Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman’s Hour: Royal Navy exclusive, Tamsin Greig, Period Tracker Apps, Formula One, Sleepwalking, Choral music

Episode Date: May 18, 2024

A female officer in the military says she was raped by a senior officer who was responsible in the Royal Navy for behaviours and values, including sexual consent. Speaking exclusively to Woman’s Hour, the female officer, who we are calling Joanna, reported the incident and her allegations to the military police who brought charges against the officer. However, the Services Prosecution Authority later said that they wouldn’t be taking the case forward to a military court. The female officer, who feels she has been forced to leave the military, says that her career has been left in ruins, whilst his continues. The Royal Navy has said “sexual assault and other sexual offences are not tolerated in the Royal Navy and anything which falls short of the highest of standards is totally unacceptable" and that since the alleged incident they "have made significant changes to how incidents are reported and investigated." Nuala spoke to Joanna and the Conservative MP and member of the Defence Select Committee, Sarah Atherton.Period tracker apps claim to help women to predict when they might start their period and calculate the best time to attempt to conceive. The Information Commissioner's Office has said that a third of women have used one. A report out this week, however, has raised serious questions about the way in which this data is used. The study, by Kings College London and University College London, examined the privacy policies and data safety labels of 20 of the most popular of these kind of apps. Anita discusses the findings and implications with BBC Technology Reporter Shiona McCallum and the lead author of the study Dr Ruba Abu-Salma from Kings College London.Known for her dramatic and comedic roles on TV, stage and film the Olivier award-winning actor Tamsin Greig is currently performing in The Deep Blue Sea - Terence Rattigan’s 1950’s study of obsession and the destructive power of love - at the Theatre Royal Bath. She joined Nuala to explain the appeal of her latest role and why in 1952 legendary actor Peggy Ashcroft said she felt she had no clothes on when playing this part.Talking about her new book, 'How To Win A Grand Prix', Formula One expert Bernie Collins takes Anita behind the scenes of an F1 team, and explains how she forged a career working as a performance engineer at McLaren for names such as Jenson Button, then became Head of Strategy at Aston Martin, with world champion Sebastian Vettel.Journalist Decca Aitkenhead regularly sleepwalks. She talked to Nuala about her night-time escapades which include finding herself locked out in the middle of the night, eating food she’d find disgusting when awake and incredible strength that has seen her smash furniture to pieces. She’s joined by neurologist and sleep expert Prof Guy Leschziner who explains what’s going on in our brains when we sleepwalk, and how women are affected.How has the role of women in choral music changed? With girls as well as boys now singing in cathedral choirs and more music by female composers being commissioned and performed, women’s voices are becoming increasingly prominent. Composer Cecilia McDowell and singer Carris Jones talk about championing and celebrating women in this traditionally male world.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Annette Wells Editor: Rebecca Myatt

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour with me, Anita Rani, featuring all the best bits of the week just gone. Today, you'll hear from Olivier Award-winning actor Tamzin Gregg on her latest role in Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea, his 1950 study of obsession and the destructive power of love. Formula One strategist-turned-commentator Bernie Collins will be telling us how she made it in the male-dominated world of Formula One. For a long time, I was the only female on our pit wall.

There's advantages and disadvantages, you know. When I speak on the intercom, my voice really stands out. Nobody's ever had to ask who said that. So that, I thought, was always quite an advantage. You know, when we make the mistakes, I'll carry that mistake mentally for longer than the guys next to me will. Journalist Deca Aikenhead tells us about her experiences sleepwalking, including finding herself locked out in the middle of the night,

and why choral music for centuries sung by choirs made up of men and boys and written by male composers is now changing and women's voices are becoming more prominent. So, no disruptions for the next hour, just you, the radio and a cuppa, if you fancy. Now, this week, Nuala McGovern started a new job. She joined me on Woman's Hour as a permanent presenter, and she began on Monday with an exclusive interview.

In case you missed it, we heard the testimony of a female officer in the military who says she was raped by a more senior officer in the Royal Navy, a man who is responsible for behaviours and values, including sexual consent. She says whilst he has been permitted to continue his career, hers has been ruined. You can hear the full interview with a woman we're calling Joanna and MP Sarah Atherton talking to Nuala McGovern on BBC Sounds.

Here's a reminder of the impact the incident had on her. It ended my career. I've been medically discharged because of the mental health consequences of this. You know, it led me getting very close to attempting to take my life. The only reason I didn't is because I'm a mother. I strongly believe that if I wasn't, I wouldn't be here today. The physical effects of the assault itself didn't last very long. The mental side remains and that manifests itself physically when you've been through an extreme trauma. You feel it in your body in many, many ways.

I went through periods where I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I lost a dramatic amount of weight. I was a different person. I was a shell. And I've partially recovered some of that, but not fully. And I never will be the same person again. I think it's generally the worst crime you can survive. Rape's up there with murder as a really serious crime. And you can't survive murder by definition.

I'd have rather broken every bone in my body and gone through physical rehab than this. Essentially, he's been given a slap on the wrist. He hasn't been demoted in rank. It might have cost him a promotion. It might have affected his career a little bit, but he is still in a job in the Royal Navy. He's still in the same rank. Whatever he's doing, he will have power

and influence over people and their careers. My career has ended and his carries on. And he's still earning a good salary. And he's adding to his pension. It is wrong. And the first sea lord, the head of the Navy, has gone public and said this behaviour is not tolerated. He didn't say if you've committed a crime. He said anyone who has been found to be acting inappropriately in this way, which this person has admitted to doing, you will be discharged. There's no place for you in the Navy.

Yet this man still serves. Let me ask you, Joanna, you know, you talked about trying to move forward. Do you feel you can? I've lost the career that I loved. But that's, you know, that's not as important as being as well as I can be. I will carry on, but it will never have not happened. Nuala also spoke to Conservative MP Sarah Atherton, a former member of the Armed Forces who sits on the Defence Select Committee. In 2021, she led a landmark review into women's

experiences in the Armed Forces, and she gave her reaction to Joanna's story. It's saddening to hear yet another account of mistreatment in the military of a service woman. I'm sad, but I'm not surprised. What I repeatedly hear is abuse of power in the military, a breach of trust, a duty of care that's neglected. And actually, I get into my office at least one case a week from service women and veterans around this issue so it is a topic that is not going away and service women now feel more empowered and veterans feel more empowered to speak about it. This person, this senior officer has a responsibility and it's incumbent on him to have protected her, not exploit her. I know it's very

difficult to have a conviction when it's one word against another. But you know, these are not the standards we expect from a professional military. Do you think this person should still be in this post? No, he's let the military down. He's let himself down. He certainly let Joanna down. He should not be in the post. Why do you think it's not working? The zero tolerance policy is not working for a number of reasons. One, we have, or the military has a problem with personnel recruitment and retention. These people that usually are perpetrators of these acts are senior male officers with 10, 15, 20 years of experience and the military are saying actually we cannot afford to lose that level of expertise. I have no doubt that service chiefs, ministers and

civil servants at the MOD think they are doing the right thing. But there's a disconnect between what they think is happening and what is actually happening on the ground. Conservative MP Sarah Atherton talking to Nuala earlier this week and you can hear the full interview with Joanna and MP Sarah Atherton on BBC Sounds. The Royal Navy told us sexual assault and other offences are not tolerated in the Royal Navy and anything which falls short of the highest of standards is totally unacceptable. Now, do you use a period tracker? These are apps where you enter information about your menstrual cycle, including your mood, amount of flow, sleep hours and energy levels. They claim

to help you predict when you might start your period and calculate the best time to attempt to conceive. The Information Commissioner's Office has said that a third of women have used one. A report out this week, however, has raised serious questions about the way in which the data is used. The study by King's College London and University College London examined the privacy policies and data safety labels of 20 of the most popular of these apps. The authors say it's the most extensive evaluation of its kind completed to date.

Well, to tell us more about it, I was joined by the BBC technology reporter Shona McCallum and the lead author of the study, Dr. Ruba Abu Salma from King's College London. And I began by asking Shona how these apps work. It lets women put their data in so they can look at when their periods are coming, tracking symptoms like cramps, maybe how many days they bleed for. And of course, one of the main things that women report success with is trying to get pregnant. They're extremely popular. Millions of women are using them across the world. And you can imagine the amount of health data that then is building up

as you're putting them in every day. I have to say I have used one myself. And you're getting daily prompts where you are putting in your symptoms and you're able to see then over a calendar month or year the different trends that you have in your body and you might be able to identify, OK, well, that was a particularly stressful time, my period was late, or, you know, when is the most fertile window?

But, of course, they do raise these significant data and privacy issues, which is what this study has been looking at. Well, we know why lots of women use them, because they're really useful. Yeah. They're just, they offer a technological solution to something that's quite difficult to keep on top of. But Dr. Ruber, let me come to you. What did you find then?

Tell me about the research. Yes. So we analysed the privacy policies and the data safety sections of the 20 most popular apps in the US and the data safety sections of the 20 most popular apps in the US and the UK. We also inspected the privacy-related features offered by those apps. And then we found a lot of inconsistencies between what the privacy policies say and the features offered by those apps. So, for example, a lot of privacy policies say that data can get deleted, but the

apps don't actually offer clear and usable deletion mechanisms. So it isn't clear what data gets deleted. And sometimes you also have applications that don't offer any data deletion mechanisms. So the user needs to email the developer of the app to delete their data. And that depends on how responsive the developer is. If you can find the email address in the first place. And if you can find the email address in the first place, absolutely. So where does the data go, first of all? So it depends. It isn't clear, but the privacy policies say that a lot of data and a lot of data types get gathered. They are stored on the servers of these applications.

Sometimes they're actually shared with third parties outside. So, for example, if you have an app that is being developed by a UK developer. Those developers can use third-party services for a specific purpose of use, and then they can share the data with those third parties that are based in countries outside the UK. So you have different data protection laws that apply to this data, depending on where the data is being stored. So for example, if you have a user that is using a UK-based app, their data might get shared with a third party in the US who can share this data with a law enforcement agency in the US without them knowing. And this could have actually dire safety consequences to the user, especially if the third party is being based in a state where abortion is criminalized or stigmatized.

Okay, so let's get into this then. Let's talk about why this should be a concern in your view. So abortion is criminalized in some states in the US following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It is still a criminal offense in the UK because two physicians need to approve whether a law enforcement agency where abortion is criminalized, the woman might get a life sentence. Also, it is not only about the data that the user inputs, but also the inferences being made by the app. So sometimes based on your behavior, the app might make some inferences about you. So for example, you might miss a period. The app might mistaken that for being pregnant. And then the following month, you get your period.

So most probably that user either got a miscarriage or an abortion. And that inference might be shared by a law enforcement agency that could deduce that person might have had an abortion, so they might get criminalized. Also, even if abortion is not criminalized, it might get criminalized in the future. And because of the covert gathering of a lot of sensitive data by these apps that get retained without people really understanding where the data gets deleted, they might get criminalized in the future

because laws change. Some women will love using these apps, Rube, and sharing data, they might say, is just a small price to pay. What would you say to that? Definitely. So in the paper, we're arguing that those apps are beneficial. They're cheap. You don't need to go to the GP. They manage your sexual and reproductive health in a very cheap way. And the UK Information Commissioner's Office have found that half of the women in the UK were concerned about the privacy and security of the peer tracking apps in the wake of Roe v. Wade. We don't want people to stop using peer tracking apps,

but we want to follow a human-centered design to these apps because the vast majority of developers self-identify as male or men. They're not necessarily fully aware of the unique privacy and safety concerns and needs of the users who use female health apps. And without really talking to people before designing those apps, it will be problematic. So this is what we found. Shona, the reports looked into 20 apps, all the research. You approached some of these companies. What did they tell you?

Yes, that's right. I heard from, no surprises, the biggest apps, Flow and Clue, who told me that they do everything to keep data safe. It's kind of at the heart of their responsibilities around privacy. They said that they handle it extremely seriously. And to the law enforcement point, they say that they won't hand over data that would be sensitive and that would compromise women. And they wouldn't disclose it to any authority. Now, I think that's where the debate really lies because, of course, if you are issued with a warrant or in the US a subpoena,

then, you know, the authorities probably have precedent and more power over the apps. And so there could be a situation, we haven't seen any situations as yet where these companies are kind of forced into handing over the data but you know they've told me that their goal is to build applications that allow women to be confident in sharing their information and you know building up this health record over time. I think there has been a lot of concern, as Ruba said, since Roe versus Wade, where women have been deleting these apps because of the concerns that they feel that, you know, perhaps in the future their information could be used,

especially if they were to have an abortion in a state where that's no longer legal. And, you know, perhaps it could be used in a legal case against them to help build that case that they didn't, in fact, break the law in that state. But so far, you know, we haven't actually seen that happening. It's just very much a concern at the moment. Dr Ruba Abu Salma andc technology reporter shona mccallum still to come on the

program journalist deca achinhead on her experiences of sleepwalking and formula one strategist and commentator bernie collins on life in the fast lane now on monday nula mcgovern was joined by an actor widely known for her dramatic and comedic roles on TV, stage and film. A familiar face in so many much-loved roles, like Dr Caroline Todd in Green Wing, Beverly Lincoln in British American sitcom Episodes and Jackie Goodman in the Channel 4 sitcom Friday Night Dinner. And there are so many more.

Now Olivier Award-winning actor Tamzin Gregg is performing in The Deep Blue Sea, Terence Rattigan's 1950s study of obsession and the destructive power of love at the Theatre Royal Bath, apparently based on an ex-lover, the actor Kenneth Morgan. Nuala began by asking Tamzin what had impressed her about this play when she'd first seen it. Yeah, I went to see a production of The Deep Blue Sea starring Penelope Wilton back in the 90s. I think about 95, it started at the Almeida and then transferred into the West End. And I saw it there and was utterly gobsmacked by her performance, by the play, which I know

was sort of sidelined as being too well made because it was you know at the beginning of all of the um the angry young men plays the 50s and 60s but I was just blown away by the beauty of the construction of the play and particularly the central performance of Penelope which was so deep and authentic and raw that I felt like I'd been skinned. You know, I was in the audience. I can tell you, you skinned your audience on Saturday afternoon. They loved it.

But we were all like, whoa, like we had just, I don't know, gone through something so gripping and compelling. I did see that Peggy Ashcroft, who first played that role of Hester in 1952, said she felt like she had no clothes on when playing her. Do you feel that? I mean, we're in a different era now. You know, a lot of performance these days is more confessional and more appealing.

But I think what Rattigan does is that he gives you the top one tenth, like an iceberg. He shows you the top tenth of a person and does it in beautiful irony and leaves the subtext for the actor to explore. So it's a kind of ongoing, nudifying, and I've just made up a word there of of exposure of this woman so uh I don't feel so much exposed by the story or the character but by the ongoing peeling back of the layers as you do with every new audience yes yeah and that peeling back of the layers is a really good way of putting it because um you really have the three acts.

And each time we're kind of getting closer or we think we're going to get to know Hester a little bit better. Maybe I should just briefly ask you as well, Tamsin, to give us an idea of the plot without any spoilers. The play starts in a shabby room in a sort of rundown boarding house in Labrador Grove and there has been an escape of gas and other people who live in the house find a body which they think is dead. This is Hester Coyley who's attempted to take her own life through gas poisoning and an overdose of drugs. She has previously left her very well-known, well-established barrister-turned-judge husband and gone off with a becoming alcoholic ex-RAF fighter pilot from the war. She's fallen madly in love with this younger man, left her husband and is now considering whether to stay alive because he is threatening to leave her. He will not love her in the way that her passion requires.

We'll get to love and lust in just a minute. But first, let's hear a clip of you as Hester when you see William, your estranged husband, played by Nicholas Farrell, for the first time after months apart. He believed you were abroad until he received a disturbing call from a neighbour. Are you all right?

Quite all right. What happened? How much did that boy tell you on the telephone? Enough to spare you the necessity of lying to me. I must be careful what I say. Attempted suicide is a crime, isn't it? Yes. And I'm speaking to a judge. You're speaking to your husband. Shall we say qu'il est néa? Nonsense. You're as sane a person as any in the world. Perhaps I've changed since I left you, Bill. No, I'd better not say that. Might give you an opportunity of saying I told you so.

You misjudge me. Misjudge a judge. Isn't that les majestés? Why didn't you let me know you were in London? The last time I saw you, you said you never wanted to hear from me again. The last time I saw you, I didn't know what I was saying. How long have you been back from Canada? Oh, three or four months now.

Freddie lost his job. That's to say, he gave it up. It wasn't a very good one, and neither of us liked Ottawa very much. Why didn't you answer my letter? I never got a letter. Oh, didn't you? I addressed it to the aircraft firm in Ottawa and put, please forward. Oh.

We left rather hurriedly and I forgot to leave a forwarding address. What did you say in the letter, Bill? Just that you could have your divorce, if you still wanted it. So that gives us a little snapshot. But, you know, one quote, Tamsin, that struck me as almost a thread through the play is to love with one's eyes open sometimes makes life very difficult. That theme of love and lust and relationships. Talk me through that a little bit. There's a character called Dr. Well, Mr. Miller,

who also in the boarding house, who has been struck off from the medical register and has a slight German accent. And you find out through the course of the play that he has been in Britain since 1938 and has spoken nothing but English, apart from a year in the Isle of Man, which a lot of people find funny because they think that you don't speak English in the Isle of Man.

But actually what it was is that he would have been imprisoned during the war as a German refugee. But he is a doctor who's been struck off. And you never quite find out why he's been struck off. It's just hinted at. But he, as a kind of outsider, is the one that Hester, and he's the one who speaks these words of piercing truth and insight into her breaking heart. Because there is also an aspect of Hester, though she's vivacious, intelligent, really quick-witted, like we hear a little in that clip there, but there's also a cloak of shame on her. But it is interesting that it's often tied up with female characters.

It's so interesting, her husband, who is this barrister and judge, who is always questioning her, always trying to understand her, but never really getting to the heart of her. And he says, well, what was it? What were these feelings that made you do this terrible act? And she says, anger, hatred and shame about equal parts i think he says anger at paige her lover she says yes hatred of myself of course and then she continues shame at being alive and she lives with shame like a dressing gown it kind of encompasses her and she has agreed to be ashamed so that at the very end miller is the one who says to her she says if you can find me one mitigating circumstance one single reason why i should respect myself even a little and miller says you must find that reason for yourself and

it's just such a beautiful or very modern look at how women have had to go on this journey of aligning themselves with self-respect rather than agreeing with the opinions of those around them. It's amazing that it's a play that's been around for 70 years that still has all these themes that just feel so relevant today and really resonate. I can't really recommend it highly enough. I know you've pressed night to night. I know it's going to be glowing reviews. Tell me about your next project, though, because you are not one to sit on your laurels. Well, as well as learning this quite difficult, very precise play, and the director, Lindsay Pozen, has been so precise with every single syllable, thankfully, I've also been learning to play the bass guitar because I am doing the next Sally Wainwright project

for the BBC called Riot Women about a group of five women of a certain age who form a punk band as a fundraiser and sing very angry songs about the menopause. And we all want to join the band. The brilliant Tamzin Gregg talking to Nuala there, and the deep blue sea is on at the Theatre Royal Bath until the 1st of June. Now, growing up in a small village in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, working in the

predominantly male heavy world of Formula One wasn't something Bernie Collins aspired to, but she'd go on to work as a performance engineer at McLaren racing for names such as Jenson Button and then as head of strategy at Aston Martin with world champion Sebastian Vettel well she's just written a new book How to Win a Grand Prix taking us behind the scenes of an F1 team to uncover what it takes to make it in Formula One well Bernie joined me in the studio and I began by asking her why working in Formula One hadn't been an ambition of hers. I hadn't even thought about working in motorsport, in automotive. I think when you're in that very small school environment, it's very hard to imagine what an

engineer does, what a strategist does, what you can do with the rest of your life. So I didn't have that planned to always work in F1 I just kept choosing subjects that I really enjoyed you know that's why I chose maths and physics when I was at secondary school or whatever but it's really hard when you're that age to think about working life. And you were a natural tinkerer and problem solver weren't you? Yeah I think you know a lot of I guess growing up in a sort of rural environment there was a lot of sort of machinery or bits that needed help with outside or, you know, I guess a very like mend sort of mentality. So there's a lot of trying to figure out how things worked. And I really enjoyed, I guess at home I was probably really annoying at taking things apart and not necessarily putting them back together again just to figure out how they worked.

And maybe that was always the young engineer in me, but maybe wasn't seen so much at the time. So at what point did you realise that a career in F1 was possible? When did that opportunity arise? I think well realising that it was even something I'd really enjoy came quite late. It came when I was at uni actually so I went to Queen's University in Belfast. I did a mechanical engineering degree. Halfway through that, there is a body called the IMGE, so the Institute of Mechanical Engineers. And they organise sort of single-seater race cars from different universities to race against each other. And we went to Silverstone.

We had an event. And that was the first time I really thought that this mix of design work and racing and being at a track was really an interesting possibility and so from there on the sort of F1 dream sort of gradually became reality. But and you got a job with McLaren. Yeah. On their graduating training scheme but initially you weren't going to even apply for it.

Yeah so initially McLaren had sent sort of like an advertisement to a load of universities, I guess. And I think maybe it's Northern Irish mentality. Maybe, you know, it's just whatever. But when that advertisement came out, the initial process was, oh, I'm surely not going to get that. So I just didn't initially apply. One of my lecturers, Joan R., actually said, why have you not applied? Like, definitely you should be applying. And so I was like, OK, well, I'll give it a go.

And then that's what led to where I am today. Isn't that interesting? You'd sort of discounted yourself before you'd even tried. Where did that come from? Thank goodness for that lecturer. Yeah, exactly. I think, yeah, thank goodness for that. I think there is a lot of, you know, you know that it's going to be a very highly sought after job.

And there's always this little bit of doubt that you're good enough or whatever um and actually what I've learned from that whole process is if you don't try then you're never going to know um yeah like it's a real sliding doors moment doesn't it yeah because uh you did really did learn from that because you went on to lots of different roles within F1 so you decided you wanted to do more track more from design to track side. Yeah exactly. Explain the transition. So I worked really hard a lot of extra weekends and stuff to get to that track environment so I did I actually did three races I think in 2013 when Jenson's performance engineer was on paternity leave and then he wanted to stay at home the next year and I got to follow 2014 season.

So I'm working with someone like Jenson who had a load of experience. He'd had his world championship at that stage. His race engineer was really experienced. It was this like great learning environment where there was loads of encouragement to learn and yeah, really great as a young engineer. So you decided that you wanted to be in the thick of it?

Yeah. From an industry you didn't even realise that you wanted to be part of? Yeah, I Yeah. From an industry you didn't even realise that you wanted to be part of? Yeah, I think the more exposure and the more experience I got, the more I realised it was really what I wanted to do. And I wanted to make the most of the opportunity to be there. And then you became head of strategy for Force India. Yeah. What's that job?

So strategy is if we have two racing cars in a team, whereas Performance Engineer with McLaren is about making the car faster, making the driver faster. Strategy is about choosing which tyres you're going to run, choosing what pit stops you're going to do. So coming up with a plan for the race for both cars in the team, but then also reacting to all the other events.

So strategy is a lot about making decisions really quickly. So if you have an accident or if there is a safety car, if it starts to rain, like what is your next decision? So it's a lot of on the pit wall, fast decision making. And it's super important because ultimately it's about, are you going to come first? Will you be top of the podium? And so just explain to people who don't fully understand,

because each team has two drivers. How does it work? Do you favour one driver over the other? What's the overall aim of the race? Yeah, so each team has two drivers. And the interesting thing with Formula One compared to other sports is each driver wants to beat the driver next to them. So within the team, you've got these two people who want to beat each other and want to be the best. But ultimately, as a team player, as a strategist, as any of the members of the team, you're trying to get the best team results of both drivers as high up player, as a strategist, as any of the members of the team, you're trying to get the best team results. So both drivers as high up the order as you can. Now, there are situations where,

you know, it looks like one driver will finish better than the other, or it looks like one driver has a better chance than the other. So you do try and prioritise how you're trying to get your best position, but it might not necessarily be the same driver each week, depending on who's driving for your team. And how does communication work then if you're making these split second decisions whilst the race is going on? Yeah so generally for each team there's a race engineer that speaks to the driver they're the only people that speak to the driver and we're on the pit wall with headsets on a bit like we are now and an intercom that we communicate to that person to make the pit stop call and we talk to the pit crew in the garage to get them ready

and come out into the pit lane with all the tyres. And we're also linked back to what we call mission control in the factory. So we might be in Australia, but the factory in Silverstone has still got a load of people set up in there looking at a lot of data that we're talking to all the time. Is it a highly stressful environment? Yeah, it is, yeah. So how do you channel, like, how do you thrive off that? I think you need to, you need to drive off the adrenaline of, you know, once you get on the pit wall and you put that

headset on, like that is your pressure environment and you're in that for the next hour and a half, two hours, whatever it is, but you've got to love it. You've got to love making the decisions. And actually one of the things I love the most was you have this massive influence on the outcome of the race like the decisions that you make yes really affect the results but that's huge because there's so much that has gone into that moment yeah it's like 300 people working on the design of the car yeah they're keeping the safety of the driver the the amount of money that there is in F1 behind F1 yeah so how you mean obviously you you've learned to thrive and you know the industry inside out

which is why you got to that point but there must have been times when it's gone wrong yeah and I think that is the hardest time you know there have been definitely times and a few of them we discuss in the book but there have been times where you made a decision for what you think are the right reasons and for whatever reason it doesn't work out or you know you made a decision for what you think are the right reasons. And for whatever reason, it doesn't work out. Or, you know, the weather's not quite what you expect or you make a mistake. And that is always the hardest one for me to deal with personally, to get off the pit wall, knowing that you've not had the best race you could have and walk back through the garage of mechanics who have all worked, you know, night and day to get the car out there.

And then the final result is disappointing for everyone. And I find, I guess, a little bit of a female, a little bit of my personality. That's the hardest to recover from. Well, how is it being pretty much probably, you know, this is the solo woman in these spaces? Yeah. So I think, you know, in each team, engineering is very poorly represented as females, I think. It's getting better, but within each team, there's sort of, for a long time, I was the only female on our pit wall. There's now four or five teams that have females on the pit wall, so it is definitely improving. There's advantages and disadvantages, you know.

The running joke is the queue for the bathroom is always quite good when you're the only female there but when I speak on the pit wall when I speak for once yeah for once yeah when I speak on the intercom my voice really stands out nobody's ever had to ask who said that so that's I thought was always quite an advantage I do need to be aware that you know when we make the mistakes I'll carry that mistake mentally for longer than the guys next to me will. So there's definitely things I've had to be aware of in my own personality over and above the guys I'm next to. I've got to ask because Formula One has been in the news because of allegations of inappropriate behaviour by Red Bull team principal Christian Horner by female employees always denied the claims. And he was cleared after an internal investigation.

We're not going to talk specifically about that case or him, but it is important to ask what it's like to be a woman in such a male-dominated industry. Yeah, so I think like, you know, I've worked, I've only worked for two teams, worked for McLaren and Aston and I've always felt really supported within both those teams. I felt like, you know, to get to the head of race strategy role, I was given it for Cindy when they were a very small team. But I've always been promoted when I thought I was promoted. I always got the roles because I was good enough at the roles or I, you know, deserved the roles. So it was never, in either way, I wasn't ever promoted

because they needed to show a female on the pit wall or I never felt like I missed out on the opportunity because I was a female. So I felt quite fairly treated throughout my career. So that's definitely not my story. You know, the support I had was really, really great. That was Bernie Collins talking to me earlier this week. Her book, How to Win a Grand Prix, is out on the 23rd of May.

Now, journalist Deca Aikenhead recently wrote an article about her experiences of sleepwalking, and the details were quite surprising. Deca's nighttime adventures include finding herself locked out in the middle of the night, eating food she'd find disgusting when awake, and an incredible strength that has seen her smash furniture to pieces, all without waking up. Well, Nuala was joined by the Professor of Neurology and Sleep Medicine, Guy Leschsener.

He's written a book about sleepwalking, The Nocturnal Brain, and Deca Aikenhead. Nuala began by asking Deca about when she first experienced sleepwalking. The first incident when I was an adult that got me slightly into hot water was I was sent off in the 90s to interview Paddy Ashdown in Somerset. I stayed in a lovely grand old country house hotel, went to bed very early, thinking I needed a good night's sleep. And I woke up at 3am in the hotel basement in the kitchen, peering into the fridge, stark naked. And I wasn't particularly bothered. I thought, oh God, here we go again. You know, this is not entirely out of the ordinary. But when I got back to my room, I realised, of course, the door was locked

and I had no way of getting back in. And there was no one on reception and ended up phoning my boyfriend in London who ended up having to call the Taunton police to come and get me. So that was sort of somewhat mortifying. And then the next time I stayed in a hotel, I made a very clear mental note to wear pyjamas and put the key card in my pocket. This was on a busy main road in Bristol. And I don't know why, but at some point in the night, I clearly took off my pyjamas and went walking because when I woke up, I was in the street. And that was, I have to tell you, this was the first of many, many such incidents. I mean, they've sort of, they've punctuated my life. Since you were a child, right? Yeah, my first memory was waking up peeing into a small cup.

And my mum said, oh, don't worry, you know, you'll grow out of this. But I never have. But you're so relaxed about it from my immediate interaction with you laughing. And it is funny. But the thought of being naked on a street in Bristol, and I will also say as a woman, because when I was speaking to people about this story, they're like, she's a woman and she was naked on the street. Does that not fill you with any fear?

It's a really funny thing. When you put the question to me, I think, well, of course, one manifestly should. I can't really account for why it doesn't. I think I've always just found it it's inherently comical and sort of bizarre. And there's also, I'm faintly charmed by the idea of this other self, this other version of mine who does completely bananas things. And it is true. I could have got into hot water on lots of different occasions. One time in a hotel in San Francisco, I went wandering off down the corridor looking for the loo and my husband woke up to hear him knocking on the door and slightly cross-looking

man in his boxer shorts saying could you come and get your wife out of my bed please and uh and he's i mean waking her but she just kicks me so of course you know there are many times when things could have gone wrong but most of the time it's sort of faintly comical. I often wake up in the morning and I look at my hands and I, oh God, because the fingernails are clogged with food. I'm downstairs in the kitchen thinking, oh God, what have I eaten this time? And sometimes the fridge door is wide open and the kitchen looks like a bombsite and I will have eaten almost the entire contents of the fridge. I mean, there are 24 hour periods when I eat far more asleep than I do when awake. And quite often food I absolutely hate as well. There's no rhyme nor reason to it. My kids have learned to take precautions. They hide their chocolate now because they know that

that may vanish in the night. But it's, as I say, I can't account for why it's never worried me. But you also talk about food under your fingernails. What about glass shards in your feet? Yeah, that was less funny. I mean, again, I can't account for why it never occurred to me that I might actually hurt myself until I did. And that was August last year. I was in Jamaica and I woke up in the morning and thought, you know, there's scenes in TV and films, the crime scene,

and you have these sort of pools of blood and bloody footprints. I thought, Christ, what's going on here? And I got out of bed to investigate and just plunged my knees sort of screaming. My feet had been absolutely slashed to ribbons and I could kind of piece together what had happened. Sure enough, there was a kind of incriminating

empty plate on the sideboard. So I'd obviously gone looking for food in the night and then I'd knocked over a glass and I'd walked all over the broken glass in my sleep then I'd gone off to the loo and got back into bed without even waking me up now after a few days I could walk again but a few months later I thought yeah something doesn't feel right and sure enough there were bits of glass embedded in my feet and I had to have a general aesthetic and surgery and I couldn't walk for two weeks and that was not ideal at all. Let's park that one for a moment. I have to bring in a guy here. What is going on? Well, Deca's stories are really rather familiar actually amongst many of the people that

I see. We tend to think of the brain as working as a single unit in sleep but actually over the last 20 or 30 years we've realised that that's not the case at all, and that actually different parts of the brain can exist in different stages of wake or sleep at the same time. Now, why people like Decker might sleepwalk remains a bit of a mystery. We think that there's a strong genetic component and that certain triggers can disrupt deep sleep and result in parts of the brain being awake. So what sort of trigger? Well, things like, for example, extrinsic noise or snoring, sleep disordered breathing,

restless leg syndrome and issues related to that. But in some individuals, they don't need any of that in order to precipitate these kind of sleepwalking events. OK, Deca, does your family do it? Do you have restless legs? No and no, I'm afraid. It's a bit of an enigma. I think there might be an element of stress involved. I think it happens more during stressful periods than not. OK, let's throw that back to Guy. So a lot of people wonder whether or not there's a psychological cause for sleepwalking.

But actually, it's very much a neurological issue. It's the same as, for example, having a seizure or a head injury where part of your brain is not working properly. But actually, this is related to how the brain functions in sleep. Undoubtedly, psychological factors may influence your events. So we know that, for example, sleep eating can be associated with particular psychological triggers. And actually, it's not unusual for stress to disrupt your sleep anyway. If you've got a predisposition to sleepwalking, and you're stressed, that makes it more likely to occur. We all know stress can affect sleep. How does

sleepwalking affect women in comparison to men? Guy? Well, I think that there are a number of different issues. So we know that, for example, in women, restless leg syndrome is much more common than in men. Some of that is hormonal. Some of that is related to having lower iron levels. And restless leg syndrome and associated conditions can act as a trigger. Insomnia is much more common in women than it is in men. And one of the cohorts of individuals that I see are women who've been started on sleeping tablets, for example. And some sleeping tablets are well known to precipitate rather dramatic sleepwalking events in people who may have never had sleepwalking before they started

on those medications. Why do women have more insomnia? Is that too big a question? Well, I think that's a very, how long have you got? Because I'm having another programme. I think some of that is hormonal, some of that is related to societal stresses and strains. But you know, it's a very consistent finding. Also on women and men, let's talk about physical strength and what happens with sleepwalking. You have shredded things, Deca. Yeah, this is fascinating to me. I mean, it's also deeply inconvenient. I sometimes break things in my sleep that if awake, I would not possibly have the physical strength to do so. I went through a long phase of ripping toilet seats off their hinges and smashing them to bits

over my knee. And there was a lovely chest that I really rather treasured that I woke up one morning and found in splinters in the living room. And there's no way in the world I could have done that if it weren't. So I'm wondering, I don't know, Guy, I mean, do we know, like, why you might break furniture when you're sleeping? So I think that there's quite good evidence that in sleep, certain parts of the brain that are responsible for measuring exertion to limiting your physical strength are switched off and we see that for example in people with Parkinson's disease who may be unable to walk or move very slowly or talk

in a very soft voice during waking hours but then when they exhibit acting out their dreams they will talk normally or they will move normally. And we also know that these parts of the brain are affected by emotional state. So there are all these examples of what's termed hysterical strength. You know, women defending their kids from raging bears, for example. And so it's likely that in the sleepwalking event, some of those areas are turned off. And that allows you to exert more strength than you would in day-to-day life. How common is it?

Sleepwalking? Yeah. So it's very common in children. A lot of people with children will have seen that their kids will occasionally sleepwalk or will have night terrors. We think that it persists into adulthood in about 1% to 2% of people. So it's not that rare. A person has got in touch, Mo woman i believe from scotland i've been a sleepwalker since i was 12

many a laugh was hard but now as a woman of 60 i have suffered from night terrors for the last five years these are terrifying i get wonderful support from my husband and now with hypnosis i get a few months of relief but what frustrates me is that people find it both fascinating and amusing and I tend not to speak about it now for these reasons. Guy, the women who come to your clinic, what are they most concerned about? Well, I think it's a range of things. A lot of people find them very distressing, particularly if there's a very strong emotional component to them.

So one of the areas of the brain that seems to have a tendency to wake up during these events is an area of the brain called the limbic system, which is the emotional centre of the brain. So there can be the distress. Then there's also the risk of harm. So you talked a little bit earlier about finding yourself as a woman naked in the streets. But there's also physical injury. You know, I've had patients who have broken limbs, for example. One patient that I can remember who actually stabbed themselves with a knife in the leg, which has, you know, it's slightly reminiscent of Decker's event. Decker, have you ever tried to cure your sleepwalking? I suppose in the kind of list of issues to attend to, it's always ranked fairly low to me. So, no, I've not sought any kind of list of issues to attend to it's always ranked fairly low to me um so no I've not sought any kind of help I did at one point consider putting a lock on the kitchen fridge

but then I thought god what would that look like to my children's friends when they came round so no no I've taken no no precautions other than always taking pajamas to hotels although I can't always be sure to wake up in them. Do you think the sleepwalking you has a different personality? Oh, that is an interesting question, isn't it? I mean, she's certainly awfully violent and incredibly messy. And hungry. Yeah, well, yeah, no, that applies when awake as well, Nuala. I leave a hell of a mess and I'm puzzled by the ripping things up and smashing things about. Obviously, Guy is describing very serious circumstances in which people have done themselves terrible injuries or committed crimes. And I count myself very lucky that I don't feel that I belong in that camp.

For me, it's just a kind of comedic aspect to my life, really. Deca Aikenhead and Professor Guy Lesch-Zinner talking to Nuala there, all of them very much awake. For centuries choral music was sung by choirs made up of men and boys performing music by male composers but the role of women in choral music has changed. Girls as well as boys now sing in cathedral choirs and more music by women is being commissioned and performed. To discuss how women's voices are becoming more prominent, Nuala was joined by Cecilia McDowell, one of the UK's leading composers of choral music,

and by Caris Jones, who was the first woman to be appointed as a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral in its 1,000-year history. How have things changed, Cecilia, since you started out? Well, it is very interesting because I really started composing seriously about 20 years ago. And at that time, I wasn't thinking at all about being a woman composer, but much more about the intention of writing music that I hope people would commission me for and sing. But during that time, it has shifted enormously. One of the things that I always hope is that my music will be performed not because I'm a woman, but because somebody is interested in the music and wants to perform it.

That's really interesting that you didn't think about, I'm a woman in this field. I didn't. And I don't know whether it would have made any difference if I had Just the determination to do it at a fairly late stage in my life What was it that, you say a late stage in your life, what was the catalyst there? What changed? I think what, well it wasn't so much anything changed but rather that I had always been composing in a sort of unserious way and just deciding that now is the time. I love that. I'm going to get serious. Yes, exactly. Thank you, Cecilia. Let us bring in Carys. Carys, welcome to Woman's Hour. Lovely to have you with us. The first woman to be appointed as a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral.

Like we're talking about breaking down barriers of a thousand years that have held. It's quite the ceiling, isn't it? I'm glad that I left it intact in a real sense, though. But you did definitely break through. Tell us a little bit about your path then from being a young girl to reaching these dizzying heights well I sang at school but not very seriously I mean I sang in primary school at secondary school I gradually became more and more interested in singing

and I have to be honest and say that a lot of that was because I figured out that I was likely to do better at it than I was at the piano which required more practice so I was very busy with my academic work. But really, I didn't have any thoughts of being a singer. I went on to study history at Cambridge, and I was aiming for the civil service. But my music was always with me. And I was lucky enough to get a choral scholarship at Cambridge, at Caius College. And the sort of singing in choirs in churches has sort of never really left me from that point, really. And entering the hallowed ground of St Paul's Cathedral and their choir, what was that like?

It was astonishing. I mean, when I was appointed in 2017, it was something of a sort of seven days wonder. But I also had a four month old baby when I started the job and my second child was born actually after the interview process so um so like I think most new parents would say everything was kind of a blur um although at St Paul's it's a very very beautiful blur but um I have never walked into that building and not felt keenly how honored and lucky i am to be able to to be able to sing there and to be able to to reach so many people with music um every day but your story is a unique one at those upper echelons are there more girls admitted to cathedral choirs now? It used to be just the boys.

So the big change really is over the last few decades really is in the increasing numbers of girl choristers in our cathedral churches. Parish churches, of course, have long been better at this than the big cathedral churches. But that's one of the really exciting things. You know, it was so lovely to hear Beth Mead talking about watching the next generation come through snapping at her heels.

I feel exactly the same way about our amazing girl choristers. And I can't wait for them to be snapping at mine. You know, I just had a quick glance over at our messages coming in. And this is one from Richard. I have to throw this to you, Carys. As an ex-choir boy myself, I'm not happy to hear of more girls in choirs. There's a purity that gets lost or at least diluted when the choir has females of any register in it.

Well, I've heard that one a time or two. Cecilia wants to get in here. Go on. Well, I find that really interesting because I don't know when this happened, but the Director of Music of St Mary's, Edinburgh, St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, carried out a blind test with directors of music across the country. And he had girls and boys behind a screen.

And apparently they had to write down whether they were boys or girls. And apparently there were a lot of errors. Ha! You're nodding your head there, Carys. What's it all about? Well, I think it's an interesting thing. I think the other thing other than that study, which is well known, I think the other thing to bear in mind is that largely girl choristers haven't had the benefit of the training that some of the boy choristers that I believe that listener may be referring to and also haven't had the opportunity to sing in our amazing cathedral buildings. And I think what's far more what has a far more impact on a child's sound is is the building they sing in.

And of course, at St Paul's, we have this amazing grand echo and and also the training that they receive, which is which is completely different from person to person, of course, at St Paul's, we have this amazing grand echo and also the training that they receive, which is completely different from person to person, of course. And what's exciting about this new chapter, particularly for us at St Paul's, is giving girls the opportunity to benefit from that amazing musical training. Here's another one that came in. There's still some way to go for girls as choristers. My own daughter is four hours away from home because at her age she can't sing in the cathedral in her home county. She's questioned why when we've had female prime ministers and a Queen as head of the Church of England, it's not possible

to sing in her home cathedral. The funding available for girl choristers lacks parity too. Some charitable trusts only support the tuition boarding fees for boy choristers. So eyebrows are raised there by Caris. But that is one side, so the singing. And I want to come back, you're still the only woman

in St Paul's Cathedral Choir, as I understand it, Caris, and we'll ask why that is. But Cecilia, on your side, last year the Dunn Women in Music Report found that only 7.7% of scheduled works were composed by women. That includes orchestra as repertoire, not choral music. But it also suggests there's a really long way to go. I think there is some way to go that I would agree with. There was a statistic, wasn't there, recently of 78% male composers and 14% women composers.

And I'd be quite interested to know how the statistic was formed, whether it was including dead male composers. Yes, there's quite a lot of those. Yes. When you're up against Bach and Mozart and whatnot. That's true. I mean, I was just quite interested to look back to the beginning of this year at the BBC Choral Evensong. There have been 20.

And I thought it'd be quite interesting to see how many of those include works by women. And out of the 20, there are 12. I know, Carys, you had a very welcoming environment for you as you stepped into St Paul's by your co-choristers. But you are still the only woman. Very briefly, why? I think women have not always benefited from that chorister training that we're now saying is available to so much more and that's been a factor but also these adult salary positions don't come up very often

they're you know a salary in music is as rare as hen's teeth and people tend to hang on to these jobs once they have them and of course because we have children singing the highest line of music, there are only really at any one time a small number of jobs that might be available to women. So, you know, I hate to say it, but until some of my lovely colleagues move on, I may be the only woman for a little while yet. Caris Jones and Cecilia McDowell talking to Nuala earlier this week and nice little fact on the side Saint Cecilia was the patroness of musicians and church music

so what an appropriate name she has that's it from me but do join Nuala on Monday she'll be talking to a woman who says she and others like her have been forgotten and ignored in the infected blood scandal but until we meet again next Thursday

have a wonderful weekend. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who 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.