Woman's Hour - Sally Phillips, Nusrat Ghani MP and vice-chair of The 1922 committee, Women's football, Anti-depressants, Soul singer PP Arnold

Episode Date: July 9, 2022

The actor Sally Phillips on her latest film on Sky Cinema 'How to Please a Woman. Set in Western Australia, Sally plays fifty-something Gina who, having just lost her job, feels invisible and stuck in a sexless marriage, and sets up an all-male house cleaning service that also offers sexual services. Photo © SUCH FEISTY DAMES PTY LTDAs Boris Johnson prepares to step down we hear from Nusrat Ghani the Conservative MP for Wealden and vice-chair of The 1922 committee that represents backbench conservative MPs. The members of the 1922 Committee wield a lot of power in the Conservative Party and runs the selection process for new leaders.Charlotte Carew Pole the Director of Women2Win, an organisation which aims to increase the number of Conservative women in Parliament.The rise in women being prescribed anti depressants. Dr Nighat Arif a GP who specialises in women's health explains. The American soul singer PP Arnold found fame in the 1960s as an Ikette with the Ike and Tina Turner Revue . Her autobiography is called Soul Survivor,As the Women's Euros get under way, veteran players share their stories. Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Dianne McGregor

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour, the finest selection of interviews from the week just gone. On today's programme, as the women's Euros gets underway, memories of the game from some veteran players. Why one woman says now more than ever women should join the Conservatives, the rise of women being given antidepressants,

soul singer Pippi Arnold who found fame as an Iket with the Ike and Tina Turner review, and we hear from two members of an all-female team travelling to the Ukraine border with supplies and helping women and child refugees with safe passage. But first, the actor, writer and comedian Sally Phillips, best known for Smack the Pony, playing Shazza in Bridget Jones, Tilly in Miranda, the Finnish Prime Minister in Veep, and of course Radio 4's very own award-winning Claire in the Community. Now she's returning to our screens on Sky Cinema in the starring role in the new film How to Please a Woman. Set in Western Australia, Sally plays 50-something Gina who, having just lost her job, feels invisible and stuck in a sexless marriage. So she sets up an all-male house cleaning service

that also offers sexual services. I started by asking Sally how her character came to set up the all-male cleaning service. Well, it's based on a true story, actually. The director, Renee Webster, who is a first-time feature director in her 50s, came across this company which was run by two very unlikely Sydney housewives who were, you know, not nymph-like, shall we say, who just decided that they just had enough of cleaning the house and not having any sex. And they thought this is ridiculous. Why? You know, we want sex to be

well. Australia is much less repressed than us. We want sex to feel well and alive. And so they set up a cleaning company that started offering sexual services on that. And it was enormously popular. And so Renee was fascinated by these people and thought, well, this is a, you know, this is a fun story on which to hang this discussion about, you know, we're not supposed to articulate our pleasure like nice girls don't. And certainly my generation, I'm enormously repressed. That's partly what attracts me to the role. I just I can't talk about this stuff. Aussies are so much sort of more comfortable with talking about their desire and their bodies

and all of that. And I just find it completely, I mean, I turned down the vagina monologues because I didn't think I could say the word vagina without snickering, you know? So, yeah, so this character is not those people. It's a woman who's just got beat got got beat somehow by life by others expectations she's um she's not young she's not yet old she was a mother her daughter has now left home and

come to come to London and is loving it here and um she'd had a job that fitted in with the hours where she wasn't appreciated a job that was beneath her that she wasn't appreciated in. And she's then replaced for a younger model in the job. And her job is working in liquidation. And she comes across this company of blokes whose removals company is also hitting, is also going bust. So she has the idea, why don't these guys start cleaning?

Because one of them, she discovers one of them is working as a stripper part-time. So because her friends buy her a stripper because they think she's so repressed for her birthday. Yes, and so she starts this company and against, it's not her idea that they offer sexual services, but the women idea that they offer sexual services but the women start asking for the sexual services and the men start doing it so very quickly she becomes the only

person she knows who isn't having tremendous sex and uh and it leads to her sort of finding the words to articulate what she wants which is really to leave the marriage and start again find her voice and i think that's very i mean for, Forbes have just started doing the 50 over 50, haven't they, the list of female entrepreneurs over 50. And we control 65% of all buying power, apparently. Wow. And yet we're invisible in many ways, aren't we? Yeah, I just think there's beginning to be a bit of groundswell going,

actually, you've got much more power than you realise. I mean, you've got skills that you've learnt from bringing up children and making relationships and running the PTA and multitasking. And you've got a sense of time running out. And so there's an urgency and you're efficient. I remember meeting somebody I've known for a long while who started up an animation company who was saying she was only really employing mums over 40 because they did the work quickly and efficiently. No nonsense. Get on with it. No nonsense. Get on with it. And your character, she's in her early 50s and she feels invisible and she's stuck in a relationship. Do you think women watching this are going to be able to relate to a lot of it?

Well, in Australia, that's certainly what's happened. Yeah. What's the reaction like cinemas full of women screaming and going back several times and bringing their partners to see it her her partner in this um is trying to get well she he's got her doing diet boxes yeah which i just think is such a brilliant it's such a i don't know it's just such a brilliant idea of renee's that that's a sort of terrible control that's sort of joyless you can only eat you're only allowed to eat this very low fat yogurt until 6 p.m and then you're allowed a you know caesar salad and two prawns followed by three raisins and the idea that your husband's they're encouraging you to do that so i

remember felicity montague saying to me that one of her worst Christmases was when her husband gave her an exercise bike she just felt so I mean you know yeah yeah I think that's quite a good one for later in woman's hour the worst gifts you've received um pots and pans I went for an onion dicer my 39th birthday I got an onion dicer in a bottle of Waitrose bubble bath. And I said thank you on the day and five days later, just cried and cried and cried. Is this what you think of me? The worst, the worst. Now we've seen that there's also the scenes at the beginning, you swimming, wild swimming with this group of friends that you have that are your first

customers when you set up the company. Is that you swimming? Because you've got fantastic strength. I also had, they did some shots later with a body double as well, but I did, my first day of filming, they did chuck me in the Indian Ocean and I hadn't swum for a couple of years because of the pandemic, all the pools had been shut. And I thought, oh, you know, Aussies are so sort of bold, aren't they? I better not show any fear i better just get on with it and they threw me in and i those were the scenes of me crying in

the ocean and then they hauled me out like a tea bag on a stick and the dop said to me um he said you're brave i wouldn't have done that. Because, of course, there's loads of great whites. Yeah. So there's scenes because of the swimming that make for great moments in the film, because often we get lots of locker room scenes with men having male banter. But this is women together, just having a giggle, talking about their lives and just taking charge of their own pleasure. Yes. Yeah, it felt very beautiful.

That was a real changing room. There's lots of ocean swimming clubs in Australia. It's very common. They felt quite moving, those scenes, because she had a rule that there was no nudity during the sex scenes. Your body was only just the body that you inhabited and we had loads of women of all different shapes and sizes i remember one woman saying to me she said i've just had a bad time sexually and i i just decided that this would be a way of taking my body back and saying it's saying it's beautiful we all felt quite moved by that, realising how much of our lives we spend hating our bodies

and we just ought to get on with it, really. It is a moving film. There's scenes, there's lots of joy and lots of laughter, but the scenes that really struck me were when you're in the car and your potential customers are coming, it's almost like confession, where they share with you why they want to do this, how they don't feel like they've been touched or there was one woman

who wanted to experience it with a woman. How much research went into those? Was that all Renee? Yeah, that was Renee. Renee did so much research and she felt, because she was really interested, she spoke to these Sydney entrepreneurs, i shouldn't call them housewives sydney entrepreneurs and they spoke to her about their clientele and they were women who'd you know been raped had bad sex experiences didn't want to shut up shop people who hadn't been touched people who had only experienced sex with a partner who was addicted to porn and so it was very sort of brutal in one way and you know people who um couldn't cope with an emotional link but felt that i mean australians as i say it is much less repressed but felt very

much that they needed a sex life for their health and it's interesting because there's some countries so for example um there's some the producer of the film also one of the producers also produced the sessions which starred helen hunt hunt as a sex therapist working with a man with a disability and there are some countries in the world where they regard sex as a as a human right and so if you're disabled and you find it hard to have sex the government will pay for you to have a sex worker. I've actually interviewed a sex worker who does that on Woman's Hour. It's a remarkable interview. Actually, we've had a message in, Sally, from somebody who says,

basically asking, is it okay to objectify men in this way? Saying, I'm astonished and depressed by the horrendous double standards demonstrated on Woman's Hour. This person's asking if Sally Phillips was a man who'd written a book about another man setting up a company to supply female cleaners who's supposed to have sex relations with their customers, there would have been an absolute outcry and quite rightly. What do you say to that? Have you had that kind of reaction? It's a good point. That was my first thought when I read the script pretty much. But then once you look into it, you know, it is just much more complex than that. And the fact that it's from a true story makes it much more interesting to me. There is a way in which we're not supposed to be sexual after a certain

age. And also, yeah, I mean, you know, I'm'm not as you say, I'm not the right person to talk about the pros and cons of of prostitution. But it is a more complex question than it might first appear. And I think what's interesting is, you know, how much care in the film went into the question of consent. Yeah. If it's if it's entirely consensual, what do you what do you say then? And I think, you know, a less careful, a less careful film. I mean, it's not all played for laughs by any means, which meant I felt a bit uncomfortable because I'm much happier when playing for laughs. But there are sort of five or six scenes that just wouldn't have been there 10 years ago. Yeah. It's about consent and about

the men's uh attitude towards it the brilliant sally phillips and how to please a woman is available to watch on sky cinema now and she can also be seen in series three of breeders which starts next week on sky comedy and so many of you got in touch about sally's comments about presence here's a flavor of what you said anne got in touch about Sally's comments about presents. Here's a flavour of what you said. Anne got in touch to say, My children's dad and partner of 15 years once bought me a beard trimmer to do my bits with. Not appreciated and immediately returned to the shop. Not surprisingly, we're no longer together.

Claire said, My soon-to-be ex, after 42 years, once gave me a pipe filler for my birthday so that I could properly fill his pipe while he was driving. And like she says at the beginning, soon to be ex. And John says, My dad bought my mum a garden shovel for a birthday. He even wrapped it up. How nice of him. Amazing. Now, it's certainly been a lively week. On Thursday, the Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced he was stepping down as leader of the

Conservative Party. He's pledged to stay on as PM until a successor is chosen. But a growing number of Conservative MPs say he should leave Number 10 now. Nusrat Ghani is the Conservative MP for Wealden and vice-chair of the 1922 committee that represents backbench Conservative MPs. Dubbed the Men in Grey Suits, the members of the 1922 committee wield a lot of power in the Conservative Party. The committee runs the selection process for new leaders

and if MPs want to get rid of their current leader, then it's the 1922 that collects the votes to do so. And only a few weeks ago, they were in charge of that vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister that he won. On Thursday morning, Emma spoke to Nusrat Ghani and began by asking her for her reaction to the Prime Minister stepping down as leader. It's the right thing to do. It was becoming completely undignified and the Prime Minister couldn't continue without the support, not only of MPs, but without the support of ministers and even cabinet ministers. He was unable then to form an administration

that had to focus all of its attention on supporting our constituents, not being focused on the Boris Johnson psychodrama. So I am pleased that he has resigned. The intention is that he wishes to stay, but that timetable has to be agreed with the executive of the 1922. And I'm hearing from colleagues that they are uncomfortable with him continuing to stay as caretaker. We have a deputy prime minister. That's why we have a deputy prime minister.

And I think it's important that we have somebody in place that has the confidence of colleagues to put in place an administration that can function. So you would prefer Dominic Raab? In case people are wondering who our deputy prime minister is, that's who it is. in place an administration that can function. So you would prefer Dominic Raab? In case people are wondering who our Deputy Prime Minister is, that's who it is? That's why we have a Deputy Prime Minister. Why should anybody trust Dominic Raab to be a decent caretaker?

Yes, he's got the role, but he hasn't resigned. He hasn't made any comments on this. He seems like he's still loyal to the Prime Minister, although it's incredibly hard to get anybody to talk to us. Look, I understand your concerns, considering what's been taking place at Downing Street. And this is one of the problems that we're going to have to try and to deal with, to rebuild trust with the public and to rebuild the confidence in the Conservative Party. But we have got really stellar people who can continue to function as ministers, but they will need a leader that they have confidence in. So when Boris Johnson or the Prime Minister says that he is resigning and he will take his time or take a few months to leave, I think it's better he decides just to go. There are some, again, members of the public, nothing to do with Westminster, listening to this and this rat, thinking, I just can't even support or get behind or respect these ministers, aides and MPs now who are saying that he should go through to resignations. weeks ago to have that vote of no confidence. And they bottled it for either their careers.

How can that much, or for other reasons, how can that much have changed in those intervening weeks for this strength of feeling to suddenly come? Look, I think colleagues are going to have to reflect on when they chose to publicly say that they no longer have confidence in the PM. You know that the last vote to no confidence, we did have a substantial number of colleagues vote no confidence in Boris Johnson's leader of the party. But I suspect for many, the Chris Pinscher situation was just the final straw.

Having the Prime Minister continue to hold a position that was untenable, making colleagues go on air whilst not briefing them with the accurate information, we got to a point where it was just turning into not only a farce, but everything was focused on just protecting and promoting Boris Johnson. It was no longer about protecting the party or even protecting the country in focusing all of our attention on delivering policies that are important. Do you understand why some people will be thinking I've got zero respect or sympathy for these MPs who did not take the opportunity a few weeks ago and suddenly seem to have found

huge numbers of concerns and morals, perhaps, that they didn't seem to have a grasp of a few weeks ago. We've got a lot of work to do building back trust. We really have. Sahalia tweeted us yesterday, just imagine if Boris Johnson was a woman and was incompetent, lied constantly, was a lousy leader and manager, couldn't organise himself, never mind about his team. She would have been got rid of ages ago.

But because Boris Johnson is a man, he is still in the job. I despair. What do you say to Sahalia? I agree with her. And I think there is something about politics where women are treated and they are just we have to reach a very different marker. And unfortunately, men don't. And we seem to have a situation where men can progress with very little skill and merit. That's about progression, but I suppose this is, and your view of it, it's very interesting you say that,

but it's also, she's speaking to what's keeping him in there now as well, isn't she? This is the character of Boris Johnson, I'm afraid. He will always put himself first. So you think it would be different if he was a woman? He would be gone by now? I don't think people would have been so forgiving or given so many opportunities if it was a woman that had made the same mistakes. What can we take from that, do you think, just as if there are learnings to be taken at this stage?

You just have to be incredibly careful who we put our confidence and faith in. But also we need to stop treating women differently in leadership positions that we do to men. And a word on your own experience, if I may. People may remember you were a junior transport minister until early February 2020. You, of course, had experience of working alongside Boris Johnson and his team. That came to an end. You alleged in January this year that a whip, we've obviously been hearing a lot about the whip's office with regards to Chris Pincher, you said that a whip said your Muslimness was a factor in you being sacked as a minister. An investigation was launched into those allegations.

I wonder, first of all, has that investigation concluded? Have you had any answers? Well, Lord Guyte resigned before handing me the report. The Prime Minister, I read yesterday, when he was in front of the liaison committee, said that he'd had a conversation with Lord Guyte about the report. I'm asking for that report to be published. But my experience of Downing Street and the prime minister is not dissimilar to other people's experience where there is a huge issue with honesty and integrity. So working with him, you would describe in what way,

having been a junior minister, and we've seen a lot of those junior ministers walk out. I didn't work with him. I was a junior minister over in the Department for Transport. But, you know, when I raised my complaint with the prime minister, he chose not to take it seriously until it was made public. And then he instigated an inquiry by Lord Guide and the Prime Minister sell us authority over that inquiry. And I hope that he will now have the time and the space

to give it the seriousness it deserves. Nusrat Ghani speaking to Emma there, Vice Chair of the 1922 Committee. Charlotte Carew-Pole is Director of Women to Win, an organisation which aims to increase the number of women to stand for the Conservative Party. Emma began by asking Charlotte, why would a woman want to stand for the party at this time? Funny enough, we've had quite a lot of interest because quite a lot of women have been sitting at home shouting at the radio or the TV and they've been wondering whether they should send their applications in and they've realised

that this is the time because if you want to change things the only way to change it is to be in it. Are you saying the Boris Johnson effect could be to drive more women into Conservative politics onto the front line? Well we are pleased by the reaction and the interest of people who are getting in touch, saying time and time again, we see men getting into trouble and we have seen men getting into trouble, but we don't see women getting into these situations. We don't see the women getting involved in sleaze and the women see that they need to come forward.

They only make up 25%. Well, I mean, women are not angels. I accept the point that with the latest spate of sleaze, it has majority been men, certainly the names that we know of. And some of the names we're not allowed to say publicly. But I mean, I don't know if that's helpful to paint women that they don't get involved or get caught up in bad things. Well, by and large, women are not involved in the scandals. The women tend not to let the party down. They won't embarrass their constituencies. Theresa May?

And so the women see themselves as wanting to come forward and have a bigger voice. We could have a debate a different day about that because there are different views, aren't there, about how we view women. There's a school of thought as well, which again, we could have a very fine debate on, maybe we will, this idea that for instance, the pandemic would have been handled better by a female leader. A lot of people then

point to Jacinda Ardern. There's also, would the financial crash have happened in the same way? Coming away from that though, because I point out Theresa May, not involved in scandal per se, but she wasn't the leader people thought she was going to be. There was a thought that she would be and perhaps being a woman may have been to her asset. It's interesting to hear women do want to step up, though, potentially at this time. Some, as I was hinting at, may have thought it would be the opposite. Do you think that will last? Do you think that will be something or do you worry now that this particular moment as it drags out is harming the image of the Conservative Party as a place you might want to work? I don't think so. I think that the party will listen to the members and they will listen to the women and they encourage women to come forwards. And you heard Sajid talk yesterday about the importance of family and his role as a father. And it is a

key conservative principle, the family. And I think that more women will continue to come forward because we need to get back to the principle of integrity and running the country and our true conservative values. Have you, over your time in position as part of this organisation, but also as an individual, have you supported Boris Johnson? A lot of our listeners also getting in touch this morning are not happy with what's happening today. How do you feel about it? Well, I'm here to talk about Women to Win,

and our sole goal is to try and get more female conservative MPs. But I presume you're a conservative if you're running a Conservative organisation. OK, I don't need to draw you on your personal personal. I accept that. But what is your reaction today as an individual, if I could at least get a flavour of that? Yes, well, our supporters and myself are very uneasy about the lack of integrity and the situation that has involved.

We are deeply unhappy with the situation and it needs to change. It is a good thing that change is coming and let's grasp this opportunity. Let's encourage more women to come forward. Let's make the place a less toxic environment. There are not enough women, the whole of the Conservative Party. Let's make it a friendlier place for women and let's encourage more consensus politics. I mean, it's also been very striking. A lot is made by the spokespeople of Boris Johnson. We'll just pause on this for one moment, that he is a man who likes promoting women, working with women. A lot has been made about the balance of the cabinet, not the wider party.

It's the lowest number since the early days of David Cameron. Is it? Yes, he doesn't do very well in promoting women. Charlotte Carey-Pole from Women to Win. And if you'd like to get in touch about anything you hear on the programme or something you'd like us to discuss, then please, we welcome your suggestions. Email us by going to our website

or you can contact us on social media. It's at BBC Women's Hour. Now, the Women's Euros is underway and the Lionesses got off to a good start. England beat Austria, but Northern Ireland lost to Norway. But it's still early days. 2022 looks like it will be a huge year for women's football, with matches shown on terrestrial TV and record attendances.

But as an exhibition called Goal Power, which is now on at Brighton Museum, points out, girls and women have long played football and loved it. Charlotte Petz spoke to Janet Gilbert, who played for the General Post Office in Brighton, and Angie Banks, who went on to become semi-pro for Arsenal and got 18 caps for England. Jo Davis played as a goalie in the early 70s, but first you'll hear from Alison and Chris, who started playing in the late 60s for the team that eventually went on to become Brighton and Hove Albion women's team.

I'm Alison Poore, now Alison Penn, and I started playing football when I was 17. I'm Chris Harding, now Wickham. I joined in 1967. I played centre forward and goalkeeper. I scored 75 goals in one season, which was a record. I was a defender as well. I played centre half for the same reason as Chris. I could head the ball in those days, but could also pass. We used to play at school you know in playtime and stuff so we've always been sporty it's just that nobody took any notice

of women playing did they in those days so we were quite happy to do that and be like the boys. And we had a lot of fun a hell of a lot of fun yeah so what are some of your memories from playing at that time changing rooms there were sheds no showers bucket of water if you were lucky and going home in your muddy kit and only just at half time oh yes i remember joyce palmer who's not here today she took a free kick missed it three times and the referee gave a free kick to the other side and we all fell on the floor laughing and that's always stuck in my mind

We're so pleased to see how women's football has moved on because like myself our grandchildren are involved in sports and we've got granddaughters and they play football, women's football too. They're only seven and nine but they're involved and there are so many more opportunities for them now to join a team. There's no stigma about being a girl. My name is Janet Gilbert. I started in

72. I started off as centre forward and played about four games as centre-forward, then played in goal. Must be about ten years. I have a lot of memories of good laughs, playing some games which I never touched the ball, because we were winning by a few goals, because we were much better than the others. I used to enjoy it.

When we were playing and it was raining because then you could go out and do some lovely slides. Sometimes my kit was brown completely with mud. I enjoyed my life playing football, yes. My name is Angie Banks, I'm now known as Angie Taylor Banks. I joined when I was 11 years old. There was no girls teams around when I was a kid and the caretaker at my junior school actually told us there was a ladies' team in Brighton and he had contacted,

because he'd seen me and a friend of mine playing on the playground, but he contacted them and asked if two young girls could come along and play. As an 11-year-old, I was quite small and skinny and I was playing against these grown women and I absolutely loved it. I think we lost our first game something crazy like 20-0 or something crazy.

My mum and dad at the beginning thought it was just a phase. And even though they knew I loved football, they just thought, oh, it's never going to end all this time I'm losing. And didn't actually really get involved until I went to Sweden and started playing at a higher level. So I wasn't supported, I wouldn't say much. It was a lot of my own doing, going on the bus. At 11 years old, going to Wyvdean Stadium playing East Brighton Park grew up playing football

around boys and always boys and then growing up playing with ladies my physical side of the game had to improve instantly so I think I had the technical talent I think it just helped me to improve my game by playing with the older ladies as well. I played at a high level for Arsenal in England and I was semi-pro. My escape was football from real life and school and things like that because I was different. I was a different type of girl. I loved football and at that time it was a you were a bit strange if you were sort of you know young playing football it wasn't you know why are you playing football you're a girl you know that's not the sort of thing. So for me football and playing alongside people that love the same thing as me

was my escape and then when I went to Sweden so normalized because they've been doing it since they were five six years old I felt completely at home didn't feel different and it was just a wonderful wonderful time my name is Jo Davis I started when I was 15 playing for Shoreham so did that for about 20 years and then I joined Brighton when we were National League. You know, highlight of my career was playing at the old Goldstone ground, which was, as a Brighton fan, was just the icing on the cake, really. And then I ended up at Whitehawk at the end of my career, as a player initially and then as a manager.

Absolutely loved it. Loved the journey. I remember once we played up at pevensey marshes which is a really flat flat open ground and we we won about i don't know 16 nil or something one game i was absolutely frozen and when the final whistle went the girls all ran off into the hut as it was in those days and i just stood there because i couldn't actually move i was like frozen to the spot having seen what these girls have got now it's just just worlds apart you know we we we paid to play we played on muddy pitches I can remember having to shoo sheep off of a pitch when we played over at Horham one time and those days you didn't have mobile phones and you used to drive in a convoy of about five or six cars and lose half the cars and you know you'd

all end up at the game at different times and sometimes a car never arrived and when you look at the facilities just amazing we're you know we were lucky if we had a shower, it was through a bucket of water over you or something. Different worlds, different worlds. But I wouldn't have given mine up for anything. Because it shaped me as a person. I think I probably could have ended up in quite a lot of trouble as a kid with all kinds of issues. But a school friend introduced me to football and my best friends now are the friends I played football with

40, 50 years ago. How good was that? And on the subject of the Euros, Richard wrote in to say, as a 60-year-old man, ex-part-time player and lover of the game, I've started to lose interest in the men's game, full of play acting and bad sportsmanship, and enjoy watching the women's game instead. And Mark says, trucker and how refreshing it's been to see these incredible female athletes doing what they love not once have i seen one of the girls spit on camera well done girls and shame on the men and adrian says i played for the fabulously named camberwell old fallopians wfc for over 20 years from 1990 some of the best times of my life that year seems to be when the women's game really took off.

The effect of Italia 90. I'll be watching the Euros. Love to see how far the game has come. And remember, you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day. If you can't join us live at 10am during the week, all you need to do is subscribe to the daily podcast via the Woman's Hour website and it's absolutely free. Now, new data from the NHS shows there's been a record rise in the number of people that are now taking antidepressants. 8.3 million people were prescribed the drugs in the last year and two thirds of them were female. The group most likely to receive them was women aged 50 to 59. And there's also been an uptake in children and teenagers taking them. Dr. Nigat Arif is a GP

who specialises in women's health. She's also a resident Breakfast TV doctor. And she joined me on Friday's show. I began by asking her why there's been such a rise in the last year. The trend has been going up and the figures and the statistics don't surprise me as an NHS GP. I'll tell you there are three reasons why I think there's a rise. One is the pandemic. The pandemic has really affected lots of people's mental health. The lockdowns, the uncertainty, workplace, people made redundant

and the financial pressures that might have caused relationship pressures. So the pandemic, as we know, everyone can relate to the fact that at some point they felt extremely stressed or anxious around that time. Number two, I think that there's far greater awareness that we've got. So we've got Dr. Alex George, who is the mental health ambassador.

We've got Dr. Julia Smith, who's been using TikTok, and she's got 4.3 million followers who have been accessing her content on how they can help their mental health. And number three, I think that there's greater awareness about antidepressants themselves. There was a huge stigma around antidepressants. They were always called, as I said, the happy pills. There were derogatory terms sometimes used for them. And now there's far more in acceptance. A trend started in America on social media

of doctors posting their antidepressants that they're taking, making sure that everybody else was knowing. Do you know what? Even doctors and healthcare professionals, they also become affected by their mental health. No one is immune. 100% of us at some point will become affected by our mental health.

And so I think those are the three reasons why we're seeing an upward trend. And why women? Why more women than men? So we do know that there's a gender health gap already. The research has always shown that that is the case. And then access to services are different as well. So, again, if I can use my three-pronged attack to why I think women far more is because, well, women talk and they talk a lot more with each other. As a GP, if I tell a woman any health care advice, she will go home and she will spread it to all her friends and her mates and she'll let them know.

And so women ask for help as well. And women understand that actually there is a chemical imbalance and antidepressants given at the right time will help with that chemical imbalance because antidepressants do a lot of good work. And I think this is almost like for women sometimes, if this is my personal view, it's a kickback against the masculine toxicity that we have sometimes that hangs around that we're going to get through this. This is absolutely something that I don't need to get some pills for or go and see a doctor for and put up with it. Unfortunately, if we look at the research from Mind or Rethink and the mental health charities, we know far more suicidal attempts or even successful suicidal attempts are in men. The biggest killer of men in the UK. So that just means that we do have a gender health gap, but we need to be tackling that.

We need to be supporting men so they don't feel that they can't go to the doctor and ask for help. Now, last year, NICE, which gives guidelines to doctors, said that talking therapies and exercise should be the first port of call. Do these figures suggest that that's not happening for some reason? Oh, not at all. I don't think these figures do. I think these figures show that actually we're giving the right support at the right time. I think that we need to be really clear what happens when a person comes to the GP. So firstly, a lot of the talking therapy. So the government put in £5 million in March 2021

for mental health recovery action plans. So they made IAP services, which are talking services available on the NHS, which means patients can bypass their GP and not have to have that appointment and they can do a self-referral. And cognitive behavioural therapy is great for anxiety, low mood, depression, stress or PTSD.

If I can just take a small second to say about myself my son had a liver transplant when he was really young in 2016 and I as a GP went to talking therapy first and I had sessions of CBT in fact still even now to cope with the pressures that I deal with as a GP I go and have talking therapies and CBT and do exercise and mindfulness. Antidepressants is very nuanced. It's a complex reason. There's multifactorial reasons why we start someone on antidepressants. It's not one single decision. So the fact that we're using them appropriately for some patients is really good. And this shows that we need to be also aware that they're not appropriate for everybody but it is that sort of nuances and

that relationship between the patient and the GP and understanding it's an individual choice and that's why we start them. What kind of circumstances then are people normally prescribed them? So I'll take a typical consultation I've done consultations all this week and I've been prescribing antidepressants so usually what happens is a patient comes to see me and they'll say, Dr. Arif, and the reason that they've come to see me Anita in my surgery is because they've tried all the lifestyle, all the talking therapies, they've tried to cope with their mental health, but now they're finding that they really are struggling and that's why they're at my doorstep because this is where the GP steps in. So then I actually go through what their wishes are. I tend not to prescribe antidepressants on the first, second,

or even the third consultations. We go back to holistic measures. It could be like yoga or acupuncture or hypnotherapy that they might not have thought of. Antidepressants are then started if we think, do you know what, we've done and we've exhausted all the routes that we possibly can. And now the mental health is impacted so much

that actually we need to try and help that chemical imbalance. So start with either SSRI, serotonin reuptake inhibitors like citalopram or sertraline, and then we wean the patient on slowly with it and checking in on three weeks. So the circumstances are so individual. It could be because of the extremeness of their symptoms. It could be because of the lack of their sleep or impact on their life and their work. Is there something else possible? I'm just thinking back to the figures, particularly that so many more women are on antidepressants than men. Because you've been on before to talk to me about HRT and prescribing antidepressants for some women when they're going through menopause.

So is that got anything to do with the uptake in women over the age of 50? This is a really good question. And I'm so pleased that you're asking me this because a lot of women, unfortunately, we know, and this comes back to the gender health gap and the knowledge of our women's health in this country, is that women from the age of 40 can approach perimenopause and psychological symptoms such as low mood, irritability, brain fog, lack of sleep, irrational anger, tearfulness, that loss of self-esteem and self-confidence might be the first symptoms even before they get hot flashes. So women sometimes can be misdiagnosed as having depression

and offered antidepressants. The NICE guidance in 2019 says that psychological symptoms are far better dealt with if you actually peter out or tackle the oestrogen and progesterone fluctuations that the woman is having. And to do that, you give HRT. So HRT is first line, not antidepressant at that stage. But this is where we don't have the education

to be able to find those nuances between them. That was Dr. Nigit Arif speaking to me on Friday's programme there. Now, the 75-year-old American soul singer Pat Ann Cole, best known as PP Arnold, started out singing gospel at church. By the age of 17, she was married with two children when a prayer led her to find fame as an iKet with the Ike and Tina Turner Review. They came to London to support the Rolling Stones

and she then broke away to find solo work. In a career spanning more than 50 years, she's worked with artists from Eric Clapton and The Small Faces to Barry Gibb, Paul Weller and Primal Scream. She's appeared in musicals including Starlight Express and most recently she's performed solo at this year's Glastonbury. Her autobiography out now is called Soul Survivor. Emma began by asking her about performing at Glastonbury. Her autobiography, out now, is called Soul Survivor. Emma began by asking her about performing at Glastonbury.

Brilliant. It was really nice. You know, I have such lovely, supportive fans and everybody enjoyed the show and I got some great reviews and good feedback. No, it looked like people really enjoyed it. I mean, I mentioned, of course, how you began and where you began. And it's certainly been a journey since then.

But I wonder, why did you feel you wanted to put the story, if you like, behind the songs in a book? Well, I started writing the book years ago. Did you? I started writing the book in 1994. And I actually lost it. Of course. Yeah, I was making a copy from time machine to a portable disc and I lost my book.

So it's a good thing it was my life story. Because you knew it as well. Well, yeah, and I had notes and things like that. But when I rewrote it, you know, God works in mysterious ways, and I decided to rewrite it and I did a lot of ancestry work because I thought, well, if people want to hear about the gospel music and the soul, I'm going to take it all the way back to the plantation. And all that history of, you know, slavery and those hymns and everything. And so, yeah, I think it worked out better in the end. Yeah, well, there is a lot in there.

And there's also, you know, your experience is unvarnished. You know, you're very honest about some of the more difficult, very difficult things that happened to you, as well as, of course, the wonderful things. I mean, I mentioned there you were young when you were chosen to be one of iContina's backing singers. That, I'm sure, just changed your life. It certainly did because I had never had any ambition or any desire to be a professional singer. I was born into a family of gospel singers, so I grew up

singing in church. That's just what I did. And unfortunately, I got pregnant when I was very young and I was forced to get married and I was trapped in a very abusive teen marriage. So I just said a prayer one Sunday morning, asking God to show me a way out of the hell that I was in. And an hour later, the phone rang and my girlfriend who wanted to be an ICAT and another girl who was supposed to go with them, didn't show. So they called me out of desperation and refused to take no for an answer, hung up the phone. They came, and I lied and told my husband I was going shopping. And an hour later, I'm in Ike and Tina Turner's living room singing, dancing in the street.

So Tina kind of put this bee in my bottom because after we did the audition, she goes, right, girls, you got the gig, right? And I'm going like, oh, no, not me. I'm just here to help. I said, I'm in big trouble. Should have been home two hours ago. I'm going to be in trouble.

So Tina sort of said, well, if you're going to get in trouble for nothing, why don't you ride with us up to Fresno and at least see the show? Well, Fresno was 300 miles away. So I had left home at 12 o'clock that morning and didn't arrive back home until six o'clock that next Monday morning. And so my husband, sure enough, he was waiting for me. And, you know, it was a very abusive marriage and he hit me he hit me in the head and it was as if he knocked some sense into me because i suddenly remembered my

prayer god had answered my prayer so i became an i get and uh yeah and it was the beginning i was still married to him for a while after that but yeah it was the beginning. I was still married to him for a while after that. But yeah, it was the beginning of my professional career. And of course, we now know Tina Turner herself was going through a lot of pain and difficulty and abuse herself. She really was. And that was very, very difficult for me to watch and experience that because I was quite a damaged young girl myself very introverted and shy and and everything and having to watch her experience that abuse after she had like saved me it wasn't nice. Was there was a sort of sisterhood in in that do you think? Oh yeah you know Tina and the Ikeettes we were all girls together and we

were the only girls on the road and and hugely talented I mean what you were creating together was was magical even if the backdrop of your personal lives at times were really difficult exactly and you know working with the Ike and Tina Turner review was an amazing experience musically I mean I have to say you, this has been picked up from the book. You also chose to write about your own abuse at the hands of Ike Turner. Yeah, yeah, I did, you know, because Maya Angelou is the inspiration for me just writing my story at all. I just love Maya and, you know, it was like if I'm going to write, write it.

I just decided to tell the truth. And I had never told anyone about that except for my sister years later. And specifically for people who haven't read the book, it's to talk about Ike raping you. Yeah, yeah. I was a very young girl. You know, I was 17 when I joined that review, and I had two kids. And I didn't tell anybody because if I had told my parents, they would have, like, insisted that I come home, which meant going back to my abusive marriage situation. I didn't want to tell Tina.

I didn't know how to tell Tina because I didn't want her to think that I was after Ike or anything like that because she was already dealing with that whole thing of Ike having loads of women and all of that. So I just kept it to myself. I just decided that I was going to, I didn't want to lose my job

because that job was my way out of my marriage and the way forward to support my young kids. Has it felt healing, putting it in the book and sharing it? Well, yeah, the book was quite cathartic. And like now, I mean, I've never done any therapy or anything, so I'm doing my therapy in front of the whole world. So, yeah, it's quite amazing, you know, and going through the editing processes and everything,

every time, you know, having to go over it and over it and over it, and it's really, you know, so emotional. Especially during the recording. The audio book was really emotional for me. I mean, I was going to say, it just brings another meaning to the title, Soul Survivor. Yeah, it really does. That was Pat Ann Cole, best known as P.P. Arnold, talking to Emma there. And Penny wrote in to say, P.P. Arnold is a legend. I saw her many times years ago and love her voice.

Recently I saw her and told her how great she is and she was lovely. Great memories. And she is lovely. What a woman. Now the war in Ukraine continues. Women now make up approximately 22% of the Ukrainian military but most women have left the country who've been able to. Although I should say some remain who haven't been able to leave. Later this month, an all-women team from the charity EdenAid

are travelling from the UK to the Ukraine border with much-needed supplies and plan to return a few days later with 28 refugee women and children and their pets. Emma spoke to two of the women who'll be on the trip and are very recent friends, Suzanne Pullin and Barbara Wont. This will be Suzanne's third trip. Emma started by asking her what got her involved. I bumped into a friend who had done it the week before in a pub. Right.

And he was so moved by what he'd done and told me about it and we all cried and I said, I can drive. I've got time. I can do that. And the next week, I found myself driving to Ukraine. And it's an all-female trip. This time is an all-female trip. It'll be the first all-female trip.

We have a team of or a group of 55 drivers, 11 of which are women. And really, we need to grow the female population of drivers within that group. And I thought this would be a really good way to do that. Just before I come to Barbara, and I know you two are, as I say, very recent friends. Looking this morning, the official advice is people shouldn't go to Ukraine. If they want to help, they should donate. In fact, the Ukrainian ambassador, you're going to the border, but to the UK, is on the record saying money would be better placed rather than bulky items.

What's your take on that? I know you will have done your research. Yes, we don't go into the Ukraine. We go to the Ukrainian-Polish border. We deliver aid that then is moved on into the Ukraine the following day. So last week we took out 16,000 reusable sanitary pads to go to the maternity units and refugee centres and nappies. We delivered that to the mountain rescue team on the border and then it was taken in the following day.

So we are not in danger at all. Yeah, there are some concerns about your danger and your safety. So you would say no? No, we don't cross the border at all. We stay in Poland. OK, there you go. There's some questions already answered that I could anticipate already coming in. Barbara, you two met recently, is that right? Five weeks ago, we were at an all weekend anniversary party with some friends. And Suzanne and I discovered very early on that we had something in common, which is we were both widowed with children.

We brought our boys up. We both have boys. We brought them up after losing our husbands. And when widows with young children or who've brought up young children meet, they have a lot to share. What I didn't expect was that four weeks later, Suzanne would text me and say, do you want to join me in a minibus driving to the Ukraine border? But it took me all of three seconds to say yes. Right. Sorry. And did you find something about Barbara that made you think, yes, she needs to join this crew? Is there something about her?

Energy. You've got to have a lot of energy to do this. Suzanne hasn't seen me driving yet. Are you on the driving road? I will be on the road. I have never driven a minibus. I'm going to be taught how to do it. My kids say the poor refugees might have been in danger in Ukraine. But when they get in a bus with me, oh my goodness, but I will drive well. I'm quite anxious about it. I'm not a great navigator, but I'll be sharing the driving. We're doing two hours on, two hours off. So we're very conscious of safety. We are going to be driving pretty much

for 24 hours, but sleeping in those brakes. So we will be very, very careful. Why do you want to do this? You know, my mother was a refugee. I saw a photograph on social media at the beginning of this war of a single suitcase in someone's apartment in Ukraine. And they said, we're about to leave with just this. We don't know if we're ever going to come back. My mother was a refugee in Eastern Europe after the war. She left her home with a single suitcase.

She had an hour to pack it. She didn't know if she was going to go back. She ended up in Germany. As a teenager, she didn't have enough to eat. She didn't have a school to go to. She lived on a diet of potatoes. And she said it was only the help and the kindness of people in the community that got her food, that got her to

school, and that got her family really to survive. And that image of the suitcase, when I saw that, I thought my mother has gone through something similar. I know millions of people have. But to me, there is that personal connection. And I just feel all of us, if we can just do one little thing to help in this enormous crisis. And there are people behind the scenes helping us. There are people who have donated minibuses. And by the way, we have been donated a minibus by Millwall Football Club. So if anyone would like to top that, there are lots of people helping, working behind the scenes, donating money. We're not the only ones doing something because this is a massive crisis. And we're going to bring back 28 refugees.

There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands. We have a huge waiting list. And I was going to say, with those refugees, again, interest on that. How has that come about, Suzanne? So there's a fantastic woman called Olga who helps us find the people. They're all ready with their paperwork. They all have host families to come back to. In Poland, this is when you pick up?

Yes, in Poland or Germany and we bring them back to their host So that's all been sorted in advance? That's all been sorted and we find out on the way out who's ready to come back and we're given a list when we arrive and we drive

I naively thought we would go to one place and pick all the people up but actually we drive to Warsaw, Berlin, Hanover, to lots of different refugee centres and collect them on the way back to Calais. I always like details. Where do you sleep on the way? Where do you go to the loo? What's the plan?

So we have one overnight sleep. We set off Tuesday lunchtime. We get to the border Wednesday evening. We stay Wednesday night at some hotel. So not sleeping on the minibus? We sleep every two hours. We're meant to sleep. We swap drivers every two hours. And in our two hours off, we are meant to sleep.

It's not very easy to sleep on the way back when you've got a minibus full of very vulnerable women and children. I was reading yesterday a lovely portrait piece, if I can say, but very sad piece in the New Yorker magazine about women and children and some of the journeys that they've made. And in it, it said the Ukrainians love their cats, this very strong

bond with their pets. And you will be bringing some animals. In fact, one of my hairiest moments was when we lost Jessica the cat in Berlin airport at three o'clock in the morning. That wasn't very relaxing. We found her, don't worry. She's safely back in the UK. We brought back actually 29 cats and 43 dogs, as well as 267 women and children. Suzanne and Barbara speaking to Emma there. That's it from me.

Join Emma again live at 10am on Monday morning. Have a great rest of your weekend. And remember, stay hydrated. It's hot Emma there. That's it from me. Join Emma again live at 10am on Monday morning. Have a great rest of your weekend and remember, stay hydrated. It's hot out there. 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.