Because, I mean, there's also the other side of some say it loosely, and I use the word very carefully to you, but that, you know, you can get addicted to running, you can get addicted to

the highs of that, that you replace one addiction with another, what would you say to that? That's probably one of the things that I think can be the most dangerous thing to say to anybody who is who has suffered from addiction to a substance or to a behavior so if you are addicted to alcohol or drugs or anything um you will stop at nothing to get to the alcohol you will lie to people you'll hurt people you'll hurt yourself i spent a very long time being hung over like years i was really hurting myself mentally i was hurting myself physically i was hurting myself but that didn't stop me lying to the people around me it didn't stop me hiding wine in my bag it didn't stop me drink driving it didn't stop me from getting what I needed which was my fix of alcohol because I was

addicted to a substance if you look at running you it's very hard to be addicted to something that's hard to do so with running you have to make a decision to go and do it if you're injured you will stop you are forced into stopping you have to plan it it's not always that if you're on an airplane you know you don't crash land the plane to go and do the running but you will smoke in a toilet so I think it's actually it does a disservice to those who train hard it does a disservice to those who really try and you know this mental clarity make this time go out and do this work it's hard being an ultra runner it's not easy if if it was everybody would do it and I think you need to give people their dues I don't think it's the same as being addicted to a substance I think you need to give people their dues I don't think it's

the same as being addicted to a substance I think and the other thing I say quite quite a lot in this book is that running isn't therapy it's therapeutic it is not going to save you from your demons there's a lot of talk of running away from them but it bought me the time to think running being out on those fans for eight hours at a time sitting down having a sandwich it gives you time to think it gives you time to have a cry it gives you that space sometimes that you need and that zooming out from yourself so you can actually see that maybe it's not all a disaster maybe it is all solvable and and that's the great thing about it so I think people just need to be slightly careful with the language they use around ultra running because it isn't it is not an addiction like addiction to substance I think that's why I said you know carefully use that word because it's a question that sometimes people may have when they

are coming to this and then perhaps coming to your book thank you very much for talking to us this morning all the best with it and I should say I can see because you're on a video call to us today I can see some amazing looking medals behind you which looked huge they look incredible ultra running ultra ultra medals this is why we do it just for the bling the bling looks excellent Ali Bailey thank you so much the book is called there is no wall now we've got some messages just coming in before I go to my final guest today just to share um I really don't care about the bet, going back to the Prime Minister's bet with Piers Morgan. However, Sunak's answer to Rachel Burden on Five Live

saying he was sad about the watering down of baby milk was appalling. Rachel Burden was rightly outraged, as is anyone who heard that response. Sunak is so out of touch. Another one here says, the bet reminiscent of the blokey bet of I bet you X pounds you can't get her into bed. I thought that as always. Ill thought through as always

rather. Noel says it doesn't matter what he did. If he accepted the bet, everyone's against him. If he didn't take the bet, then people would say he wasn't convinced of his policy. Another message, it worries me that our Prime Minister says he just got caught off guard by a chat show host's cheap trick when he's out there negotiating with the likes of Putin on our behalf. And David says, I want the prime minister to be real. A thousand pounds may not mean much to him, but I don't and I don't want him pretending that it does. Some very different angles there. Thank you for those messages. Keep them coming in. I will come back to them if I can. But let me say this phrase to you woman of substance it takes on a whole new meaning with my next guest's new BBC Radio 3 series in which she looks at five legendary female artists

and the impact of different substances on their craft quite literally Sally Marlow professor of practice in public understanding of mental health research at King's College London. Good morning. Hello Emma. Why did you want to make this series? Tell us a bit more. So my job is about explaining complex things to people to do with mental health and addiction is a mental health issue and I did my PhD in addiction science. So when I was given the opportunity to work with Radio 3, I was researcher in residence there for about a year, and talked to them about different ways of getting mental health onto the airwaves and addiction onto the airwaves. We came up with this idea. I have to say, listening to Ali, that was just such an inspirational interview. And she was so

frank and honest there's a personal element in this for me too I've struggled in the past and and this is the first time this series is the first time that I've really disclosed that in the 10 years that I've been making radio programs so I wanted to bring these artists who are often known for their addiction, first and foremost, but not their art, to the fore and kind of flip on its head this rather lazy way that we've got of saying, oh, you can only make art as a woman if it's about torture and neurosis and emotion. And say, actually, for these women, what is it in their art that can tell me about their addiction? Not what does their addiction tell me about their art, but what does their art tell me about their addiction? And to do that as an addiction scientist. And what have you, let's look at Billie Holiday, because this is one of the legendary women that you have looked at. What have you found with that question posed that way around so there's two sources that i looked at i looked at the songs that she sang and she was really

prolific and she sang more than 200 more than 200 hits i love billy oh yeah i mean extraordinary absolutely extraordinary even if we set aside all the people who said, you know, her voice is like whiskey over ice in a glass. Even if we set all that aside and just listen to what she sang. And she wasn't a pushover. She had a lot of choice over what she sang. Most of what she sang, other people wrote. And it was mainly men. But she did write some songs herself.

Her first ever hit was called Riff in the Scotch. And she made that when she got hit when she was 18. She she sang that. And it's a song about leaving a man who's cheating on you to go with a man who lies to you. And at the end of the song, you hear a cork pop out of the bottle. So even at 18, this is her first ever hit. She has this kind of world weariness that the way you deal with disappointment and heartbreak in a relationship is by drinking. And what we know from the science is that a lot of women get into trouble with drugs and alcohol because of their own relationships with their partners um so you can see this throughout her songs you know she

sings about heartbreak she sings one for my baby and one for the road she sings um the end of a love affair she sings sophisticated lady you know she sings these songs which are about having her heart broken and then dealing with that with alcohol. And I just think that that's a really interesting, it's just a really interesting thing. You can't get at what heartbreak feels like with science. And you can't get at what it feels like to want to drink to oblivion because of heartbreak with science. But her choice of songs and the way she sings them, I think, tells you more than the science can tell you.

We've got a snippet of Strange Fruit. Let's have a listen. Okay. It's a very powerful song, if you're not familiar with it, and especially with what she's talking about there, what the lyrics are. Tell us a bit more. So this is the absolute nub of Billie Holiday, I think.

She sang about racism. And this song, Strange Fruit. I'm so glad you chose it, Emma, because this this song and you've chosen a version that she sang towards the end of her life. And you can actually hear in her voice. It's not as strong. And that's the effects of the drugs and alcohol. You know, as she as she got older, her voice remained as emotional, but not as technically powerful, if you like. Strange Fruit is a song which was inspired by a photograph of the lynching of two men and the idea of the strange fruit. The men were the strange fruit hanging from the trees.

Billie Holiday chose to sing this song at the end of every single set that she did. The waiters had to stop serving, all the lights went out apart from one light on her and there was no encore and that was her way of being able to protest against racism, not only the racism that she experienced, but she said it was also for her dad, who she believed died because he couldn't get medical treatment, which wasn't available for African Americans, but was available for white Americans. So I'm really glad you chose this song. Racism and discrimination, we also know, is linked to why women use alcohol and drugs and become addicted so that however you look at Billie Holiday there are clues to her addiction

in all every almost everything that she sings but But I think that, you know, Strange Fruit is particularly powerful. You know, she says that until she sang that song, she didn't have any trouble from the authorities. When she started singing it, that was the point at which the authorities got interested in her, arrested her for then her heroin use.

And she went to prison for a year and a day for her heroin use. But up until the point that she wasn't publicly raising the issue of racism, nobody paid any attention. It was only when she got above herself and brought this to the audiences, and in such a powerful way, that's when the feds went after her. How fascinating. And also that observation on a slightly more superficial level, but that her voice had changed through the uses of those substances as well.

You do look at other women in the series. People can hear and check it out. It's called the essay Women of Substance on BBC Radio 3 every weekday evening this week at 10.45, but also any time that suits you on BBC Sounds. But you look at Frida Kahlo as well

and you're also looking at the artist, the photographer and protester Nan Golden. Some really interesting choices there. Is it just another story perhaps about one of those maybe to whet the appetite? about one of those maybe to, to whet the appetite?

Which one would you pick to talk about? I'd pick Andrea Dunbar. Oh, another one. Please do. A lot of your listeners might not have heard of Andrea Dunbar, but she's a working class playwright who wrote Rita Sue and Bob too. And she grew up in Bradford. Whenever she was featured,

I mean, she was featured on some very highbrow shows like Arena that what used to be the BBC Arts Programme and she was always referred to as the working class playwright with three children by three different fathers and the Daily Mail called her the genius from the slums and she was dead at 29 and she predicted in her work the Me Too movement, the grooming scandals across Yorkshire. I mean, she was just an extraordinary, extraordinary talent and completely unsupported in terms of being able to live her life. And when we talk about addiction, we often talk about that as a very middle class issue. You know, women in their 50s are drinking too much wine. Actually, you know, one of the key factors that makes you more

vulnerable to becoming addicted, and Andrea's problem was alcohol and tablets. We don't know what those tablets were, whether they were prescribed or not. One of the strongest things which works against you as a woman is if you're working class and living in poverty, which she was. So her story is my absolute favourite. I'm from the northeast myself and her story is my favourite because I think it needs to be told. People need to know about her. Professor Sally Marlow, thank you. I will definitely check that one out.

And as I say, it's called The Essay, Women of Substance. Look it up via BBC Radio 3. Thank you for your company today for many messages coming in and still coming in. Sorry, I can't get through all of them. And on tomorrow's Woman's Hour, I'll be joined by Crystal Hefner.

That's the widow of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. She's put a lot of experiences into a book called Only Say Good Things into her life inside that mansion. I'm sure it will be memorable. Join me then at 10. Until then. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. The Post Office Horizon scandal has shocked Britain.

Post Office IT scandal, which has had so much publicity, hasn't it, over the last... This is a scandal of historic proportions. I've been following the story for more than a decade, hearing about the suffering of sub-postmasters like Joe Hamilton and Alan Bates. It was just horrendous. The whole thing was horrendous. I was told you can't afford to take on Post Office. And about their extraordinary fight for justice. What was motivating you?

Well, it was wrong what they did. Listen to the true story firsthand from the people who lived it in The Great Post Office Trial from BBC Radio 4 with me, Nick Wallace. Subscribe on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who 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.