Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman’s Hour: Doctor Who's Varada Sethu, The first UK womb transplant, Grief and music, Cardiac surgeon Dr Indu Deglurka

Episode Date: April 12, 2025

Varada Sethu joined Woman's Hour to talk about stepping into the iconic role of the Doctor Who companion. She tells Datshiane Navanagayam how she went from a guest star to landing the role of Belinda Chandra, why this character feels like her most personal yet, and what it means to her to bring cultural authenticity to the Tardis. With a background in science, classical dance, and Star Wars fandom, Varada brings a fresh energy to the Whoniverse.Grace Davidson was a teenager when she was diagnosed with a rare condition that meant she did not have a uterus. But, following a transplant using her sister's donated womb, she gave birth earlier this year to baby Amy. Nuala McGovern speaks to Isabel Quiroga, the surgeon who led the transplant team at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, and to Lydia Brain, who is currently on the waiting list for a womb transplant.Emily MacGregor is a music historian and trombonist. After the sudden death of her father, a jazz guitarist, she found she wasn’t able to bear the sound of music. The very thing that once connected them became a source of pain and silence. In her new book, While the Music Lasts, she explains how she reconnected with her father through the pieces left on his music stand, from tangos to Handel, Cádiz to Coltrane. She joined Nuala to talk about how she learnt to navigate grief and how she discovered the joy of music again.BBC2’s Saving Lives in Cardiff is back on our screens from tonight. Based in the largest hospital in Wales, University Hospital in Cardiff, the series highlights the weight of difficult, sometimes life and death decisions surgeons make about who to prioritise next. The first episode follows Dr Indu Deglurkar, a cardiac surgeon, one of only 19 women in this role in the UK. She tells Nuala about the pressures and joys of her job.Have you been watching The White Lotus? The season three finale aired this week and one of the key themes that's had fans talking has been female friendship. It's left us wondering - is three a crowd? In the show the dynamic plays out between a trio of friends Jaclyn, Kate and Laurie, played by Michelle Monaghan, Leslie Bibb and Carrie Coon, who alternate between loving and loathing one another. So can friendships between three people work? TV critic Rachael Sigee and relationships writer at the Independent Olivia Petter joined Nuala McGovern.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Annette Wells Editor: Sarah Jane Griffiths

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, I'm Nuala McGovern and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast. Hello and welcome to a selection of standout moments from the week. Coming up today, the latest Doctor Who companion, Verada Setu, will time travel to the woman's era studio to give us the lowdown on her iconic new character.

Also, we hear from Isabel Quiroga, one of the lead surgeons in the UK's first successful womb transplant that resulted in the birth of baby Amy Isabel. We'll hear what it takes to make history. In this particular case, Grace's sister Amy donated her womb. Grace called it the greatest gift of sisterly love. Also, is 3 the magic number? Or could it be that 3 is a crowd? Fans of the TV show The White Lotus will have seen the three female friends who go on holiday

together only for that friendship to dissolve into a toxic trio of blame, anger, gossip, competition and judgment. Can a trio be a bigger, stronger bond than any duo can have together? We'll discuss. Plus we have the woman called the queen of hearts by her patients. That's Dr. Indu Deglerca. She's a cardiac surgeon performing what her patients would call miracles every day. I think real pressure is when you are actually in really uncharted territories and probably happens twice in a decade where you know you're trying to fight for the life of a patient but it may not succeed and you know that sort of pressure is a completely different ballgame. So let's get started. Joining the cast of Doctor Who is no small thing,

especially when you're stepping into the shoes of the Doctor's companion, a role with decades of history and devoted fans all across generations. Actress Varadha Setu is the latest to carry on that legacy, starring alongside Chutigatwa in the new series of Doctor Who. Varadha wasu is the latest to carry on that legacy, starring alongside Chutigatwa in the new series of Doctor Who. Varadha was raised in the North East. With roots in classical Indian dance and a background in science, her journey to this moment was anything but ordinary.

Varadha joined Dashiani Navanayagam to talk about what it means to play a companion and why this particular role feels more personal than anything she's ever done before. And also how it all came together, how the stars aligned, if you wish. But first, here's a clip from today's first episode. Melinda, what's going on? Do you know Lucy at number seven? Tell her the cat's gone to live on a farm. Apparently I'm the queen of outer space, if you could tell the police. My mum and dad.

Oh, my poor mum and dad. Tell them, robot, are kidnapping me. Tell them I love them. I'll take care, Belinda. Bye-bye. Transmatch initiated. They're here! Transmatch initiated. Okay, well look, we won't say what happens next, and I'm terrible for giving away spoilers in the first episode, so I'm going to stay sh-tum. But let's talk about Belinda, because she is such a fresh, dynamic character.

And you said that she's the closest character to yourself that you've ever played. In what ways? I think, well, I was given the script. It was such a quick turnaround. I was given the script a couple of weeks before I was on set. So, you know, you get the basics of what the character is in terms of her job, in terms of the things that she says. But I had to fill in all the gaps with, you know,

her mannerisms and how she reacts to certain things, things that aren't written in the script. how she reacts to certain things, things that aren't written in the script. I mean, in some ways, she is a lot braver, in many ways, she's a lot braver than me and is a lot more capable than me. I think if I were kidnapped by robots, I would have a mental breakdown. But she is so witty and quick,

She's, she is so witty and quick. And I kind of based a lot of her characteristics on her job, actually, the fact that she's a nurse. She's an A&E nurse as well. So she has to be, she has to be able to get, she can read people very well, very quickly. She has to go, she has to meet people with compassion and you know, there's people that turn up in A&E in all sorts of states of distress and you know, she can hold up a boundary but still meet them with compassion.

That's tricky isn't it? Hold up a boundary but meet people with compassion. Yeah, and she does a lot of that with the doctor. She holds him accountable for all the sort of tricky situations that he inevitably gets her in. But I think in terms of me, a lot of the more vulnerable parts of her come from me. So, you know, she's thrown into this world that she's got no clue, she's panicked. That was all me as well, because I was also thrown

into the universe. It's interesting you used that word vulnerable, because you said it's the most vulnerable you've been on screen. I mean, did you feel exposed, I guess, in a way? Yeah, massively. I was winging it, the whole, so much of it for the first episode especially, I was winging it. And it felt, you know, as an actor, when you're able to structure a character and you've got this like firm foundation that you can always go back to, you can always lean back on. If you're having an off day, you can always lean back on, well, I've got this belief system or I've got, you know, this background that I've developed for this character. I just didn't have the time for that. So I had to rely on my own kind

of value system and way of thinking and behaving. And it means that, yeah, it's very exposing. Well, look, you know, your own background is, because you've got quite a fascinating background because your own background is in science and dance. You know, how did that shape the way you moved through this role, especially one as physical and as imaginative as, you know, the companion. Yeah, so I grew up doing Bhadnathya Manmohiniyatham, which are two forms of classical Indian dancing. And they are the classical Indian dancing generally is a form of storytelling. It's very expressive, isn't it?

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And it's very physical. And the one dancer has to embody so many different characters, the male characters, female characters, humans, animals, all of them. And I think there's a fluidity that I've kind of absorbed in terms of how to physically express myself. And there's a confidence that I have in using my body to express things, whether I'm saying it or, you know, because obviously when you're dancing, it's nonverbal.

You're relying completely on your body. And I think it's also just being a performer, being on stage. I was quite comfortable with it from a young age. My mom danced, I grew up watching my mom dance and my dad sing on stage. So performance was very much in my blood. It's just, you know, they're both doctors, they were doing it as a hobby. I wanted that though. I loved that feeling of being able to story tell.

Well look, I want to ask you because there is a huge amount of excitement about the growing diversity in Doctor Who. And how do you personally navigate that visibility and the responsibility that comes with that? I think I'm a couple of years older than you. And growing up, I definitely didn't see characters that looked like myself in these sorts of roles. Do you feel that sort of weight on you? If weight is even the right word to use, I guess. Yeah, I think I do. I feel, I've been acting for like 10 years, but I still feel quite

new to this. I feel new to having this many eyeballs on me. And there is a pressure that comes with that. And I think I spoke about it before, I think I said it feels like I can't fail because I don't want to become the cautionary tale. And I think minority groups tend to carry that pressure sometimes that we, you know, we can't afford to fail because it reflects badly on all of us. I try not to follow that thought process because I think when I do that, I try and fit myself into boxes that aren't helpful, that aren't authentic. And I think I'm here, I am where I am because I've been able to lean into

my own authenticity as much as possible. The harder I lean, the more success I find. And I think that also inspires other people to be more authentic, other young, you know, people of color, I hope, feel that they can also be themselves and have space. I think anything that is moving towards normalizing, seeing things on screen that actually reflects our society, because our society is very diverse, I'm here for it. Very well said. And look, I want to ask you another thing, because this idea of self-confidence and knowing yourself, you know, you mentioned both your parents were doctors, and you originally went off to university

to study to become a vet. Yeah. This is a massive pivot. Yeah. How did you do it and how did you take that leap? So I had done a gap year before I went to uni and I landed a role in a film and it meant that I got a taste for the potential of another way of living. It was like falling in love and then to have to be married off to someone else, it's like, I can't do that. I absolutely can't. My true love is acting.

It's my calling. And there's no other way to express it. There was no other way I wanted to live other than to pursue that. It felt so aligned with me. Faradah said to with Dashiani there, the new season officially launched at 8 a.m. today on BBC iPlayer. And the first episode will go out later on BBC One. Viewers outside the UK will also be able to watch it on Disney Plus.

Now to a story that had people talking this week. The first baby born in the UK after a womb transplant. Grace Davidson was a teenager when she was diagnosed with a rare condition that meant she did not have a uterus. But following a womb transplant she has given birth, a little earlier this year, to baby Amy. Her sister, Amy, yes the baby was named after her, donated her womb during an 8 hour operation in 2023. It was the UK's first successful womb transplant. Surgeons have called it astonishing and a medical breakthrough.

I spoke to Isabel Quiroga, the surgeon who led the transplant team. But first here's Grace and her husband Angus, the baby's father, speaking about their experience. Well she's a little miracle because we'd never really let ourselves imagine what it'd be like for her to be here until we sort of saw her come up over the drapes so it was really wonderful. I didn't feel like I was living a very full life, I was, I felt pretty broken, so my quality of life wasn't great I would say. There was a sadness that was over me and the sadness is gone. I think it's just the joy that I feel now.

It was an absolute no-brainer. We'll look at our daughter every day of her life and remember her auntie who played that crucial role in bringing her into the world and we wouldn't have a family without Amy. Grace and Angus hope to have a second child using the transplanted womb. The surgeon who led the transplant team at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford was Isabel Caroga. I asked her to take us back to the day of the womb transplant. What was that experience like? Well, it was the day of the transplant. It was a very momentous time for us all. In Oxford and in London, a big team came together on that Sunday morning. We have been working towards this for, well, I had personally been working over 10 years to get all the paperwork, all the regulation, all the permissions ready for this day.

So it was very, very important that everything went well. And actually, it did go very well. And here we are two years later with little baby Amy. So let me fast forward. When the operation was a success, the womb transplant, at that point where you're like this will probably be a viable pregnancy when Grace becomes pregnant? Well as you say in in any other transplants and I do kidney and pancreas transplants, when

you do a transplant you see that the organ gets well perfused, like loads of blood going into it, and it starts, for instance, a kidney starts making urine, patients' blood tests get better. But with a uterus, it's a different organ. It doesn't make anything. So it was, and we know from the international experience, that a lot of organs, about one in four, one in five, fail within the first ten days or so. So it's almost that you can never relax and can never be so happy. But yes, as the months and the years went by, we realized that yes, she should become pregnant and we should be where we are now. Which is the next tie, the birth of baby Amy Isabel, which we will get to the naming in just a moment. But there is that beautiful photograph that I saw

of the team that made this happen. You know, they often talk about it takes a village to raise a child, but it took a village to bring this baby into existence, I think. How did it feel? How did it feel being there? Oh, it was an incredible moment and you know as a surgeon you do become part of people's lives very often and and that's our day-to-day job. But this was totally different. I'm not very often in delivery rooms. So for me it was totally different. I wasn't expecting to be part of the surgical team as such. So when Ms Jones asked me to take part and scrub up to assist sister on delivery was a very important moment for me. So when we saw the baby being born very healthy and started crying immediately, all we felt was

joy and huge pride. But seeing their faces, Angus' and Grace's faces, were just an unbelievable moment. I'm getting tickly now. Yeah, thinking about it, because Angus said there was, and Grace, they talked about the amount of love that was in the room, which is such a wonderful thing in something that has obviously been, by the nature of it, so medicalized. by the nature of it so medicalized? Oh yes, absolutely. I mean this was a very, very closely monitor pregnancy by multiple teams. So just from the transplant side of things, from the gynecological side of things and of course the obstetrics

and antenatal medicine. So it's been a massive, as you were saying, it takes a village and I would say it's just a small city to come to where we're at now. So it's just a great testament to the whole team, a massive team effort. A massive team and everybody working towards that same goal for that couple and for that baby. But this procedure you talked about 10 years in the making. I'm sure so many people will people will be wondering, you know, is this possible for many people? You work on organ transplants by profession.

How difficult is it to find a womb match? Well, with with any transplant, first first you have to be blood group compatible with any transplant and also tissue compatible. So we were very lucky with Grace and Amy that they were compatible on both fronts. Equally, not many people have a sister or a mother that fulfill this criteria or a friend or a relative that could become a donor. So that's why we also have our disease program and we hope to be able to help many other women in the UK.

Does a womb have to be under a certain age for it to be used? So we would like them to be premenopausal but others in internationally have managed to do transplants for postmenopausal women but I think it will be especially as we are starting, we want to have the most optimal organs to transplant. But when somebody donates their womb, a living donor in this case, will they go into menopause, the donator, the donor? Well it is very important to communicate to your listeners that what we are doing is just removing the uterus, not the ovaries. But we know that a small proportion of women that have undergone

a hysterectomy before the menopause, that's a very small proportion of patients, I think, that could sort of kickstart the menopause or to develop any menopause, but not necessarily. It was interesting in this case, I saw Grace had another sister in addition to Amy, who was prepared to donate, as was her mother. So in a very particular position there, but Grace will be, is taking immunosuppressants for this organ, for the womb, to ensure her body doesn't reject it. How risky is that? Because they do want to have a second child, they have said. Yes, so of course when we see patients, we have to go through a very, very thorough

consent process by which we explain all possible risks at the time of surgery but then onwards with the immunosuppressant drugs as you say the anti-rejection drugs and our immune system is protecting us against infection and cancer. What we need to do with the transplant is bring that in that the immune responses down so the immune system just sort of accepts the organ. And by reducing the immune system, now we're increasing a little bit the risk of infection and cancer. However, what we are, because this organ is only going to be in situ for about, well, four or five years, we will reduce that risk in the long term for grace. So that's the, possibly why this transplant

is a good way forward for some women. We are just trying to minimize the risks, the long term risks. So it wouldn't be for forever, you wouldn't keep the transplant forever just to keep the uterus, but it's got the function to carry life. And once that's finished then we can remove it. Then you would remove that uterus. Could that uterus be used again? Well, I've been asked that loads of times, given how difficult it was to transplant these tiny tiny vessels, I think it wouldn't really. And actually with these babies being born through cesarean section,

the more sections that you do more cesareans, the more scar the organ would be and more risky for future pregnancies. And I ask because of my next guest as well because I know there is this waiting list, of course, for people that want to do it, but haven't had a womb available to them. Isabel Kiroghi, you're going to stay with us for a few minutes. Thank you so much. She's the lead surgeon on the transplant team that has created really baby Amy Isabel, who got your name.

I didn't even ask you about that because I want to bring in Lydia for a moment. There are about 10 more women going through the process of approval for womb transplant, cost about 25,000 pounds and the surgical team say there's any funding for two more transplants to take place as a charity that funds it. One of those women is Lydia Brain, she's on with me now. Welcome Lydia, good to have you with us. Well first your reaction to baby Amy Isabel. It's brilliant news. I mean, I was waiting for it to happen. Obviously, we knew when she was when she had the donation and she

had the surgery, because it's in the news, and I was counting down the time in my head thinking it must be soon, having my fingers crossed that there would be, you know, positive news and there was. So just to know that the UK team with all the training and all the time they've put in have had success and that's just a really good sign that hopefully more of us on the waiting list will also have success. Why are you on the waiting list? So I had a hysterectomy when I was 24. I was diagnosed with womb cancer after having

abnormal vaginal bleeding, so really heavy periods, bleeding between my periods. I'm 32 now, so it's been quite a lot of years of getting used to the idea that I couldn't carry a child. And that is such well before this clinical trial and this transplants, that was a definite there was like absolutely zero chance. So I had I guess five years of getting my head around absolutely zero chance to now a chance. So that's quite a process to go through. And now obviously being on the waiting list myself, that chance feels quite hopeful and likely and that's nothing short of a miracle really because it has gone

from an absolute no possibility to a possibility. So that's something quite amazing. So that's a positive as you're seeing it. But how does it impact your day to day life, Lydia, being on a waiting list like this? Quite a bit. I mean, I can live my life just as I did before, but staying quite close to Oxford, within a certain amount of hours. So I'm not jetting off around the world having lovely holidays, but that's a small price to pay really. We're always ready so it's always in our mind if we have plans, you know, we always take the car now just in case we need to leave. One of us, well me, usually can't drink, you know, we always have to be able to drive. I want to

be in a fit state for surgery at any time so I'm a bit better at exercising and eating well than I used to be. I even dyed my hair back to brown just so I didn't have to keep up with the maintenance. So even small things, me and my partner, everything we do is kind of preparing I guess, as many people do when they are trying to have a family. For us it's just a bit longer. It's so emotional though it must be, you know, anybody who's gone through infertility of any kind will understand that limbo that you speak of. But I'm wondering, do you think, do you have a time that you will stop or get off that list?

Or, you know what I mean, I'm just trying to think of your life as a whole. Yeah, so you kind of age out of the list, I guess, at 40. That is the upper limit. Okay, I'm 32. So I feel like, you know, I'm not being kicked off anytime soon, at least. And me and my partner, you know, the wait has been 18 months already for us. So we're kind of embedded in it now. If surrogacy and if adoption were quick, easy things to do, we might consider stepping off the list to try those. But at the moment, it still feels for us like the fastest route now, especially one with this far along. That's so interesting to me and I'm sure to our listeners as well, that waiting for a womb transplant could be the fastest option to becoming a parent? Yes, probably not start to finish, but from where we are now it certainly is.

To go back to square one on something and feel that we're starting from the beginning, I mean mentally as well as anything else would be quite difficult. We feel quite far along now and that mentally is really positive for us. We feel like we're in process of getting the family we want. And do you give yourself an end date? I know you talked about 40, which is eight years away, but could you see yourself staying on the list for a number of years? Yeah, yeah, I could. We're used to it now and

you know the adaptations to our life, you know that I mentioned, they're small, you know, prices to pay really. We can live as normal and you know the hope that being on the list brings also is mentally a really positive thing for us, so and exciting you know, so it's brought, as well as not being able to go on holiday, it's a negative, it's brought a lot of positives. So interesting, Lydia. Thank you for sharing your story. I want to go back to Isabel for a moment. You're hearing Lydia's story there, and I'm just wondering on your thoughts.

Oh, goodness. I can't wait to transplant you, Lydia. I've known Lydia for years now. So I really can't wait to make your dreams come true. Because with this, of course, I mentioned the funding. This is not on the NHS. This is privately funded and with that waiting list that we've heard of, 10 women going through the process of approval, only funding for two transplants, so Isabel, will it come to a halt? We really hope not. Once we finish our research study, our programme, hopefully we'll be able to continue our work with a centrally commissioned NHS commission program. The surgeon, Isabel Quiroga and Lydia Brain also speaking to us there, thanks to them. What's still to come on the program? The woman called the queen of hearts by her patients,

that's cardiac surgeon, Dr. Indu Diglerka. And also remember, you can join Women's Hour any hour of the day. If you cannot join us live at 10 a.m. during the week, just subscribe to The Daily Podcast for free via BBC Sounds. It is curious that we don't understand why music can tip us over the edge. So writes Emily MacGregor in her memoir, While the Music Lasts. Emily, a musicologist, found that after the sudden death of her beloved father, she wasn't able to listen to music. Music became instead of a source of joy, a source of pain and also of silence. Emily joined me this week and I began by asking about what happened to her after her father's death. Yes, so my father died very suddenly in 2019. He had pancreatitis and he died

within 48 hours of being diagnosed. He'd been fine and he was dead. And after he died I went into this period where I felt incredibly numb. I think it's very normal. I was incredibly angry and I just just like one of the things I was most angry with was my, was music, was classical music. And I found I couldn't listen to it at all. I spent a couple of years just listening to podcasts. And obviously like not being able to listen to classical music was, well music was a huge problem given my job. And I mean, there was a line in your book that said after your father died, the day you wake up after he has died, that it was the first day of the rest of your life and the first day of a new relationship to

music. Did you expect that at all, that your relationship with music would change after your father died? I know you were not thinking about your father dying at that stage or in your mid-30s. He was only late 60s. Yeah, no, I wasn't. I mean, I wasn't expecting him to die. So I think my relationship with music and how I felt about that came much later. I think it was the shock for the first couple of years. I mean, really the first couple of years. And then it was noticing how angry I was with all the rules and all the ways in which I felt I sort of learned to behave. I had like this sense, I think there's this nihilistic thing that happens after

a major loss, where all the things you think mattered stop mattering and you start to see all the rules you've internalized and that hold you down and keep you in your place for what they are. And I guess I was super angry with that and so that realising that all those rules, you know, aren't always all they're cracked up to be, was something that really helped me improve my relationship with music further down the line. Your father was a jazz guitarist I should say as well, so it was a real bond between the two of you as well as it being a major part of your day-to-day life. It was really I suppose from when you were a little girl. For sure. Yeah, my dad

as you say was a jazz guitarist. He also played classical music as a guitarist, although he had complicated attitudes towards classical music in general and we found it all tricky and elitist. But no, music was very much the soundtrack to me growing up. It was what encouraged me to be curious, to be curious about the world and I was very much encouraged to go into music. What was your dad's name? He was called Phil. Tell me a little bit about him. My dad was, I mean I think he was amazing because he was my dad. He was the best, yeah. He was someone you could call up whenever you wanted and he'd always be interested in what you thought. He was my dad. He was the best. Yeah. He was someone you could call up whenever you wanted and he'd always be interested in what you thought. He was also totally infuriating.

Like in what way sort of he saw the world laterally in a way that I think people, even people who see the world laterally would struggle to understand how my dad saw the world. Like he had no time at all for bourgeois norms. Like if you finished eating a banana and he was like holding the banana skin, he would just put it down wherever. Like didn't matter if he was putting it down on top of a laptop. That was like very much the vibe of my dad. Yeah.

He, you know, he was everywhere, obviously, even after he died, particularly, I get this picture of the home with piles of books and newspapers and also a music stand full of sheet music that he was working on that became a source of pain, of course, for you as well. But tell me a little bit about how important that stand became in this journey that you went through. Yes. So when we got back from the hospital that day, the house was exactly as he'd

left it because he'd, you know, he'd just sort of been almost teleported out of life and that was very hard and there was this music that he'd been working on that week that he'd been rehearsing and it was called Rumores de la Caleta by Isaac Albainis. It took me a long time to go back to that music to look at that music on the stand it's a, a flamenco inspired piece from southern Spain. And when I did finally listen to other people's recordings of this, I found it really hard because they didn't play it like he did. And I felt I was beginning to lose my ability to hear him playing the music. I do have a little clip of it. Is it okay if I play some of it? Yeah, I just want to let people know as well. I was

listening to this while reading your book. There is a playlist at the beginning that accompanies the book. Such a beautiful way to read. We can talk about that because I often have a problem listening to music while I'm reading but not in this particular instance. That's not your dad playing, so I'm wondering what that did. I think it just emphasized, actually, in lots of ways. It's like the closest thing you can get to him being in the room. But it's not him being in the room. It's like the outline of something next to it.

But isn't that grief, in a way, I think, because you can come oh, so close to the person and feel their presence or see the items that belong to them, but it's not them, which can be quite jittering. It doesn't make, it's like all the things don't make sense without that person there who's the organising principle around which like they all belong. And it's the same with music. It's, yeah, it's close to having him, but it's very much not the same. You tried to, and I'm using your words in a way here in one of your chapters, like almost

embody him in a way in trying to figure out where he went, what made him tick. You actually went down to Andalucía, down to Seville and Cadiz where that piece was written. Did you find solace? Sort of. So I travelled to Spain, I stayed with very old friends and I visited the actual beach that this piece is about. Well at least I thought at the time that it was the actual beach. It turned out it wasn't, it was a different beach. So that was a sort of interesting challenge to my kind of academic way of approaching, you know, in some ways approaching my grief.

I don't know quite what I thought I was going to get out of going to Spain. It was a place, my father just before he died had suggested a family holiday in Seville. So I think I sort of wanted to try and recreate that. I think it was a way of trying to hold onto his memory in a way that I think was actually just never going to be what I wanted it was a way of trying to hold on to his memory in a way that I think was actually just Never going to be what I wanted it to be but because I did go I had this amazing opportunity to spend time with my friends and it became clear to me that what really mattered was actually continuing to deepen and build relationships and Being open to the fact that life's all about change and you know, I don't know what to do with that

But it's okay. So you begin seeing this glimmer I'm also interested in your thoughts on what you think music does to our sense of time. I think it's very interesting because it can pull us back. It pulls us back into a past. When we hear something. When we hear music, yeah, particular music that we associate with a particular time in our lives, it pulls us back into a past, but it pulls us back into a past where we, like, we can feel a future because music is always pushing us forward when we're listening, when we're inside a musical

experience. And I think personally that's one of the reasons that music is so powerful in terms of connecting us to people we've lost, because we feel ourselves in that moment in the past while we're listening when we were you know teenagers or in our early 20s whenever it was but we feel ourselves in that moment anticipating a future. You went to the Royal Albert Hall, no surprise there in a way you're a musicologist just you played the trombone. Music was a huge part of your life but it was there that you realized you'd fallen out of love with music and I'm wondering what that was like after being

a musicologist and it being part of your identity. Absolutely yes. I was at the Royal Albert Hall listening to a Proms concert and they were playing a Mozart piano concerto and I couldn't, I honestly couldn't think I honestly couldn't think of anything more pointless than sitting in this concert hall with 5,000 people who were all behaving themselves, like sitting really quietly. I just felt like there was this sort of grand stupid and I actually was, I was feeling like, you know what, I want to just stand up and shout that this is all pointless because I have this sense that, like, what would really happen? You know,

the worst happened, my dad's died, people can die. Like if I stand up and people across with me because I've shouted in the middle of a concert, like the consequences didn't feel like they really existed, which was a very, it was in lots of ways like quite a profound thing to realise when I'd spent so much of my life following rules. But that is a big, that is a big loss as well as that of your father, that of the importance of music within your life. Absolutely, yeah. I didn't really know, I think in lots of ways it was sort of a moment that shook the foundations of my identity. I didn't really know who I was anymore if I didn't have music. Emily McGregor and her book While the Music Lasts,

a memoir of music, grief and joy, is out now. If you or someone you know has been affected by what we've been discussing, there are links to support on the BBC Action Line website. BBC2's popular series Saving Lives in Cardiff was back on our screens this week. It's filmed in the largest hospital in Wales, University Hospital in Cardiff was back on our screens this week. It's filmed in the largest hospital in Wales, University Hospital in Cardiff, and the series highlights the weight of difficult, sometimes life and death decisions that surgeons have to make about who to prioritise next. All of the stories are real and they follow patients who have chosen to let cameras in during a very difficult

period of their lives. In the first episode, cardiac surgeon Dr. Indio de Glirca performs a four and a half hour surgery on the very diseased heart of a 51 year old father of five. Dr. de Glirca is one of only 19 female cardiac surgeons out of the 500 in the UK. I began by asking her how she deals with such a stressful environment on a day to day basis in such a calm and controlled manner. Nula, you know, we face pressure all the time and I actually think I thrive very well under pressure and it's in a way it brings out the best in me. I think real pressure

is when you are actually in really uncharted territories and probably happens twice in a decade where you know you're trying to fight for the life of a patient, but it may not succeed. And that sort of a pressure is a completely different ball game. And at that point in time, there is no time to think about yourself. You are the team leader,

you are bearing up the emotions and looking at the wellbeing of the team, and then dealing with the family and how I thrive under pressure at that time. No, I don't know if I thrive at all. I just retract into a shell after that and very quiet and reflective and really mull over every stitch that we've put in. And less than a handful of people are really privy to my intensely vulnerable state at that stage. I was watching you closely when you finished and you thanked everybody in this large team that were operating on Tyrone and then you took one step back and I could tell by your body language even though we're just watching you from behind I was like okay now she's going to retract and process, I think, what this intense four and a half hour operation that you had just been through.

But my other question was, why did you want to take part in a TV series? It's such intense work. The thought of a camera over your shoulder watching your every move in this very delicate operation. What was the thought process there? Gosh, the cameras didn't bother me at all. I'm so used to having a lot of people in my theatre, but there are really good reasons, I think, why we should allow this to happen.

As you yourself said, Nuala, this is real life And there is no better way of educating the public about what gets done, you know, within the four walls of the hospital in a setting like ours and the intense pressures. I think three things come out of a serial like this when BBC comes and films. One is the intense pressures that we frontline clinicians face in constantly making life and death decisions, deciding who's urgent than the other. Not that they're all not urgent, but just one needs to be prioritized and you make the right decision. But the second thing is it also shows and depicts how a serious diagnosis impacts on

the patient and their families and you know, and all the raw emotions that go with it. And I think the third thing that this series does and all other medical series do is it brings out the professionalism of the multidisciplinary team that works their skill sets and their empathy and literally the hundred miles beyond that everybody goes to to make the patient better. Yeah, yeah. That's why I thought it was a perfect way of disseminating some information.

Yeah. I mean, you have to be as a viewer in awe of what is happening, you know, at points you stop the heart to obviously work on it and then get the heart starting again. It's mind blowing in so many ways. I know and I love the idea that some of your patients call you the queen of hearts. You always wanted to be a surgeon. Yes. Tell me a little bit about Little Indu and how she went about thinking about that and making it happen.

You know, it is a bit weird. about Little Indu and how she went about thinking about that and making it happen. You know, it is a bit weird. We had this magazine called Illustrated Weekly of India, which is a large magazine that gets delivered to your doorstep. And there were these huge machines which were called, you know, the heartling machines in evolution. I was just fascinated by it and the people and scrubs around it. And I literally poked my dad and asked, you know, what are they doing? And he said they're doing open heart surgery. And I said, that's exactly what I want to be doing. Right. And then I said, how do I go about? And he said,

you need to be a doctor. And you know, I think my fate was sealed then. What age? What age are we talking? I was seven. It was really weird when all my friends had posters of cricket, you know, cricketeers, Sunil Kavaskar and Clive Lloyds. There I was looking at Michael DeBakey and literally had a crush on him, I think throughout my teenage. So it was the surgeon that was the one for you. But, you know, I mentioned some of the figures there.

Funny enough, this week on Woman's Hour, we've had two female surgeons. We also had Isabel Kiroga who performed the womb transplant on Woman's Hour. But you are outnumbered by the men and I'm wondering what that's been like. Well, I always say, you know, people say it's a male dominated profession, but I beg to differ, I say it's a profession that predominantly consists of males. I'm not going to really be letting people dominate over me. But the truth is, I really get on so well with all my colleagues. And, you know, I don't think the gender comes into it at all. That's so interesting to hear. You feel throughout your

career that you haven't had to face sexism or misogyny within the industry? Oh no, I wouldn't say that at all. You know, the cultural battles that I've had to face have been enormous, you know, throughout, not in terms of the ability to do and things because I was way ahead in terms of my surgical skills for my level of training, but the mindset, the archaic mindset that surrounds surgical careers and surgical training and worse, I think it's a double jeopardy if you're ethnic as well. And it's a triple jeopardy if you're an ethnic pregnant women and specialty like cardiac surgery. So I think things are getting better. You know, we're all fighting. If you look at it, you know, we were five of us until 2014 who were consultant cardiac surgeons. And now we are 19. That's still about eight to 9% of the workforce. but it's heading in the right direction. And I mean, what got you through that? Being the pregnant young woman in an ethnic minority, in a super skilled, filled with males, I'll use your word, of cardiac thoracic surgery. The truth is, Nuala, ethnic or not, I was pretty much the lone woman in surgery wherever I went to in the department because, you know, when I got my national training number in 2000, I was the first female national trainee in Wales

and there were less than a handful of us even at that time. But in a way, you know, adapting to the circumstances, never actually giving in, but being the ability to forge good relations with people around and once people get to know you, they just respect you for what you do and you hold your own, I think. You know, I was struck as well by, obviously, your professional life, as we've spoken about, but your personal life. You said in Saving Lives, at one point you were working 80 to 120 hours a week. You also mentioned regretting having one child you would have liked to have had more. And I suppose that puts it into sharp relief some of the sacrifices you've had

to make to get to the point where you are leading those teams where not so many women have gone before. Yes, I think sacrifices are not just mine, my ECA families I would say. I don't know many families where the husband is an orthopedic surgeon and the wife is a cardiothoracic surgeon. It's probably the worst combination for a family. But there have been intense sacrifices, Nula. I really haven't had the pleasure of being able to go and pick up my son, you know, less than a dozen times in his entire schooling. And when I got to the school, I wouldn't know which building they were going to emerge from, and the mums used to rescue me.

So these are the pleasures of life that I really never have had very much. And you do miss it sorely. And, you know, embarking on a profession that is very demanding should somehow not be with such a work-life balance that is distorted. And I think that is what we all are trying to address, even as a specialty, I would say. Do you think there's another way?

No, no way is perfect. But you know, for a woman, you know, we used to have very short maternity leave periods, etc. I think really policy changes at the legislative level are required for getting a better work-life balance and that is the hard sort of hurdle to climb. Yes, and of course, the years that you'll be having babies is that a very important part no doubt of your career as a surgeon when you're really building your reputation and getting those skills as well. So I can understand that.

I did love speaking of your son, that you wear his socks on important surgery days, you know, and you've got a really difficult, intense surgery ahead of you. Yes, I do. And, you know, it just impacted. My son has such utter confidence in my skills, that you know, when I wear his socks, it intensifies my positive mental attitude, especially you know, the can do will do in uncharted territories. You know, Nilo, like every other mom, my son is my heartbeat. Okay, most people wear their hearts on their sleeve. I think I might be

wearing them on my feet, but it helps and it brings results. So I'm fine with it. Dr. Indu Deglerca and Saving Lives in Cardiff is on BBC Two and BBC Wales and also on the BBC iPlayer. If you've been watching The White Lotus, you'll know the season 3 finale aired this week. One of the themes central to this TV series has been female friendship and it's left some of us wondering is three a crowd? This dynamic plays out in the show between a trio of friends – Jacqueline, Kate and Laurie, played by Michelle Monaghan, Leslie Bibb and Carrie Coon – and the three of them alternate between loving and loathing one another. So can friendships between three people work? Well, I was joined by the TV

writer and critic for the iPaper. That's Rachel Sige, also the journalist and author, Olivia Petter. I asked Rachel for a quick rundown first of that friendship that we see on the television. Yeah, absolutely. As you said, it's this trio of women, Jacqueline, Laurie and Kate. They've been friends since school, I think since they were nine, so it would fall into that pre-teen category. They don't see each other very often anymore and so they're on this luxury girls trip in this beautiful hotel in Thailand to unwind and reconnect and relive all the old good times. But quite quickly the cracks start to show. Because on the surface, they're quite similar.

They're all white, wealthy. They're blonde. They're in their 40s. But their lives have gone in slightly different directions. Jacqueline's a famous actress with a hunky new younger husband. Laurie's a high-flying corporate lawyer. And Kate's a wife and mother in Texas

who's become quite conservative. And it's clear really quickly that there's sort of these decades of memories and tensions and things that have been said and things that haven't been said that just can't help but bubble to the surface in this pressure cooker where they're all supposed to be having the most fabulous time. Do you think there is any reality within it? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I'm not sure that we'd all be having this experience at a hotel like that in Thailand. No, sure.

Lovely, is it with me? But I think definitely the long-term friendships, and particularly the ones where you don't see the people as often as you used to, that's a really difficult thing to maintain because there's a huge amount of pressure for that short time that you spend together to go really, really well. And it's also not the time, you don't want to spoil it by saying something that might upset someone. Let me bring in Olivia here. How do you see it? An accurate depiction of some female friendships? And I'm ready for my listeners to jump to the defense of the trio 84844.

Yeah, absolutely. I think so many women have really related to this dynamic that we see because, you know, they arrive and there's this idea of perfection. It's like we're childhood best friends. We all adore each other. We're going to have the most amazing girls trip. And then slowly you start to see there's actually a really clear power dynamic between the three women as there often is in trios and you know Jacqueline is the famous actress she's also footing the bill for the entire trip. Oh I forgot that. Yeah and so you learn that that immediately sets an interesting precedent and then you know you you learn about all of these

different kind of external factors of their lives and how they've they've become so different so yes two of the women are married one of them is a divorced single mum, and they all start kind of competing against one another, but very, very subtly, because you see the scene where they are all kind of complimenting one another, being like, oh, but you know, you have your lovely house and your lovely kids and your lovely husband, but you're doing so well too, and you look so great. And then it reeks of this inauthenticity which kind of bubbles to the surface in one scene in particular really early on in the first episode

really kind of almost triggered me in a way because they're all kind of complimenting one another being what you look so great and you look so great and then like but how much work have you had done and who's your doctor tell me who your doctor is and it becomes about this like competition of who looks the youngest but they're all ostensibly being so nice to each other's faces. But it's so interesting. So you talk about power, you talk about competitiveness. Rachel, do you think a trio of women is different to a trio of men? I think you could definitely have a version of this with both genders.

But I think what's really specific to this trio and them being women is the fact that they're at, it's their age, they're in their 40s, they're at a point where like society has told them that they should have ticked off certain achievements regarding motherhood, marriage, career and in looking at their two friends that they've grown up with, they're seeing kind of different versions of how their life might have turned out if they made different choices and different decisions and that's meaning, they're seeing kind of different versions of how their life might have turned out if they'd made different choices and different decisions. And that's meaning that they're questioning their own paths and exposing all of their own insecurities. And they're just sort of searching for this validation that very naturally spills into judgment because

they're so used to being judged by other people and by society themselves. It's such an interesting concept, Olivia, the sliding doors moment. And maybe that's what intrigues us. Yeah, but I think it also harks back to just this idea of women growing up consistently being pitted against one another, right? So you're always kind of comparing and contrasting your lives to one another, particularly if you've been such old childhood friends. And I think we see this almost like playground like dynamic playing out between

the three of them, particularly when, you know, one of them will go off to go to bed and the two other two will immediately start bitching about the third. And then the third woman is sort of crying. I think it's Laurie Carey-Koon's character. And that again, it's something that you see probably in among nine year olds. And those those dynamics really persist. And I think, you know, as women, we have been kind of forced to compete against one another and see each other as enemies just through our social conditioning.

But you will know that some people will really push back against that. And some might have an issue with the word that you use there as well as they are mean to one another, that particular word, just apologies if you're offended by it. We'll hate that characterization of women instead of pulling together, that when they're put together that they're going to be at one another's troth. Rachel?

I think it is important to remember that this is The White Lotus, a TV show in which broadly everyone is terrible. We're not supposed to like any of these characters very much. They're very rich, not particularly nice people, spending a lot of money to have a terrible time. So that's the kind of conceit of the show. But I think I definitely have some sympathy with them because like Olivia said, they kind of slip into this school dynamic which makes sense. There's a real high school element to this because they've known each other for a long time. And the fact is they're not as close as they used to be. So the thing they have most

in common is their relationships with each other. And as they realise that they're sharing different values now, they just sort of default to talking about the other one because that's the thing that's holding them together. And no one wants to be the person to say this isn't working anymore. We've outgrown this. That's a really hard thing to admit. Rachel Sige and Olivia Petter. On Monday, I'll be speaking to the actor, Frances Mailey McCann

and also the writer Kate Kerrigan about the new musical version of The Great Gatsby. It places female characters front and center. It was first shown on Broadway but now it's on stage in London's West End. I do hope you'll join me for that but until then have a lovely weekend.