Woman's Hour - Wally Funk, Blood Inquiry, Gloria Vanderbildt, Conservatives

Episode Date: June 19, 2019

As the candidate field narrows further in the Conservatives quest for the next leader, we discuss how those left are trying to win over different female electorates - MPs, the party membership and the women who will have to vote for the new PM in any general election. And, how do they compare to the Lib Dems where the favourite to become their next leader is a woman? Jenni spoke to Anne McElvoy, a senior editor at the Economist and Miranda Green, a journalist and former adviser to the Lib Dems.In 1961 an American pilot, Wally Funk wanted to be an astronaut and passed the Woman in Space programme as part of a group known as the Mercury 13. The programme was abruptly cancelled and instead Wally became America’s first woman aviation safety inspector and taught 3,000 pilots to fly. Now nearly 80, Wally still wants to go into space and is on the waiting list to go as a tourist.More than 2,000 people have died after being infected with HIV and hepatitis C through blood treatments. The victims were infected over 25 years ago, in what has been called the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS. But even now new cases are still being diagnosed. Michelle Tolley found out that she had been infected with Hepatitis C while she was giving birth in 1987. She tells Jenni what happened and why she is taking part in the Infected Blood Inquiry.Earlier this week we heard of the death in Manhattan of Gloria Vanderbildt. She was 95. She was a famously beautiful, fabulously wealthy socialite, but she was also a fashion designer and known as the Queen of Jeans. Jenni spoke to the fashion historian, Amber Butchart about what led Vanderbildt into the promotion of jeans.

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, Jenny Murray welcoming you to Wednesday's edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. It was 1961 and a group of women known as Mercury 13 were tested and trained as astronauts. It didn't happen. Wally Funk was one of them at nearly 80. Why is she still desperate to go into space? The infected blood inquiry continues. More than 2,000 people are known to have died. Michelle Tolley was infected with hepatitis C when she gave birth in 1987. Why is she taking part in the

inquiry? And earlier this week we heard of the death at 95 of Gloria Vanderbilt. Why was a sophisticated socialite known as the Queen of Jeans? Now you may have been watching BBC One at 8 o'clock last night for an hour of debate between the five remaining candidates for the leadership of the Conservative Party and of course consequently the job of Prime Minister. They discussed Brexit and the possible consequences of no deal. They were asked about children in care, tax cuts, the Irish border, climate change and Islamophobia. But what did we hear that might have been seen to suggest the candidates were concerned about the lives of women and might be making an effort to win over the female electorate.

Well, I'm joined by Anne McElvoy, a senior editor at The Economist, and Miranda Green, a journalist and former advisor to the Lib Dems. How conscious was she that there were no women in the line-up? Well, it's hard to avoid, Jenny, definitely. And, you know, there were lots of jokes about which boy band they resembled, which aging boy band, you know, or the, you know, the Rat Pack, you know, pick your all-male lineup metaphor. And it is very, very conspicuous. It

doesn't look at all like modern Britain. And poor Sajid Javid is the only person who looks vaguely different. Even the kind of upstart challenger, unexpected insurgent Rory Stewart is another Etonian. It's not reflective. Of course, there were two women who were eliminated in the earlier round. And I'm not saying particularly that I would have been cheering them on because I don't share their politics. But it's very conspicuous that the Tory party doesn't look like the country that it wants to represent. And how concerned do you reckon the candidates and their teams will be about how that looks to a modern electorate? I don't think they're concerned enough.

And I think it's inevitable if you're going to go through rounds of a contest and you have a knockout structure and that's the party rules, whether anybody likes it or not, or the way that they've decided decided to run the contest they've sort of made it up as they went along a bit but what I thought was very interesting was I'm very interested what happens in the back room of politics here the boiler room and who is behind the candidates who's prepping them who's making sure if they are thinking about women at all of what the angle is I didn't feel that there was much awareness of that. And I think we saw why when we went, if you like, to the post-match report on Newsnight, when we saw their kind of batmen come out,

and they were almost, to a man, batmen, the people who sit behind them, the kind of campaign managers who were spinning for them. And they were largely male as well. So we went from the men in black, or the ageing boy band, as Miranda nicely puts it, to the sort of, you know, the drummers and the technicians in the back room were also male.

And I think that is really something that needs to change. In American politics, whether you go to the Republicans and even to Team Trump, and certainly on the centre-left, if you've got a male candidate, you can make sure that there's a bit of female-facing activity around the campaign. It shows that we really haven't got there yet. Boris Johnson talked over Emily Maitlis, and I know last week he was criticised for dismissive behaviour to the female political editors of Sky and the BBC. How did that look, that he talked over her so much?

It's very hard, given the time, time isn't it to know when to stalk and when not to stalk. I mean you're pitching out there really for your votes at this stage. Boris is through to the party through the MPs to the party. So I have a bit of sympathy for politicians particularly I think when they're not quite match fit and that's the problem with Boris. I think he's usually quite courteous. He can be quite amusing. He's provocative. He's controversial. There's all the things you either love or hate about Boris Johnson. I think he looked like a slightly nervous candidate who therefore is speaking just at the wrong time and can't decide when to shut up. The optics of that, I don't know what Moran thinks about that,

but I don't think were very nice. But it was a little bit in the format. If you've got five people fighting for airtime, they're going to get to the end of the sentence. Yeah, I think all of them were trying to take each other's oxygen and Emily's, to be fair. And therefore, it was quite difficult as a viewer to learn things. I think we did learn a few things, though. I think it's possible that the kind of outsider insurgent Rory Stewart campaign may have hit a bit of a brick wall because he's very good at pointing out other people's problems, but wasn't so good at arguing his own positive case. And possibly Jeremy Hunt's not as weak a candidate as we thought. I thought that was the only two main things. I think he was the winner.

If there was a winner, it was Jeremy Hunt. The first woman who asked a question was worried about her children and her husband's job. And she said very specifically she was not reassured by any of their answers. How concerned should the candidates be about that incident? Well, I think it depends on the angle of personnel. I looked at Twitter and afterwards, and you tend to find that people who didn't like the candidates to start with didn't like them even more after the debate. So you have to allow for the fact that people come with their own views. They come with their own angles.

It's a bit of a funny thing to go back to people who often have come on because they weren't satisfied about something. Are you satisfied? To which the answer is generally no. However, I think what she was putting her finger on was a sense that the candidates, in a way, they hadn't thought through how they were going to explain their pitch and their policy outlook when it came to a specific person, a woman, her family, somebody with children in a particular situation. Now, you can like or not like their views. But one thing you absolutely have to stress test in politics is how does my answer sound when someone with a big problem in that area comes and confronts me with it. I think there's also something else more fundamental about the Tory party's problems

at the moment, which was this woman was asking about the lack of stability. She was asking about something very specific, which is the consequences of going for no deal and the danger to ordinary families. And to have inadequate responses on that was quite revealing because, you know, what is the Conservative Party for? You know, what's its USP? Number one, it's supposed to be the party of safeguarding the economy. And it's supposed to be stable, you know, protecting the things about the country that we know and trust. If voters are worried about their family's immediate future, you've lost something really quite fundamental.

And that is to do with their Brexit policy and, frankly, the fact that none of them have a clear answer on it. The party membership, Anne, who will vote on the final two are often characterised as male and pale. How worried are some in the party that they may have a winner who won't appeal to floating female voters? This electorate probably is. I mean, we have very loose data on who they are. And I feel a bit, sometimes a bit sorry for this group of voters who are sort of talked down to as if they couldn't make a sensible decision. They're actually a very sophisticated party electorate.

It is the system that they vote within the party. That's the way it goes in leadership campaigns. I think that's not, to my mind, the big problem. The big problem for the candidates is to look beyond that. That's, if you like, the hurdle they have to get over to get elected. And then they have to be ready straight away on day one to take their pitch to the country. Because the way things are, they become prime minister at a very difficult time. They have to restore that stability that Miranda was just talking about there. Something will have happened by

the autumn, which will have tested them on that. So all I would want to know from them is not so much, do you not understand because the party's a bit old and a bit male? Parties, depends who joins them. Can they get other people to get interested in them? Can they get away from that view that they're just super serving a very small group of people? I think someone who really broke out of the box, Rory Stewart obviously has tried to in his way, but probably not going to be the winner.

That's really where this contest needs to go next. Let's see what they learned from last night on that score. Miranda, the favourite in the Lib Dem leadership contest, which is running pretty well concurrently, is a woman, Jo Swinson. How concerned will Conservative strategists be about how that looks? Well, I think they should be more concerned about the Lib Dems than they are, is the answer. There are three and a half million odd Tory remain voters who do seem to have, if the European elections and the local elections and the Lib Dem success there is anything to go by, which I think

it is, are really quite tempted by a kind of sensible middle of the road party. And Jo Swinson would be a kind of fresh face. So she'd have that sort of honeymoon period. And if, as Anne says, in the autumn, things become really, really unstable again, and we're plunged into an election, that sort of fresh few months that she's had will advantage her. And yes, women voters and indeed men voters will be able to sort of have a much more visible Lib Dem choice in front of them. I think it's always a mistake to think that women will just vote for another woman. In fact, one of the problems, frankly, in getting good women selected at local party level in all parties

has often been trying to get men and women in the parties to believe that the electorate will choose a female MP. So, you know, it's not as simple as putting a woman in front of women voters. If I had a pound for every time I've heard that Liberal Democrats doing one in elections, between general elections, meant a big break. My conservatory would be considerably larger.

I think there is something when we talk about remain female voters. We have to remember that voters can identify very strongly as leave or remain, but they have other things they will want to know. And that will be Jo Swinson's challenge. Is it just another campaign for the people's vote dressed up or can she offer a broader platform very good thread on twitter from lisa nandy from labour yesterday saying we're getting too trapped in identifying as leave and remain our voters our potential voters or those we've lost have a lot of other concerns they might consider themselves remain but they might vote on something else and mikhail roy and miranda green Green will know more about who goes through next at six o'clock this evening

and we will watch it very carefully. Thank you both very much for being with us this morning. Now you may already be aware that 1961 was a rather significant year for women in the space race. The film

Hidden Figures brought out the history of the brilliant female mathematicians who worked at NASA, but less known is a group called the Mercury 13. They were women who were selected, tested and trained to take part in missions to space, but the programme was cancelled abruptly and none of the women made it. Wally Funk was a pilot who was selected to be one of the group. She became America's first female aviation inspector and taught 3,000 pilots to fly. At the age of nearly 80, she's still rather keen to go to space. Her biography has been published by Sue Nelson and it's called Wally Funk's Race for Space. Wally, why did you want to become an astronaut? Oh, all my life. When I started flying,

I wanted to be up in the heavens. It was part of me. And then the other thing I did was I was into opera. So I had two major things. And then, of course, I had to pick from them. But aviation took over my life because I have over 19,600 flight hours. And that's a lot more than most airline pilots have. How were you selected to be trained as an astronaut? I was given a phone call when I was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, teaching the army. They said, W Wally do you want to be an astronaut I said yes and they said well get a hold of Dr. Loveless which I did and wrote to him and he wrote back and he said be here on a certain date and my parents had to drive me from Taos New Mexico where I born, to Albuquerque and checked me in. And I was underage for those tests at 20. And they signed me in. And right away, they started giving me tests, which included everything they could possibly do to the body. And I'm sure you're going to ask me questions about that. Yeah what sort of things

did have to be done? I know you had to swallow three feet of rubber hose which makes me feel sick just thinking about it. Yes I had to swallow three feet of rubber to figure out what was in my system, different parts of my system. Also, at one time, those hoses went up me. And then they would give me two white cups, and one would say urine, and the other one would say stool, and I gave them the urine. And then two days later, they said,

where's the other cup? I said, I don't know what stool is. Stool to me is what I sat on when I was milking cows. And they said, no, we want the other stuff that comes out of your mouth. I said, you want that? Yes, we want that. But every test was really incredible. The one that was probably

most people didn't like, but I was always taught never to yell out, never to cry. I was brought up very, very strictly and proper. They injected 10 degree water in my ear one at a time. So the right ear was first. I said, when it hit the eardrum, I said, oh, wow. And I took it. And that happened for about 30 or 40 seconds. And it came out. And I was taken to another room to get, because people have fainted on this test. And they brought me back in. And they did the left ear. And that one hurt a little more more because that's my ear that I hear the best out of

and I said oh my word and I went through that test you're strapped in a seat so you can't really move people have fallen out of their seats in former times so you have to remember the men went through that the Mercury 7 actually there were 125 guys that took it. And how many got it? Seven. And then there were 25 girls that were selected, but only 13 made it. How were you regarded by the men who were doing it? And I found it very interesting. They called you moon maids or astronauts. No, we didn't, I didn't like that. I liked the Mercury 13. I don't know where that came from. I never endorsed it. How did you find out the group had been disbanded? Oh, because I knew Dr. Loveless personally. He had taken care of my father, and he knew I was from Taos, New Mexico.

And it was told to all of us when we were supposed to go down to Florida to take more tests that the things in Washington that were going on, they didn't think they needed women in space, which was really too bad. So they said, we don't have any more of a program. And when Dr. Loveless died, it was only three or four years after my test, all of the records were destroyed of all of the tests that all the girls took. You went on to work as an air crash investigator. our first girl to be an accident a ntsb investigator so i investigated airplane accidents and i did 45 accidents in three or four different states but some of that work must have been terribly distressing because you were there soon after the planes had come out of the air. In my childhood, I had played with any kind of animal and picked them up and did whatever.

As a person, that was part of the job. No, I did not get upset. I didn't have a bad feeling. I was doing my job. I had to find out why the pilot did what he did. If it was the pilot getting into bad weather, the pilot not being aware of what the aircraft could do. Was it an aircraft problem? There are several problems that could have happened. And I have to figure out which one of those problems it was that had the accident. So my most famous accident that I did out of that 45 was the PSA airline accident that ran over a

172 and crashed in San Diego, California, which took out five, or no, 20 rows of homes, and I had to figure out what was going on. It wasn't until I listened to the FAA radio, when the guys were talking, there were two different frequencies. They didn't know about each other, so they didn't know to stay away from each other. And when the first officer said, oh, I see him, he's over there. And before we knew it, they crashed into him. Now, as far as space is concerned, why are you still keen to go? I want to go because I've trained.

I'm the only one that has trained and passed. Loveless said, you keep going. And I am. I'll go to any place I can to get a test. And I've been to Russia three times to go with the cosmonauts, and I beat them at their tests. So I will still keep going hard and fast and I'm still flying. I'm the only one out of the group and I'm the only one left that flies. You've bought

a Virgin Galactic ticket for, I think, $200,000. That is correct. In the hope that you can do it as a tourist effectively. How likely is that to happen soon? Well, I'm going over there in about three days. So I'll see Virgin Galactic. And I've met Sir Richard. So he told me he would take me 100 miles above Earth. I hope that'll happen. And they were the only company.

I've been with three or four different companies out of California that said they would take me up, but they didn't have enough money to build that vehicle to go into space. I couldn't get on with NASA because right now they're not sending girls up from NASA. It's all out of Russia. And then when I wanted to get with Russia, I mean with NASA, I had to have an engineering degree. Well, I didn't have an engineering degree, so I went to get one when I was living in Dayton

because I had been all over the United States as an investigator and as a chief pilot, primarily a chief pilot, and they said, when I went to get the thing, he tapped me on the shoulder and he said, you're a girl, go to Home Ec. Wally Funk, I have no doubt that you will make it into space. Oh, of course I will. And the very, very best of luck to you. Thank you very much indeed for being with us this morning.

And that book by Sue Nelson is called Wally Funk's Race for Space. Wally, thank you very much. Thank you. Now, still to come in today's programme, the legacy of Gloria Vanderbilt, who died this week. Why was a high-class socialite the woman who promoted genes? And the serial Reading Europe lullaby. Now, you may have missed

earlier in the week a discussion on Monday about the mental health of teenagers and Dr Ruth Westheimer reflecting on her career as an advisor on sex. Don't forget, if you miss the live programme, you can always catch up. All you have to do is download

the BBC Sounds app and search for Woman's Hour. Now the Infected Blood All you have to do is download the BBC Sounds app and search for Woman's Hour. Now, the infected blood inquiry opened in London last year. It's heard evidence in Belfast and it's now in Leeds. And we've heard of entire families who lost relatives as a result of contracting HIV and hepatitis C through blood transfusions and blood plasma. More than 2,000 people are known to have died. Most of them had suffered from haemophilia, but even now new cases are being diagnosed. Well, Michelle Tolley has given evidence about the blood transfusion she was given when she gave birth to her first child in 1987 she was infected with hepatitis c she runs a facebook

group for people infected and affected and she's in leeds giving support to other people she joins us from there michelle what's the latest news from the inquiry oh good morning um so the latest news is, well, actually, the first witness is about to give their evidence at 10.30. It's very harrowing to sit there watching people share their lives with you, their losses, the effects that it's had on their families, the destruction. It's just never ending. It's absolutely shocking. It's sad. it's emotional um i just what can you say you know it's um it's just onwards get as many people out there to give their evidence to tell their stories to share what's happened to them to raise awareness to find that the missing thousands that still continue to walk around with hepatitis C.

Now, you spoke at the London hearings, as I said. What was the experience like for you to relate what had happened to you? Well, I think because when I found out I'd been infected three years ago, I've actually spoken, I've been quite open with media, etc. So I've been quite used to sharing my journey. However, when you're then sat there and they're going down your witness statement, it's quite harrowing and it's quite nervy. Like I say, I'm quite used to speaking now, but it is very, very nervous.

Yeah, you feel very, very nervous. You know, you're worried you're going to say things wrong. You're worried you're going to forget things because of the brain fog. But I must say that the inquiry team are absolutely fabulous. They really do look after us very well and I've got great faith in them. How did you find out that you had hepatitis C? Well we'll have to take this back to the mid-90s when something came on the TV there was only four channels then and it was relating to the bloods hadn't been screened until 1991

and if you'd had had kind of any of these so it would have been if you'd had tattoos dentistry operations abroad if you'd intravenously like shed needles and blood transfusion which obviously alerted me because I'd had two before the bloods were screened there was a contact telephone number which I phoned and then we was advised to go along you know to your GP and at that time I was already feeling extremely exhausted so I went along to my GP and I said you know I'm really really tired I'm absolutely it's ridiculous this tiredness and I said and also I've had two blood transfusions before the bloods were screened and we've been advised to come along so his first his reaction to me was

well of course you're tired you've got four young children what do you expect and then secondly he said well don't be silly you won't have that and almost poo-pooed me out of the room it made me feel very small um like i'd wasted his time and you know you you trust your medical professional so if he said you won't have that you know don't be silly i didn't have it and off i went um how did it get confirmed okay so um it was during a routine um my annual diabetic blood test they checked lots and lots of different things and some of the bloods were elevated my liver function test come up really really high so I was called in to see my GP which is a different GP surgery from the first one and you know they go through then the questions of you know um you know have you kind of been

promiscuous um have you um you know do you drink loads you know have you ever like shared needles which is quite it's quite a daunting thing when you've done none of those things so we sat there together and we're trying to work out why these results were as they were and it was like if you can imagine a cartoon when someone has a, you know, thought pops into their head and I call it my light bulb moment and I'd remembered these blood tests. So I said to my GP, ah, I did have two blood transfusions before the bloods were screened in 91

and I went along to my local GP and he sent me away, wouldn't test me and he put his hands in his head, shook his head, tested me and then a few days later i'd got the phone call to say that i was positive for hepatitis c and this was after 28 years it obviously made you feel terribly ill michelle but how can it be treated okay so there are back back in the day there was interferon with ribavirin which was a rather well very harsh very very harsh treatment but when i was diagnosed at the end of 2015

the new drugs were coming out so they were less harsher um the the undetected rate is like 95 plus so i was very lucky although I had to fight for my treatment, I was very lucky that I didn't suffer as bad as what the people had done previous to 2015. I had my treatment for six months. It was a very harsh trip for me, this particular one, and it took six months. But that six months, and this is two years ago now, and I'm still undetected. So thankfully, that's gone out the system, but I've been left with no ends of problems with my health. It's destroyed my life. Absolutely.

Your children and your husband happily have been found to be okay. They've been tested and it was not passed on. Yes. What do people who've passed their illnesses to others tell you about the impact of that? Well, the impact is absolutely awful. On the support group that I run, we have a lady who did pass hepatitis C onto a daughter

through breastfeeding and it's transpired just with the different treatments and being a child you have to be a certain age to be treated when the new drugs finally come through because when she was old she couldn't tolerate the interfere and etc she was then pregnant with her first son, and sadly, when he was 18 months old, she passed away. So you have a mum who's got that over her head, that she's infected her daughter, although it's not her fault, that's now left a child without a mother, and our lady had to have three treatments, two treatments back-to-back

to finally be undetected. But she's had to deal with all of that as well. It's absolutely harrowing. Now, you run your Facebook group and you make very clear that it's for those who were infected and those who are affected, the people around them. Yes. How are you actually able to support each other? Okay, so I actually didn't make, I didn't set the group up. The group was set up already and I'm the third admin, chairperson,

whatever you like to, you know. Administrator, shall we say. Yes, yeah, administrator, yeah, that's a good version. So when I took it over, I thought, you know, this is, I've already done the campaigning. I'd the minute i found out i needed to you know tell everybody because if it happened to me how many more me's might be walking around out there so we turned it into a support group which has steadily grown it is for victims that have been infected or affected by blood and not the blood product because our dear community friends

with haemophilia or thalassemia possibly um there's lots of support groups for them that's that's been established for years and years so you know some some of our members um that we're the first people that have spoken to in over 30 years because they've not felt able or for where they live for the stigma um yeah we are the first people that they that they get in touch with and briefly michelle what are you hoping will be the result of the inquiry okay so for me um i want the justice i want our questions answered i want everybody to be treated with dignity and not as lepers as we have been treated as. And if there is anyone out there or any people that are responsible for this, then I hope that they are treated in the correct way that they should have been. Michelle Tolley, thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning.

Thank you very much. Now earlier this week we heard of the death in Manhattan of Gloria Vanderbilt. She was 95. She was a famously beautiful, fabulously wealthy socialite, but she was also a fashion designer and known as the Queen of Jeans. New York Magazine interviewed her last year in her Upper East Side apartment in New York City. What is beautiful to me may not be beautiful to someone else, or what someone else does may not be what I like, but I always know one thing leads to another, and I know the direction

I'm going, and I have a lot of fantasy and imagination. It certainly is what inspires me. Well early this morning I spoke to the fashion historian Amber Butchart. What led Vanderbilt into the promotion of jeans? Well she was known for her style panache since a young age, since her 20s. The fashion editor, Diana Vreeland, really sort of complemented her style. She had quite an elaborate sense of style. She actually donated some of her own personal pieces to a museum in Los Angeles in the 90s. These included some couture gowns and kind of green velvet and white silk, which she was said to have even worn as maternity gowns. So she had this real idea of style.

She knew what went together. And so it, in some ways, was kind of a natural fit for her to turn her hand to fashion. But why jeans? Well, it's interesting. At the time, jeans were not really seen as a fashion item. They were just on the cusp of turning from workwear, from items worn for their practicality and worn by students on protest marches

to becoming a designer item. And she was a really key part in that transition. It was actually a genius move because she was really concerned about the fit of jeans. Jeans had not really been made specifically for a woman's shape before. She used stretch denim at times and she tailored them or she had them tailored so that they would fit at the waist and fit around the derriere, she liked to say. So really specifically made for a woman's shape. So it was kind of a perfect

mix of sort of luxury, her very aspirational Vanderbilt name, and this kind of mass market but premium line of denim. What was her background? Because yes, a very wealthy family, but I know she used to say that it's all very well to have rich parents, but you really need to make it on your own. Well, she was a Vanderbilt. She was the great-great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the 19th century tycoon, and the family made their money in the railroads in America. Her background was absolutely defined by this wealth.

She was famous from the moment she was born. Her birth was reported in the New York Times. She was the subject of quite an unpleasant custody trial at a very young age, which the media gave her this name, the poor little rich girl, because of this custody trial between her mother and her aunt. So really from a young age, she was known for being a socialite. She was just known. She was famous from birth. What did she look like? I understand she was a really famous beauty when she was young. She had quite specific sort of dramatic dark hair. She had high cheekbones.

She kind of looked, she was, well, Truman Capote called her one of his swans, one of his beautiful women that he immortalised in some of his short stories. So she kind of looked almost exactly how we imagine a mid-century American socialite to look. Very slim, very glamorous all the time. What do you think drew her into fashion design? I think it was her own love of clothes and love of style that drew her into fashion. She did a number of different things throughout her life.

She was an artist, she was a poet, she was a playwright. She even turned her hand to erotic fiction at times as well. But I think it was her love of style and she seemed to have, despite being born into wealth, she seemed to have an innate understanding of how to market the product she was selling. So she was approached by a company called Majani International and she worked on them at first with a line of blouses, but it was really when they started to do the jeans

that this really sort of struck gold. And she ended up earning more money from her fashion line than she had inherited. So what impact did she have on what women wore? Well, her jeans were the best-selling jeans for a while in 1979, beating her competitors, people such as Calvin Klein and Jordache. The idea that jeans could be fitted to a woman's body, this is really where she sort of left one of her biggest legacies.

But also in the idea of designer denim as well, this was a really pivotal point in terms of the designer logo, designer labels. Jeans hadn't really been designer before this moment. And so as we entered the 80s, she was really on the cusp of this moment where the designer logo, designer label really trumped everything else. We start to see designer sportswear, other kinds of designer workwear, you know, there's logo mania throughout the 1980s. But her influence seemed to fade in the late 80s. Why was that? By the late 80s, there were a number of different competitors. Designer jeans were available from a huge range of places. She had issues at the beginning of the 90s in terms of

unpaid taxis. She claimed she'd been defrauded by a number of people that were close to her. And this kind of really signalled the end of her fashion empire. She'd already sold the rights to her name as well, so she couldn't take it on and do anything else with it. So it was at this moment that she really turned her hand to her art, to her writing, to these other kinds of artistic endeavours. But how true is it that she fell on hard times and had to move into a

tiny little Manhattan apartment that she hated? Well, I think hard times in terms of a very, very wealthy heiress is not quite what the rest of us would consider to be hard times. She certainly ended up losing quite a lot of the money that she'd made. But I think hard times would probably be stretching it. I was talking to Amber Butchart. Now, responses from you on the Tory leadership debate. Hillary said, please don't bang the drum on the lack of female candidates. No surprise after the disaster of May's premiership.

Ray said, How do you think it would have gone if there'd been a woman contender with Johnson's sexual history? I'm asking because Johnson has secured the support of Rhys Mogg, a high Catholic, and Charles Moore, a high Anglican. Cheryl said, Female members are very powerful in the Conservative Party. It's no surprise that the first two women PMs were Conservative.

And Jackie said, Every time we ask how concerned will the candidates be about women's representation or their lives or their interests, the answer is easy. Not a jot. Wally Funk got lots of you to go to Twitter and email. Prita said, Wally Funk is the coolest person on the radio this week.

Phil said, I'm not sure an hour is long enough for Wally. Laura said, What an inspirational lady. I was glued to the radio while she was speaking. And then on Michelle Tolley, Chris said, I'm glad to hear you're publicising the infected blood campaign. My sister-in-law died in 1980 from hepatitis C

after blood transfusions when she gave birth in the 70s. It's not provable that it was the transfusions, and it would be great if you would ask if other women had this around the same time. The inquiry is interested in those who are not certain. Her sons were five and seven when she died. Now do join me tomorrow at two minutes past ten for the live program, if you can, when we'll be hearing from teachers in the latest in our series about teenage mental health. Theresa May wants them to be trained to spot poor mental health in pupils. But do teachers really feel able to take it on? That's two minutes past 10 tomorrow.

Be there if you can. Bye bye. News past 10 tomorrow. Be there if you can. Bye-bye. 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.