Woman's Hour - Vanessa Feltz, SEND best practice: what is working?, Rivals

Episode Date: October 26, 2024

Vanessa Feltz has been a fixture on TV and radio for three decades. Now she has written a memoir, Vanessa Bares All, which charts the many ups and downs of her personal and professional life. She joins Anita Rani.Listeners share with Nuala McGovern what they think works when it comes to Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision in educational settings. In the late 1970s, in the toilets at Euston Station, Dr Sheila Reith, while trying to administer insulin to her daughter, thought there must be an easier way. She envisioned a pen-like device that could be used simply with just one hand. A few years later, the first insulin pen came to market, revolutionizing care for people with diabetes. Dr. Reith has since devoted her life to diabetes care, improving and saving the lives of millions. She joins Anita to discuss winning a Pride of Britain Lifetime Achievement Award.Best known for her sketches on Saturday Night Live and her role as Weird Barbie, comedian Kate McKinnon has now turned her attention to books. The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science is her first children’s book. Kate discusses the story and embracing her 'weirdness.'What does the TV adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s 80s classic Rivals tell us about sex in 2024? Nuala hears from Dayna McAlpine, a sex and relationships writer and lifestyle editor at HuffPost UK, and Rowan Pelling, co-editor at Perspective and former editor of the Erotic Review.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Dianne McGregor

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good afternoon and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour with me, Anita Rani. How does sex in the 80s compare to today? We dive into the world of the TV adaptation of Jilly Cooper's Rivals. We continue our conversation on the SEND system and how it's working for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

This week we asked you what's working and what would best practice look like. Plus, Dr Sheila Reith, the pioneering inventor of the insulin pen, whose work has transformed life for people with type 1 diabetes around the world. And the former Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon joins me to chat about her new children's book and embracing her weirdness.

So settle in for the next hour. But first, Vanessa Feltz is one of the most recognisable broadcasters of the past 30 years. She's shared The Big Breakfast Bed with everyone from Madonna to Miss Piggy, remember that? And has covered topics ranging from infidelity to anal bleaching on TV. Now in her new memoir, Vanessa Bears All, she somehow manages to get even more candid,

including her journey to embracing singlehood later in life. When Vanessa ended her relationship, she made a point of going out every night, 530 nights in a row to avoid the pull of her couch. Growing up in a suburb of North London, she told me about her early life. My mother felt she just missed, missed feminism. You know, she got married in 1959 when you still got married and then didn't really work if your husband could afford for you not to. And so she didn't. She just missed out on liberation.

You know, by that time I was born, my sister was born and, you know, that kind of a thing. So it's sort of pre its time in a way that that little suburb of North London. And, you know, the women were trying to keep slim while cooking constantly. The men were all working and playing golf at the weekends. And the children, I'm not sure what we were supposed to be. I think mainly decorative, I think. Well, you say that you were brought up to be a Jewish geisha. What did you mean by that?

Well, wait upon the husband that you were desperate to get. You know, it was all about if anyone has ever seen Fiddler on the Roof, either on the stage or the film, they'll know all about matchmaker, matchmaker. You know, you have to make a match. And I reckon the pressure was on me to get married, honestly, from birth. I think from the minute they cut the umbilical cord, it on me to get married, honestly, from birth. I think from the minute they cut the umbilical cord, it was all about right now, it's time now, we're planning the wedding, we're thinking about the wedding, you'll make a beautiful bride, don't eat

that cake or no one will want to marry you, you'll be too fat, stand up straight, learn French, you know, and then you'll meet a wonderful husband. And I went off to Cambridge to read English literature at Trinity. Yeah, very smart. When I got back again with my kettle and my bath mat, moving back into my old bedroom after the three years at university, my parents looked horrified. They just could not believe that in three years I hadn't managed to find someone to marry while I was there. So the heat really was on.

And I make it sound, I hope, a little bit funny, but it wasn't very funny, actually. It was very, very serious. You know, you really had to find a man. And it was very much be picked rather than be the picker. And the pressure is on. And, you know, coming from a South Asian community can absolutely relate to that. Exactly. But some people might say, you know, you've gone to Cambridge, did you have to kind of go along with the pressure that was being put on you? I think I had no choice.

It didn't feel as if I had any choice. I mean, I suppose I could have put a backpack on and just, you know, gone off to Australia or something, but I didn't think of it. And really, until I managed to get married, which I was engaged at 22, married at 23, and with a baby at 24. But it felt in those days that I was absolutely on the shelf. I mean, my parents were looking desperately around, you know, to see if they could find someone. And in the end, I married the Jewish doctor that my grandma chose. She ticked every book. Absolutely. He came in to take a blood chose. She ticked every book. Absolutely.

He came in to take a blood sample. She was a patient at University College Hospital. And she said, doctor, are you married? And he said, no. And she said, are you Jewish? And he said, yes. And she said, have I got a girl for you? And she sent me down to casualty to accost him.

And he married me. And I was incredibly grateful. I was so thrilled to bits. I can't tell you how happy I was. Were you happy? I was. I was very happily married, indeed. Yes, I loved him with all my heart.

But you'd also gone off to Cambridge to become, and working as a journalist as well. Well, a student journalist. Yes, yes, a student journalist under the nom de plume vivacious Loyola. So you'd done everything right, ticked every box. You were married as the doctor that Granny

picked for you. But you also had ambition and you became, eventually, you made the first female column picked for you but you you also had ambition and you'd you became eventually you made the first female columnist for the jewish chronicle what made you go for that how did that happen well it wasn't really like that i needed to earn money i was married to a junior hospital doctor on i think a wage of 6 750 pounds a year as i recall so we didn't have any money so i had to work and the only thing i could think of to do was try and be a journalist. So I was writing articles really on anything at all, like wedding flowers and heated rollers and, you know, quizzes about finances, any old thing that anyone would pay me to write. And eventually I ended up writing things for the Jewish Chronicle and they made me the female columnist. But that was highly controversial.

First one? Highly controversial. In what way? Because there was this eminent male columnist, absolutely venerated, quite rightly so, called Chaim Berman, the most beautiful writer, wonderful man. He looked just like Topol in Fiddler on the Roof, you know, long beard. And, you know, I never knew if he had a Scottish accent in which he spoke Yiddish or a Yiddish accent in which he spoke Scottish because I couldn't really understand a word he said. But he wrote like a dream. And my first column came out and the next week the paper was flooded with letters of complaint saying Vanessa Feltz is not fit to lick Chaim Bermant's boots.

What did you write about? I didn't disagree. What did you write about? I wrote about rabbis and why they weren't better at PR and why they weren't better speakers. And I suppose I was, you know, about how old was I? 27 or something, writing about, you know, rabbis who are venerated in the community. Who did I think I was? When I think about it now, I probably wouldn't do it again. I was, I think, so ignorant about the whole thing. I was just quite fearless. There's a particular column that you pinpoint that was

your sort of turning point in the Jewish Chronicle. It was a column you wrote about Jewish mothers. Yes. That was the starting point of your fame. How dare I? How dare I? What did you say? Well, I wrote about, you know, the Jewish mother of legend, you know, the Jewish mother who closes her window at night so that more fresh air goes into her children's bedrooms. You know, that kind of mother who cooks and cooks and said, you know, she is no more the Jewish mother of whenever I wrote this, God knows what year it was, 1990 or something, you know, is now at the gym, you know, sipping a latte, having left her children in the care of somebody else. And it was I mean, I thought they might just set fire to the building of the Jewish Chronicle. The outpour was so immense. And I was asked to go on a radio show called Jewish London

on the late lamented GLR, BBC GLR, Great London Radio, for no money. But I was asked to go on the radio and just defend my position on this. And I was nervous as hell. I'd never been on the radio. Honestly, my teeth were sticking to my gums. I kept sipping water.

I remember there was a rabbi there, a Holocaust survivor. You know, they were giving me, they were trying to shore me up. I was so nervous. And then I went into the studio and the green light came on, just as it has now. And I found myself saying things I hadn't even thought of on the way there in the car. In your elements. I loved it. You got the bug?

Got the bug instantly, instantly. And you wanted to go back? Oh yeah, I was hoping and praying they'd ask me back. Meanwhile, my parents didn't like it and my husband wasn't that keen either. They were like, what are you doing going in there all the way to the West End for no money? What's the point of it? What are you showing off? What are you doing? You know, that kind of thing. They asked you if you were showing off. Was I showing off? What was I doing? And also, I better lose weight. That was always the punchline. When I said, but it was the radio. You couldn't even see me. What do you mean lose weight?

Well, you know, you never know. You might be asked for something else and you'll look fat. You talk about that a lot in your book. And you say that your mum, you've been fat shamed your whole life, haven't you? Yes, first of all, at home by my parents. And I wasn't fat. That was the thing. It wasn't like I was one of those. I love those chubby, adorable children who are always eating a pie.

But that wasn't me at all. I was kind of a bit Willa the Wispy, a bit like you, not particularly interested in food, wasn't one of those kids. And then my mum started dieting me when I got to about nine. I started, as they called it in those days, euphemism to end all euphemisms, developing. So in other words, tiny little bosoms had just begun to sprout. And I think my mum panicked. I think she thought that I might develop a weight problem. She had what she thought was a weight weight problem although I didn't really think so she was about a size 14 you know looked a lovely lovely looking lady with no particular problem but anyway and I think she just began to diet me ferociously she put you on amphetamines that was later that was when I was older as sort of my late

teens um and it was a way of shifting the weight and it worked but it was horrible they were sort of hallucinatory and you know you could hardly remember your own name, but you weren't eating. That was sure enough too, but I couldn't stick with them very long because they were so unpleasant, really. I mean, you've talked about it a lot, your issues with your weight since then. Well, I think, you know, if you're nine years old and you're suddenly told at your own kitchen table, in your own house, by your own mum, we're all having the chicken soup, you know, with vermicelli, with dumplings. We're all having that. Vanessa's having half a grapefruit and you're nine.

You can't help thinking, what did I do? It's really sad, Vanessa. What did I do to deserve this? You just think, hang on, what? And I was only nine. I wouldn't have challenged my parents at nine or indeed really at all. But as a grown-up, when did you challenge it? Never. Did you never

talk to them about it? No, really. I tried once to talk about it. My mother got so agitated, I thought, right, it's just not worth it. I didn't want to upset them, really. And then I lost my mum at the age of, she was only 57, and I miss her, honestly, every day, every minute. And I don't think she did it to be nasty. I think she was worried. She thought I might get fat.

She didn't want me to, and she was trying to stop it. I think she was doing her best. I don't think she was trying to be um in any way sort of you know punitive to me but the effect was I was always hungry because I wasn't really being fed that much and I was always made to think about food totally focusing on food which I had never really thought of at all and therefore if anyone ever saw fit to give me a packet of opal fruits or something I would obviously wolf the whole thing because I wasn't sure when I was ever going to get any again. So I think you can kind of set up these weight issues in children

if you're not very careful. How does it feel talking about it? It feels a little bit as if I'm sort of betraying my late mother, but she has been, you know, no longer with us for the last 29 years. So I hope she'll forgive me. Or maybe I would say that people listening might find that they can relate and they're forgetting something from your honesty as well, which they will from this book because you talk about so much. There certainly will be women who were put on darts by their mothers and fathers and who will still be smarting from it really, even to this very day.

Absolutely. And we talk about it all on Woman's Hour. You also talk about your breakups. Yes. Do you see any relation between your personal rejection and public adulation? Because you're getting your huge fame, huge, you know, on our screens, they either love you, or they love to hate you. Do you think you sought one as a substitute for the other? No, because I don't think it is a substitute for the other. I remember when the late Princess Diana said, I want to be queen of people's hearts. And I thought when she said it on Panorama that time, I thought, well, not really.

That's not the thing you need to want. What you really want is personal relationships that work. And if people who don't know you think they like you or love you or loathe you, that's one thing. And a public profile is something and it can be a resource that you can use. It can be something that makes you feel lovely. When I walk down the street,

people stop me and want to take a picture. I really like it. I can't pretend pretend not to I don't feel superior to it I adore it you also make sure that you're always smiling so nobody can say oh there was Vanessa what are you saying the book I can't remember well you don't want someone to say oh she was so stuck up you know I smiled at her I waved at her she didn't she didn't smile back so I'm always smiling but smiling is exhausting isn't it, I've got used to it. Can't you just relax? 35 years of a big, big smile.

Because I don't want anyone to think that I sort of sailed past them in a nasty sort of supercilious manner. And I hope everyone always says, I saw Vanessa. She gave me a big smile. She gave me a hug. She gave me a wave. Because if anyone wants one, I'm really happy to give one. You are allowed to just be yourself, though, surely. I don't know about that, really.

I think people might have one encounter with you and they might remember it for years you know you really want to make sure that they enjoyed it if they did. I started the program by talking about you going out 500 what was it 530 days? I think it's nearly 700 now. Where does the energy come from? Just the energy not to want to just sit there and stare at the wall on my own which I don't like doing it's I don't know why people think this is so weird. I'm not spending a great deal of money and going to nightclubs every night. It's not that.

But it's seeing a pal going out to a film, you know, hanging out in a kitchen somewhere with my mates. It's just not to just sit in silence and hear the clock ticking and hear intimations of my mortality and just think, oh my God, what the hell? I don't like being on my own like that. Hanging out on your own?

No. You just don't want to be on your own? Not really. How are you finding being single? Well, I mean, you know, it wasn't the one I ordered from the menu, this single life. I'm not very good at it, I don't think. I've had to get used to it. 22 months so far.

The longest I've ever been single in my life, really, since I started dating at the age of about 12. This is the longest. So you're not discovering anything about yourself? Yeah, then I don't like it much. I mean, I am coping. Yeah. Definitely.

I'm not desperate at all. And I really hope to have learned one lesson from writing this book, which is this time be the picker, not be grateful to be picked. And don't just find any old person to sort of, you know, fill the vacuum. Don't do that.

So I'm trying not to do that. But, you know, I couldn't be telling the truth if I didn't say it would be delightful to meet someone I could fall in love with. That'd be nice. And it might fall in love with me. I still believe in love. I still believe in romance.

I don't think it would be the tragedy of all tragedies if I don't. But I think I'm only 62. To me, 62 feels quite spring chickeny. And I'd love it. Vanessa Feltz on her memoir, Vanessa Bears All. Lots of you got in touch about becoming single in later life. Michelle wrote in to say,

my husband and I split when I was 57 after 20 years. Now, five years later, I'm enjoying life. I have my own house decorated exactly how I like it. I go on holiday when and where I like, no compromising on places or times. I'm out with my friends for dinner and cocktails and theatre trips, and sometimes just sit in my pyjamas eating cheese with a glass of bubbly. I would like to be dating, but want to meet organically through friends or at an event, but it's not high up on my list of things to do.

Sounds like a great life to me. Someone else wrote in to say, I became single at the age of 50 after 27 years of marriage. I took my mother's advice, who was sadly widowed twice, and she said, accept every invitation I have done and lead a very busy, happy life now. And if there's anything you want to discuss on the programme, you can contact us on social media at BBC Woman's Hour or via the Woman's Hour website. Now this week, the public spending watchdog reported the system supporting children and young people with special educational needs in England is in need of urgent reform. The

National Audit Office says the current arrangement is financially unsustainable and is letting down families. We continued our coverage of special educational needs and disabilities with a phone-in following up on our recent programme where so many of you shared that the SEND system is broken. During that programme, the Minister of State for Schools, Catherine McKinnell, acknowledged that the government believes children with SEND should be at the heart of the educational system, promising that changes are on the way.

On Wednesday, we asked, what is working in your schools and what best practices might look like? Lots of you got in touch, starting with Lou. I'm very lucky in that my son is currently at a grammar school that are very supportive. So my son has ADHD. He got his diagnosis back in 2020 and we previously had a really poor experience at his first secondary school. We're a military family, so we move a lot. I had to get his EHCP myself.

The support from the SEND team was really good, but it wasn't disseminated. And for me, that is the key to good SEND support. It's all well and good having SENCOs and a SEND team who are, you know, experienced, knowledgeable, do all the training. But if that is not shared amongst the teaching faculty, you cannot expect decent support for your children. From our perspective, I could not be more appreciative of the school now don't get me wrong my son has been suspended for 19 days in the last academic year you know which probably sounds terrible but I know if it's at the point where he's being

suspended things have gone catastrophically wrong they very much took on board my recommendations around sanctioning needing to be restorative, not punitive. It can't be used as a tool to punish him. He needs to be given an opportunity to make reparations. This is just an example of their phenomenal practice. He had a new biology teacher and he's very much one of those children that if he doesn't like the teacher he won't engage and they recognized this quite early on so they arranged for a mediation between him and the biology teacher so that they could have a conversation about what was going wrong what was breaking down how could they move forward I can't praise them enough we have meetings at the school where we are able to share our perspectives if there's anything that works at home they ask about it

so that we can they can use it at school they are kind compassionate they send emails giving me feedback and it might be that there's things that are going wrong but they will always caveat that with some positives so that we've got something good to take away they will ring me and let me know if he's gonna there's gonna be a sanction they communicate really openly with me and they ensure that the teachers are on board with the plan that they've put in place so it's not just that the SEM team are really good it is something that has been taken on board by the school, the head, you know, the whole school ethos is about supporting those with additional needs. How is your son? He's really challenging.

He can be really hard work, but he's also very likeable. And the school are very good at recognising that these that these are behaviors but that's not who he is as a person and that they recognize that these behaviors are a culmination of his dysregulation you know he himself recognizes how well supported he is to the point that the other day he actually said to me you know well of course I'm not going to do that because I'm going to get kicked out and I really like the school and I was like wow. I'm so happy for you that you have found that and all the best to you and your son what we're doing if you're just tuned into Women's Hour we're hearing your positive experiences your best practices when it comes to send let me bring in Helen hello Helen

good to have you with us tell us a little bit about what you feel has worked. My son, Woody, is six years old. We're based in Scotland. He is in a mainstream primary school and he's had a very complex start to life with health conditions that have affected his general global development. He has limited verbal skills,

some delay with gross and fine motor skills. He has epilepsy, and he's also in the process of being assessed for autism and ADHD. He is in his second year, what we call P2 of primary school. And we've been, well, he has been very lucky because since day one of P1 he was

allocated a one-to-one support worker who he has been with him from that day one all the way through to where he is now and I know that that's a little bit the exception rather than the rule but the difference that that has made for him that he has a person who he's got that predictability, that trust in somebody, someone who can understand when he doesn't have all the verbal skills that his peers have, someone who can really understand where he's at and what he needs. And that's been incredible for him. Do you know, so that's continuity you're talking about there. And I feel with Lou previously, it was like communication was a really big issue.

Do you know how long that might last? I mean, do you get any guarantees? No. And even at the end of his first year, they said, it's likely he'll have the same support worker going into second year. And we were like, oh, I hope so. But there was no guarantee. And I'm assuming that comes down to resource and other children coming into the school and how they can allocate that resource um so you know part of this has been a little bit like like Lou was saying

that the school have implemented some really good practice with learning about my son's um needs and meeting him where he's at and therefore enhancing his ability to learn you know from the structure of what he's learning in the classroom but also from from his peers being you know challenged to do activities and get involved in ways that he may otherwise not have done but by having that one person who's with him if he needs step away, if he's getting a little bit emotionally dysregulated, or he's lost focus, he can step away and he's not on his own, someone's with him, which actually I feel completely enhances his learning. It sounds a bit counterintuitive. But if you try and get my son to sit through a structured school day, the same as his peers,

he will learn nothing. He needs the ability to dip in and out. And that's what that one-to-one provides for him. It's really interesting, Helen. Thank you so much. And let me bring in Lorna next. Lorna, welcome to Woman's Hour. Tell me a little bit about a positive experience that you have had for your child. I've been a SENCO in the Belcature area for over 20 years. So I'll stop you for one second. That is a special educational needs coordinator. I know there's so much of the lingo, so I want to always kind of go back on those acronyms, which is like a language among people who have gone through it. Right. So back to you, you're a teacher for children that have special needs. Yes. And working in mainstream schools

and supporting and training across Bedfordshire as well and while I was doing this job I noticed there was a gap, a huge gap, so we were having the children which I know at the moment a lot's been called the in-betweenies, so children who are not able to access mainstream school but who are not for special needs school and there was this huge gap where we were going through lists saying okay we've tried this and tried that and tried this and what's available and the answer was nothing and if there's nothing available then we're not getting it right and I was listening to Kelly Bright and Katie on your program about mums bridging the gap and they were it was just a

total frustration about being trapped by a lack of options. So looking at all this said, right, we haven't got anything like this in our area. Let's build one. And that's what we've done. So we've built an alternative provision. It's called the den provision. And what we've done is we built a classroom and a playground garden area. And it's available for children with EHCPs, educational health care plans, who have autism as a primary need. And what we're doing is we are intentionally planning for the success of the pupils. So what does that mean? Because I think a lot of people that I have spoken to may have an autistic child and they're bumping up against SEND provision. What is it that you're providing that you feel is working?

So what we have is a personalised, child-led, one-on-one environment. So we're looking at a bespoke learning for the child, child-centred, all these buzzwords that are coming out, and where we focus on what that child needs to do, what that child needs to learn. Because we're looking at developing children's skills, but more importantly, their confidence in order that they can succeed, not just in lower school or middle school or secondary school, but in life and in further education. So let me come to specifics. I mean,

how many people are we talking about for kids? You know, you talk about one-on-one. Yeah. So at the moment we have one-on-one and we opened the moment we have one and we were we opened only a week so we're very congratulations very very well so far and it was you know primarily based on one little boy who um was very much at the forefront of my mind and I thought you know what can we do for this child and then what we've done is we have this classroom where we have a child who needs to access education they They've tried different ways, nothing's worked. So let's then make that so that child can access it. Personalised, what does it look like? If you love elephants, when you come through our door, you're going to see elephants.

If you love ducks, when you come through, you're going to see ducks. So it's about making that child, first of all, the most important thing, relationships and making sure a child wants to be there and wants a person in their space. So if a child comes in and they want to be there, automatically they're going to start being able to trust that person and learn. And it sounds wonderful. But with this, obviously, as we talked about certain children, particularly when they have an EHCP. Yes, sorry, another acronym, but it is an Education, Health and Care Plan. And when you have that, then you are legally to be given, to be provided an education

and certain services are to be met. With this, will the state fund what you are trying to do? So if the child is on a school role, then the school fund it. And if the child is not on school role, then the local fund it. And if the child is not on school role, then the local authority special needs team will then be responsible. So it would go to a panel and it would be decided, you know,

we've tried lots of different options and then give us as an option. And do you feel if somebody was listening who was a SENCO, for example, and they feel in their part of the country that they would like to replicate something like what you're talking about? Do you think it's easy, doable? It's definitely difficult. I mean, we've had months of getting everything ready and prepared. But as you'll probably know from doing all the centre focus, and I'm certain the parents will know, the systems are difficult to navigate. The paperwork is long and the applications are long. Everything needs to have a meeting and an interim review and a panel so um we are now after half term in the first week of half term we're going to be full

and we've been open a week thank you to lorna lou and helen and everyone else who contributed to the phone in education secretary bridget phillipson in a statement said every child and young person deserves the best life chances and the opportunity to achieve and thrive. I am determined to rebuild families' confidence in a system so many rely on, so there will be no more sticking plaster politics and short-termism when it comes to the life chances of some of our most vulnerable children. The reform families are crying out for will take time,

but with a greater focus on mainstream provision and more early intervention, we will deliver the change that is so desperately needed and if you'd like to listen back to the very powerful program all about send that nula presented live from our radio theater then go to bbc sounds it's the episode from the 10th of september remember you can enjoy woman's hour any hour of the day. If you can't join us live at 10am during the week, all you need to do is subscribe to The Daily Podcast. It's free via BBC Sounds. Now, the actor and comedian Kate McKinnon is best known for her impressions of Hillary Clinton, Ellen DeGeneres and even Justin Bieber on America's most famous sketch show,

Saturday Night Live, where she was a staple for 10 years. Whether you know her from SNL or as Weird Barbie, she'll have made you laugh probably a lot at some point in your life. She's now written a very funny children's book, The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science, and joined me earlier in the week for a chat. The genre is middle grade. I've learned this. It's ages 8 to 12, for a chat. The genre is middle grade. I've learned this.

It's ages 8 to 12, 8 to 14. I'd say 8 to mid-40s myself. Yes, yes. Which is different from YA, which is, you know, making out with monsters. And I love the genre. I love the genre because it bears resemblance to sketch comedy in a way. Lots of funny names and big hair and funny characters. But it's also, it's a hopeful genre. I find it's the best of us. It's speaking to young people at a time when they're starting to think about these big existential

questions like, who am I and what do I want to do to help the world? Do I want to help the world? So what's it about? Oh, yes, the book. What's it about? Well, it's about three sisters in the snooty turn of the century East Coast United States town of Antiquarium, who get kicked out of etiquette school, and they get an invitation to a mysterious new school that happens to be presided over by the infamous mad scientist Millicent Quibb. And she takes them on an adventure and they save the town. Wonderful. Can we have a reading, please? Oh, yes. Allow me to read. So Millicent Quibb is... Let me get comfortable.

Here we go....is a pariah, an iconoclast, a bogeyman in the town. And the children have a nursery rhyme about her, and it goes like this. Heed my tale, I tell no fib. Beware the home of Millicent Quibb. She'll twist your skull until it's loose, then pickle your brain in lemon juice. Her hair is wild, her clothes are smelly, all coated with fish and rotted jelly. You needn't fear the witch's curse. Mad scientists like her are much, much worse. If you hope to grow up past 11, or have a birthday when you're 7 or even make it past the crib, beware the home of Millicent Quib. But of course, she's not bad, you guys. It's just that the people who present as upstanding in the town are actually rotten of spirit and the woman who's a total mess

is the one who's actually working to theme for the program i mean we were talking to emily watson about her character that she's just played in the the film where she's the mother superior who is actually sort of you know running this town through fear yes um who Who is Millicent Quibb? Was she modelled on someone in real life? I hope to think that I'm a bit of a Millicent Quibb for the young people that I encounter. But my father and my mother were both iconoclasts in their own right. My father... What are their names?

My father, Michael, passed a long time ago, but he was a solar architect who was in the 90s trying to begging all of his clients to put solar panels on their houses because he knew then and none of them wanted to do it. But he he spent his life tortured by the coming climate crisis. And my mother is here in town with me she's a social worker and um sometime a youth sex educator who devised a curriculum for girls who are beginning puberty and she would give them all tiaras and and you brought your mom with her with you yes yes she's on she's on tour with you yes she is that's wonderful i know does she always go on tour with you she doesn she's on she's on tour with you yes she is that's wonderful i know does she always go on tour with you she doesn't she just she's she's the funniest person i know and she's uh

an avid avid reader and she's so smart when i began my menage she she said oh god we're making you a tampon crown and we're gonna dance dance around the moon. And that's the difference. And so I never had any shame about anything. How freeing. How exactly that I never had any shame about anything, isn't that? I mean, but not periods. No, I mean, some stuff, but not that. And so to have these kind of mentors, I mean, I think the most important thing for a young person is to give them the message that whatever about yourself that the people around you are saying, that's too big, that's too weird, don't do that.

That is the thing that will save you in the end and will in fact save the world and help the species to evolve. So what was it about you? Because as I mentioned at the beginning, people may know you best as playing Weird Barbie. And you and Greta Gerwig were at college together. Yes. And that role was written for you. Or she saw you as... That's what she said, yeah. So what were you like at college? I've just been profoundly weird my whole life.

As a young person, I had an iguana in my room. I had a tank of Madagascar hissing cockroaches in my room as pets that I would take out and put on my arm while I was doing my homework and speak to them. And, you know, I think any 12 year old is having a dual experience of falling in love with the world, with the natural world, with the people around them, and also feeling so dogged by these messages that they're getting from the culture. And I certainly was confused. I thought, well, I think I'm interesting. And I think my little hobbies are interesting.

And I kind of like myself. But the culture is telling me that this is bizarre. And so I didn't know what to think. But thank God I had mentors in my life who told me to keep going with those things. And your mum. Yes. Yeah. And when I was in the sixth form, we were the self-confessed freaks corner.

And I still have a WhatsApp group with my best mates. Just the freaks. It's the greatest. I've just announced that to the world. There you go. When did you find your crew? club and we would while other girls were watching the boys play basketball we sat in the corner at recess and um tested the different honeysuckle flowers and tried to determine if there was a correlation between color of the flower and sweetness of the nectar so yeah stuff like wonderful absolutely wonderful um i'm gonna lean into this so much okay i need to talk about your Saturday Night Live crew as well, getting a part of that, the 10 years that you spent there. I understand your love of impressions is what got you onto the. People always at a restaurant, people say, what, what? But we had to audition for a skit for Reading Week and to be the queen of Reading Week. And I started and I was nervous and I couldn't get the words out. And then I thought, wait, a queen has a British accent. Why don't I do it in a British accent? And suddenly I had breath support and I had volume and I could do it. And it's been that way ever since. I just,

I feel so much more comfortable speaking in someone else's voice. Can you do Yorkshire? That's where I'm from. I'm from Bradford. You are? Yeah. Oh my goodness. My favourite. Your favourite? Martha from the Secret Garden. my favourite. Oh my goodness. I won't put you on the spot, don't worry.

Look at you porridge, you're getting on well enough with that this morning. That was wonderful. Excellent, love it. Hilary Clinton, perhaps your best known character. How do you embody Hilary? Oh gosh, to do anyone I just would watch hours and hours of footage. I don't know how anyone did an impression before YouTube because just the gathering of video footage was a task in itself. There thesis about a person. And I find any comedic character is the juxtaposition between two paradoxical elements. And I find two words that are juxtaposed. And that, for me, is the genesis of any comedic character. The rather brilliant Kate McKinnon. Now, living with diabetes is a reality for more than 4 million people in the UK, according to Charity Diabetes UK. For those with type 1 diabetes, it involves daily insulin injections

and near constant monitoring of levels of sugar in the blood. That process was made a huge amount easier by Dr. Sheila Reith with an idea that struck her in the loos at Euston Station way back in 1975, the insulin pen. Sheila's invention, developed together with a team of doctors and engineers, has vastly improved, if not saved, the lives of millions of people. She was made a CBE in 2023 to recognise her work and this week received a Lifetime Achievement Award

at the Pride of Britain Awards. She began by explaining diabetes. Well, diabetes is a condition where you have too much sugar in the blood and the body can't process that sugar. You need to be able to use the sugar in your blood to make energy and new tissues and you need insulin for that. And this is the basis of all diabetes. In type 1 diabetes, the person doesn't make the insulin.

It's an immune response. It's nothing to do with their lifestyle or anything they've done themselves. So it's, you know, they're attacked. Type 2 diabetes, the person becomes resistant to the insulin their body makes and then gradually they don't make enough as well. But it tends to attack people who have a weight problem. It's more likely to attack people who have a weight problem. Vastly more common than type 1, but all diabetes is serious. People used to say to me, I've got type 2 diabetes, it's not serious, but it is serious.

All diabetes can cause complications. Now, you were already a doctor specialising in diabetes, but it was actually your personal experience of the disease that led to the idea for the insulin pen. So tell us what happened in the loos at Euston Station. Take us back. Well, at that time, we'd been working in London and my husband got a new job in Glasgow and he'd gone ahead to Glasgow to try and find a house and

each weekend I would bring the children at that stage, the two of them, up to Glasgow. We caught the night sleeper on Friday evening to Glasgow and then on Sunday evening we would come back on the night sleeper because I think at that time Fiona was my other one was going to school and the train would get in to Euston station early in the morning and at that point she was needing her insulin injection she had developed type 1 diabetes when she was only four it was an awful shock because I was already a consultant in that field and we didn't have it in the family so it just seemed you know a bit ironic that should happen. Anyway she needed her insulin and the only

place I could think to give it because we'd been made to get off the train was in the ladies' lure in Houston where we'd come in and it was a great palaver giving insulin those days I mean it's unbelievable since 50 years ago remember, because at that time one had to use a glass syringe and a steel needle which got sent away to be sharpened and then reused and you boiled these up and in between the boilings to sterilise them one kept them in a flask of industrial meth. So in the loo one would have this flask of industrial mess with the steel needle and the syringe, when we had a bottle of insulin, we had to get all this out and then give the

injection. And the needles were quite big. I mean, they were really quite brutal. And as we were doing it, I thought, this is just crazy. This is medieval. In a tiny toilet. I's hard is it hard enough just going to the loo in those toilets never mind having to think anywhere else to try yeah of course it's a bit harder but anyway i didn't so that came to me and i knew the dentist he was pre-filled um files of a local anesthetic and then a delivery device um and so i thought there must be some way of doing better with insulin. We need to cartridge the insulin such we can then use a device to give the injection.

So when was the eureka moment? When did you come up with the idea? My husband and I then tried to kitchen sink the devices. I actually thought, I went to all the big insulin manufacturers. At that time there was Nova and Nordisk and Eli Lilly America, and at that time insulin was still made in Britain, I was welcome, to try and explain my idea. But none of them took it up, so we set to try and devise this ourselves. At that time I knew in America they'd just come out with disposable syringes which had a very uniform bore, plastic ones.

It occurred that if we took the plunger out, that made the disposable syringe into a cartridge. But you then needed to monitor how much you were giving or meter it because insulin is expensive and one couldn't afford to just give some and throw some away. And every patient needs a different amount. You might need two units or you might need 22 units. And so it had to be a variable meter. Well, at that time, we moved to Glasgow. And I was very fortunate to join Dr. John Ireland,

that was then the Southern General Hospital, now the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Yes. I discussed my ideas with him and he was a remarkable man and he was very enthusiastic and thought we should pursue this. We both realised that we weren't engineers to make this metering device. So who did you take it to, to develop it? Well, the Department of Clinical Physics and Bioengineering and then very kindly, Dr John Payon joined us. You're obviously someone

who knows how to convince people. Although it's my idea we're already a team of three I mean this was not just me. Do you remember the first prototype do you remember holding it in your hands? Oh yes yes and so he was brilliant and came up with this device where you press the button on the end, rather like a virus, and that gave two units. If you wanted six units, say, you press the button three times. But, of course, we only had, you know, the one device. We had a very excellent nurse at that time, and she volunteered to ask some of the patients if they would volunteer to try this device out.

And eight people stepped forward of varying ages and so you know again I've always said this was a team effort it wasn't just me it was my idea. How much have insulin pens changed since then? Oh just enormously I mean what happened next well Diabetes UK stepped up and provided the money to make 100 pens so we could do a bigger trial in the country all these things have to be you know monitored properly and it was greeted enthusiastically and the first commercial pen was made in plastic but again that was still quite cumbersome and modern pens made by particularly Novo and Eli Lilly you you know, much improved on with our original version.

But they all have this principle of having insulin inside them. They now just make the whole pen disposable and a metering device on the end where you dial up the dose you need. And all because of you realising that there needs to be a better solution. You've been made a CBE and you've now received a Lifetime Achievement Award. What do these achievements mean to you? Well, I mean just always was fairly passionate about making diabetes care better at the time this all happened this is now 50 years ago one couldn't even measure blood sugar and the diabetes is absolutely essential to know what the sugar is doing in the blood but there was no means for the patients to directly measure this. So, I mean, the whole care of diabetes has been transformed.

Because of you. Thanks to you, Sheila. Well, not only me. I mean, other people have done things. But, you know, it's so important to go on with research because now research is very good in Britain. We've got marvellous people and they're now looking in ways first of all to delay the onset of type 1 by stopping the immune attack and secondly to improve the lives of people who already got it and nowadays you can get a so-called hybrid closed loop where there's continuous monitoring of the blood sugar and a little computer bit program then tells an insulin pump how much insulin to put in and this makes control of blood sugar infinitely better and greatly improves people's lives yes

this isn't available to everyone once you talk and i'm sure you're aware of this and i'm sure lots of people have thanked you but dr sheila ruth you have not only revolutionized type 1 diabetes, but also people's lives. A personal friend of mine, when I said I was interviewing you, wanted me to pass on his thanks. And we just had a message from somebody saying, please thank Dr. Reith on behalf of myself, my daughter and all type 1 diabetics. Congratulations once again on receiving your Lifetime Achievement Award. Thank you. The inspiring Dr. Sheila Reith. Now, have you been watching Rivals?

The eight-part series on Disney Plus is an adaptation of Jilly Cooper's classic 1980s bonk-buster novel Rivals, starring David Tennant and Aidan Turner. It's set in a fictional upper-class Cotswolds community and features media, politics and lots and lots of sex. What does this moment of steamy nostalgia tell us about sex in 2024? Dana McAlpine is a sex and relationships writer and lifestyle editor at Huffington Post UK and Rowan Pelling is editor of Perspective and former editor of The Erotic Review. So what did Rowan make of it?

Oh, it's absolutely glorious. I was exactly the age that Taggy was when that drama is set. So I sort of came of age in Gilly World, stealing those novels from friends of, you know, mothers of my friends at school, because my mum wasn't racy enough to buy them. You do hold it quite sacred in your head how it should be done. And this is the first adaptation I've seen that really captures something of the joyousness, but also looks at the 1980s with a sort of shrewd, slightly dark eye saying,

do we really want to go back there? Let me turn to Dana, you're 31, you don't remember the 80s with a sort of shrewd, slightly dark eye saying, do we really want to go back there? Let me turn to Dana. You're 31. You don't remember the 80s, but I'm wondering what you think about the world that you're seeing created in Rivals. I mean, when you look at it, it's certainly not like shying away from the era's shortcomings whatsoever, right? Like I found Rivals so much fun. It was very British. It was sex is meant to be silly and that's definitely how it was portrayed. It wasn't this sleek American sex between Egyptian cotton sheets

and perfect teeth and tans. It's like very much, how's your father? It was rumpy pumpy. But in the same way, as much fun as it was, it really didn't hide the fact that there was plenty wrong in that era and I think seeing it through a 2024 lens was really interesting. How does the sexual landscape of the 80s differ from today Dana in your eyes? Certainly from my side of things we

have the I don't think my well I'm I know I come under the millennial umbrella but I don't think we're shying away from sex by any means I think the difference now is that we have the language we have a bigger understanding of consent the one night stand have been mastered we know how to ask for pleasure you know this is where we've got dating apps you know where you can have sex tailored to what your pleasure and fantasy might be. That's not to say that horrible things don't still happen out there. But I think it's certainly a lot more open in terms of pleasure isn't a dirty word. And we know a lot more about consent. But what about that, Roan? Like I'm looking at the 80s to 2024.

I mean, do you think it captures the sexual atmosphere of the 80s, Roan? Well, clearly we were growing up in a world where there wasn't internet, there wasn't Tinder. People met in real life situations and that meant that alcohol was often involved. I think what really I noticed about the series, it reminded me of being at those kind of parties where you would just gulp back a glass of wine you didn't even like. And then the end game was to get off with someone by the end of a party. So I think my children would find that tremendously vulgar and silly. You know, they'd be going through stages of dating. You know, they're all set in stone, these different stages before you're even committed.

And we would be just saying, when's the slow dance? Before the slow dance happened, you have to have found someone for that night's entertainment. You didn't know what you were doing. You hadn't seen sex education. You didn't have those kind of models. You might have found your mum's joy of sex, but that was about it. So you had to sort of learn by doing it. I'm not sure that was an entirely a bad thing. Let me throw that back over to Dana. What about that? The way Rowan describes that, I mean, does that still happen? Go to the party, knock back some bad wine and start looking for somebody to hook up with? I mean, I certainly think there's still plenty of that on a Saturday

night. I think there's parts of rivalsivals that definitely still exist now in 2024. I mean, I'm not sure that you'll catch me doing naked tennis anytime soon. But I think certainly that was what quite a lot of the appeal about Rivals has been when I've spoken to my friends over the weekend about it. That's what was actually the sexiest bit of it. It wasn't the sex.

It was these organic power dynamics and meeting organically and sort of having that, God, that, you know, that just doesn't happen now. What about that though, Rowan? Like not having the real life, you know, power connections, dynamics that, of course, you would have grown up with. And it was just not even something you thought about, to be quite honest. I mean, flirting in the office as a de rigueur. And, you know, you really expected that people were going to hit on you. And then you could sort of go, no, not interested. Or maybe you were interested. I met my husband at work in a magazine office. And at the time that magazine, this was in the 90s, a bit later, but it was known as the love boat because there were so many relationships that got going

there. And I think that would be rightly frowned on, but something has probably been lost in the mix. You know, we were having a very riotous time that wasn't policed and sometimes people were properly harassed and it was serious. And it was hushed up in the way we see in the programme by HR too. I mean, you realise that was happening. Someone would just disappear. And then you'd hear this terrifying tale about how it was always the woman's fault. That was true then.

The man did not get punished. The woman was sort of shuffled off to another role. There are a lot of aspects of when it comes to the uncomfortable storylines. For example, something very moving, actually, about a gay relationship that takes place, but just also that there was no space for some gay people in those lives that were there. I was wondering, Dana, as a younger person watching that, what you thought? Certainly, even now in 2024, there's plenty of people who still feel that they have to remain closeted. But I think it was a really important thing to have, certainly, for us to appreciate where we've come from, and the sort of hardships that people before us in terms of LGBT have been through. You know, we are in a far more liberal landscape now.

Sexually, it's just a part of that, you know, across everything. There is still problems as well. But I think it was so important to have something like Section 28 included in it so that we could pause and reflect on that as well. Yes. Another, you know know I just had Jay Smith Cameron in talking about her role as Gerry in Succession when she had an unconsummated relationship with Roman Roy in that TV drama but in Rivals there is the main love stories between a 19 year old woman and a man more than twice her age. What did you make of that,

Rowan, kind of par for the course at that time? Yes, I think relationships with older men and often with the boss were far more common then. And I'm going to say again, from my own experience, that when I was first in London, and I was 23, I was dating a man who was 50 for two years. I didn't work with him. He was an architect. But, you know, he was powerful and interesting and took me to grand restaurants I could never afford. And, you know, I can't look back and say that was a mistake. It was a learning curve. And I sometimes wonder whether in our very sort of policed finesse, you know, we think about things so carefully that we sometimes overthink ourselves out of situations because everything comes with this side dose of anxiety in 2024. And I suppose with that relationship,

he was obviously older, but it was obviously consensual. Perhaps there were not the power dynamics that there would have been within a work relationship, for example. Dana, I'm wondering how you see it. I mean, as someone who also in their early 20s dated someone that was a lot older. Sorry, mum, if you're listening. I think, you know, it is just a bit par for the course. I think, again, the good thing about where we're at now is, again, we have a bigger understanding of this, right? It's not just about age. It's also a power imbalance. It's all of these things.

And yes, God, we know that power is sexy and that there is such an appeal with that as well from a dating perspective. But again, I just think there's more of an understanding about the warning signs that you do need to look for. And do you think, you've probably heard the term, and I'll start with you, Dana, that rivals is anti-woke? I think that's really a stretch. I think that quite honestly, like the sex is probably the least interesting part of it in some of the cases. The sex is silly. It's fun. It doesn't shy away from the fact that, you know, there is everything

from homophobia, racism, you know, sexism. It tackles all of these things as well. I don't think it's anti-woke as such. It deals with these hard things alongside portraying the era. Yaron how would you see it? I think there was an element that was if you like anti-PC but not to do with the sex particularly or the storylines I just really enjoyed the fact that people were gleefully drinking, smoking, driving their fast cars far too speedily down narrow country roads, not really worrying about wearing helmets on horses. So there is that carefree aspect, which, of course, you know, it's not you're going,

oh, I wish we could return to the good old dangerous days when everyone's livers exploded and they got lung cancer. My father got lung cancer, but there's a certain nostalgia for the James Hunt way of life, I suppose you'd call it, and a playboy who didn't care. It's just fun, like Austin Powers is fun about the 60s. Rowan Pelling and Dana McAlpine talking to Nuala. That's it from me. On Monday, Nuala will be speaking to the star of Motherland

and Line of Duty, Anna Maxwell Martin. That's Monday from 10. I'm off to be very weird and binge-watch Rivals. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hey, friend, I'm Randy Feltface, the world's most entertaining non-human comedian. And if you like stand-up, sitcom and sketch comedy, Join us again next time. 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's 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.