Woman's Hour - Singing nuns, Long Covid, US presidential elections, Victoria Wood, Women and homelessness, Sister Bliss.

Episode Date: October 24, 2020

The Poor Clares of Arundel are a community of nuns. They've just released an album'Light for the World' described as 'traditional plainchant with added beats'. We hear from Sisters Leo & Sisters Aelread.What impact is Long Covid having on women’s lives, and where are we with treatment and support?How will the female vote impact the USA presidential elections? Melissa Milewski, a lecturer in American History at the University of Sussex and Dr Michell Chresfield Lecturer in United States History, at the University of Birmingham discuss. The number of women sleeping rough and living in temporary accommodation has risen. Katya Adler hears from Dame Louise Casey who, as “Homelesssness Tsar”, championed the “Everyone In” policy which got rough sleepers off the street and into temporary accommodation during the height of the pandemic and Petra Salva, the head of the Rough Sleepers Unit at the charity St. Mungos.Sister Bliss is a DJ, songwriter and electronic artist. She is perhaps best-known as a member of the British electronic band Faithless.Victoria Wood, the Lancashire born comedian, writer, actor, stand up and singer died in 2016 having never written her own story. With access to letters, and interviews with friends and family Jasper Rees has written ‘Let’s Do it’ – The Authorized Biography of Victoria Wood.Presenter: Jane Garvey 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. Hi, good afternoon and a warm welcome to the weekend edition of Woman's Hour. Now, this afternoon we're going to be just revelling in the comedy genius of the late Victoria Wood in the company of her biographer Jasper Rees. And here he is telling me when Victoria realised she could write gags. Julie plays a character who's not quite sure whether she's pregnant or not and this woman comes in and says, where are you in the menstrual cycle? And Julie says, Taurus.

And there was a kind of, you know, whoosh of laughter every night but that is her first ever joke. She's doing a joke about menstruation. I love Victoria Wood and I really enjoyed talking to Jasper Rees and you can hear more from him this afternoon. I will talk too to Sister Bliss, the DJ, songwriter and electronic artist and hear from

the nuns of Arundel, the poor clairs of Arundel who have a new album out and we'll talk too about women and homelessness and just why that problem has increased during the coronavirus period. Now, new research out this week suggests that one in 45 people who get COVID-19 will still be unwell after three months, even if initially they weren't that poorly. And under the age of 50,

it does seem that women are more likely to develop long Covid, so-called, than men. People with it report ongoing symptoms like fatigue, headaches, shortness of breath, brain fog, heart palpitations. In some cases, they can't work. They can barely care for their families. Basically, they can't get off the sofa. Support groups and campaigns to get recognition and treatment for this new and debilitating illness have sprung up, and most of them are led by women. Their efforts are beginning to bear fruit with, among other things, a network of long Covid clinics recently announced for England. Now, we devoted the whole of Friday's edition of Women's Hour to long Covid,

and if you go back on BBC Sounds and hear that programme, you will hear reports from all over the country, from women who are really wrestling with Long Covid at the moment. Here is just a selection from Friday's programme. And the first speaker you'll hear is 76-year-old Gillian, who lives with her dog in Wales. I've had good physical health all my life. I was a cricketer when I was young.

And then in middle age, I did mountaineering and marathon mountain walks and runs. I love the mountains. But as I got older, of course, I started playing golf. And that's quite an energetic sport. I'm very blessed with good health generally this really has knocked me for six And in terms of your lifestyle you're living on your own you've got your Springer Spaniel haven't you with you who I guess perhaps has been going without exercise

for the last couple of months That's a problem I got to the stage where I couldn't walk properly so I took him in the car up the mountain sat on a rock by and just let him scamper around which isn't really marvelous for him but of course there it is but we're getting we're getting a bit better now yes in terms of your um your state of mind Gillian do you mind just

telling us how much this has affected you obviously like everybody who's suffering with this I think we we do get terribly low, particularly when we feel we're getting better. And we wake up one day, suddenly, oh God, I feel a lot better. Thank God it's gone. And we just do a little bit like changing the sheets on the bed or something too much. Flat out again for nearly a week. It's ridiculous. It's now seven months since I contracted this. After a while, it gets you down. And what really frightened me recently was I did suffer with depression in my 20s quite severely, but thank God that went away. But I started getting terribly

irrational thoughts. I was worried about my state of mind to the extent that I really thought about ending it. But of course, my dog saved me in a way. I looked at him, I thought, who's going to look after Garth? Julian, can I just say, it's very distressing to hear anybody say that, first of all. So you have our very best wishes

and this is tough and you're there on your own. I know we've spoken before the program just to tell everybody we had chatted before the before the program today but um you've chosen this wonderful place to live but perhaps not the easiest place to be when you're feeling wretched no i true i've lived here 20 years i come from welsh anyway but uh i i'm not i've got good friends i've got friends in the golf club i've've got good friends. But you can't keep picking the phone up and saying, I feel dreadful. I don't feel well.

So, you know, it's just the case. But I've got over that. Well, got over that really now. But it does have an effect on one's state of mind, this ongoing thing. I know, you know, I've been lucky I didn't end up in hospital. I didn't go on to a ventilator. I've been very, very fortunate in that respect.

But my goodness, everything else, the fatigue, the brain fog, the muscle aches, the shortness of breath, pins and needles, twitching leg muscles. It comes and goes. And now the insomnia. Yeah. Because I've always been a very good sleeper. But no, insomnia now. Now you can't even get sleep. That's really the've always been a very good sleeper. No, insomnia.

No, you can't even get sleep. That is, that's really the final straw for a lot of people, I think. Gillian, thank you for that contribution. Let's bring in Dr Elizabeth Kendrick, who is a GP, Medical Director of Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust. You're overseeing a virtual long COVID clinic. That's been up and running since when? When did that start elizabeth

um our virtual clinic started in august jane but before that we were looking after people in our um community hospital wards but also in our um discharge home to assess team so people who'd gone home from hospital with covid and we built on the experience we had of looking after those people and we set up our virtual clinic um in august and we now take referrals from primary care as well um which is really important because a lot of covid and post-covid clinics actually only take referrals for people who've been in hospital with covid right but you don't you'll talk to you'll help anybody yes yeah okay Yeah. Okay. And it's really interesting. None of our contributors this morning have been hospitalised. But that doesn't

mean they're not suffering the long term impact. Can you, is it possible for you to tell us something about the people you're seeing with long COVID, Elizabeth? Are there, do they have any similarities? Are there more women than men? So we've seen 96 patients in August and September. We haven't seen particularly more women than men. It's been roughly equal. About 67% of those patients are from general practice rather than from hospital. And we're very keen to do some research as well to look at the differences between people

who were looked after in the community and people who were seen in hospital. We find that obviously some people who've been in intensive care have some symptoms related to being in intensive care so they potentially have some problems with their swallowing or their speaking if they've had a tracheostomy and they may also um have some problems and we've also seen problems been people who've lost their sense of taste and sense of smell so they've found it really difficult to eat afterwards and then we but the majority of problems that we've seen are people with um breathing problems ongoing shortness of breath, particularly on exercising. And we've also seen people with the fatigue that you're described,

that the listeners have described and people are describing. And also kind of more cognitive issues, kind of mental health, fog and things, problems with their memory. Some people have described problems with word finding. Right. Yes. Well, that is something that people have mentioned to me actually they're struggling to find the right word um where some people are saying that being overweight over 50 and female all are risk factors for long covid is that something that you've encountered not particularly at the moment um i think that um we've certainly seen um people of the people we've treated, some of them have been more overweight than others.

But it's not we've not we're too early on, I would say at the moment to see a particular trend in the people that we've been seeing. We are obviously collecting all of that data. And as as time goes on we may be able to get a better picture but at the moment there's a whole variety of different people people who were really well beforehand people who had lots of chronic disease beforehand so it's really very varied from person to person and i think also you have to think about the fact that some people with covid have ventilated, so on a ventilator for a very long period of time. And those people who are on a ventilator for a long period of time may have problems after that as well,

just by having muscle weakness. Sure, I was going to say, my limited understanding of this is that anybody who's been on a ventilator will be really quite poorly for quite some time afterwards. It's not an instant cure at all is it that absolutely but we've seen some really great stories of people being able to go home and um being rehabilitated in our community hospitals coming in really unable to even get out of bed and walking out of the community hospital so that is just fantastic to see. Right forgive me if you've already answered this because there were various things going on earlier

in our conversation but you say you're treating them actually if you can quite briefly Elizabeth tell us how you treat people at your long Covid clinic. Yes because of the variety of symptoms that we see we think triage is really important to these people. So actually collecting which symptoms that they have so that we can better direct them to different resources. So some people will go for pulmonary rehabilitation. So they'll go for specific exercises to help with their breathing. Some people would be referred to our chronic fatigue service. So they will be given help with fatigue and pacing and things like that some people will need just generalized physiotherapy because of muscle

weakness and problems with really getting about and so we um some people go for general physiotherapy some people will see our occupational therapists so they may help with people getting back to work some people will see our dieticians particularly if they're struggling with um loss of sense of smell and taste and things and some people um and we also have a fantastic gp working in our service because of the um variety of symptoms that people can present with and so she's really key in triaging the patient. Dr Elizabeth Kendrick, GP and the Medical Director of Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust. And our thanks to the listener, Gillian, who you heard earlier in that item.

And just to emphasise, if this is a subject that really is important to you or to a member of your family, do recommend they listen to Woman's Hour on BBC Sounds from Friday. You can get the full programme there with, of course, additional material in the podcast. So what has Covid done to the club scene? We know it's decimated hospitality. It's not done anything at all for the music scene, for theatre. But how are clubs faring? Sister Bliss is a DJ, a songwriter and one of Britain's most iconic and long-lasting female electronic artists,

perhaps best known as a member of the British electronic band Faithless. They've got a brand new album, it's called All Blessed and it's the first in a decade. Yeah, it's been a little bit of a while. We did put out a remix album of our greatest hits in 2015 called 2.0. It was a kind of, you know, play on it being 20 years. And it did really well, went to number one. And we did quite a bit of touring off the back of that. And it was just amazing how much love there was still for Faithless out there. So it kind of reinvigorated us and made us realize there's definitely an audience for our kind of music which is you know clubby at times but it kind of goes all over the place

genre wise and it's also music with a message you know the lyrics have a real consciousness behind them let's just give our listeners a taste this is a track on the album called I Need Someone. half of the time We'd glue this together if we could rewind Now that track features the poet Caleb Femi. He was named the first Young People's Laureate for London back in 2016. I mean, poetry seems a real inspiration on this album. Yeah, definitely.

And I think that comes from the beginning of Faithless when we met Maxi, who has been our frontman for the last 20 odd years. And he set the bar really high with his lyrical style. And, you know, it isn't exactly rap. You know, he sees himself as a hip-hop head but absolutely his his style is poetic so I felt that we really wanted to honor that on this record and that's where we went looking for collaborations and Caleb Femi I mean he's actually just got a book coming uh which I'm very excited to read called Poor so he's a real polymath amazing artist and with a beautiful voice as well because

the voices are instruments and the way we weave them in and out of the music gives it its you know particular flavor but yeah we managed to work with some really intelligent thoughtful fresh young artists i mean you were actually classically trained even though you're known for for electronic music and you've said that you're concerned that there's not enough emphasis or value placed on music anymore in schools. Yeah, I think it's potluck whether you get music lessons in any part of the curriculum or not. Sometimes it's very much up to the individual school.

It seems to have been sidelined. As we can see, there's a bigger picture here with what's happening with government grants for the arts and what can I say, the lack of respect for not taught musical instruments as a matter of course. As I say, it's very random as to whether the school can even afford instruments or instrument lessons. Budgets have been squeezed. It's not a pretty sight. And therefore you're depriving children of something that brings huge joy, social connection and ultimately is a viable job. There's so many jobs associated with music, even if you don't become a musician, behind the scenes, the technicians, the sound engineers,

the monitor engineers, lighting designers. You know, what can I say? I did do classical music at school, but I never practiced hard enough. So I always knew I wasn't going to be a professional musician. But that was in the classical world, where I think the standard is possibly higher than in house music. But, you know, I was very blessed. I did play a lot of instruments, not any of them particularly well, though. And how did you get into electronic music? I think the passion, did it start at home?

Yeah, it certainly did. My dad was a gadget aficionado and also a very talented jazz musician and he always loved having uh the latest keyboards in the house so I grew up with a piano in the house which again was a huge privilege but he also had some very early synthesizers um one of which you could hear the taxi drivers coming in as soon as you switched it on you put a flexi disc in the front and so all of north london's cabbiesbies would be rippling through the back of it. Strangely, I have no idea what the crazy frequencies in there. So I was very lucky. I had instruments to muck about on at home. And then I was a child of the 80s and 80s electronic music somehow spoke to me.

Anything that sounds like it comes from another world in the future, that's what floats my boat. Well, did you find it challenging, though, as your boat was being floated? Because you've mentioned yourself many times, I think, electronic music, DJing. You've said they're very male-dominating industries. Do you think that's affected your career? I mean, you've been phenomenally successful.

Would you say it's affected how you're perceived in the industry? Possibly. I do know for a fact that I certainly earned less than certain male counterparts in the DJ world, even when I had globally successful records riding high in the charts. You don't really get to know these things. You know, there's an opacity, isn't there, about wages and earnings, as people already know within the BBC, for example, in lots of different environments,

but particularly in the world of show business, people keep that kind of information quite close to their chest. But, you know, in the main, I feel I've had to work, you know, twice as hard to be recognised, maybe. You know, particularly if I'm travelling the clubs up and down, as I used to be recognized maybe um you know particularly if i'm traveling the clubs up and down as i used to right the way through the 90s and people go oh she can really mix as if they they were sort of surprised that i had good dj technique so i think there was definitely a bit of sexism there but i think on a personal level i've been really lucky i think

people have been very respectful and you could also say I did come through in a time where there were very few female DJs and producers and I think the more visible we are the more it encourages the next generation and now I do know that the industry is also taking a long hard look at itself well it was up until Covid you know about representation and festival lineups being very male dominated and there's been a lot more forums to talk about that now but you know we're an industry of freelancers often and that's where I think the division comes and the weakness if we can speak together with one voice we can lobby for our industry and for each other and for different issues of diversity and so on.

I just wanted to say quickly because you have been so creative throughout your career you say you've had to work double as hard but 15 million albums worldwide songwriter DJ podcaster your music has been used on films and and video games but I think it's interesting you you say you feel the pressure of expectation on the album this new one do you doubt yourself? Oh all the time I mean you know to the outside world it looks like a rip-roaring success any which way but um it comes with a lot of personal struggle and maybe that is part of the artistic mindset is it ever good enough is anybody listening is anybody out there um and for me a lot of the affirmation comes from performance. And of course, we've been unable to do that.

This is the first time in 20 years I've put out a record and I haven't performed. I lost every single gig over the summer and into the new year. It's very hard to predict whether we'll ever tour again at this rate. So not to be negative about it, but yeah, absolutely. The loudest critics inside my own head. But performance is where it makes sense. That's Sister Bliss. Now, you probably don't need reminding that the US presidential elections are coming up.

They're on November the 3rd. You might have heard the debate or some of the debate, the last one, which was on Thursday in Nashville. Now, at the moment, Joe Biden is still ahead in the polls, but it's worth reminding everybody, of course, that Hillary Clinton was also ahead in the polls at the same stage or more or less of the last presidential election campaign. Before that debate on Thursday, I talked on Woman's Hour to Melissa Milewski, a lecturer in American history at the University of Sussex, and to Michelle Crestfield, who also lectures in the same subject at the University of Birmingham. We know that the majority of white women turned out to vote for Donald Trump. So what does Michelle think President Trump has done for women in the last four years? I think it depends on what side you're coming to the question from. If you are a woman who leans conservative, then you might point to the rollback of provisions

for Planned Parenthood as a benefit. Planned Parenthood provides abortion services, but other reproductive health access for women in the United States. You might look at his kind of rhetoric about the kind of primacy of families, his work on the employment rate has been down during his presidency. And so thinking about the ways in which that benefits women. Another thing has to do with maternity care. So the U.S. is one of the nations that does not provide a paid maternity care. And he did introduce a bill that was not passed by the House because that money would have come out of women's Social Security. But if you're coming at it from the left, you see kind of rhetoric that is demeaning to women. You see that same rollback of Planned Parenthood, a potential challenge to Roe v. Wade

on the horizon. And so, yeah, it really depends on where you're coming from. Lots of things happening with women. But if it's beneficial or if it's harmful, it really is the question. Well, I mean, it does depend completely, of course, on where you're coming from. But I guess what I really was trying to was trying to ask Melissa was those women, those white women, the majority of whom chose to put their faith in Donald Trump. So it's just interesting to know whether they feel they've had their money's worth, frankly. Well, I would add to what Michelle said is that white women really played a pivotal role, as you're saying, in boosting Trump into the presidency. And it was because they supported him at such high levels in many ways that he won.

And I think that the pandemic, the unemployment rate, and all of these different factors, which are in many ways hitting women the hardest in America, when children are home from school and many children are still not in school in America, it's oftentimes women who are facing that higher burden of work, juggling a job and children. And I think that this is part of the reason why the polls are saying that white women are increasingly moving away from supporting Trump. I just recently saw a poll that in some of the battleground states, white women are supporting Biden by 23 points over Trump, which is a really astonishing statistic, considering he won many of those women. So I think another thing that I'm seeing and hearing from white women is that they voted for Trump, perhaps they're conservative, religious, but they haven't been that impressed with how he's comported himself in office. They think his behavior hasn't been a very good example for their children. And so I think many of them are kind of fed up with the

drama, fed up with having how the virus is handled and with the way that the economy is going in America. Right. But there is no doubt, Michelle, that people who might be supporting Joe Biden, they can't be complacent, can they? Because as I said, right at the start, the polls were saying very similar things about Hillary Clinton at this stage in the game four years ago. That's absolutely right. I think it's probably going to be a nail biter. I think the likelihood that we wake up on 4 November and we know who the president is, is very, very not likely to be the outcome. I think that, you know, those who are committed to Biden, you're seeing a huge swell and people doing trying to do their vote, their mail in ballots right now. That's going to be a really huge thing because, you know,

it changed in the night of the 2016 election. It really seemed like Hillary had it. And then as the night went on, the kind of projections shifted and shifted and shifted. And so this will be close, I would imagine. I was really interested to discover, Michelle, that you went to Notre Dame, which is a school where Amy Coney Barrett taught. Now, she is the socially conservative Catholic appointee nominee for the Supreme Court. And she, to put it mildly, is a well, a somewhat divisive figure. Yes, that's absolutely right. So she has been a member of organizations that are not only kind of anti-abortion, but really take a very traditional stance towards marriage and the family. She has signed petitions, particularly against Roe v. Wade, which kind of raises questions about how

she would perform as justice. She's really kind of resistant answering that kind of outright in her nomination hearing, which in a way is not unlike other nominees who've also tried to avoid leaking their personal feelings. But she's quite divisive and raises a lot of anxiety for people who are committed to wrong. Right. Yes, this is the legislation that permits abortion in the United States, of course. And Melissa, the important thing about Amy Coney Barrett is that she could be on the Supreme Court if President Donald Trump does dispute the result of the election. What might that mean? So I think that this could be really significant.

And during the hearings, the several senators really pressed her on this and asked if she would be willing to recuse herself from any Supreme Court decision that deals with the election. And she said that she would consult her colleagues, she would look at precedent, but she was not willing to say one way or the other. And I think that it is quite likely that there will be a Supreme Court case that rises out of this election. So you, like Michelle, you don't believe that we'll necessarily know the result come the morning of the 4th of November? I think that we may, but I do think that Trump is going to fight for the presidency if things lose. And I think there might be a battle in the Supreme Court. And I think many Americans are also anticipating that.

Right. We do know that Donald Trump has had a profound effect on millions of people in America in various ways. He has politicized huge, huge swathes of the population one way or maybe the other. Do you think, Michelle, that there is likely to be a higher turnout of women in the election? I think so. Absolutely. I think that Hillary is not the same candidate that Biden was for a number of reasons. And I think that people, particularly on the left, are in a different position where they've seen a Trump presidency. And so now they have something to really be voting against. I think in 2016, as much as people kind of catastrophize what it could be,

he was still an unknown factor in terms of his presidency. So I think we're going to see unprecedented numbers of turnout. I think this is going to be one for the books. Really? And do you think that women of colour will vote like they never have before, Michelle? I think what's true of women of colour, particularly black women, they've always come through. If you think about some of these big, particularly in the midterms, they've turned out in numbers. I think that for them, though they've had some kind of many examples, especially during the summer with these galvanizing issues through which if anyone had been on the fence, that this is the thing to push them over. I think it's a matter of will voting be accessible in a way that is, you know,

legal, that allows people to kind of exercise their rights in a way that is comfortable for them. But I think that they're really going to turn out. Michelle Cressfield and Melissa Milewski, who both lecture in American history. Katja Adler presented Women's Hour this week and spoke to Louise Casey, dubbed the homelessness czar, who championed the everyone in policy to get rough sleepers off the streets and into temporary accommodation at the height of the pandemic. And to Petra Salva, the head of the rough sleepers unit at the charity St Mungo's. Just how big an issue is rough sleeping for women? The fact is that women who sleep on the streets are so much more at risk and live so much more dangerous and difficult lives than any others. So it's not just the stigma

and the shame that women feel, but the mental health issues are significantly more prevalent in women than in men. And I think the worrying thing for me around rough sleeping and women that are forced to sleep rough is that it is going up. It's always a potentially could be seen as a small part of the overall population. So it's bumped along at sort of 14, 15% over many years. But in the last few years, that number is going up and it's going up quite significantly in london just in the last year women rough sleepers has gone up by 25 percent year on year between 2019 and 2020 so it's more like 1700 now and that actually is up by 54 percent i.e it's doubled in the last couple of years. So that's one thing that worries me.

And then there's a whole different but equally important issue that is running around women and children, really, and specifically the now extraordinary high levels of numbers that we've got of kids that are growing up in temporary accommodation, which sounds OK to a lot of people. Temporary accommodation makes you think that that's all right it is so not all right and those numbers are huge imagine living in lockdown you and your children all in a room the size of a car parking space in a supermarket with you're lucky it's like a microwave or a few rings um to food. I can't impress upon you how difficult that is, particularly for women and children in temporary accommodation, which is not just in London, but nationwide. We'll be getting to more of those details in just a moment. But Petra,

Louise made a number of distinctions there. But one big one, of course, was when we speak about homelessness for women, it's one aspect is sleeping on the streets and the other those without a steady home, a permanent home above their heads. How much of both of these numbers increasing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, would you say? Well, I mean, one of the greatest challenges we have is understanding the extent of the rough sleeping population amongst women. Because as Louise said, the numbers over the last 10 years have risen. The problem is, is that with the data set that we have, we know that women are grossly underrepresented because of the way we collect that data.

So whilst women are over-represented under statutory homelessness figures, the pyramid comes really down once they hit the street. And once women sleep rough, those figures reduce dramatically. And they reduce because women are less visible and they're less visible because there is a they have a greater reliance on informal arrangements. So they are more likely to be hidden homeless. And the reason for that is because of the women hide. They think safety first, you know, rough sleeping is harmful for everyone. And as Louise said, but it's incredibly, incredibly dangerous activity, but it's even more dangerous for everyone. And as Louise said, but it's incredibly, incredibly dangerous activity, but it's even more dangerous for women. So women move by night, they dress like men, they avoid services, because services tend to be overrepresented, you know, sort of geared more to

men, and women are more at risk of violence and sexual abuse. So the figures are a gross underestimate. And so we find, you know, our teams from St Mungo's are out there day in, day night. And we find that women are much more hidden and as a result, in much more precarious, dangerous situations. I mean, our own data revealed that from the residents that we have in our current accommodation, about 33% of those said that domestic abuse contributed directly to them becoming homeless. So I think one of the real problems is we don't know the extent of the problem and we need to get better at understanding the extent of the problem. And Louise, you do speak about that wider extent of the problem and we need to get better at understanding the extent of the problem. Louise, you do speak about that wider extent of the problem very often, not just the amount of women and women with children in need of accommodation, but also food.

You say that especially coming into the winter months now, it's a question of will these women and children have enough food to eat? I think COVID, the sort of 80%, two thirds around income, just won't cut it for some of these families. And you think of a lone mum who's trying to keep the show on the road, as it were, throughout these last few months, will now suffer yet another cut to her income. And, you know, that's why I think it's one of the reasons we've seen the rise in people, women and families approaching local authorities as homeless and why I think we need to have a look at this,

not just in terms of the government, what they do with their spending review and how we get through the next six, 12 months. But actually, I think we all need to think about, and I was talking to colleagues in London local authorities yesterday, about are we ready to make sure that every sort of food hub or food bank has what it needs? Like food banks used to be things that probably listeners to this programme would, when they go shopping, they make a donation of something, you know,

at the end of the shop to the food bank, or they they give regularly but actually we need to be much more proactive now and make sure that families that have very little or are really suffering actually all of those really relief services have got what they need to get through not just to christmas but actually christmas and beyond i think we need to be planning for six months of people in need. And we still operate vouchers. So many people that use food banks actually have to go somewhere else first physically, they have to go to a citizen advice, they have to go to their GP, they have to go up the social to talk to social workers, then they get a voucher, which enables them to get food from the food bank. And I think some of these things need to be looked at. And, you know, over and over again, women are disproportionately affected by poverty. Women are disproportionately affected by having to be the people that keep families together.

And it's women that the number is rising in terms of what I would call statutory homeless, i.e. that you are actually accepted as homeless by a local authority and they put something over your head. At the moment, in many areas in London, we're sticking those families into converted office blocks with rooms the size of car parking spaces for all of their families. So it was pretty bad before Covid. Covid has added a whole layer to this, which we just need to be prepared for. And we just need to get on with it and get on with it now. Louise Casey and Petra Salva talking to Katja Adler. Now Victoria Wood is without a doubt my comedy heroine. I absolutely loved the woman and enjoyed everything she did. Of course she died unexpectedly to those of us who obviously didn't know what was going on in 2016.

Now with access to letters and interviews with friends and family, Jasper Rees has written a huge book. Let's do it. The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood. I'm just going to, well, attempt to, no, I won't even attempt to imitate her. But I loved Kitty, the very judgmental lady who Victoria Wood wrote. And here's a quote from Kitty. I've had my share of gynaecological jip. I still can't polka without wincing, but we're spunky and cheedle. We totter on.

Don't we just? Here's Jasper Rees. I was given access to her archive, which is boxes and boxes and boxes, which kept on arriving in my house, just full of her scripts and notebooks, etc. And audio tapes with her sort of talking very intimately, her audio diary that she kept at the time at Dinner Ladies. And then I gained access to correspondence when I started interviewing her friends and family.

And I didn't know how long it was going to be, and it started to grow and grow and grow the more I found out. And I actually thought that Victoria Wood is someone who is so important in the cultural landscape of post-war Britain that she merited a big book. Let's enjoy a bit of her genius. This is from Victoria Wood as seen on TV. This is the sketch Service Wash.

I can remember when pants were pants. You wore them for 20 years, then you cut them down for pants scrubs. Or quilts. We used to make lovely quilts out of Selenese bloomers. Every gusset a memory. Not bras, though, they won't lie flat, you see. We didn't wear bras till after the war round here. We stayed in and polished the lino.

We weren't having hysterectomies every two minutes, either, like the girls these days. If something went wrong down below, you kept your gob shut and turned up the wireless. Right, I think it's worth saying, if you are my age, so I'm 56, when this woman appeared on television, the relief that I felt, that here was someone who I thought was a bit like me. We'd been fed this diet of Mike Yarwood, Morecambe and Wise, Dick Emery. People we were told were funny. I didn't find them that funny.

I did pounce upon the genius of Victoria Wood. So, Jasper, what is her genius? Well, you can hear in that wonderful clip that, I mean, she's sort of taking the mickey out of northerness there while having a great affection for it. But it's the linguistic specificness. She had a vast vocabulary, and she loved making jokes about the past.

So, you know, she did loads of jokes about the war. I love this one. It was quite an old play, and I sat next to the rear gunner. I mean, that's a fantastic gag. She talked about sex a lot. I mean, the only joke she ever wrote with her husband, Geoffrey Durham, was she loved so much she kept on doing it for 25 years.

My boyfriend had a sex manual, but he was dyslexic. I was lying there and he was looking for my vinegar. I mean, it's an absolute zinger. And the first joke that she ever told that made her realise, actually, I now know how to do it was in a show in Shepherd's Bush at the Bush Theatre. It was called In At The Death. And she, at the very last minute,

wrote this sketch called Sex for Her and Julie Walters, who she met on that show. And it's all about Julie. Julie plays a character who's not quite sure whether she's pregnant or not. And this woman comes in and says, where are you in the menstrual cycle? And Julie says, Taurus.

And there was a kind of, you know, whoosh of laughter every night. And they both absolutely loved doing that. But that is her first ever joke. She's doing a joke about menstruation. Yes. I mean, nobody mentioned periods. Never mind didn't joke about periods. We didn't officially know they existed, despite the fact that we were having them. I'll give that one in case you didn't know, Jasper.

It's ladies that have periods. Just we know she's appeared on Desert Island Discs twice, actually, Victoria Wood. I think we know that her childhood was fundamentally an isolated, basically unhappy one. Fair? Yes, it was a lonely childhood. She was the youngest of four. Her mother resumed her own education when Victoria went to Berry Grammar School at the age of 11 and they lived on a very lonely house on a hill.

Which the mother had chosen, I think, quite deliberately. Yes, she was one of the daughters, described her as a bit sociopathic. In fact, no, as Victoria said to me, she couldn't really be bothered with neighbours and, you know, chatting over the garden fence. And by moving up onto that former children's holiday home, looking down on the Rossendale Valley, she didn't have any neighbours. She had a golf course and the Moors.

And that suited her fine. And that suited her fine, but did it suit Victoria? No, it didn't. But, of course, without that childhood where she just spent years sitting in her den on her own with her piano and her television and her books and lots of sugar, that was the crucible in which Victoria was formed. There was comedy, but there was also, I thought, Housewife 49 was one of those unforgettable programmes. Just for anybody who missed out on that, explain her role in that. Well, she played Nella Last, who was a housewife in the war in Baron Furness.

And she wrote... She was the most prolific contributor to the mass observation diaries that were set up just before the war. And she wrote about ordinary life and her marriage and about what it was like to live through the war and the Blitz in Barrow. And Victoria, all of the elements in this book, Victoria was compelled by.

She had actually read it in the early 80s and it wasn't until actually until after her mother died and her marriage had broken up that it sort of, she felt that she wanted to move on to something else and she wanted to stop doing comedy. She said to the producers, I want to write about a marriage. But Nella also reminded her of her mother because her mother had been this person who, in another life, in another later generation, would have been able to have an education and go on to university

and, you know, sort of profit by her huge native intelligence. And, yes, I think she, you know, and also, as I say, she wanted to do something that wasn't just funny. She was absolutely thrilled when she won a Best Actress BAFTA for that. Yeah, I thought it was one of the best things that she's ever done and one of the best things I've ever seen on television, to be honest with you. I think I'm making it clear now I am a massive fan of Victoria Wood.

The Channel Tunnel, the Channel Tunnel, the Channel Swimmer sketch, which a lot of people will recall, that also, essentially, reading your book, I became aware that it's about her relationship with her mother or the lack of connection between the two of them. I mean, for anyone who doesn't, just describe that sketch. She never said that. And indeed, her parents apparently, according to one of her sisters, Penelope,

her older sister said they absolutely loved the sketch. It was one of their favourites. But whether they could actually see that she was portraying her childhood, you know, it's Chrissie, this very gawky and shy teenage girl who is always wearing her swimming cap, is planning to swim the channel. And she goes off to swim the channel,

dives into the water, and then they cut back to the parents and the interviewer off camera says are you are you going to go and watch her in the support boat and say oh no we're going to catch a show up in town and it's a uh and they've also forgotten that they've got any other children so victoria was acknowledging that she wasn't the only one that was neglected um and it's about it's called swim the channel but you have to assume at the end of it that she's actually sunk in the middle of the channel and she has died. And it's about being dropped by your parents.

It's pretty brutal. It's Strindberg. No, it really is. And the people who worked with her, I'm sure you've spoken to all of them. It's interesting hearing what they say. She clearly, because she is a genius, was a genius, wasn't that easy to work with. Reasonable? No, because, no, that's true.

But they, yeah, I mean, I spoke to Julie Walters and Duncan Preston and Celia Imrie and they all told me versions of the same story of what it was like to do As Seen on TV with Victoria and Dinner Ladies and all the other things they did with her. They absolutely venerate her and they accept that she made a huge difference to their lives and their careers. But in the rehearsal room and the recording studio, she was the boss.

And, you know, later on, when they did Acorn Antiques the musical on stage, which was really their last hurrah as a gang, she was there invigilating to make sure that what she'd written came out as she had written it. You asked me earlier about why she was funny and I wanted to talk about her love of language and there's so many words that Victoria used often, macaroon obviously and theodolite

etc all these wonderful funny words but she loved the word raffia and she could deploy it differently so in Pat and Margaret which was another drama about maternal neglect it's about two women looking for their mother that abandoned them there's this great line from

Thora Heard they didn't have dyslexia in those days you sat at the back with Raffia which is funny but it's as cruel as anything in Evelyn War but then Raffia turned up again in and I've got to read this out because I've got to get it absolutely right in Dinner Ladies

his auntie dot from Cockermouth they had a Raffia drinks coaster she thought it was a high fibre biscuit she had to be held back from moving down the table and buttering two more now that is a line that obviously only Victoria could have written. But if you untune one string in that heart-worn disc, you cannot take a word out of that.

Buttering is perfect. It's a remarkable gift for the language. I have to say that the very end of your book broke my heart. Victoria actually died with her elder sister, with her actually. And you write here, sorry, I had a quarter to seven on the morning of Wednesday, the 20th of April, 2016. The greatest entertainer of the television age took her last breath. And that, you believe that? That is what she should be thought of as?

I do believe that. Funnily enough, there's an all-star cast reading the audiobook and I was very eager for Anne Reid to read that last chapter because I thought she'd be the right voice for it. She rang up and she said, I'm not sure that I should read that line because people are going to say, what about Eric Morecambe? And I said, well, Anne, it's my opinion and I can back it up.

It's my opinion, too, by the way. Jasper Rees, who is the author of the authorised biography of Victoria Wood, it's called Let's Do It and it's out now. Siobhan said, I really enjoyed that interview. One of my regrets is seeing Victoria Wood sitting outside the South Bank. I really wish now that I'd gone over and just told her how great she is um yeah siobhan thank you for that i suspect many people would share that sentiment um it was really shocking to me when i heard that she died celebrity deaths let's be honest don't always touch us but um that one really got to me and i was um genuinely genuinely made upset by it

and I know I'm not alone so thank you for that. You can email us of course whenever you like via the website bbc.co.uk slash womanshour or we're available omnipresently on social media at bbc womanshour. Now let's finish

this Saturday afternoon with the poor Claire's of Arundel in Sussex who've made an album called Light for the World. It's described as traditional plain chant but with added beats. I spoke this week to sisters Leo and Aylred from their convent founded back in 1886. At the moment we are 23 sisters ranging in age from late 40s to the early 90s. Quite a collection of us, really. And we are also from different countries, too. We have sisters from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, France, Sri Lanka, and of course, Scotland, England and Ireland.

Right. English ones. OK, good. Sister Elra, can you be honest? Can you all sing? No. I mean, everybody can have a bash, but not everybody can sing in perfect tune. No.

I mean, we work at it. Yes. We work at it. Yeah, I imagine you do. How often, Sister Elra, do you practice? We have a practice once a week for 45 minutes. Yeah, well, forgive me, it doesn't sound a tremendous amount of practice. Well, we practiced a lot for the CD, a lot more than that.

Oh, OK. But normally we go over things just to make sure of things. Sometimes we learn new stuff, but often it's just to go through what we'll need for the following week and to make sure everybody's okay with it and everybody knows it. I mean, it's part of our life. We don't do it like a choir might do it. We just do it as part of our normal living. Yes, forgive me.

I mean, you would actually plain chant during a service, would you, every day? We don't sing much plain chant. Normally we sing psalms to English settings and music, modern music, contemporary music. But for the CD, James and Juliet wanted plain chant, which of course we do sing sometimes, but they wanted plain chant with a modern backing to it. We need to hear this, really really and I think this is something that our audience, well, they're as beleaguered as everybody else at the moment.

In the outside world, I have to tell you, sisters, it's not much fun at the moment. We do know that. No, I know you do. Let's just hear a little bit of your album. This is Earthly Kingdoms. Earthly Kingdoms. I thought that was absolutely beautiful. That really is transporting. Sister Leo, how did you decide which tracks to put on the album?

Well, originally James and Juliet brought a selection. Yeah, who are James and Juliet? So James and Juliet are the music producers, James Morgan and Juliet Pochin. And it was their idea. It was James's idea to do this CD. He'd been looking for a community that would work with him on this. So they came with their ideas and we listened and then suggested some from ourselves as well,

because we are followers of St Francis and St Clare. And for us, some of their writings are beautiful. And we thought it would be good to put some of the quotations from St Francis and St Clare to music. I think there's three or four from St Francis and St Clare that we think has never been put to music, certainly not in English before. And we're very very happy

with with what they produced and gave our all to it um because it just speaks to us we didn't do this lightly um we had quite a few community discussions because it's a very community very much community effort i was going to ask about that because this is a very public facing bit of work you've done here was there some resistance within the convent cicely i wouldn't say resistance more hesitation because it's something that we you know would never have thought to do and then having something put in front of you saying well this could be a possibility so we explored it um and they they really supported us in in answering questions and making suggestions so

that we could come to the decision that the whole community was behind this. You know we all know that everybody's having a challenging time at the moment. Can I just ask Sister Elred how much has Covid impacted on your way of life if at all? It hasn't directly impacted on us very much because we live a structured life within the house, times of prayer, times of work, times of spent together. But it's impacted on us hugely in knowing how it's impacted on the people for whom we live our life. We don't live this life for ourselves.

We live it for everybody, people we don't know, people we do know. We believe that our life of prayer is a help to them. And we've known something of what people have been suffering in this time. We read the news, we get the Global Guardian, we hear the BBC News. So we've got some idea of the terrible suffering that people all over the world have been experiencing and the grief and the loneliness. So that's impacted on us hugely, but you would say indirectly. Yes, I mean, that's very honest of you. But you know, you're right. It is the loneliness.

I think it's the isolation that people are feeling at the moment. And of course, Sister Leo, that is something that you don't have. You're all together in your community. Yes, we are. We're a community of sisters that pray, work and recreate together every day. As Sister Ered said, you know, we have a structure and we follow that structure. And we really try to be sisters to each other because that was so important for St. Clair and for St. Francis. Yes. Does that mean, sorry, you have a structure that you stick to seven days a week every single day of the year? That's right. Though, you know, we can have, we might make an alteration on feast days or if there's big celebrations going on, like we have a sort of a free day on a bank holiday or Christmas and Easter.

There's obviously slight changes depending on the time of the year, but each day has its structure. Yes. Do you think that because so many people have been tested over the last six months or so, that you might have an interest in people who think, well, you know what, perhaps the spiritual life is for me. Perhaps this artificial, superficial, commercialised existence is rubbish, basically. I'd be better off with the poor clairs of Arundel. Are you expecting more people to enquire, Sister Leo? I don't think so.

People coming to us is not a lot. We have few and far between, really, because of our life. You have to have a call from God from this. You know, on normal times, we have a guest house and people come and spend time and join us in chapel for our prayer. And that does seem to feed a lot of people just coming for some space and some silence and we're sad really sad that we're not able to do that at the moment because we know what the people that do come to us share with us what it's meant to have this chance to have some space and have some silence so i'm not sure it would mean that we would get

more people coming as receiving the vocation to come and join us. But certainly, I think people are longing for the chance to get back to a place where they can have space and recollect themselves and time to think. That was Sisters Leo and Aelred from the Poor Clares of Arundel. I think we all needed that. Join me Monday morning just after 10 o'clock, and have a reasonable rest of the weekend. Before you go, I'm Miles, the producer of a brand new podcast for Radio 4 called Tricky.

This is how it works. Four people from across the UK meet up and without a presenter breathing down their necks talk about issues they really care about. Sex work is quite complicated for a lot of people and it's okay to be against it but not to you know shame someone because of their profession. Across the series we'll hear anger, shock and even the odd laugh. Another thing that really gets to me is when people say, I know what we need to do.

I know what black people... Shut up. You don't, like, that's the thing. That's not how it works. Nobody knows. If you knew, you would have done it. Discover more conversations like this by searching Tricky 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.