Woman's Hour - Tilda Swinton, Homelessness, Gwenda's Garage Musical, Romance Scams

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

Tilda Swinton is one of the UK’s most singular and celebrated performers. Over four decades she has delivered unforgettable and varied screen performances, notably Orlando, The Chronicles of Narnia, Michael Clayton and Asteroid City and collaborated with artists and filmmakers. She joins Anita Rani to talk about a new exhibition in Amsterdam celebrating her work and the enduring relationships that have inspired her.According to the latest data, homelessness is rising. Over 130,000 households were in temporary accommodation in June, up 7.6% from last year. Charities warn that women are underrepresented in the data, as they often face different challenges to men. The Women’s Rough Sleeping Census, now in its fourth year, aims to address this. Rebecca Goshawk, Director of Business Development at Solace Women's Aid, joins Anita to discuss it. Named after pioneering racing driver Gwenda Stewart, Gwenda’s Garage was a real place: where three female mechanics defied the odds by setting up their own garage in Sheffield in the 1980s. Their inspiring story is now a musical on stage in Sheffield which is based on these true events, of women fighting everyday sexism, homophobia and Section 28. Anita is joined by Roz Wollen, one of the co-founders of the original Gwenda’s Garage and Val Regan, the production’s composer and musical director.The FCA has called on banks and payment firms to bring in stricter controls protecting customers from romance fraud after a study showed a number of missed “red flags” that led to people losing huge sums of money to people creating fake online profiles. They found that women tended to sustain these relationships for longer which could mean a bigger scam. Anita speaks to Beth Harris, Head of Financial Crime at the Financial Conduct Authority to ask how we can be aware of these scams and avoid them, and what banks should be doing to assist.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Corinna Jones

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. A new season of Love Me is here. Real stories of real, complicated relationships. It's not even like a gender. I mean, it's wrapped up in gender, but it's just a really deep self-hate. I think I cried almost every day. I just stole myself on the floor. It's coming on really straight.

It's like he's trying to date you all of a sudden. Yeah. And I do look like. my mother. Love me. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Nula McGovern and you're listening to The Woman's Hour podcast. While you're here, I wanted to let you know about the Woman's Hour Guide to Life, your toolkit for the juggle, the struggle and everything in between. Life is complicated and often incredibly busy. So whether you're fixing a problem at one of life's crossroads or just looking to shake things up

a bit, this is the guide you'll need to help you survive and even thrive. Each episode brings together world-class experts with women sharing their honest, powerful stories, offering real insight and also practical tips that really work. From work and career to relationships and family issues, the focus is on helping you grow, also adapt and overcome life's curve walls. It's your companion, your life coach, it's your Woman's Hour Guide to Life. Join us only on BBC Sounds, but now back to today's Woman's Hour. Good morning and welcome to the program. The red carpet has been rolled out for cinematic royalty. I would describe my guest as a living and breathing work of art. The one and only Tilda Swinton is here to tell us about a new exhibition

in Amsterdam celebrating her life's work. As the temperature drops, we'll be turning our attention homelessness and finding out about the reality for women sleeping rough? How do you break the spell of a romance scam, which last year cost victims £106 million and... In the 80s, a group of women came together to set up a lesbian-run car repair workshop in Sheffield, dismantling the patriarchy one spark plug at a time. The story of Gwenda's garage has been turned

into a musical. And it's of sisterhood and community and the power of women coming together to do things on their own, especially when they've been told they can't. Can you relate? Have you felt the power of the sisterhood? Have you got together with other women and set up a business? Or maybe you meet up and go on holiday together? Possibly a book club. Do you do cultural activities or simply hit the pub? What is the power of that female group and bond and how did it change your life? Get in touch with me this morning in the usual way. The text number is 84844. You can email me via our website or WhatsApp the program.

It's 0300-100-444. And if you'd like to follow us on social media, it is at BBC Woman's Hour. But to my first guest. She's one of Britain's most singular and celebrated performers. Tilda Swinton's career has spanned four decades, and she's delivered unforgettable screen performances in Orlando. We need to talk about Kevin,

The Chronicles of Narnia series, Michael Clayton, the Grand Budapest Hotel, the souvenir, the list goes on. But she's here today to talk about a new exhibition in Amsterdam. Tilda Swinton, ongoing, that celebrates her life's work, not just as a solo career, but as a web of relationships with filmmakers like Derek Jarman, Joanna Hogg, Jim Jarmouche, and others built on trust, curiosity and a shared imagination. Tilda, welcome to Woman's Hour.

Thank you, Anita. I'm so thrilled to be here with you. How are you this morning? I'm really happy. I'm psyched to be sitting in this room. It's a hallowed room for me. I normally listen to you in my car in the Highlands and it's kind of trippy to be here with you. Oh, it's trippy to have you here in the best possible way. So five years in the making this exhibition, they've been asking you for five years. They asked me five years ago and I quite quickly said no because I had a failure of imagination. The Eye Museum, for those who don't know, is an extraordinary cinema museum in Amsterdam. And I'd been there for years seeing exhibitions devoted to my, you know, most hallowed filmmakers, Bellatar, all sorts of extraordinary people. And I couldn't imagine what an exhibition devoted to my work would be, except something rather boring and retrospective and dead. I couldn't help thinking about old clips of old films and old posters and old photographs and old costumes.

I couldn't think of anything that would interest me. and then slowly, well, they kept very patiently asking me again, and I kept updating the software. And one day I asked myself, okay, so what would be useful? How could a show dedicated to your 40 years of work be useful? And I started to reflect on what I might be able to offer, particularly younger generations.

And the thing that I feel I kind of stand for is fellowship. I've worked for 40 years now in long, term relationships with not only a handful, but quite a lot of people who want to work in this way. Of course, I started with Derek Jarman in the 80s and started to work in a collective way. And when he died of AIDS in 94, I was really stuck. I thought, well, that's over. I can't work in film anymore because nobody else is going to want to work in this way. And the miracle is I've found other families. And for 40 years, I've gone on working. So, I thought of this title.

I thought of ongoing. I also thought what a good word it is to have on posters around cities around the world. Yes. But publicising this show. A good mission statement as well. Yeah, we need to remember that ongoing is ahead of us. You know, it's not, or rather it's with us. We talk so often we're absorbing all the time ideas of endings, but ongoing is the thing.

I do want to talk about some of your working relationships and Derek, But first, tell us about the exhibition. What can people see? What they'll see, and they may, many of them who might have wanted some rather sort of glamorous finished pizzazz, are going to be disappointed. Because really what I wanted to look at was the process of making work, how simple it is. And it's like a kitchen in a way. I asked the museum, and for them to say yes to this was not nothing. I said, I don't want there to be anything finished.

I want it all to be new work. And so I've commissioned eight of my collaborators to make new work. There's a new film that I made with Apechatpongwyr, et cetera, my friend Joe from Thailand, a new piece of work with Joanna Hogg, which in fact is an installation of my first flat in London. There's a new set of portraits with Tim Walker and a new performance with Olivier Sayyar, who I do performances around costume with.

And even Derek Jarman, who's the only one, of course, who's very sadly no longer with us. I've even found new work from him. The first two screens of the exhibition carry images that no one's ever seen before at Dungeoness, taken from Dungeoness, 1986, super eight footage of me playing around in the pebbles and in a bluebell wood. How magic. Had you always had those? It was in the archive. My friend James Mackay, who worked with Derek and all of us, producer, he holds the archive.

We just went scrabbling around. It's like looking in a bottom drawer and we found these unused bits. And I'm so grateful that they exist because they're as fresh as a day. Oh, incredible. What's it like watching yourself back? It's quite shocking because I look so like my children. Who are now, my son pointed out to me when he came to the opening of the show, you're younger than I am now.

And that was quite an amazing thing. And what was it like stepping back into a recreation of your first flat, the flat that you moved out of on the Kings Road when you had your twins? Yes. Well, I was in that flat from when I went to London first in 1983 to when I had my twins and left in 1998. So I think of it as a chrysalis because when I first moved into that flat and I think most people will be able to relate to this, there's a place and it might be a flat, it might be a room in a house, it might be a squat, it might be anywhere, a student accommodation. It's a place where you entered feeling very formless and vague about your future,

but full of all sorts of passions and dreams, and you find your working practice during the time you live there. And that's what that place represents for me. And we literally recreated this flat. And when I first walked into it when it was complete, because one of the amazing things about those days is we didn't take photographs of our flats. Nobody's got photographs of their flats

unless they were taking a photograph of a cat and a sort of a little bit of a skirting board around the back the back. But I had no photographs at all of that flat and it was all recreated from memory and when I stepped into it just before the show opened we had this agreement Joanna and I that I was producing all these details

but I wasn't going to actually be in it until just before it opened. It was literally like walking into the flat. Wow. Yeah. And I wonder if that sort of feeling came back of being somewhere that really ignited your creativity. It really did.

The installation, such as it is, also involves me. It has a soundscape of stories that I'm whispering from each of the doorways of the different rooms, stories of what it was like to live in that flat and what it was like to be that age, what it was like to feel unformed in this way. And the interesting thing is that the next door element of the exhibition is the Derek Jarman section.

And so the soundtrack of The Last of England is coming over the walls of the installation. So that's when I shot that material with Derek, I would go to sleep that night in that flat. So it's completely appropriate. How do you choose who to collaborate with? Well, there is a longer list than the list involved in this iteration of the show. And I'm hoping the show is going to travel the world.

And I'm hoping there are other people who couldn't be involved this time because they were busy making pieces of work. And they've said they want to be involved in other ones. But, you know, the title of the show is ongoing. It is about ongoing relationships. You know, I have this vision in my mind of the relationship being the most important thing. That's the trunk of the tree. And then the conversation you're having at the time is the branch.

And the film or the book or the performance or whatever it is, it's just the leaf. It's not that important. And it seems to me that's a relatively unusual approach. We're always encouraged, particularly young artists, are encouraged to think of the product. How are you going to produce this thing? What's it going to be when it's finished?

But that's not real. What's real is our life's work and practice making the thing. And you always, if you're making films, make it in a group. It's not a solo task. And so it's really about companionship, conversation, and an ongoing developing life. And relationship. Now, I haven't seen the exhibition, but I will,

because Amsterdam is a great city and what a perfect reason to go. but I have got the accompanying book in front of me which is it's so beautiful it's really tactile, it smells wonderful as well and I could look at the photographs of you in this all day long, absolutely magnificent images

but you open with a very tender letter to Derek Jarman and you first worked with him when you were still very young. Could you tell us about your relationship with him and when you first met? It's unimaginable for me Anita that I would be anywhere near filmmaking

without meeting Derek Jarman because when I met him, I had just left university. I was not, I went to university as a writer. I even got my place as a writer and then very, I'm always very ashamed of this, stopped writing the second I got there, and was drawn into performing by friends that I made, again, ongoing relationships, I still know them and work with them, who were involved in theatre.

At the university I was at at the time, there was no film studies, there was no film course. Where were you? At Cambridge. In fact, I had a bittersweet moment a few years ago when I was asked to go and open the new film studies course and I was torn between extreme excitement and extreme unhappiness that it hadn't been open in my day.

I was looking for cinema at that time, but I couldn't find it. So I started being in plays with my friends. And then when I left university in a slightly half-hearted way, I started working in the theatre. And I realized quite quickly that I was not interested in the theatre. And I was just on the verge of going, okay, well, then I'm not a performer when I met Derek Charman. And what I met with Derek was not only the cinema and a cinema that I really wanted to be a part of.

In the 80s, it was an underground world, an experimental world that was so dynamic and so, you know, it's the sort of beating heart of the culture of the time. How exciting. It really was an exciting time. But I also found a way of being a performer with him, which is actually really demonstrated in this exhibition. When you see these early pieces of film, you'll understand maybe why I'm always a little bit pedantic about saying I can't describe myself as an actor because it's not acting.

It's live performance, very autobiographical, very closer to dance in many ways. And I developed that with him over the nine years we worked together over seven films and all sorts of other shorts and performances and whatever. And that became a way of working. that I've drawn on ever since. And, yeah, I can't even imagine

how I would be working in film without him. And then we can't talk about Derek Jammer and not mention Prospect Cottage in Dungeoness where you and Derek made films. You helped him plant that extraordinary garden. It's become a kind of mythical place. It really is a magical place. One of my favourite places.

I love that you love it. I do. I love that you know it. What does it mean to you? Oh, the first time I went, I couldn't believe where I was and I go back a lot. But it is a very particular

part of the world and you know it was described i think in the 13th century as the fifth quarter of the globe it's beyond romney marsh and it's this for those who don't know it's a beach entirely made of pebbles there's no sand anywhere it's quite um it's quite a tough landscape and of course it's got the nuclear power station just down the beach which we always thought had a kind of glamour to it lit up at night and it hummed um um it's a very outpost part of the world and it's inhabited by these little fishermen's houses. And I was with Derek when we found it and he created a fiefdom there, a world.

I mean, the very fact that he was able to plant a garden there in stones where everybody said nothing would ever grow and it's now quite a legendary garden. But the house itself, when we first found it, it was a very cozy little cottage. I remember we were driving back and I saw this cottage, black cottage with yellow painted window frames and a for sale sign outside.

And Derek's father had just died and he inherited £30,000. And he said, I'm going to buy somewhere because I want to plant a garden. And we went down to Dungeoness to just have a look. And without asking him, I just pulled in outside this house. And we knocked on the door and went in.

It was a very nice lady living there and it was very sort of pink and chintzy and cozy. And I think it was a Friday. And he got back in the car and he said, I'm going to buy it. And I think he bought it on the Monday. And the first thing we did when we went in was kind of strip it out.

of all the pink and chintz and made it into a, I think of it as a toolbox. It was this wooden toolbox. We didn't really have any furniture. We had desks, but we had futons, which we rolled up in the morning and put into boxes. And we worked. It was a place of work.

And when he died, it was sort of a little bit in mothballs for a while. And then there was a moment when it was needing to be sold. And we were very proud to be able to, well, proud of everybody. and there were people who listened here who sent in five pounds or 50 pounds or whatever to the campaign to save it for the nation and to set up an artist's residency there.

Why was that important? Because it needed to be what it was set up as, which is a living, ongoing place of work. And it continues in that spirit. It's there for artists to apply, but not only artists, gardeners, philosophers, activists, people who needs time to reflect. Yeah, I think Derek would love that.

He was such an active person and it's an active place. The exhibition also touches on cinema as a place for grieving and protest as much as storytelling. So how does that resonate with you personally? And I'm thinking about, especially after losing Derek, John, and so many friends from that generation. Well, it is true that, and I'm not alone in this, but, you know, I was 33 in 1994 and I went to 43 funerals that year. Goodness me. And one of them was Derricks in the February. But that was what our life was like then.

And it bears repeating because I know that there's a younger generation that has somehow missed out on knowing enough about it. You know, we've just heard the news reported, us sitting here listening to the news just now, that there's a new approach to the treatment of HIV. And it's poignant for us who lived through that to know that it isn't necessarily a death sentence. It was at a certain point.

And, yeah, that, as a young person, that was a sort of bedrock of a lot of my creative life. And my exhibition, I have to say, has got a lot of ghosts in it. It's all about phantoms, really. And also surviving the departures of people and also holding them close. You know, there's an exhibition of my wardrobe, which is my wardrobe, my parents' wardrobe, my grandparents' wardrobe, my great-grandparents' wardrobe, and my children's. I mean, not all of them, by the way,

we still have clothes to walk around in, but elements, and it's all about shells and leaves and how do we survive things? How do we go on? Yeah, magical. In 2025, we received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Berlin Alé. You made a speech about the great independent state of cinema.

What did you mean by that? I believe that the cinema is, I mean, art in general, but in particular cinema is it's our place of nourishment and possibly our best resource. It's the place that we can find connection, we can rely on connection and there ain't no borders, nobody's going to get pushed out of the state of cinema and nobody's going to dominate it and we are not going to get anybody building any kind of, you know, luxury condos on it. It is a free space where we can make our eyes available to the eyes of the world.

And it's, by the way, for me, completely ongoing and completely undomitable. I think it's, you know, people talk a lot about the death of cinema. And there's always been a reason to believe that cinema was dead or dying or very ill. I don't believe that anything will ever, uh, conquer our need for it and our desire for it. If you remember during the lockdown, the COVID lockdown, people really, I remember doing a kind of straw pole of all the people that I knew and not only the city nerds, but everybody in our village and all the people that I knew, you said, what are you really missing at the moment?

And it was friends and family. It was going on holiday. It was going on, going into restaurants or whatever. And it was cinema. Everybody realized how much we rely on that point of connection. and that fellowship sitting in the dark with strangers. It's very important. It's not about sitting in bed at night watching Netflix at the end of you,

which we all value and has a place in our lives. But the event, the communion. Community, exactly, that experience of being together in the dark, watching, taking us away somewhere magical. And the fact of cinema inviting us to step into other people's shoes, look through other people's eyes who are not like us, It's about difference. Vive la Difference. That's what cinema is all about. Tilda Swinton, long may you be ongoing.

Thank you so much for taking the time to come and speak to us this morning. It's my honour. Oh, wonderful. The exhibition, Tilda Swinton, ongoing, is on at the eye in Amsterdam from the 28th of September through to the 8th of February next year. Tilda, thank you. Thank you, Anita. 8444 is the text number. Lots of you getting in touch about sisterhood and female friendship. Jess from Dorset wrote to say,

she wanted to mention an incredible group of women who are all military wives. We've just completed an 88 mile run from pool to limestone along the Jurassic Coast to raise money for the Royal Marines charity in awe of the organisers who juggles so much when their spouses are busy or deployed and therefore unable to help. Well done to the Hamworthy Barracks Women's Run Challenge team.

A new season of Love Me is here. real stories of real, complicated relationships. It's not even like a gender. I mean, it's wrapped up in gender, but it's just a really deep self-hate. I think I cried almost every day. I just stole myself on the floor. It's coming on really straight.

It's like he's trying to date you all of the sudden. Yeah, and I do look like my mother. Love Me, Available Now, wherever you get your podcasts. Now, as temperatures drop, concerns rise for those among us who are homeless or rough sleeping. Indeed, yesterday government statistics found that over 130,000 households were in temporary accommodation at the end of June. This represents a 1.2% rise from the previous three months period and a 7.6% increase compared to the same time last year. But some charities warn that these official statistics don't tell the full story, especially when it comes to women. One organisation found that the number of women's sleeping rough

was over ten times higher than government estimates. One initiative working to address this gap is the women's rough sleeping census, now in its fourth year. While joining me to talk about this is Rebecca Goshoek, Director of Business Development at Solis Women's A's. Welcome, Rebecca. The women's rough sleeping census, what's it looking to achieve? So we're concerned that the way in which women rough sleep is quite different

to their male counterparts, and that actually a lot of government data isn't representing their experiences. Often women take different steps to protect themselves, often from the risk of violence and abuse when on the streets. So they will be more hidden. They will look particularly at night when a lot of street counts take part. They will be in A&E departments. They will be walking all night to keep safe.

They may go to 24-hour restaurants or on buses and trains, really trying to be away from the streets at night, where the risk of violence and abuse can be so high but that means they're not being seen by those outreach teams going out to do those counts and we think there's an under-representation of women in government statistics around rough sleeping. So how's it going to work?

So what we do is we do counts differently. We often do some in the day where we think women are more visible. They may try and find space to sleep during the day where they feel a bit safer, the public's around. They feel there's that kind of eyes that may help and protect them. We go to those hidden locations, we go into A&E departments, we go to 24-hour restaurants, or we go to public spaces like libraries in the day where women may be just taking some shelter, and we really try and then be able to capture their women's experiences of where they are and really try to understand how different their experiences are.

Yeah, and what have some of the women been saying to you about their approaches? I am sure that some people listening won't have even considered. that in order to stay safe, homeless women might stay awake all night and walk the streets. Yeah, we see that a lot where the women say, you know what, when I'm on the streets at night, men will come up and approach me around sex work or they will have experienced sexual violence. It's so common that women will say that that is part of their experience. And so we need to be looking in different places, really, to understand where they are.

and actually what we need is services that feel safe for women as well. You know, a lot of the women we spoke to had been in a homelessness service, but many of them leave them because of the trauma they've experienced around violence previously or whilst on the streets, I mean they don't feel safe in spaces that are predominantly men. Why might they find themselves in these situations in the first place? So often actually violence and abuse is the reason they're on the streets as well. Many of the women we spoke to, nearly all, in fact, in 2024, had an experience of sexual violence or they'd been in an abusive relationship.

Some of them then had, you know, been sofa surfing or staying with friends and family, but that's only temporary. And often they can't find access to the right service or the right type of accommodation for themselves and end up on the streets because of it. But unfortunately, they're still at risk on the streets and they're facing more violence whilst there. And so you'll conduct the research and get the, you know, get the accurate details. But what, why does that matter? So if we don't understand the number of women or the way in which they're experiencing,

we can't provide services that will help them to resolve their homelessness or their rough sleeping. If we don't know how many women are out there, we can't provide the number of shelters or hostels that are women only or kind of safer spaces. So if we don't have that right data and that right understanding, we're not providing the right services and we're not providing that kind of holistic support that they need. We often see that, you know, people's immediate needs is around how. housing. But if the trauma of experience around violence against women and girls is part of their experience, we really need to be tackling that as well. And the stats that I started, you know,

this item with, I mentioned that it came out yesterday, they've found that homelessness has increased. Do you think those figures are likely to have missed a significant number of women? Yeah, I mean, it's really concerning to see those statistics going up, but we still don't think, yeah, they're representing the number of women out there. We've got a statement from the homeless minister, Alison McGovern. She said, yesterday's statistics are a harsh reminder that too many have been let down by the system meant to protect them. We're seeing signs of progress with the number of households with children in bed and breakfast accommodation continuing to decrease and the number of households

requiring homelessness support falling but I know that's not enough to fix years of failure. That's why we're digging deep to tackle the root causes investing £1 billion in 2526 including an additional £84 million to prevent homelessness this winter, building 1.5 million homes and £39 billion for the social and affordable homes programme, scrapping Section 21 evictions and raising standards to ensure safe and secure housing for all. You've just completed the 2025 data gathering process. The report isn't ready yet, but what are some of the initial things you found? So in our initial counts, we have seen more women, particularly in our London data, we are seeing more women on the streets and we spoke to more of them. So we are

concerned that that overall trend in government data saying there is more people rough sleeping does also reflect more women rough sleeping as well and I think what we've seen is many are going to aren't in touch with the housing officer or the council's housing department to help resolve their housing so if they're not even being seen by housing services or they're not being seen by a homelessness services they're not really starting that that journey to safe accommodation or supporting their needs so I think we again saw that many the women we spoke to spoke about their experience of violence

either as their cause or consequence of our sleeping. So of course we need to kind of find a solution for housing, but it's about violence against women and girls, isn't it? It is. We need to be looking at both. The government have committed to a homelessness strategy and a violence against women and girls' strategy and their key commitments, but we need to see

both of those strategies looking at women's homelessness and those two areas working together to tackle this. What more would you like to see from the government? They were due to release a violence against women and girls strategy, but instead a reshuffle took place. Are you waiting for that report to come through? Yeah, I think it's going to be crucial to tackling this issue.

You know, we can't halve violence against women and girls if we're not looking at those most in the most need and those are at a really cute end of disadvantage. And so we really need that strategy to look at while women rough sleeping. How is that creating violence? And how we can really provide those services that meet those with the most complex needs who are rough sleeping.

Rebecca Gossack, thank you so much for coming in and speaking to me this morning. Thank you. Now, have you caught up on this week's episode of The Woman's Hour Guide to Life? It's all about money and juggling our finances.

One of the pieces of advice to build up a freedom fund by saving some money into it each month. Here's a chartered accountant, Abigail Foster. The Freedom Fund is for when you need to leave. So when you need to get up from a job and it no longer serves you and you just want the ability to walk out of a job

and think, right, I've got some money set away so I can go and look for something else. Or you want to get up and walk away from a partner. Make sure it's in your name. Make sure you're getting good interest rates. Just think of that money is the money that's there to make you happier. I think often we think of finance and saving is this really boring thing and it's always depressing because we're putting money away and we can't touch it. But actually, you know, life happens.

And if you're unhappy and you have the money to change that, That's why sometimes I'm a bit like anti when people are like, oh, like money can't buy happiness. And I think, you can definitely buy you out of a really sad situation. To hear more from this episode of the Woman's Hour Guide to Life, just go to BBC Sounds. Search for Woman's Hour and when you scroll down in the feed, you'll find the Guide to Life episodes. And if there's a topic or an issue that you'd like to cover, then get in touch in the usual way. Lots of you getting in touch about your female friendship groups and what they mean to you. I play double bass in Hotsie Tozzie, a fabulous all-female jazz quintet.

They sound great. The band is very accomplished, very relaxed, and there's just such a warm vibe. Come and watch us play at the Plymouth Jazz Club this Sunday and see and hear what I mean. That's Jude in Lou in Cornwall. Another message here saying I help run a women's cycling group in Tayside. It's a really great group of varying abilities and has been so good for me as I've made a lot of friends. And it helped me feel less isolated. And one more here, 12 years ago.

Six women in the creative town of Vivenho opened up the idea of including any artists to join them in a twice yearly art trail. We now have around 50 participants and attract visitors from far and wide. We even played a part in being named Best Place to Live in East Anglia. Well done. You keep them coming in. 84844. Now, Gwenda's Garage, the musical, has just opened at the Tayy Masayevich, Tanya Maseevich, playhouse in Sheffield, and is soon to open at the Southwark Theatre in London at the end of the month. The garage was a real place, an all-woman car repair workshop in the 1980s in Sheffield.

The musical draws and interviews with employees and customers of Gwenda's garage and also with feminist campaigners capturing the stories of those who trained and inspired future generations of women in South Yorkshire and beyond. Well, joining me now, I'm delighted to say, is Val Riegan, the production's composer and musical director, and Ros Wallen, one of the three co-founders of Gwenda's Garage. Val and Ros, welcome to Woman's Hour. Morning, Anita.

Morning, lovely to speak to you. It was press night last night. How did it go? Oh, it was fantastic. Such a great atmosphere. The way the audience is responding, it's just really moving. Ros hasn't been yet. She's coming tonight.

But last night, it was fantastic. The audience were on their feet, singing and clapping along at the end. All we could hope for. Yeah, I mean, we started the programme asking people, to get in touch with their stories of sisterhood. I imagine it was strong in the room last night. Ros, how does it feel to know that your story is on stage? Well, it feels great that I'm able to tell

and to be part of the story of what went on in the 80s, of the women's movement, of the political activity that went on. And I think the story is about the history of the 80s, how we were fighting Maggie Thatcher and how we were actually challenging a lot of the things that had been inherent in our culture for so long. And it's great that that story's being told. Well, let's hear the story.

Tell us about Gwenda's Garage and why you started it. Well, we started it because we had done an initial course for unemployed people called Trops Courses. And we were in our 30s and we couldn't get jobs. And so we thought, okay, we can't get jobs. We're still quite naive, but let's go for it. we're going to start a garage. And we were lucky to be able to rent a workshop from the council,

which was only partly built. Well, it was built, but it had no electrics and plumbing in it. And we managed to offer some women, electricians and plumbers, the opportunity to put in our plumbing and electrics and return, help them with their cars. So it was a great era of, creativity, political activity, and sisterhood. How did the local people respond to you opening this garage, this female-run garage?

We were part of the community down in the industrial area of Sheffield, and I think that on the whole, they accepted us. I think there were other times where it was more difficult. I was the only woman going in to my city and guilds at the local college. and that was probably more challenging than actually once we'd established ourselves in the garage itself. Val, Gwenda Stewart, sometimes knows Gwenda Hawke, was a real person, a racing driver who set multiple motorcycle and motor car records in the 1920s. Tell us a bit more about her.

Well, Gwenda, yeah, a real inspiration, I think, for the women in the garage. And the show is not actually about Gwenda, Gwenda Stewart, but we do have her featured throughout the length of the show. show. So if you come to the show, you will get to see, Gwenda. But yeah, trailblazing. And I gather that Rose found the story of Gwendo Stewart in the Guinness Book of Feminine Achievements. Before we had Google, we had books. And yes, we wanted to name the garage after a woman who was a mechanic or a racing driver, and we came up with Gwenda Stewart. And one of the lovely things about Gwenda Stewart was that through a guy who had a

Morgan in Sheffield, we actually were able to, she sent us a letter saying she was absolutely delighted that we'd name the garage after her. How lovely? We sent her a t-shirt with Gwenda's garage on it. And then we had another letter from her and we've kept them to this day. In fact, we've archived them. Oh, how fantastic to actually get Gwenda to know about what you were doing. That's brilliant. And Val, you said the stories based on real events and the history of Gwenda's Gerridge. So how did you get the story together? You drew on interviews from customers and other people involved? That's right. Myself and the fabulous scriptwriter Nikki Hallett, we set up a company called Out of the Archive, which is about bringing hidden histories, queer histories,

lesbian histories, women's histories into the wider world in interesting ways. And we were lucky enough to get some funding from Historic England who were particularly interested in recording hidden histories, working class histories, and they funded some research and development for Gwenda's Garage. So what we did was we did oral history interviews with Ros, with other women who were around at the time, who used the garage, and we drew on those histories to create the show. So they inspired the show.

The stories in it are true. What we say is it's all true, but it didn't all necessarily happen in exactly this way, in exactly this place, but it all happened somewhere. I think we should hear a clip, and this is a clip of the title song, Gwendo's garage Goendez's garage Go with Gwendo's

Go with Gwender's Because you know that you're good to go When you go with Gwendo's Where at the engine There's a happy ending because you know that you're good to go when you go with blenders no need to panic i'm a real mechanic i've got every kind of tool i need oh get your march on without testosterone all you need is out of grease and we've got plenty

with a garage for your mo's a carriage and you know you got to go go go when you go with Okay, so you've nailed the catchy numbers there, haven't you? That is absolutely. I'm in, I'm straight in. There's a lot of humour in the musical, but you also address some really serious subjects that you were all dealing with at the time in terms of prejudice, homophobia and sexism.

Absolutely. So the musical takes place in the 80s, as Ross has said, and that was the time of Section 28, when laws against the so-called promotion of homosexuality, were coming in and that law defined family relationships that included lesbian parents and gay parents as pretend families. And so there's a story which came out very strongly in the oral history interviews about fostering an adoption and lesbians who were trying to foster kids and really struggling to do that, questioning whether or not they could reveal their sexuality,

mostly having to hide that. We heard some very moving interviews about that. So that features us one of the themes of the show, along with the wider idea about what is family. Is it made? Is it constructed? What is family like, particularly for people from the LGBTQ plus community? And, Ros, this was your experience? Yes, it was my experience. I applied to Foster in the 80s and I said to them, when I went to fill my application for me

and I'm a lesbian, and they said, well, forget it, right? I went to see the director of social services. He said, forget it, you know. And I just thought, right, okay, I'll forget it. But I'm not going to let this die. And there were a lot of women fighting lesbian custody cases in the 80s. There was a lot of activity going on. And I think that some of the movements that were still, that were going on then,

are still we're still fighting for. There's still some misogyny around. There was women's aid. People there were still fighting for refugees for women, run by voluntary sector organisations still. And I think that rape crisis, as you've just mentioned, homelessness for women. All of those issues are still very, very true today. And unfortunately, I was the only woman, as I said, when I went to college to do my city in guilds.

And that's still the case now. There's only one woman in the class doing plumbing, motor vehicle, or carpentry and joinery. And there's still the same issues that aren't today. and we've still got only about 2% of women in trades. Yeah. I mean, there's so much that you've mentioned there, but I just want to pick up on what you started with, which is that you were turned down to be a foster parent because you were a lesbian.

You're a lesbian. How do you reflect on that now, looking back? Well, fortunately, in 2000, I was accepted. So I now have a foster daughter and foster grandchildren, and they're all fabulous, and so I was actually able to do it. But that was after the things had started to change, and the culture had changed, and we were starting to see the repeal of Clause 28.

Tell us about that. Clause 28 was brought in by Maggie Thatcher, and she said that homosexuality could not be talked about in schools or in families, and it took until 2003 before the actual Clause 28 was repealed and women and gays and we've now got a queer community

were allowed to be open about their lives. Val, one of the many reasons why it's so important that these stories are told so that we don't forget. That's absolutely right. I think it's worth pointing out that as queer people, often living, growing up in families who are not necessarily the same as us.

So having those stories, those histories, we have to create our own. We have to build our own culture for that. And that's why it's so important that these stories get recorded and brought to wider audiences. But also because you can see the parallels today so strongly, the culture wars, the way that politics can really encourage division and uses division as a political tool still going on. We all know that it is. And so it's really important to talk about collective action. and the power of sisterhood, like you've been saying all morning

and the listeners have been writing in about. I'm going to read a couple more out because I think they're very good to bring in because there's so many coming through. I'm a member of the Ducati Dragons. You'll like this. It's a group of women of all ages and backgrounds from all over the country that come together over a shared love or Ducati motorbikes.

About 50 of us go away for a spa weekend every year. This sounds great on our beautiful machines and it's an absolute riot. When we meet up between and go for dinner, out on the rides and sometimes on European holidays. They're an amazing and inspiring group of women. And over the past four years, some have become my closest friends. Next year, a weekend coincides with the week before my wedding. So I will have a ready-made hendoo.

And that's from Rachel, but are you going to ride in on your Dukati? That's what I want to know in your wedding dress. That sounds good. Another one here from Anne says, we're a group of four women ranging from our early 60s to 86. who decided to do something creative during COVID pandemic and filmed a short play outside. This led to us forming a small, low-budget film company and are currently making our seventh short film, a romantic comedy.

Several of our previous short films have won awards at various international festivals. You're never too old to learn new skills. And if you're determined to achieve something, don't worry about age, just get stuck in. That's really good advice. But it's something very specific about doing it with other women. Isn't that right, Val? Absolutely. I think that sense of community and of coming together, I mean, we all know women who are really active in their communities.

They're also probably raising families. They might be caring for elderly relatives as well, but they're getting things done. And, you know, you often hear people say, if you want something done, ask a busy woman. Well, you know, women in particular develop their skills, I think, through those kind of community enterprises and things that they engage in. And coming together just gives you that sense of strength and solidarity. and it keeps you going because it gets tough, doesn't it? What's the legacy of the garage, Roz? I know it lasted for about 8 to 9 years and he sold it in 1990.

Yeah, the legacy of the garage is that we set up an organisation called Women in Engineering, Science and Technology. And it was in memory of Raz Wall and Annette Williams, who died too young. And in it, what we do is it's a South Yorkshire charity and we promote non-traditional trades and engineering for young for women and what we do is we go into schools we have activity books we produce posters we produce um videos we've got a really great website and um we also give out every year and

have done for the last 10 years bursaries to young women who are training in trades in yorkshire not in shir and derbyshire um who may be the only young women in their class yeah and they they write in and tell us their story and we give them just a small amount of money, not a lot of money, just to encourage them to keep on going. You can get there

and stick your neck out and just get in there and do it. Brilliant, brilliant advice. Thank you so much, both of you for joining me this morning, Ros and Val, and Gwenda's Garage,

the musical, is on now at the Tanya Moseevich Playhouse in Sheffield. The dates her from the 25th of October and then at the Southet Playhouse in London from the 30th of October till the 29th of November. I can't wait to see it.

Thank you, both of you, for speaking to me this morning. Now, according to the Financial Conduct Authority, banks are missing opportunities to help break the spell of romance scams with these cons costing victims, £106 million last year. Women often lose more money on average, but men are just as likely to be targeted. The FCA say there are examples of banks going to significant lengths to protect those at risk of romance fraud

but advised further measures are needed such as better detection and monitoring systems identifying vulnerability early on and compassionate aftercare. Beth Harris, head of financial crime at the Financial Conduct Authority, joins me now. Thank you, Beth, for coming in to speak to me about this.

You've uncovered one case that involved a victim losing more than £428,000. My heart sinks just thinking about it. That's a huge amount. Can we start by explaining what romance fraud is. Yeah, so romance fraud is really where frauds as target victims to exploit them for money.

So they will pretend that they are in love with them, that they won't have a relationship with them in the hope that they'll get as much money from them as possible. However, it's not only just romance fraud because actually some people can fall victim because they're just looking for companionship and actually not looking for romance, but could perhaps just be looking for friendship

and could just as easily be exploited. So the average victim, is about, I've got a figure here, 11,222 pounds, but who's being targeted? So really anybody can be targeted. We found in the study that we did that 85% of people are targeted online. So that seems to be the most common way. I think that post the pandemic, many people have moved their lives online. And so therefore that is the most likely way that people are targeted.

How does it work? Give us some examples. What's happening? So people will join dating websites or they might just have their profiles on social media. Obviously, lots of people are on many social media platforms. And so sometimes people will contact them from out of the blue on a social media platform. You know, we saw one example where someone said that they enjoyed travelling a lot. So someone contacted them pretending that they travelled a lot and duped them that way,

pretending that they would sort of found their soulmate. But then also you find people who will go to dating platforms because obviously, That's, you know, you can see people on there are looking for a partner. So therefore, you know you've got a good target audience to find somebody to exploit. I started by mentioning this one victim losing more than four, nearly half a million pounds. How did that happen? Yeah, so that's a really tragic example. We have seen some terrible examples.

So certainly in the examples we've seen of some women, a woman in her mid-40s who had given away over 100,000 pounds, who was in a really good job. She believed that she'd met a medic who was working abroad, who was saving lives, that she was sending money to help for charitable donations and also just to help him to live, knowing that he was working for a charity

and not being terribly well paid. So, you know, she ended up, you know, sending an awful lot of money, which obviously turned out to just be that she was a victim of fraud. I mentioned that this happens to both men and women, but what's the difference when women are targeted? So we found that equally men is just as likely to fall victim as women.

More women report between the ages of 30 and 79, whereas men report between the ages of 50 and 79. And we did find that women are twice as likely to have a relationship with someone for over a year. So I guess because someone's having a longer relationship, then they're more likely to give away more money over that period of time. And women particularly targeted and men actually between the age of, of 50 and 79, we found average losses from our study to be in excess of 22,000 pounds and thinking that's largely because people are still working, so they've got the financial

resources, but they might be at a time in life where they're going through divorce, separation or potentially the loss of a partner, and so therefore they're more vulnerable. Who's behind it? So, some fraudster can operate from anywhere. They could be absolutely anywhere. we are seeing that sometimes they are operating from abroad and from scam centres. So, you know, with the use now of artificial intelligence, you know, it makes it easier for people to scan the internet,

to scan social media platforms to try and target vulnerable people. People post how they often feel online, don't they? People will say that, you know, perhaps they're feeling lonely or unhappy or whatever. So, you know, it makes it quite easy for people to see all of that and to make people a target. Yeah, there's something really It's really sad reading these stories And I did a piece for the one show years ago

About an elderly woman who was scound But it was via telephone So I guess the technology has changed And it's just becoming more sophisticated But there's an article on the BBC online today About this and it's saying The one male victim was quoted as saying You see all the signs

But you're so emotionally attached You're willing to lose the money But you're not willing to lose the connection So it can be hard to live. let go. Yeah. And I think that's something that makes it incredibly challenging that we've found from our study of the banks because, you know, we do find from our study that there could be better detection and monitoring. And, you know, banks should be questioning if people are making unusual payments and sending monies abroad. But one of the things they also found is that in nearly

half of the cases, when people were questioned about why they were making transactions, they lied about why they were sending it. Because often the frauds will have told them what to say or they make something up because, you know, people want to believe this is real. They want to believe they've found someone who loves them. And, you know, fraudsters know that and can completely exploit that vulnerability. And a level of shame attached to what's happening, where people don't want to admit that they've given their money away. Absolutely.

I think it's really, really difficult when someone realizes they're a victim. I mean, we have advised people that they should go, anyone who is a victim or family members who think someone's a victim should really report that to action fraud. and to their bank, action fraud have got a fantastic website which has a lot of resources on there telling people how to report and to offer victim support. Okay, Beth, give us more advice though.

How can we make sure we don't get ourselves into this situation? Yeah, so I think the big red flags really are as if someone's asking you to send them money, especially early on in a relationship, that's a red flag. If they're asking you to send money by way of crypto or gift vouchers, a huge red flag. Ask somebody to meet you. If somebody won't meet you in real life, question why.

We've often found in these cases that people say that the person they've fallen in love with is working abroad. But, you know, that to us would be a red flag. You can use reverse image checkers for free. So we would say to people, do that. So, you know, you can put someone's profile picture in there. And that will show you if they are posting the same thing but across many different platforms. So, again, that would be a red flag. They're not targeting you.

They're targeting anybody. And we'd also say, as our general message on fraud, as if something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. If this person is sounding amazing, sounding too good to be true, then they probably are, it's probably made up, and they are a fraudster. And if they feel that this is happening to them now and they're feeling all sorts of shame and guilt and strange emotions, what could they do?

We would tell people really to speak to a family member or a close friend and get some help and support, and obviously that can help because they can really spot the red flags as well, sometimes better than the victim themselves, if they're still unsure as to whether or not. or not they're being duped and we would just really encourage people to report it if they find they are a victim.

Good advice, Beth Harris. Thank you so much for coming in to speak to me about that. And thanks to all of you for getting in touch with your messages. Join me tomorrow for Weekend, Woman's Hour. Legendary makeup artist Bobby Brown will be on the program and also we'll be talking to women about what it's like living with Tourette's Syndrome.

That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. As part of Limelight from BBC Radio 4, this is the betrayed the story of a family torn apart by a political extremism sweeping across Europe you see this guy in the red t-shirt

I'd allowed myself to believe that this moment would never come do you remember the looters outside the sports shop last year the one guy who'd let a scar slip I think that's him my brother Frank standing with a group of angry men shouting abuse at the police is the same guy

I now knew that Frank was an anti-immigrant activist Listen to the whole series right now, first on BBC Sounds. A new season of Love Me is here. Real stories of real, complicated relationships. It's not even like a gender. I mean, it's wrapped up in gender, but it's just a really deep self-hate. I think I cried almost every day.

I just stood myself on the floor. He's coming on really straight. It's like he's trying to date you all of the sudden. Yeah, and I do look like my mother. Love me. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.