Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman’s Hour: Natalie Fleet MP, HIV prevention, Trisha Goddard, Older surrogacy, Comedian Rosie Jones

Episode Date: June 21, 2025

Natalie Fleet is the Labour MP for Bolsover whose path into politics has been far from typical. From a very young age, teachers told her she was destined for university – something almost unheard of in her Nottingham mining town. But her future took a different turn, when at fifteen, she became pregnant by an older man. At the time she had thought they were in a relationship - but as she grew older, Natalie says she realised she had been a victim of grooming and statutory rape. She's now speaking out to give a voice to those she feels have been made to feel they should be silent, and joins Anita Rani in the studio. Only 3.1% of PREP users in England are women. That's Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, a drug that reduces the risk of being infected with HIV. Many women don’t know that PREP exists, or don’t consider themselves at risk. Yet women accounted for 30% of new HIV diagnoses in England in 2023. This week, the Elton John AIDS Foundation has launched pilot programmes to increase women's access to PREP. Anita was joined by Dr Jenny Whetham, Consultant and Joint Clinical Lead, Sexual Health and HIV Medicine, Brighton and Anne Aslett, CEO of the Elton John AIDS Foundation to discuss.Trisha Goddard rose to fame as a TV journalist. She was the first black TV presenter in Australia and is best known in the UK for her eponymous TV show which aired on ITV and Channel 5 in the late 90s and 2000s, earning her a reputation as the British Oprah. She joined Anita to talk about her career, appearing on Celebrity Big Brother and why she chose recently to go public with her diagnosis for stage 4 metastatic breast cancer.BBC journalist Sanchia Berg and fertility lawyer Beverley Addison joined Nuala McGovern to discuss the recent cases of older couples becoming parents via surrogacy.Comedian, actor and writer Rosie Jones joined Nuala to discuss her first sitcom, Pushers, which she stars in and co-wrote. She plays Emily in the Channel 4 show, who has very little left to lose after having her disability benefits cut when she loses her job - she finds herself building an illegal drugs empire. Emily isn’t your average street-dealer though - she’s sharp, funny, highly educated and has cerebral palsy. What better disguise could there be for criminal activity than to be entirely written off by society?Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Annette Wells Editor: Rebecca Myatt

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello and welcome. Coming up, some highlights from the week. Tricia Goddard, the queen of UK daytime TV in the late 90s and early 2000s. You may have seen her more recently in the celebrity Brigg Brother House speaking very frankly about living with stage four cancer

and becoming a journalist. Mum was a fighter. People say how come you chose journalism? She'd listen to the radio, shows like this one back in the day, God she'd be proud. And she'd shout at the radio, no you can't say that, oh yeah yeah. She'd shout. My parents would literally paint placards in their front rooms. They were very, very active politically. The government is reviewing how to enhance public guidance on surrogacy after a couple in their seventies recently became legal parents of a surrogate baby. They'll be 89 when the child is 18. We'll be talking about a new pilot scheme focused on HIV prevention for women, and the

comedian, actor and writer Rosie Jones on her new sitcom Pushers, where a young disabled woman becomes an inconspicuous drug dealer. So let's get started. First, Labour MP for Bolsovr Natalie Fleet won her seat for the first time at last year's general election. Her path into politics has been far from typical though. From a very young age, teachers told her she was destined for university, something almost unheard of in her Nottinghamshire mining town. But her future took a very different turn when at 15 she became pregnant by an older man. At the time she thought they were in a relationship but as she grew older Natalie says

she realised she'd been a victim of grooming and statutory rape which is defined as unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. I spoke to her yesterday and she started by telling me why she wanted to share her story. I didn't want to. One, I didn't want the story to be mine. I don't want it to be anybody's. And two, I don't want to share it. I feel like I've got a responsibility to. There are women up and down the country that are being raped in all different kinds of way and rape is an issue that transcends class and age and profession. The common

denominator with rape is you have to be, or you're more likely to be, as long as you're a woman, it's part of your story but it's a story we're not telling. And this is horrendous to say, it's a ridiculous thing to say but it's still true. I am so lucky in the way that I was raped because I have a birth certificate that tells my age and I have a birth certificate that tells my daughter's age and I have a DNA test that links her to a man that was far older than me. And people have still said, you will not be believed, I don't want you to tell your story and then you're not be believed. And I'm like, I've got biological evidence. Women don't come forward in this country and beyond because they don't think

they're going to be believed. I am in an incredibly privileged position that I've got a platform and I've got a story that is still refuted. I mean, I'd looked at some of the online comments before I came in and I really shouldn't have done it. It is refuted and people have got very strong opinions about the fact that it was still all my fault. But in the law, it wasn't. And the thing about this country is that nobody is talking out. This is an endemic that's happening up and down the country. And if I can do something to shine some light on it, then that's happening up and down the country and if I can do something

to shine some light on it then that's my responsibility. And you've done it by speaking out about your own experience. So for our listeners, I think we should go back to the beginning and you should, how old were you when you met the man who would become the biological father of your daughter? I was 15. I didn't realise that anything was wrong at all. If I'm honest, I didn't realise that anything was wrong until I came into Parliament and we started having conversations around it and assigning language to it, like grooming, that didn't even exist at that time. Which in itself is unbelievable and we will talk about why it took that long for you to be able to process what happened but what did you think was happening at the time? You

were 15 years old. Yeah and I thought I was in a really loving relationship. I thought that that was the case. I didn't realise that there was an older man that was telling me everything I needed to know over a period so that he could have unprotected sex with me and then pass all the burden to me. You know, you must have a termination, you must not tell anybody this child is mine. If you do, I will never pay a penny. I know how to avoid CSA payments. And the reason he felt so strongly is because we talk about grooming gangs. He wasn't part of a gang. He was part of a wider culture in towns like mine. I wasn't the first to get pregnant in my year

and I wasn't the last. And the amount of people that have said to me since, oh my god that happened to me and that was really dodgy. Now not everything happened resulted in a pregnancy or a pregnancy that resulted in a birth. Yeah you were together for three months. Yeah. And in your mind as a young 15 year old you were in a relationship? I didn't realize it was happening in secret. I didn't realize he was denying it was happening to other people when asked about it.

I didn't realise any of those things. I just thought that this was a, I was just really starstruck by this older man that was giving me all the attention that I just absolutely was saying all the right things. And when you became pregnant, he said, don't keep it I'll deny it's mine. Yeah. And worse he said I'll say that it's someone else's. Yeah and

when the DNA test came back and it was like 99.9% the case that it was here he says yeah but there's still 0.01% chance that it isn't. How did other people react? As you would expect, totally as you would expect. So we're talking the year 2000, I know that seems like two years ago, it's actually 25 years ago. And people, you know, they called me a slag, a slapper, this was all my fault. They were the people that didn't care about me. They were just like, you have ruined your life and you have ruined your unborn child's life. But worst was the disappointment of the people that did care about me, that still told me exactly the same thing. They said, Natalie, you had

such a bright future. You were such a bright girl. How could you do this? What have you done to yourself? You are going to be, you're going to have a life on benefits, you're going to go, you're going to fail you and your daughter before she's even born and I'm so, I'm so sad for you. And I, I obviously believed him but worked really hard to try and make sure that wasn't the case. And you had the support of your grandfather. And all my family, but it was always... What was his reaction though, because your mum took you round to see your grandparents, who were

very important in your life. Yeah. What was his reaction? I will never forget the noise that came out of his body. It was like a noise that I'd never heard before. All I can say is it was a whale. It was like a noise that I'd never heard before. All I can say is it was a whale. This was a man that I'd worked down the pit, that had done everything he could to look after and support his family, that had been really proudly, you know, part of the working class community and family meant everything. And now we saw the granddaughter that he'd worked so hard to bring up. It's life-ending. It's like I'd got terminal cancer. It was really difficult. So you were made to feel all this immense shame, judgment, people saying whatever they like. How about the father? So the father said, he was very much just of the mind, he'd done nothing wrong.

And as I say, this is a thing that was happening far and wide across our communities. So many people have got in touch since to say, thank you for shining a light on this, because there's a, there's a rightly a focus on gangs right now where it's coordinated and absolutely horrendous and the most heinous crimes are being committed. But what I hope that we we don't lose in this debate is that this was widespread across so many of our communities. When did you come to understand that what happened to you was grooming and statutory rape? so you get a 15 year old girl off the council estate and I had really good people, like I'll always be indebted to Gloria DiPiero MP.

She was my MP and she just kept saying, I will not rest until you are in parliament. I thought she was absolutely crazy. That's ridiculous. People like me do not end up in parliament. And she kept saying it and she kept end up in Parliament. And she kept saying it and she kept saying it over years and she gave me every bit of support I needed to be here and every time I doubted myself, she reminded me, or she told me, I never actually

believed her, but she told me that I should be here. So I'm like, right, a caregiving in the end. I will do everything I can to get there because I've got a huge amount of responsibility. I've got to pay forward to other women what she did for me. And if it does mean that I can have a platform, I thought I was going to come in and talk about child poverty and special educational needs and education and the benefit of Sure Start and the difference that the last Labour government made to me as a young teenage mum. I had no idea that I was going to come in and talk about this. Anyway, she says, you know, it's got to happen. So I'm like, right, I've got to do it. And I have

been through every aspect of my story and thought, I'm going to get found out at some point because I should not be here. So I thought, what could they say? What could the headlines be? What have I done wrong? What will people use against me? And so I went to my daughter and I said, and my son, who's just a bit younger than her, because I wanted her to have everything in the world and that included a brother that she could play with. So I'm very happy that they're together today listening to this. And I went through and I said, you know what happened? You know how I was always disappointed that your biological father never wanted anything to do with you. And at times it made you feel like you were

abandoned or rejected. And you've got support around that. In my mind I'm thinking how it would be perceived in the media and I'm starting to think that actually this might have been a bit dodgy and she was like, mum no way I could see that years ago. What planet are you on? She knew. She didn't think. Do you know how old you were and how old he was? Just can't believe how much you're struggling telling me this story and I told my son who's 21 and he's like yeah And I told my son who was 16 and he's like, mom, why does it take you so long to catch on? And what I love about that is that they're growing up in a different world. So we've still got, we've still got a discussion to be had nationally about rape

and people have got to be believed when they do speak about it. We've got to bring back the court, down the court backlog. We've got to make sure that women are supported by the police. We've got to make sure that the perpetrators end up in jail. So there's so much more to do around rape and getting women justice. But where we have come a long way is that we've had a national conversation about if you are a child, then it's not okay for a man to come and target you to have sex with. And we're living in a post-MeToo generation now where your daughter is switched on enough

to be able to look you in the eyes and say, yeah, of course, mum, that's what it was. The most profound thing she has said to me is she said, this is when I was first an MP, and I didn't like talking about it then. I've never liked speaking out about it, but there's, you know, there's not a queue of, this is happening to us. There's just not a queue, rightly. So I understand why people talk about it.

So she said to me, Mom, she says every single time you use the word rape, I bristle. She's got to keep saying it. And I just thought if she can be that brave, then I can be too. Natalie Fleet MP there. And if you've been affected by any of the issues raised, you can find information on the BBC Action Line website for help and support. Now, only 3.1% of PrEP users in England are women.

That's pre-exposure prophylaxis, PrEP, a drug that reduces the risk of getting HIV. Many women don't know that PrEP exists or don't consider themselves at risk, yet women accounted for 30% of new HIV diagnosis in England in 2023. This week, the Elton John AIDS Foundation launched pilot programs to increase women's access to pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP and I

was joined by Dr. Jenny Wettem, Consultant and Joint Clinical Lead Sexual Health and HIV Medicine in Brighton and Anne Aslett, CEO of the Elton John AIDS Foundation. I started by asking Anne how prevalent HIV is amongst women in the UK. Well it's much more prevalent than people actually realise and as you said in your opening, it's the highest percentage of new infections is women in heterosexual sex of any group in the UK, which I think might shock quite a lot of your listeners. Definitely. That 30% figure. Yeah, because we still associate HIV, after all these years, as simply a gay disease, and it isn't. So the reason why we're launching these pilots is we really want to find ways to reach women

in a way that's accessible and affordable so that they're not at risk and they understand what they can do to protect themselves. Can you explain that 30% figure because that's surprising as well. It's quite, is that high? Like what's happening? What does that mean? Yeah that's high. I mean that's changed dramatically over the last 20 years and I think the problem is that, you know, HIV has gone away in people's heads in an awful lot of ways. We do have effective treatment and people kind of don't see it as a problem. I think they worry more about sexually transmitted infections. If

you have a sexually transmitted infection, you're more vulnerable to HIV, which I think is another thing people don't understand. So,, it's about raising awareness, it's about getting treatment to people when they need it, and particularly to women. Who's most at risk? So particularly women from black African and Caribbean communities, immigrants to this country, sex workers, people who have less agency over when and how they have sex. But also it's people who might be in long-term relationships where they're not really sure about their partner's sexual activity.

And it's something we don't talk about. We still have this massive stigma around HIV. Even from all these years later, it is still seen as something which is dirty or morally inappropriate in some way. And something to be feared. And something to be feared. Whereas actually, if you know your status, and we did a pilot a couple of years ago on what's called opt-out testing in emergency departments, where instead of saying,

I want to test you specifically for HIV, we said, we test everybody for HIV in this borough. Yeah. Are you okay with it? And we were finding, I think the oldest person we found was a woman of 87 years old who had absolutely no idea that she was infected. So it's about normalizing this. It's about getting it out to people. And we think we found some really innovative ways to do that. How's the pilot scheme going to work? So there are two different approaches. One is what's called a direct-to-consumer approach because a lot of people either can't find the time or can't get an appointment to get on prep. We know that more than half of people who actually want an appointment wait 12 weeks or more, which is not really appropriate when you, you know,

you're thinking about protecting yourself from from sex you might be having. And so a direct to consumer means that you can do all of it online. You can get the tests that you need, you can make sure that you're HIV negative, and you can get the medication online. And we think that's going to be very, very appealing to people who either understand PrEP well or who are very nervous about accessing it and the other is is linking through women's services, existing women's services like health hubs, antenatal clinics, so that you have a rounded conversation with women about

their sexual health. I'm going to bring in Dr Jenny Wheaton. Morning Jenny. Morning. Can we understand how PrEP works? So PrEP works by preventing HIV infection before it takes hold in the body and it's 99% effective and taken properly. So most times it's a tablet that's taken every day and there are other regimens that may be appropriate as well but yes a really really effective way of preventing HIV transmission. And how long do you need to take it before having sex? So for women, typically, you need to take it for seven days before having sex. And then we encourage women to carry on taking it daily over their risk period. So that might be over a prolonged period of time, or if there are periods in people's lives where

they're maybe having sex that's more risky, they would take it for that period of time. And can you take it whilst you're on other medication? Absolutely, it's a really safe drug to take. You can take it when you're on other medication and also when you're pregnant. We'd always check those things out in clinic and talk that through with people before starting as well.

Why haven't, Anne, women had access to this? Well, partly because the guidelines have all been targeted towards gay men. Most of the effort in terms of prevention messages has been targeted towards gay men. Women just don't see themselves at risk. There are a lot of women who wouldn't use sexual health services for confidentiality reasons or difficulty in getting an appointment. So I think there's a perception that they aren't at risk. And also, we still have a problem with the medical profession having discussions with women about HIV and their risk of HIV. It still has that connotation about there's something promiscuous about you, in the same way that they used to be about the contraceptive pill.

And so we want to change all of that. Jenny, you are doing exactly that. You're in Brighton where the second pilot has just started and tell us more, what are the biggest challenges? Yeah, so we're really delighted to be working with EJF on these projects and as you say the second project is running across Liverpool, Brighton and Hove and West Sussex and we're going to be working with Women's Health Hubs and particularly in Liverpool because they've got a really well established network of Women's Health Hubs in Liverpool to incorporate PrEP into the offer of those services and in Brighton and Hove will be doing the same

across Sussex with Women Health Hub signposting into services. So yeah, it's a really exciting project to be part of. I'm not quite sure I've answered your question though, please go. No, I was actually thinking, you know, there might be, I'm just wondering about our listeners listening to this, who for the first time in years might be thinking about having hearing a conversation about HIV AIDS and women in particular. What if they're thinking you know what if someone is sexually active sleeping with a few partners might be concerned for themselves like who should be coming to you who should be speaking to their GP? Yeah so anybody who thinks they might be at higher risk of HIV. So everybody can access

sexual health services at the moment. They're free at the point of contact and open access across the country. And if people are worried about PrEP, worried about HIV, then we'd be encouraging them to access PrEP. And that's again, what we're going to be doing as part of these projects is raising awareness because unless you know about PrEP, then you can't then make those decisions for yourself to access HIV testing and to think about PrEP. What will success look like for this pilot? Success will look like demonstrating that actually these two ways of finding and reaching underserved populations, particularly women, work for them, are effective and affordable.

And ultimately, there's a, the government has committed to a new HIV action plan later this year for 2025 to 2030. I would like to see a national prep expansion program in, in that plan because, you know, we haven't got long. There's a global goal to end AIDS by 2030. The UK actually is the country that's probably closest to achieving that goal. And if we can stop people who are HIV negative becoming infected, we shrink our epidemic and we can reach that goal and prevention is a huge part of that. So that's what success would look like as well as, obviously, reaching an awful lot of people, especially a lot of women, and giving them a sense of security and safety

about their sexual lives. And Aslet and Dr Jenny Whetton there. Still to come on the program, comedian and actor Rosie Jones on her new sitcom, Pushers. 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, just subscribe to the daily podcast. It's free via BBC Sounds. And coming up at the beginning of August, we have Listener Week. We encourage you to get in touch with your stories, anything personal, anything unusual,

anything you feel like we should be talking about on Woman's Hour. We'd love to hear from you. Now Tricia Goddard began her journalism career in the 80s in Australia, where she became the first black TV presenter. On her return to the UK, where she was born, her eponymous daytime talk show earned her a reputation as the British Oprah Winfrey. Tricia was broadcast for 12 years from 1998 on ITV and Channel 5 before Tricia moved to NBC in the US. She's since hosted radio shows and Good Morning Britain, and now based in America is a CNN contributor and regular commentator on global issues. Well, last year she went public with her diagnosis for stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, which means it spread to another part of her body. In April, she went on Celebrity Big Brother in the UK and Tricia joined me this week. I started by asking her how she is. I'm okay. I'm okay. This is my first solo trip back to Britain since I came out about

my breast cancer. When I was hiding it, because of course I didn't tell anybody for 19 months, I had a wig made exactly like my hair extensions. I carried on with CNN. I covered the coronation of King Charles and- And you told nobody? Told nobody. And this was in 2023?

Yeah. Yeah. After four and a half months of weekly chemo, which was bloody brutal. Why tell no one? I had to come to terms with it myself. And I remember this is not my first dance with cancer and the first time around. I'm Andini and I'm looking back on the life of a Hollywood icon whose legacy lives on through more than just her film roles. She was someone who was interested in invention all her life.

She wasn't that interested in the film that she was supposed to be starring in. She was much more interested in the latest invention that she was working on. Who developed an idea so revolutionary that it's still being used today. Frequency hopping. It was used for secure military communications. It's in GPS, it's in Wi-Fi, it's in Bluetooth. From the BBC World Service, Untold Legends, Hedy Lamarr., available now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. It was outed literally within hours of finding out.

This is 2008. 2008. I went to North Canorich Hospital, nuclear oncology Department, shaking like a chihuahua because I'd been diagnosed the night before. And I got home to the phone ringing and it was a news desk from a tabloid newspaper saying we've heard you're in hospital and you're dying. I'm basically saying that if you don't give us the story, we'll publish that. I hadn't told daddy.

I only just told my kids. I hadn't told my... So then began something that still traumatizes my now adult children. I had to have security in the hospital. The National Health basically said, we can't treat you here and guarantee that while you're having your radiation treatment or while you're having your chemo, someone won't photograph it. Newspapers were offering £50 for a photograph of me. We had my housekeepers were harassed, my children were. I had to have security in my private hospital. They had to move my bed to a back room. There was a kerfuffle outside my room one day, flowers on the floor, a journalist. I'll use the term loosely, somebody had tried to pretend they were into floor delivering flowers. I mean, it was so traumatic, actually. That is one of the reasons I stayed in America.

I was so angry and upset at a medium I've always championed. I've always wanted to be a journalist, from doing my school newspaper when I was 10 years old to being a runner-up in Young Filmmaker at the Year Award at Government. All my whole life I've wanted to be a journalist and I started off in news and current affairs as a journalist. And the fact that my own industry would see a cancer diagnosis as an opportunity horrified me. So anyway, why did I not tell anybody this time for 90 months? Because of that. I mean, because of that, that's one of the things.

Sounds traumatic. Yeah, and I... Sounds traumatic. So I kept it really, really quiet until I was ready to come out and I was kind of forced out in a nice way. I was covering... I was told by Anderson Cooper, standby, we've got an announcement from the palace. We didn't know what it was going to be and of course it was Catherine talking about her

diagnosis and I was like as a journalist I've been hiding from my colleagues sitting next to them at one stage literally got off the table from having radiation went to the studio I said I can't in all fairness report on this without being honest so I did the report SonsWig took my wig off. For the first time. For the first time and one of my, somebody down the line, you know, one of the engineers, he knows me, says, hey, you like the new hair Trish. So anyway, I did the report along with other people and Anderson came to me and I talked about it. And I said, as I well know

Anderson, because for the last 19 months I've been going through chemotherapy and it was like they sent a car for me and Anderson was lovely. Why did you choose to go on Celebrity Big Brother? I've been asked every single year since the damn show started and I always gave a very swear word reply. I talked to my older daughter Billy and I said, oh, they've asked me to go on Celebrity Big Brother and she said, Mummy, you're so passionate about services around people with life-limiting illness, with cancer and disabilities, and

you're shouting into this social media, stumbling about in social media. You know, you're trying to get this message across. I've done a lot of work in America around this and health inequalities and what have you. I've done a lot of work with my cancer center who's bloody fantastic and she said mummy this is the best platform you can get an ear to government and Billy said go on Big Brother and talk about it. Show that you can live with a life-limiting disease. We don't use the terminal anymore, it's life limiting. And so I did. Between the first cancer diagnosis in 2008 and your most recent, and you always, whenever I see you doing anything, everything about you is about living life. You live it to the fullest. Has it taken a journey to get

to that place this time around? Yeah look I have dark days. I have dark days during my chemo every single week. I have dark dark days and I don't care how many times people tell me oh your hair looks lovely to a woman and to a man apparently men take it worse worse, losing all your hair is, I don't know, I don't know. In many societies you cut your hair or shave your hair to show grief and there is always a grief because your loss of hair reminds you that you're not quote unquote normal. I grieve for the person who could cross country run. I was coming up for my first ice skating exam. I started skating at 62 mad back that I am. And I have no feeling from my knees down. So I'm having to learn to walk again constantly and to skate again.

And the frustration, I've got a brilliant skating coach, the frustration I feel at not being able to do simple things I could before because I can't feel my feet in my boots. And if I walk number 10 Downing Street. Which you were there talking about and it was for? Windrush day. Yes. Windrush day. Mummy would have been proud and I pounced on Sakir Starmer. That's another story. Well you can tell us. No I pounced on him about just the things I'm talking about. About the you know that all of us, many of us with chronic illness fear unemployment or want to get back to the jobs that we did. And now with all this PIP and cuts, there's

fear in the community. Although those of us with life-limiting illness aren't impacted, our benefits, if I say are, because I feel it in my heart, people contact me, it's the stuff around it that that it's going to be taken away from. That's personal independence payments. Yeah. And the government has said this is a consultation, pathways to work, reforming benefits and support to get Britain working green paper Open it's open till June the 30th And it's looking closely at what support would be needed for people who may lose their entitlements

You've got to get people have got to get vocal net. Um, you mentioned mommy your mom I think we should care about your life and And also just to put into context for people, I mean there won't be many, but just to understand where that frustration comes from because your life has been so energetic and you've achieved so much. But back to the beginning,

your mum came here as part of the Windrush generation, met your father. Well, a man. A man. And Trisha, there's so much that's happened in your life. One of those things is that discovering that your father wasn't your birth parents, but you didn't find out until after your mother's death. Would you wish you were able to speak to her about it?

That's a tough one. I mean my whole life, obviously, I knew I was different. My half-sisters are lighter than my kids. obviously I knew I was different, my half sisters are lighter than my kids and I was very different. It's interesting you're going to be talking about favourites. Right, yeah. How did you feel? Did you feel you weren't a favourite or the opposite?

Mum championed me. Mum pushed me and told me I had to be twice as good as to be half as good. Mum championed me. She would celebrate my every success and then Dad would punish me for those successes, often physically. So I prefer to live in Mummy's shadow, but I was very angry with her after she died. I mean, people say, how could you not know? Remember, I was born in 1957. We were always the only black family around. We moved to Central East Africa because of the racism around a black man and a white woman being together. I had a fantastic

childhood in East Africa, fantastic. But then we came back to Britain and oh my God did it hit me hard. I was saved by my school, Sir William Perkins, teacher's day was yesterday, shout out to Mrs. Millard, saved. I mean I mean that. But mum was a fighter. People say how come you chose journalism? She'd listen to the radio, shows like this one back in the day, God she'd be proud, and she'd shout at the radio, no you can't do that, oh yeah yeah, she'd shout. My parents would literally paint placards in their front room, they were very very active politically. And encouraged debates and conversation. So how then do you go from

being in Britain and then becoming the first black woman on Australian TV? I didn't realize that. As I said, when the reporters hit me with that, what a fact. I didn't know. I didn't even think of it. I said I didn't apply for the job of first black presenter. I actually applied for a job as a reporter. I was on another ethnic network as a journal on the road and I was applying for the job as a journal for the 730 report on the ABC and I was given the role of presenter and all these journalists came in. David Hill said ladies and gentlemen, the new presenter of the 730 report and somebody said, oh, what does it feel like? Because I can do an Australian accent. I once had one.

What does it feel like to be the first black on television? Shouldn't you be Aboriginal? It's a bicentenary. And I was like flummoxed because I didn't apply to be the first black anything. I was just me. But you got the job. I just was me. And then you moved back to the UK. What brought you back? And you got an immensely popular show, dubbed the British Oprah. Only, I hate that label. Yeah, I was going to ask you how you feel about it. I hate that label. I think, you know, if I say it's racist, people are always playing the race card.

But it's like, we're very different people. Yeah, just how both happens to be black. Yeah I'm gonna be I could have been the British Phil Donahue or Maury Pave it What Jerry Springer cuz I was a big? Well, it was a big influence. I know Jerry. I knew Jerry. I knew Jerry. There were two Jerry's I knew Jerry He died of cancer just after I was diagnosed. And we, I allowed him to share my PA, Jenna. And I rang Jenna up and we didn't speak. We just cried. That's powerful.

Your show was very of its time. And it was very, it was that kind of style of Jerry Springer TV show. And then it sort of, of went out of fashion. What do you think about it when you look back and the work that you were doing? I don't know, I sure had a heart and for instance we had three counsellors, I had my team constantly talked to by and supported by the local wine metal health group, have you said we tried to be as kind as possible and one is always treading a line between ratings and kindness, to be honest. It was

of its age. It was of its age. Trisha Goddard there. Now the government is actively reviewing how to enhance public guidance on surrogacy after a couple in their seventies recently became legal parents of a surrogate baby despite the judge's concerns that they'll be 89 years old when the child reaches 18. The husband and wife, both aged 72, applied to the British courts for a parental order after the baby was born six months earlier to a surrogate in California using the husband's sperm and a donor egg. It was one of three cases to pass through the family courts over the past year, with parents in their 60s and 70s.

Well, Nula was joined by a fertility lawyer who specialises in surrogacy, Beverly Addison, and by BBC journalist, Sancia Berg. She started by asking Sancia to explain what the judges said in court. Well, the most important of these cases was heard in February before the most senior judge in the family court, Sir Andrew McFarlane, and it's a really striking case where a same-sex couple from London who were in their 60s decided that they wanted to have surrogate children. Obviously they couldn't use their women, they couldn't use their own eggs. They used donor eggs, donor sperm, and all

this was achieved through a clinic based in North Cyprus. There were a donor egg from a different woman, but the gestational mothers, these were twins, but they were carried separately, were both Ukrainian. So it was quite complicated, it was quite expensive, it cost them about £120,000, but it left them in this awful legal limbo because it turned out that the two girls, when they were born, were stateless. They couldn't be North Cypriot and they couldn't be Ukrainian, and these two women spent four years getting permission to bring the children back to the UK and then they had to go to the family court to get a parental order which or in this case they went for adoption because they didn't have a genetic link link the two girls and so

they couldn't qualify to be surrogate parents but Sir Andrew McFarlane the most senior judge in the family division, was very forthright about this and critical of what they'd done. He said anyone seeking to achieve the introduction of a child into their family by following in the footsteps of these applicants should think again. And actually the Home Office also gave evidence in that case and said they, for public policy reasons, might object to future cases like this. So both the Home Office and the Family Courts were saying, look, you mustn't do it like this.

But it is, of course, quite legal. There is no obstacle in law, no age limit either, to stop people doing this. But they are bringing up age as a factor, the judges. Age was a factor in this case. It was also a factor in the very widely reported case, the K case, where the parents were both 72. And in that case, the judge said to them, please go away. I won't grant the parental order until you come back with other people, younger people, who are able to care for these children if something happens to you. So there is a concern about age, certainly, and I think these cases really highlight the fact that

for all it can be very difficult to achieve surrogacy in this country, and it can be very difficult to adopt a baby. If you're prepared to spend a lot of money you can go abroad and do it quite successfully. Let me bring in Beverly here. Is there any legal age limit for the surrogacy route? No there is no maximum age limit. The only age related criteria that is in the law is about both parents requiring to be over the age of 18, which some may say is too young. So you know the law is very interesting in that regard. We also don't have any age limits on who can have a child outside of surrogacy or artificial reproduction, so for me it does

bring in some really interesting criteria about when do we apply these sort of moral judgments on who can have a child based on their age. These cases have brought up very interesting points. Because Al Pacino for example who was in the news he became a father again that was 2023 at the age of 83. But surrogacy is a controversial topic. Sanja had mentioned their parental orders that would need to be given by the family court. What are they? Why are they important?

So a parental order is quite important because it is the way that UK law changes the legal parenthood of that child from the surrogate and her spouse or civil partner, if she has one, to the intended parents. Now the law is very old, it's older than I am, and because of that there's a lot of medical advancements that have happened since it was introduced that the judges are now having to grapple with. So the age is one example of that, people's ability to go abroad and access surrogacy in many more countries where commercial surrogacy is legal, which isn't in the UK, only altruistic surrogacy is legal in the UK. But there's nothing in the law that says that you can't go abroad.

And so when people apply for their parental orders, the judges are in a bit of a difficult situation because when they get a hold of these cases for the first time, it's when people are applying for their parental order, which is at the end of this journey. The baby has been born, to put it frankly. Yeah, by that time, yeah. There's a baby, nine times out of ten, they're living here in the UK with parents who really want them and surrogates who don't want them. So what do you do if you're a judge in that situation? But also, because just to mention, the time means that the baby will have already bonded with the surrogate parents.

So the judge is looking, for example, in the case I mentioned in February, at children who have been known, have been living with these mothers for four years. And why would you uproot them from that, where they're very well looked after, they're meeting all their milestones, and put them somewhere else? And where else would you put them because in that case the mothers, gestational mothers, couldn't even be traced. So it really is a kind of fait accompli that these judges are presented with. And coming back to the president of the family division of the High Court for example telling parents considering surrogacy abroad to think again.

How important is that statement? And do you think I might come back to Beverly to find out if she thinks it will be heeded? Sanchi first. Well I think he intended it to be a very strong statement but in real terms the way the law works, the way people are quite free to go abroad and continue to do this, it's quite difficult to see whether that would have real impact. What would have impact is if the law were to be changed. And while the Law Commission said two years ago that the law should be changed, they said how it should be changed, the government has said it is not a priority and they've got no time to introduce a change to the law. changed. The government has said it is not a priority and they've got no

time to introduce a change to the law. But I know the Home Office did say to you that they're actually actively reviewing how to enhance public guidance but we don't know what that would look like. We don't know what that would look like and they haven't fully responded to the proposal from the Law Commission either so perhaps in that response they will set out in more detail what they plan to do. What was the Law Commission's recommendations? Essentially, as your other interview is saying, it would happen, the arrangements would be agreed much earlier.

So when the child was born, the parents would be the people who've commissioned the surrogate rather than the surrogate mother. Yeah, I understand. But Beverly, with that, do you think, think again, will have any impact on people, for example, that you have known? No, absolutely not. I think that people know the risks when they enter into an international surrogacy arrangement. And nine times out of ten, the people who are going abroad for a surrogacy arrangement are doing so for two reasons. One, they can't find a surrogate here. It's a very long process if you don't have a friend or a family member

who wants to help you. So that lack of availability of surrogates pushes people abroad. And the second reason they go abroad is because it's cheaper in some jurisdictions and in other jurisdictions it's much more expensive but they have that security of the law allowing them to be parents from birth. How much might they pay for surrogacy abroad where you can pay it's just altruistic here in the UK? Yes so if you're going somewhere like California you can be paying upwards of a hundred thousand pounds, if you're going somewhere less expensive such as you, you know, we don't want people to go places like Georgia or Cyprus, but clients who have been there pay much less, around

15, 20,000 pounds sometimes. So if you're in the UK, I think the average is about 35,000 someone will pay. Sansha Berg and Beverly Addison speaking to Noola there. Rosie Jones has many strings to her bow. A comedian, actor and screenwriter, she's now starring in her first sitcom, Pushers, on Channel 4. Rosie co-wrote the show and also plays Emily, a woman who has very little left to lose after the loss of her job results in her having her benefits cut too, and soon finds herself

building an illegal drugs empire. Emily is sharp, funny, highly educated, and like Rosie, has cerebral palsy. The sitcom asks the question, whether there could be a better disguise for criminal activity than to be entirely written off by society. Well, Rosie joins Nuala this week, and she started by asking her

about the inspiration behind the show. So it's been a long journey. her about the inspiration behind the show. had my benefits cut, which is awful, it's happened to millions of disabled people out there, but always being a comedian, I thought, right, how can I turn this into art? And me and my brilliant co-writer, Peter Fellows, said, well, what if a character turns to drug dealing? It's quite extreme. Yeah because as a disabled person I get overlooked, I get patronised every day so with our comedy minds all right. How can we push this to the limit? No pun on push.

You know, really from the start of it, I mean, very thought provoking the last time you were on as well, speaking about some of the day-to-day aggressions really, microaggressions just aggressions that you came up against but at the beginning of this you know there's the benefits office and you have to prove how disabled you are and it's very funny but it's very poignant at the same time do you want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so first and foremost, it's a comedy. Definitely. I really hope people can watch it, turn up and enjoy watching it. But like everything I do in my career as a disabled person I recognise that I have a platform to say more. So right I wanted to show people what it's like to live in the UK with a disability because it

is hard and just being challenged on how disabled you are and having to prove yourself to often a non-disabled person who how disabled you are. It is not fair and it is not okay. I think it totally comes across kind of this tick boxing, tick boxing is that the correct word, exercise. But also you poke fun at some of the headlines that might be about benefit ground shows by how to work the system. People have to see it, I'm not going to give any spoilers, but this must be a dream come true to have your own sitcom. Oh absolutely, I grew up on a healthy dose of Victoria Woods, Carolina Hearn. So to be able to write my own sitcom was the ultimate dream come true and I really wanted it to be a love letter to the Northern working class heart of the country. And yet I am so proud of it. Yeah, I love letter.

What a lovely way to put it, Rosie. I did see we like some of the same things, dinner ladies, Vic Roughtively, etc. Which you can just watch again and again on the same episode again and again and it's still funny. But this is different because you have a cast of predominantly disabled actors and I'm wondering how you went about that. I am one of the few disabled people with the opportunity to create their own sitcom and because of that I wanted to go into it differently. I get so annoyed when I watch a TV show and they've only got one disabled character

and you can feel the writers have gone great we got one, well done us, let's move on. And when you consider that We need to be better at representing that on screen. So coming into creating pushes, I knew that the cast needed to be predominantly disabled, not only to fairly represent the UK today in terms to have two, three, four disabled characters. You move away from the disability and you get that opportunity to explore personalities. And I really hope that 20, 30 seconds watching the show you forget like most of them are disabled because it's not about that. Being disabled is not a personality, it's about who they are and yet we were lucky to find a wealth of amazing disabled actors for the show and in terms of writing it we wrote every character to

be played by anyone with any disability so we found the right actor for that character and then we simply adapted the script for that person's disability. It's interesting, I suppose it's kind of what you've been calling for Rosie a little bit within society at large, right? To do what you want to do but just make adjustments or adaptations for people to excel. Yeah, exactly. And that went beyond the script and beyond the casting. We really made the set, the everyone, disabled or not, will listen to and have their needs met. Comedian and actor Rosie Jones on her new sitcom, Pushers.

That's it from me on Monday's programme. Join Noola when she'll be speaking to author and podcaster Molly Jong-Fast on her memoir, How to Lose Your Mother, about her changing relationship with her mother, the feminist writer and public figure, Erica Jong. Enjoy the rest of your weekend and stay hydrated. I'm Andini and I'm looking back on the life of a Hollywood icon whose legacy lives on through more than just her film roles. She was someone who was interested in invention all her life. She wasn't that interested in the film that she was supposed to be starring in.

She was much more interested in the latest invention that she was working on. Who developed an idea so revolutionary that it's still being used today. Frequency hopping. It was used for secure military communications. It's in GPS, it's in Wi-Fi, it's in Bluetooth. From the BBC World Service, Untold Legends, Hedy Lamarr. Available now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.