Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman’s Hour: Helena Bonham Carter on ‘Nolly’, Sophie Duker, Happy Valley & kinship care, Emily Atack’

Episode Date: February 4, 2023

Helena Bonham Carter tells us about playing Noele Gordon, "the Queen of the midlands", in new ITV drama 'Nolly' written by Russell T Davies. The actress starred in the hugely popular TV soap Crossroads for 18 years until she was sacked very suddenly in 1981. The TV drama Happy Valley has captured the public’s imagination with the final episode of the final series airing this Sunday. We hear from one listener who contacted Woman’s Hour about how as a kinship carer she has felt “heard” by the drama and Anita also speaks to Dr Lucy Peake the chief executive of Kinship – the UK’s largest charity for kinship carers.We speak to actor and comic, Emily Atack who is standing up against the men who cyber-flash her daily. Having received unsolicited, unwanted, abusive messages, dick pics and crude images for years she has made a documentary “Emily Atack: Asking for it?” for BBC 2. It’s 20 years in England since the repeal of section 28 – a law that came in from 1988 to 2003 to ban the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ in UK schools. Professor Catherine Lee of Anglia Ruskin University is a lesbian and taught in schools for every year of section 28. We discuss how this law affected gay or lesbian teachers and students.Women are able to recall details of sexual assault and rape with accuracy, even if they have drunk – moderate amounts of alcohol, according to a new study from the University of Birmingham. Heather Flowe, Professor of Psychology who led the study tells us about its significance.The comedian Sophie Duker is on a mission to reclaim the term 'hag' in her new UK stand-up tour of the same name. She tells us about growing up with ‘the princess myth’, embracing ageing and our sexualityPresenter: Anita Rani Producer: Surya Elango Editor: Lucinda Montefiore

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 and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour. I'm Anita Rani. This is the place you'll get a carefully curated line-up of the best interviews from over the week, all in one place. So pop the kettle on, put your feet up and stick with me for the next hour. We've got a star-studded line-up for you this week. The actor and comic Emily Atack on

tackling digital sexual harassment. We leave our princess era and enter our villain era with the comedian Sophie Duker. And if you're anything like me, you'll be glued to your seat on Sunday night watching the last instalment of Happy Valley. Excuse me whilst I wipe a tear. Well, we hear from one listener about how as a kinshiper, she has felt heard from the drama. We also hear one teacher's personal story on 20 years since the repeal of Section 28 in England. And have we made a step towards challenging courtroom perceptions of women? That's what one study from the University of Birmingham says has happened. But first, we're going to stay in the Midlands.

Helena Bonham Carter is one of our best known actors. She's played everyone from royalty, Princess Margaret in The Crown, and Elizabeth, the Queen Mother in The King's Speech, to Bellatrix Lestrange, surely one of the best villains in the Harry Potter films. And more recently, she's Enola Holmes' formidable mother, Eudoria, in the Netflix films with Millie Bobby Brown. She's now taking on a very different role, the Queen of the Midlands, Noel Gordon, or Nolly, as she was known to her friends.

Nolly starred in the hugely popular TV soap Crossroads in the 60s and 70s. In the new three-part drama on ITV written by Russell T Davies, Nolly is shown reeling from the news that her contract has not been renewed after 18 years. Here she is giving a press conference. No, I wasn't just an actress here. I was staff. I was the spine of ATV

and the heart and the soul and the guts. I practically invented daytime TV. Crossroads was built around me. Everyone says the star of the show is the motel, but let me tell you, the star of the show

is not a bunch of flats held together by plywood and cellotape and spit. The star of the show has been sacked. The power of a great story, a great actor and great writing. You just want to watch it from that one clip, don't you? Well, Helena Bonham Carter joined

Nuala in the studio earlier this week and Nuala started by asking Helena what was it about Nolly that made her want to play her? From the moment that I got the script, the script came through and I started reading it and honestly, he's just such a brilliant writer.

And I thought, thank my lucky stars, it has landed on my lap. And she's so fun from the go. And Nolly's such a great, complicated, not easy, but fantastic person. She was the queen. She was probably the most famous person in Britain. She was the queen of the she was probably the most famous person in Britain. She was the queen of the Midlands. This is in the 80s. I think very few people will,

certainly of, you know, modern generations, I mean, now, no one would know who she was. And even I, even though I'm 56, so I had watched Crossroads, but not avidly, I was aware of it. It was on in the background. It was on in the background. And so at the end of the great script that I read, I immediately went onto YouTube going like, Not avidly. I was aware of it. It was on in the background. It was on in the background.

And so at the end of the great script that I read, I immediately went on to YouTube going like, Jesus, I've got to look up. Who is this Noel Gordon? For 19 years, she was on the soap opera and she was sacked publicly. And no warning, no reason. And do we even know now? Well, Russell, after sort of talking to a lot of people, he's, she never found out. No, never. But in this, you do. And this is what he surmises from, and it's not a huge sort of, it's, yeah, I mean, it's a sort of predictable thing.

It kind of, it's about ageism too. She was 61. she was 61. She was 61. And she was immediately replaced by Gabriel Drake, lovely Gabriel Drake, who was 30 years younger. Redhead too. It couldn't have been more blatant. And I think it wasn't just because she was old.

She was very clever and older. Dangerous combination. No, you mustn't. If we're going to have to, if we have to age, which is a crime. No, we mustn't. If we have to age, which is a crime these days, we must be thick. You know, don't threaten and be very apologetic.

That's what I loved about her. Most people would want to crawl into a dark cave if you've been sacked. And publicly, every single day people came up and said, why did they get rid of you? Why did they get rid of you?

Why did they get rid of you? And she said exactly how it was. She also reminded me in some ways of Princess Margaret. I just want to kind of give people the fur coat, the headscarf, the cigarette. She had the same armour. Yeah, there was something at first I thought, there are bits. The same, she hid behind the same things, the sort of the icon, you know, but then beyond that, there's a hell of a lot of... Yes, and I mean, you might say hid behind,

but actually you can't take your eyes off her. She, unlike Margaret, well, Margaret liked to be watched. She knew that that was her principal job as a royal, was she was going to be seen. And, but Nolly was somebody who loved to be seen she was a born performer she was her mother pretty much put her on the stage age two um uh and she went to rada when she was 15 she was born in the east end completely self-created. It's so much about her. You wonder, a woman in that time, how she managed to achieve all these goals.

I believe went to the States also to study daytime TV and kind of bring that knowledge back. She was given Lou Grade and possibly Val Parnell. Interesting. He was, in fact, her partner for 20 years was his mistress I suppose is the the strict term because he was married we can go back loop back to that because there's an interesting thing about seeing your ex and then but um but they sent her to research in to New York to study how um broadcasting and live sort of daytime TV was done. Then she came back and she was given Lunchbox.

She did it for about nine years, which was a daytime television show. And that's what she, and she was also, she was a presenter. She was an interviewer. She interviewed Harold Macmillan. She was in fact, weirdly, coincidentally, almost accidentally, the first woman on colour television.

So there was a lot of first about her. She was a pioneer. She was a trailblazer. And she did start the way for a lot of people like, you know, our current day wonderful women who are presenting. Yes. But little known. I think Russell and that team are really good at sticking up for the underdog or uncovering stories of people who've been just brushed under the carpet for whatever reason. They did that with It's a Sin. They've done it.

That was a whole different, obviously, story and a generation of people had gone and lost. And he felt when he wrote, he wrote me a lovely letter as if he needed to i mean jesus the script was enough um but for saying like we need to give her a proper send-off this woman deserves a proper goodbye i think he wasn't given it i think what he does often is remind us of a time for some of us that have actually lived through it but haven't totally understood the implications of the ramifications of that time with in it's a sinner i found watching nollie as well oh my goodness there was this woman that was in our midst that was in the background or on our televisions that perhaps we didn't realize uh what a fully formed

character she was but she was 61 as we mentioned when she was sacked um what's your personal experience of aging as an actress been well so far so far it's going well i mean the fact that i got nollie i was thinking god i'm so lucky at my age to get this part which is frankly possibly one of the best parts i've ever been offered and at my age then part of me thought like how sad that i even have to go be apologized for my age you know, that I naturally expect is going to get worse. But it's getting better, you know, it is getting better. I mean, for one, I think it's getting better for everyone because of the amount of streaming services. I mean, telly, it's the age of telly, isn't it?

All these things are being made. It's sometimes, however, still so much pressure on looks or to look a certain way or cosmetic surgery. Is that something you've bumped up against? Oh, all the time. But you can't not bump up against it. so much pressure on looks or to look a certain way or cosmetic surgery? Is that something you've bumped up against? All the time. But you can't not bump up against it. I mean, every single magazine,

Instagram, anything, it's all about thou shalt not age. You know, it's a dirty word, isn't it, aging? It's become pathologically. I think we're all obsessed by it. It's sort of pathological.

Thou must, you know, it's almost a crime, there's shame attached. And how do I do it? How do you not succumb to what's who says i don't i'll do what makes me happy you know and hopefully not make me look ridiculous um what's good is that i'll i'm employed to be other people yes so whatever is appropriate for that other person I keep that in mind um you know at the end of the day you can get really obsessed and I think it's also to do with that's the one thing we can control you know well we can't actually control what we look like,

but we think we can and we're always being sold like, but in fact, there's so much else that we should worry about. But, you know, I'm definitely the cliche of saying I'm miles happier than I was younger. I don't want to ever go back there. My envelope might be less strictly,

but, you know, aesthetically pleasing. But I'm much, on the inside, I'm much more interesting and dynamic and I think attractive. Most definitely. Do you think Nolly would have, what would she have done, do you think, coming up against those pressures? Well, she did. Against age, but. I which she did against age. I think she just carried on. I mean, this is the thing is that she was in her prime.

And I think we've got, it would be great if we could just change things, our societal, you know, rules and say, come on, we are in our prime in our 60s. We've got everything. We're not sort of, and we come into our power. And I think she was being punished for coming into our power in a weird way. And that's why she may have been sacked. I think they got rid of her because of that. I mean, she did talk a hell of a lot.

She might have been sacked because of that. But she also, I think, was sacked for being too powerful, for running the show, which she should have, frankly, because she knew it back to front, and she'd been doing it for 19 years. And for being too clever and having too much authority. I think she threatened people, other people in the upstairs, as she says, the suits.

How was her life afterwards? It was tough. I think anybody who's been a soap actor, and she was, you know, she had been in the show for 19 years, so she really was Meg Richardson in everyone's imagination. So she was pretty realistic.

There wasn't much professional life open to her. She did stage, which was, she goes on, and this is in episode three, she goes on to play Gypsy, which is a massive part.

It's like Hamlet, particularly if you're in your 60s. It's like the stamina. And it was to huge success. But it was, there was complications there wouldn't transfer all sorts of things and um so she went she sort of did um shows toured the middle east it wasn't it wasn't a great and then i won't tell you the end. Okay, no, I'm not there yet. But it wasn't great. Put it this way.

I think it was the beginning of her demise and I really don't think she recovered from being sacked. Because it was such a shock. I won't... We played a little bit of the clip, but when people watch it, they'll know exactly kind of what an impact it had on her. But she's such a forceful character.

Obviously, you're totally in the role. I hear you sometimes decide to channel Nolly. Russell said we would impress her. I said, oh, my God, she's popping up all over the place. I said, oh, God, help us. The actor Helena Bonham Carter on Getting Older and playing the unapologetic Noel Gordon, or Nolly, Queen of the Midlands in a new three-part drama

written by Russell T Davies. Well, if you're anything like me, you'll be glued to your seat on Sunday night watching the last instalment of The Brilliant Happy Valley. I have loved it, as have millions of you. If you don't know the show, it's the final episode of Season 3, which has told the story of policewoman Catherine Kaywood, played by Sarah Lancashire, who looks after her grandson, Ryan, after her daughter took her own life.

The complicating factor is she'd been raped by her grandson's father, a character called Tommy Lee Royce, played by James Norton, who's a psychopathic killer. Well, we've seen twists and turns of Ryan growing up. Well, earlier this week, we had an email from one of our listeners, Tina, who lives in the West Midlands.

She told us she loved Catherine's warrior grandma character and said how it made her feel heard as she's also a kinship carer looking after her granddaughter. Well, I was joined by Dr. Lucy Peake, the chief executive of Kinship, the UK's largest charity for kinship carers. There are over 150,000 of them out there. That's double the number of foster carers. And I was also joined by our listener, Tina. I started by asking Tina, does she feel like a warrior grandma too? I hadn't thought about it and put it into words, but absolutely each and every single one of us is out there

fighting for our children all the time. Is that how you feel? All the time. Emotional? Yes. When you think about the reality of it, it is hard, so hard. So what did it mean to you to be able to see that on screen? I loved the fact that it was there in respected mainstream television.

Even if lots of people didn't understand the ramifications and the hows and the whys that we have this character who is loved and holds down a really responsible job but at the same time as doing that she has a traumatized child to look after and and to meet his needs it's amazing balancing act it's amazing to see. So what's your situation? How did you come about to have to look after your granddaughter? My daughter, her mother, was involved in a dysfunctional relationship which had lots of elements of the trio of vulnerability. So parental mental ill health, domestic violence and substance abuse, with the added complication that the nipper's dad was also a lack experienced adult.

So very, very conflicted and very difficult. And there were lots of concerns by services. And I was called in initially before she was born to see if I'd be available to take her at birth and that's where it started a phone call from a stranger and what do you say when someone calls you up and says that uh well you say yes but then you wonder if it's the best thing and then you say no and then you say yes and then you say no and you're so conflicted that it's um you you spend a long time debating it, but you do what you have to do, which is you take the child. What's the conflict? What were you debating?

What do you weigh up in your mind? Can you do it? Have you got the resources to do it? Will you be able to do it? What will it do to the family? Will you get the support you need from outside? Who will support you? Can you carry on with your job?

All of those things. Will you have to move house? Have you got the right car? I didn't. I had to change my car at a later date. I thought that my life was, you know, I could now answer to me. I could now do another degree and progress at the career path. And actually, I couldn't.

I've become a busy working single grandma. Another huge situation that must have really taken its toll on you is in order to become the main legal caregiver for your granddaughter, you have to take your daughter to court. Yes. I fought, literally, not physically fought, but fought mum and children's services in court. And that took two years and beginning to end with various hiccups and bumps. I'm going to bring in Lucy.

Yeah, really common story. I mean, I love the description of the warrior grandma as well. It really speaks to a lot of the carers that we support. So most kinship carers are grandparents and they're often women. And what happens, I think, is, as tina said and as we see with katherine there's that life-changing event there's a phone call and and you hear katherine in happy valley say to her family members i had to take him i had no choice did you want me to put him into care and i think lots of kinship carers are at that they're they're faced with that if you don't this baby, if you don't take this child,

they will go into care. And then it's just life changing for carers. So, I mean, I think Catherine's character is so, it speaks to kinship carers so much because it affects her relationships. She loses her husband. She loses her son. I mean i mean is that quite common lots of carers will say uh they you know might be women and they're they're on a second relationship the their partner's not related to the grandchild and they're a bit like i didn't sign up for this so they might walk um at the same time you know so your life is falling apart at the same time as having to you grieve so you know k she... So your life is falling apart at the same time as having to... You grieve.

So, you know, Catherine was grieving, was majorly grieving, really angry. She loses those key relationships. She starts to lose her identity. And that's why I think Claire is such an interesting character in that. Because that's the sister. The sister, yeah. Who she also looks after, her sister, who is in recovery, AA. Why do you think why do you because she

we don't want to give any spoilers away for anybody not watching but she does something that really betrays katherine in the final series but you have some sympathy for her so she does in the final series and i don't know where that will end but there are those moments where you see that katherine's only able to balance that job that she keeps in the police force because Claire's at home cooking the tea, putting Ryan to bed and getting him to school. So lots of kinship carers aren't able to do that. Half of them are giving up work when they take on the children. Well, just like Tina said. Like Tina said.

Tina, you had to put your life on hold. You had plans to go and carry on and do another degree and it just didn't happen. Did you have the support? I'm lucky in that I'm doing this on my own so I don't have a partner to lose. It also means that there's no respite, there's no downtime, so my friends have become even more important in our lives.

Absolutely. It's worth saying here as well, Lucy, that it's mainly women who are picking up the pieces. Yeah. I mean, the women that we work, I'd say 80% of people that we work with and, you know, we're our advice service will be supporting about four and a half thousand carers a year. So we're the biggest scale in terms of support, both National Advice Service and on the ground where we're delivering intensive support. In areas like West Yorkshire, we have project workers who go out, sit with carers and really talk through what's going on in their lives. Most of those people are women. They will tend to be in their 40s, their 50s.

Dropping out of work at that stage is frightening. Many of those women talk about jeopardising their financial futures. You know, they know they've got to return to the benefit system. They will be on benefits for the rest of their lives because they cannot build up the pension. So we're really penalising people for doing the right thing. And what we really want to see is a national minimum allowance for kinship carers, just like foster carers get. So what is the government policy on kinship carers? just like foster carers get. So what is the government policy on kinship carers? So we've had announcements yesterday.

So these come out of the care review that happened last year. The government has for the first time, I think, really set out a set of recommendations which value kinship carers. So they see kinship carers as a vital pillar of the children's social care system. They've set out a plan to do an immediate investment of nine million for a national program of support and training for kinship carers. But more than that, they have said there will be the first ever national strategy on kinship care. So there will be some national leadership. Kinship carers will have opportunities to feed into that.

We want to really push hard for a set of supports that really meet the needs of kinship carers like Tina. What would meet your needs, Tina? What do you want to see happen? What would you like the government to do? Specialist training for kinship carers on traumatized children legal support um dedicated as lucy says dedicated teams dedicated charities who can help us in a in a listening way because practically that's that's another struggle that we have to deal

with and that's without thinking about the additional needs that our children have you know the educational needs they may have physical health needs the therapeutic needs of our community of children are huge and that work needs to start when the children are removed from their parents not when they've got permanence it's it's a it's a short-term answer to not do anything we need to look at this situation for the next two or three generations to get it right, to reduce the figures of children in care, to improve their life chances. That was the listener Tina from the West Midlands speaking to me on Friday and the Chief Executive of Kinship, Lucy Peake.

The writer and creator of Happy Valley, Sally Wainwright, was on Woman's Hour on Friday the 30th of December. If you missed it and want to listen back to it, then go to BBC Sounds. You will find it there. Now, we know the internet isn't always a particularly nice place to be a woman, especially a woman with a high profile. You might know the actor and comedian Emily Atack,

best known for starring as Charlotte in the Channel 4 series The Inbetweeners, and she hosts a sketch show on ITV called The Emily Atack, best known for starring as Charlotte in the Channel 4 series The Inbetweeners, and she hosts a sketch show on ITV called The Emily Atack Show. On BBC2 this week, you might have seen Emily in a different, altogether much more serious programme, as she presented a documentary on the huge amount of unsolicited, unwanted, abusive and graphic messages she receives every day and has done for years. They include rape threats, dick pics and crude images. Cyber flashing, that is online indecent exposure.

It's an offence included in the online safety bill which reached the House of Lords this week. Well, Emily has been campaigning for the offence to be made law, which would give police and the Crown Prosecution Service greater ability to bring perpetrators to justice with a maximum jail sentence of two years. Emily also wants to understand what motivates the men who target her and where the responsibility lies in trying to prevent cyber flashing from happening in the first place. It's the subject of her documentary Emily Atack asking for it and we can hear a clip from it now. Every morning when I wake up, I see a man's penis I haven't asked to see. This morning I've had...

Does I Want To See Your Tits count? 31. 37. 37. This man sends me pictures of him doing handstands all the time. Eight o'clock this morning, there's a lovely big veiny penis there. That did put me off my scrambled eggs, to be fair.

It's the ultimate disrespect. It's the ultimate thing of going, I think you're easy access and you're up for it. While Emily joined us in the studio to tell us more, Nuala started by asking her why she decided to make this documentary. To be honest, it's been going on for, since I've had social media for about 10 years. But I noticed a particular surge in the sexually aggressive and sexually violent messages in lockdown they were just getting worse and worse and worse and worse um to the point where you know it ranged

from pictures to threats and the threats and the violence of it is what kind of uh i mean i was i started fearing for my safety and um there was a different there was a different tone i mean it's horrible enough being flashed out online and having men say all kinds of things but there was a different there was a different tone. I mean, it's horrible enough being flashed out online and having men say all kinds of things. But there was something about the sort of the sexual aggression of it that made me really want to speak out about it. I started to and as you sort of you can hear in the clip, I use humor to to kind of as a defense mechanism, really. And I I did that with the screenshots that I started putting up on my social media just to get a kind of gauge of what people thought about this kind of behavior and I started screenshotting the stuff and you know putting fun silly little captions next to it um and it was my way of saying

look this is what's happening uh but it we were also in a pandemic so I didn't want to kind of you know um negate the severity of that pandemic and have people say think I'm just moaning about something that's not really that that much of a problem so I thought if I thought is it not much of a problem I thought if I throw humor at it people will engage with it in a way that it's not looking like I'm going poor me poor me but it was a it was my way it was a cry for help really it was my way of communicating this um with everybody and I hadn't seen my family in a long time hadn't seen my parents I was missing home I was on my own I felt particularly targeted because I was on my own which is what some of the messages say um and I

just felt the need to speak out about it and the reaction was just it the reaction actually is what made me realize how big a problem this is because I had people telling me this happens to them every day. I had some people so shocked by it, they'd never seen anything like that before, a message like that. So it's like a mix of reactions. And then that's when I decided to kind of delve into it more and possibly do a documentary. You mentioned a couple of the messages you received there in the clip that we played but I want to go into more detail because I really want to try and get it across to our listeners what it is that you have to endure. I will read a little kind of to give a flavour not of the messages but describing them. So there are messages about men wanting to ejaculate on parts of your body. There are people saying they want to rape and kill you there are men fantasizing about grabbing

smelling violating intimate parts of your body they also detail what they would like to do to you sexually and some of it so violent and i'm wondering what the impact is for you for example today receiving those messages as say, over the past 10 years, but in particularly this different tone or more threatening tone, I think is what I'm hearing from you since the pandemic. It's honestly, I mean,

and delving into it, as I have done with the documentary, it's been so much harder than I thought because I've kind of, I'm revisiting trauma that I've realised I've been going through since I was a child and it's these normalized behaviors that as young girls were sort of made to think are of a societal norm you know being flashed out in the street or being grabbed in a

shop when you're shopping with your mum or having your bum pinched you know it's it's like it's just this it's this behavior that we have always grown to think is normal and we've normalized, internalized it. And I think what I'm speaking, you know, personally here, this is kind of what I've done. But I just these messages, I kind of grew up knowing that this was going to happen to me in real life every now and then. But there's something about this online space that people think people are getting away with it more so they're doing it constantly every second of the day message message message I wake up in the morning I get dressed I have a message um whether it's an ejaculating penis or a video I walk to work I have another message um I'm on the I'm on the tube I get an airdrop you know it's it's constant throughout the day and

I think me talking about this now it's because I've I slowly realized especially during lockdown it was just chipping away and chipping away at who I was as a person and I was questioning all my choices my life choices my down to my dress sense my hair colour. I was googling how to get a boob reduction, you know. No, it's, and I, I started to look around me and kind of go, well, is this why I'm, I'm on my own? Is this, am I a particular type of girl that men want, that men are kind of quite wary of, but think that they can just kind of you know project their sexual frustrations out onto me and um I seem like an easy target to men I was questioning everything and thinking what I could do to change this and the sad thing is to everybody around you that hears of this behavior

tries to change you as well so let's talk about that but I very much hear that you say you're blaming yourself can I ask you kind of went through a regular day for yourself. What about today? I have to be honest. I put this up there last night. The messages have got worse since I started talking about it, since the promo for the doc, basically. I've had some horrible messages over the last few days. I just I'm now scared that I'm in a new sort of level of fear now where I'm worried that men are it on my Instagram and seconds later I said to my sister, I said, I have to take it down. I just can't deal with the influx of messages and how I'd never thought it could be worse. And it was, it was worse last night. I was very depressed last night and very emotional and very low.

And it's really, really really hard really hard i'm really sorry to hear you're going through that and and worse in the sense of the amount that are coming and also the type of message yeah and involving my family too but i didn't tell my mom this but um if she's listening she'll know now um they were saying things about my mom uh sending me messages saying what they want to do to me and my mom um and sorry mum if you're listening I didn't tell you that but um yeah I now that my I'm now I've now got this huge fear about the documentary my family are now in it and now I'm worried for their safety too um but this has been going on for years every single every every time I put up an episode of my show my sketch show I was having

conversations with producers last minute going, we need to take that out. We need to take this out. I remember I because I'm watching it going, I know what's about to come out of my mouth. And I know what the repercussions of that are going to be and the consequences of that. And so I'm constantly say, I'll film something and I'll create something. But then I think, no, I have to change it. I have to take this out, take that out, because I know the consequences of that. So you're censoring yourself. Yeah. And you've also been blaming yourself. Completely. And I, I'm trying really hard to not. And it's, you know, I try and fly this flag for strong, independent women. And, you know, but it's,

it's, it's really tough. And I find it really hard. And there are some days I do just want to delete Instagram. And, you know, and let's talk about that because we alluded to people asking you to change your behaviour when you highlight what is happening to you. What do people suggest? They say block and delete and I was talking about this yesterday the block and delete method is just completely it's redundant to me it's asking me to turn a blind eye to it all. Saying block and delete is saying ignore the problem, ignore the problem. And that those messages would still be sitting there? Is that what's in your head?

Absolutely. And also the, not just the message, but the person who has built up the, there's kind of three stages of a, to send a message like that, I think. It's the thought, the intention and the actual act. And if a man has decided to do that and he's gone through those stages he's already there that in in my opinion that is a

dangerous person and the fact that that person can then go off and do that to maybe somebody else or that behavior can escalate into something worse you know look what happens when we do turn a blind eye awful awful things happen and we turn a blind eye to this uh normalized behavior that we see as societal norm um and that behavior we see how that develops and escalates and we see the devastating consequences of that you know so i can't i can't block and delete because that's turning a blind eye can you imagine your life say i don I don't know, doing your work, doing your sketch, being an actress without any of those messages there? I don't know a life without sexually aggressive, abusive. There's an undertone to my life and it's sexual aggression.

There's sexual aggression. There's a sexual aggression thread that runs throughout my life and it's and it's it's sexual aggression there's sexual aggression there's a sexual aggression thread that runs throughout my life and has done since I was a child and I don't know a life without that and that is now in your phone yes yeah and I don't yeah I don't know a life without that you know I found it really interesting in your documentary when you went to speak you spoke to lots of different people about this uh you did ask men who you can trust who who are your friends, and also there was a group of guys you got together, to talk about why do they think men can send these messages

or do send these messages? They, that power and control, it's power and control. And one man simply just said the words, because we can. And I think that says it all. I think that, you know, since the beginning of time, men have run the world. You know, we all we all kind of know that. And I think they're very threatened by certain men are very threatened by a particular movement that's happening now with, you know, more female empowerment. I think that really angers a lot of men.

But, yeah, this has been happening since the beginning of time. It's because they can. There was one of the gentlemen that was there who said, I think he was a gentleman, he said that what needs to change in society is that the ideal man is not a man who gets away with things and has no consequences for his actions. Yeah, I think, yeah yeah i think that's it i'm going into this i i i thought that it was massively about changing the

law um but actually what i'm discovering is that there are so many threads and so many layers it's about changing attitudes um and you know whole, the subject of toxic masculinity, maybe looking at male behavior, looking at men's mental health in a, you know, in a better way. Yeah, it was really interesting talking to them. They were a lovely group. And they, it was lovely talking to a group of men

who want to be better, who want to better themselves. And this is what I'm trying to say to men. I'm trying to say, let's have this conversation together. We're not trying to exclude you out of this conversation and label you all as monsters that's not what's happening we could call them a lot of names I'll call them messages for now yeah uh back what happened I so there was one particular guy who just blocked me straight away um I I reached out and I said look

I I would like to know the I would like to know why you send me messages like this. He blocked me straight away. But there was one particular person who has been just relentless with me for years who I reached out to and said I want to know why you send me these kinds of messages. And at first he said he was going to stop and then he just went back to his old ways and carried on. But he actually explained to me why he sent me them and he said your reputation is bad. ways and carried on um but he actually explained to me why he sent me them and he said you he said your reputation is bad you seem to go through a lot of boyfriends and um he basically saying to

me that I was easy access uh and that I seem like I'm fair game and up for that kind of thing and that that's heartbreaking because I can't that's gone in I can't unthink that. If men, if somebody has given me a reason as to why they do, why they say those things to me, that is his reason. And so I can't, then I do go back to blaming myself and going, well, it is me. all of them that had had experiences of cyber flashing. They also said generally older men that had cyber flashed them. And, you know, this bit really stuck with me, that they said they felt most vulnerable when they were in their school uniform. That honestly broke my heart. I was very emotional that day. And they say it so calmly. They were just the most lovely group of girls.

And I chatted with them for a long time and one of them yeah she she said to me she said you know when I'm walking home I could be walking home I could be walking to school I could be in my bedroom um you know after school doing my homework I am more vulnerable when I'm in my school uniform if I whether I put a picture up or if I'm walking home and a van drives past me and says something out the window. She says that to desexualize herself, she puts up photographs of herself, not in her school uniform, but she gets the abuse anyway. And she also said that she said, you know, I'm a young girl. My body's going through a lot of changes. My hips have changed and they've become awful.

My breasts are swollen. I'm on the pill my body's changing and she said I feel like I'm being told constantly that I'm flaunting this body the way that men project their kind of sexual deviant thoughts onto me it makes me feel like that I'm in some way flaunting this at them but she said I'm just trying to be a child I'm just trying to be a child and you know you can totally you can totally sympathise, empathise with that child, which I wonder whether you can do it yourself. I was very struck by your mum, Kate, and I know she was so upset about what is happening

because you hadn't really shared them so, what would I say, intently with them, exactly screenshots of exactly what you're getting. But Kate did say in the documentary that it's not your fault. You must

never, ever blame yourself. Have you come to accept and believe that now? I'm really trying. There are moments where I do and I feel really empowered. But then there are moments where I just and I've got to be honest about this. I think there's this perception that if you're in the public eye, you sort of have to have it all together and you're kind of a bit of a role model. And I think actually to be a role model, you've got to be honest about how you're feeling. And I don't always have it all together. And I do sometimes just want to put the duvet over my head, delete Instagram and not be tough about it all and just cry to my mum. You know, it's a work in progress.

I think it always will be. And I'm still finding out the ins and outs about it. There are so many complexities, so many threads to it. And yeah, I will try my best to keep that faith. Emily Atack speaking to Nuala. And remember, you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day. If you can't join us live at 10am during the week, all you need to do is subscribe to The Daily Podcast.

It's absolutely free via BBC Sounds. Now it's 20 years in England since the repeal of Section 28, a law that came in from 1988 to 2003 to ban the so-called promotion of homosexuality in UK schools. Professor Catherine Lee of Anglia Ruskin University is a lesbian and taught in schools for every year of Section 28. During that time, she was a PE teacher in inner-city Liverpool before moving into special educational needs and pastoral leadership in rural Suffolk. So how did this law affect her and other gay or lesbian teachers and her students who identified as lesbian or gay?

Catherine has written a book, Pretended, Schools and Section 28, Historical, Cultural and Personal Perspectives. Nuala started by asking her about the title of the book and why she chose it. The inclusion of the word pretended was debated for hours in the House of Lords and the inclusion of it created confusion in how on earth all teachers were expected to uphold Section 28. But I've called my book Pretended because for me and countless other teachers who were in same-sex relationships, actually, we pretended to be somebody that we weren't every day of our lives under this law in the school workplace. So from my perspective, I pretended to live alone. I pretended not to hear homophobic language in the corridor.

I pretended not to be interested in leadership because that came with a level of visibility that I couldn't risk. And I should probably point out as well it was really the local authorities in charge of schools that were prohibited from promoting, not the schools themselves just to be very clear about that aspect. But they were, the Section 28, it did come about as part of changes to how schools were run or funded or tested their pupils. Tell us a little bit about that time when you look back. I was conscious of Section 28 for every one of those 15 years that it was law. I know for many other people, particularly those who were teachers in London, they felt that it didn't necessarily permeate their lives to the extent that it permeated mine. But I was in a convent school originally in Liverpool and then in village schools in Suffolk. And as is common with other lesbian and gay teachers at the time, I didn't socialise with the staff at my school. I lived outside the

school catchment area and I gave the impression that I lived on my own. I gave the impression in the staff room, I remember everybody used to describe me as a private person because I wouldn't talk about where I'd been at the weekend or who I was going on holiday with and you know this law said that my relationship was pretended it said it was not legitimate not as good as that of my heterosexual colleagues and when that happens every day for 15 years you can't help but kind of internalize that. And I certainly look back now and wonder why I wasn't braver. Looking back, actually, don't ask, don't tell is a very homophobic thing to do because it doesn't give you the space or the time in the workplace to speak your authentic self into existence. You know, as I was reading your book, I was wondering if a young person who is LGBT came to you now and said, I want to become a teacher, would you have any reservations?

No, I wouldn't. And I think it's an absolutely wonderful career. I've spent my entire life in education and the work I do now in part is educating the next generation of teachers and you know working with some brilliant schools in the east of England in 2016 we set up a program that was for specifically for LGBT teachers who wished to become school leaders leaders and it's been an absolute joy to work with over a hundred teachers to help them achieve leadership roles in schools as their authentic selves and be the role models for young people that I young people and staff that I could never be so certainly that work, the programme's called the Courageous Leaders Programme and that's what these brilliant teachers are. So no more pretending? No more pretending and I go into schools a lot these days and it's always a real highlight to see schools celebrate LGBT pride and LGBT history month.

And yeah, it's a very different world. Professor Catherine Lee on 20 years since the repeal of Section 28 in England. Now, women are able to recall details of sexual assault and rape with accuracy, even if they've drunk moderate amounts of alcohol. Well, a study conducted at the University of Birmingham demonstrated that women who had drunk alcohol up to the legal limit for driving were able to recall details of an assault

in a hypothetical scenario, including details of activities to which they had and had not consented. The findings, they say, are an important step towards challenging myths of women being unreliable witnesses when intoxicated at the time of the assault. Heather Flo, Professor of Psychology, led the study and joined me on the programme earlier this week. I began by asking her why she wanted to look into this area in particular. Alcohol, it's ubiquitous in sexual assault cases. We find that at the

investigation stage that the police and other legal practitioners, like forensic medical examiners, for instance, really have a degree of caution when it comes to questioning and taking statements from complainants who are under the influence of alcohol at the time of the attack because of concerns around credibility as well as concerns around memory. Can they remember what happened to them during the assault? Explain what was involved. We wanted to put women into a situation where they made a number of choices about whether to engage with the male that they just met. And if they elected to leave, let's say the encounter happened in a bar, they were given the option of whether they wanted to leave with him and accept a ride

home because all of their friends have left. And that's a common scenario that we read about in the papers. And if they agree to this, then next they are asked whether they want to invite the male inside because he's lost his mobile phone. And if she invites him inside, then he will begin to make sexual advances, and she'll have the option of whether to engage in the encounter or if she wants to stop consenting and call it a night. If she calls it a night and stops consenting, then a depiction of a legally definable act of sexual assault, that is rape, is described as having taken place. And then we interviewed our participants a week later using police interview tactics. And what did you find?

Well, we found that our participants who consumed alcohol, as opposed to those who consumed tonic water, were just as accurate in remembering the acts to which they consented. And they were no more likely to make a false accusation in the case of those who consented all the way through to the sexual intercourse in the scenario. And this was quite a small sample, Heather, 90 women that you worked with, with this limited amount of alcohol. What happens next? What was really key about it is that we did the research with college students, which is the number one occupation group when it comes to experiences with sexual assault. With respect

to the study's size, it's one of the largest alcohol studies, actually, because it's quite an intricate procedure to run it ethically. It takes a considerable amount of time. It takes a full day to run each participant in the lab outside of exam periods. It might add we are very responsible participants. But there's also been a number of studies done in the field with self-intoxicating individuals who are consuming far more alcohol than what we did in our study. And those research studies find compatible results whereby people reduce the amount of information that they report. But the accuracy of the information they report, but the accuracy of the information is no different compared to sober people. So we feel heartened that these

results should be informing the police when it comes to investigations that they need to do a thorough investigation and do a thorough interview with individuals who are involved in these crimes. It'll lead to fair fair justice outcomes for everyone. Heather Flo, Professor of Psychology, speaking to me earlier this week. And last but certainly not least, what comes to mind when you think of the word hag? We heard Helena Bonham Carter tell us earlier in the programme that getting older has made her happier. Well, the comedian Sophie Duker is on a mission to reclaim the term in her new UK stand-up tour of the same name. You may recognise Sophie from her appearances on Live at the Apollo,

8 Out of 10 Cats, Does Countdown, The Last Leg, and of course, as the latest champion of Channel 4's Taskmaster. Well, she joined us earlier this week and Nuala started by asking Sophie why she named the show Hag. I feel like when you, bear with me, when you turn 30, you stop being in your princess era and you enter your villain era. Like the world changes around you, the way that people act toward you changes. You're not a dewy-eyed debutante.

You're like living that spinster life. You're past it. You're too old to be a viable girlfriend for Leonardo DiCaprio. And I think that kind of like framing of the villain era of being left on the shelf is actually like the beginning of the best part of your life is something that I really wanted to speak about in the show. It's so interesting.

This conversation we were having yesterday was like women were middle aged in Hollywood in the 60s when they hit 30 or mid 30s. And it's so interesting that you're reclaiming that now in the year 2023. But the princess myth, tell me more about that, how you understand it or what that part of life is that you're leaving behind. I think for me, it is very much a phrase I made up,

but I really hope it gets coined and used in academic literature at the back of this interview. I feel like it's sort of a myth which is sold to lots of different types of people, lots of different communities and especially women, that if you're good and polite and you work hard and you wait, crucially, that things will happen for you. So you wait for your partner to find you or for your life to turn out the right way. And you end up being kind of very passive and compliant a lot of your life, doing the the right way and you end up being kind of very passive and compliant a lot of your life uh doing the things that other people have done before you but not

really asserting the things about you that make you unique or different and no shade to any existing or listening princesses but I think that kind of getting away from that and being how can I be Maleficent how can I curse the baby at the wedding? Or just kind of enact that change in my own life is something that you only really start to comprehend how to do when you get a little bit older. What was it? Was there any particular point that you found yourself evolving away from the princess to the hag? I think it's just the relentless passage of time. I don't think it's necessarily a voluntary thing. But I think what's amazing is that a lot of women while it's still really sad that like my friends who are still in their 20s do have this kind of inexplicable fear about getting older or like a sort of distaste for disclosing

their real age and talking about how old they are one of my friends Emma shout out about to turn 30 was like I'm not scared to turn 30 at all. I feel like the fear is a myth that they tell women to break them in their prime. And I think that's absolutely right. Like every sort of insecurity we have about being too old or past it. It's just it's just holding us back. I read an advice column from a woman who said that she'd wasted her life. That the Shante J shared and it said, I wasted my whole life and the woman was 35 wow do you think people still lie about their age i mean i'm talking about people in your generation yeah definitely i definitely think people but i think it's more a sense of like people don't want to bring it up because i think there's more of a sense now of how you're marketable within a certain bracket. Right. And for me, I think because I do a lot of comedy panel shows with very lovely, occasionally crusty old white men,

a lot of people would remark on how young I was, which is also a bit coded when you're like a melanated woman. Like people would always be like, oh, you young people, you young person. And I was like, I am an adult. I am grown and sexy. And I'm also not going to be able to cling to you for my whole life. That can't be something that I allow to define me just because it's the apple that people are willing to give to me. Let's talk about hag. You talk about being Hansel and Gretel. What does that mean? Hansel and Gretel. Okay. It's basically a great parenting scheme where you sort of tell your kids like any sort of like, there's basically a ruse. It you sort of tell your kids like any sort of like there's basically a ruse it's like a surprise birthday party but it's just to get your kids

to go somewhere that they might not necessarily want to go so when I was very young my parents Hansel and Gretel to me and took me to live with my grandmother the OG hag in Ghana so I think I got told I was going to Disneyland. That might be a comedic embellishment. But yeah, sort of got lured into a place of discovery. Let's talk about grandma. What was she like? She was amazing. So my grandmother, and I think a lot of people have, whether or not they're directly related to them, really strong matriarchal figures that we do not see in popular culture in fiction but just women who I think sort of explode the another myth that femininity is somehow like or like the

virtues associated with femininity are like a necessary part of womanhood because my grandmother was like a hustler she was like I call her like Don Corleone in the show she was like an original gangster granny and she was so loving so powerful and just is someone that kind of draws everyone in by their orbit and for me was always old like I was like single digits she was in her 70s when I met her um she's now passed but I think there's a sort of fear of the hag there's a sort of like older women being shut away or being distrusted or not included in conversations when they're really like the richest resource that we have and the best templates for how to be full people. So you talk about her. I think, I believe she wore a fedora. Have I got that right? She wore a fedora. Like her walking stint was like a pimp cane. She had like she had like so much style there's that

uh poem about when I am old I shall wear purple yes and I don't I mean we don't need to wait until I think there are so many women so many people that prove that 70 is not old 80 is not old you don't need to wait to get to a sort of um unres uh uh unrespectable age in order to act out i think that just being a stylish fabulous woman that gets things done is something that my grandmother really showed me how to do but my little my little princess brain couldn't even compute it at the time but now it's there it's hag brain instead uh just in our last minute or so um you've been in the business for over a decade i was listing all the things you've done, but you've only recently, I think maybe since the pandemic, started calling yourself a comedian. Why? I think, so yeah, since the pandemic,

in which I did very well, I was like a cockroach. I thrived in the apocalypse. I think it's sort of in the timing of the pandemic entering my 30s, becoming more visible and successful in my career. I think that you do marginalise, minoritise other women a disservice if you don't accept who you are, if you don't proclaim who you are and talk about the things that are undeniable and that you've worked so hard to achieve, it becomes sort of disingenuous to not be open, say, about your pay or your struggles or the fact that you do work and live as a comedian. The comic Sophie Duker on her show Hag. That's all from me. Do tune into Woman's Hour on Monday from 10am. Nuala will be speaking to writers Holly Bourne and Julia Golding on teen fiction and asking, is it too miserable? Have a great rest of your weekend. And remember, one more sleep until Happy Valley.

I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth.

How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.