Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman’s Hour: Susie Wiles, Athlete Julien Alfred, ‘Dear Sirs’, Dating red-flag questions, The Balkan Kitchen

Episode Date: November 9, 2024

In one of his first moves since his victory in the US election, President-elect Donald Trump has named his 2024 campaign manager, Susie Wiles, as his chief of staff in the White House. She will make history as the first woman to hold the title. But what do we know about the woman Trump referred to as the "ice maiden"? Kylie Pentelow was joined by Anne McElvoy, Executive Editor at Politico and host of the Power Play podcast to discuss.The Women's 100 metre Olympic champion Julien Alfred joined Clare McDonnell in the studio. Her gold medal in Paris was the first time St Lucia had won an Olympic medal. She discusses what it took to become a champion and also having a national day named after her.A Woman's Hour listener is fed up with the phrase 'Dear Sirs'. Ellie Rees is the co-founder of Brickworks Estate Agency and despite her team being all female, they are often addressed in this way. Clare was joined by Ellie and by Susie Dent, the author and lexicographer to discuss this.Do you have a first date red-flag question? What would be an absolute sure-fire, definite no-no answer which would tell you there is definitely going to be no second date? Olivia Rodrigo, the American singer-songwriter and actor, is quoted as saying that if her date wants to go to space, that is a red flag for her. Krupa Padhy spoke to Helen Coffey, senior journalist at the Independent who's written her take on questions she would ask, and Poppy Jay, director and podcaster most famously on Brown Girls Do It Too and now the spin-off Big Boy Energy.Irina Janakievska is a food writer and recipe developer. Born in what is now North Macedonia, she left her career in corporate law to follow her passion for sharing her love of Balkan cuisine. In her new cookery book, The Balkan Kitchen, she takes us on a culinary and cultural journey across the former Yugoslavia with recipes that speak for the vast and varied cuisine of a region overshadowed by conflict in recent years – from North Macedonia to Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Kosovo.Presenter: Kylie Pentelow 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.

Hello, this is Kylie Pentelow and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour with me, Kylie Pentelow. In the next hour, the fastest woman on the planet, the Olympic 100-metre gold medalist Julianne Alfred. Also coming up, are there certain words that put your teeth on edge every time you hear them? Woman's Hour listener Ellie Reese is on a mission to rid the world of that catch-all email or letter opener, Dear Sirs. And dating red flags. After the pop star Olivia Rodrigo said in an interview that she had a red flag question when on dates,

she always asks if they would want to go to space. If they say yes, she doesn't date them as they're a little bit too full of themselves. Krupa Pardee spoke to the podcaster Poppy Jay. Being Asian, with Asian guys, we'll absolutely, first in, just to scare them, we'll ask them what their relationship is like with their mother. If it's very, very problematic, then they're going in the bin. I always ask what they don't like to eat. I don't like fussy eaters. OK. So if they come up with a list of, oh, I don't like fish and I don't like this and I don't like that, in the back of my mind, I'm like, well, there's no second date here.

And talking about food, if you're eating out this weekend, you might go for Italian, Indian or Chinese food. But how about Balkan cuisine? Well, food writer Irina Yanakievska tells us more about the history of the region through her family's food story. So lots to get through. Grab a cup of whatever takes your fancy and settle in for the hour. Now, in one of his first moves since his victory in the US election, President-elect Donald Trump has named his 2024 campaign manager, Susie Wiles, as his chief of staff in the White House. She'll make history as the first woman to hold the title. But what do we know about the woman Trump referred to as the Ice Maiden?

Well, I was joined yesterday by Anne McElvoy, executive editor at Politico and host of the Powerplay podcast. I began by asking her what she knows about Susie Wiles. She's really a veteran of Florida politics, and she comes from that world around Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago in Florida. I mean, obviously, she's going to become very powerful indeed in Washington, but that will be quite a transition. Donald Trump, even now, even after this election result,

he tends to stay there. That is really his kind of castle and his keep, that world around him. And it's very tightly run and very tightly controlled, not least by her. She has really been the person who has brought order to the chaos of the Donald Trump campaign. And that's really why she's now been given this

role. I think he's very convinced that she's the person he can better have around. You know, he's a very difficult man to work for. He ran through about four chiefs of staff, I think, the last time he was in office. But she does seem to be able to manage him very well. And she is credited with running this very disciplined campaign, hitting all of those points. This is not in any way a point approving of Donald Trump or the way that Donald Trump conducts his politics. But I think every professional campaign operator in the US would say this is a campaign that has worked. And that has been her role, really, to organise that and to execute on it. And a big role to play in Florida as well.

Oh, certainly. I mean, but Florida, in a sense, is kind of nailed down for the Trump world. And that's where it comes from. It's where her power base has been. She also worked previously for someone who's become a bit of a rival to Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, or Ron DeSantamonious, as Donald Trump with one of his terrible kind of cruel nicknames would put it. She's been in that kind of fight all the way through. And then Ron DeSantis basically always really pushed Trump to get her fired. In 2020, there was a big sort of power cabal and she fell outside it. And Ron DeSantis basically always really pushed Trump to get her fired in 2020. There was a big, you know, sort of power cabal and she fell outside it.

But she's really taken her revenge. And she's very open about the fact that she takes revenge on those who dare in any sense to diss her. And I think Donald Trump really admires that. You know, she's a woman of a certain age. She's 67. She's a grandmother. She's very steely so I think she she kind of fits she doesn't fit what you might think a campaign operator in Donald Trump world would look or sound like but gosh you know she has sort of she doesn't speak on her own

behalf very much but she tends to to speak through showy fake through her contacts in the press and one of them and I'm making this bit more polite for listeners the way that that it was attributed to her was along the lines of if you mess with me yeah no don't you know I mess with you and we've seen that you know go around very quickly if anyone has crossed the campaign or Donald Trump Susie Wiles I think has little tolerance for anyone who doesn't see it her way. But, you know, she does make it work for him. And we said that she was referred to by Trump as the Ice Maiden. So where does that nickname come from?

It seems a funny nickname to have, say, someone who's a grandmother. I think looking at her'm just looking at pictures of her you can kind of see why she has a particular kind of florida vibe you know the mirror sunglasses there's she wears these sort of luxury goods you know gucci bomber jackets it's a particular look big earrings you know you can't mistake her and yet the same way she, I think he calls her the ice maiden because she's very controlled. She has the strengths that match or sort of accommodate his much more random way of operating.

So I think that's what he means, that she's always there. She's always controlling everything. She says herself, you know, what is the superpower is to execute on what Donald Trump wants and bring his strength of personality and that convening power that he's shown across so many demographics, including women, That's moderate by Donald Trump's standards, I should say. But I think that all of those things combined mean that she has that sense of lots of threads that she keeps in her hand at one time. And that's not Donald Trump. You know, he goes for whatever's right in front of him.

I think she has also staged what are kind of slightly jokingly known as interventions with Donald Trump in the campaign when she felt that he was losing it a bit or that he was not coming across well. So I think for that reason, he respects her. And that's probably the ice maiden idea. It's quite interesting that he invited her to speak at his victory rally, but she declined. Why is that? I think that is the secret to her power. She understands the psychology of Donald Trump. He may have invited her to speak at the victory rally, but look at what's happened to a lot of other people who've spoken on Donald Trump's behalf. Where are they now? They're running podcasts on the speech circuit. They are certainly not working for Donald Trump.

There is really only one star in this show, and that is the president himself, and particularly so with Donald Trump, his personality type, his suspicion of people he thinks are getting in the way of his limelight. So I think he's been very sensible of Susie Wells, as he said of her, she likes to stay at the back. And when she was pretty much invited to come forward, she held up her hand and said no. So her power is behind the throne. I think she's understood that very well, that you don't score in Trump world by announcing that you've come to speak as his John the Baptist. You do it in the background, but she's very well known. She's very feared in certain quarters. Everyone who needs to know Susie Wiles knows Susie Wiles, whether it's in Florida or on the campaign trail more broadly.

She doesn't need to take a bow. She's there. She's not just in the chorus line. She's really over his shoulder. Someone said to me, she'd worked on the campaign. A lot of people are Trump whisperers. It's really hard to be a Trump organiser. And that's where the power resides for her. You mentioned that in the 2016 administration, President-elect Trump had four different chief of staff. So what's your prediction? Do you think she's likely to be there for a long time? Well, I think betting on the former record of chiefs of staff, you would say no, but lots of people have got bets wrong

in the last week about the scale of Donald Trump's victory. I think she's got a better chance of hanging on in there than most. But I do think at the moment we're seeing Donald Trump victorious, triumphant, absolutely has pounded his political opponents in the democratic movement. When he takes up power again, when he's in the pressure of Washington and on the international, but also that really tough world of Washington politics,

which he only ever quite half-liked when he got to it the last time. He's a campaigner. I think he finds governing a lot harder. He finds the presidency a lot more trying. He's a bit older. He's sometimes, I think, less sure of himself in some ways than he was, but he has a way of covering it up. So I think her role there will be to make him kind of happy in Washington. And I cannot predict whether in the end, if he gets frustrated, he will say, well, thanks very much, Susie, and off you go back to Florida. But she has many other strings to the bow. Trump world is also very financially motivated. She's very close to

a major lobbying company. There's been some whiff of, is that all right? Is there too much of a kind of one hand watches the other around finance, around Donald Trump? She has a world she can go back to. She's never going to rely solely on Donald Trump. She's a divorcee woman of a certain age who has survived in what can frequently be a snake pit. I think she knows pretty well that her time with Donald Trump could come to an end, but she's probably going to hang on longer than most, put it that way, and certainly a lot longer than a lot of the men who did the job before her. That was Anne McElvoy talking to me yesterday. And you can catch up on all Women's Hour US election coverage over this week, which included analysis on how women voted

and what a Trump presidency might look like for women by going to BBC Sounds. Now, for the woman you're about to hear from, a lifetime of training and hard graft all came down to a 10.72 second sprint on a rainy Paris evening back in August. I'm talking about the fastest woman in the world, Julienne Alfred. The St. Lucia-born sprinter won gold in the women's 100 metres at this year's Olympics. If that wasn't enough, she got a silver in the 200 metres too. Her medals marked the first time St Lucia won an Olympic medal. You may have seen videos of the eruptions of joy back home on the island at viewing parties. The national holiday in the country has been named Julianne Alfred Day. Julianne is in the UK looking to inspire the next generation of young athletes

and she joined Claire Macdonald this week. Claire began by asking her if winning has sunk in yet. Not quite to be honest but I do get reminded of it a lot just by how much St. Lucian's have celebrated me since winning the gold in Paris but I don't wake up every day thinking oh I'm the Olympic champion no but I do get reminded of it whenever solutions get a chance to. I'll bet I mean I watched it back recently and one commentator said post-race she was out and it was over it was over by the 50 meter mark did you think then it's mine to lose did you realize how much distance you had on the other competitors i didn't actually until i re-watched the video over and over again but you

know it's a race plan that my coach and i have been working on my coach edric floriel back in austin texas we've been working on this race plan over and over and visualizing how we're going to execute this race the olympic final and it just finally came into fruition. And I did just that. But I didn't realize how far I was away from the rest of the field. It's just an incredible race. It was pouring with rain. You're on the line. Take us back to that moment.

You know, either side of you, some of the most high profile sprinters the world has ever known. Right. What's going through your head? After the semifinal, winning semifinal two, I realized I had such a great chance of getting the gold medal. And as I stood on the line watching down the track alongside the other seven women, other seven finalists, I was just thinking of my race plan, executing and thinking of each phase that I had to go through to win the gold and my biggest challenge was the blocks you know 2022 I had a four-star world championships

so I had to really pay attention to just the gun do not anticipate it and just work on just thinking of my execution but it was a lot of pressure I'm not going to lie standing there knowing that my country St. Lucia an entire nation is watching looking forward to a medal I'm not sure if it was gold or whatever but I just know that they were expecting the medal their first ever and I was just thinking of my execution and trying to deliver for them tell us what you wrote in your journal the morning of the race. One of the things that I wrote down is Julian Alfred, Olympic champion. Just manifesting, knowing how hard I've worked for this moment.

Also, I wrote that the world will know my name. I am unstoppable. It's my race. My coach has prepared me for it. Have fun. There were so many different things that I wrote down, but just realizing that I had a great chance of winning and also believing in myself before going to the finals that I was already the Olympic champion.

Yeah, gosh. Well, that manifestation worked. Let's talk about the celebrations when you crossed the line. I mean, men have been known to rip off their shirts when they cross the line, jump around, beat their chest, you know, go up to the camera, you know, pointing and all of that. You screamed. You were clearly overcome with emotion. You're not a very flashy person, but that gives you a great authenticity, I think, that you just go, all of those years just came out, didn't they? Right. Oh, my God. It's been a long journey that not many persons know about. Whenever I get a chance to tell them about my story, I do, because it's been a long journey.

You don't just get here just like that. You know, it's been a it's a build up to it. Living my home at a young age of 14, going to Jamaica, training for three years there, then moving to Texas on my own, spending five years at the University of Texas in Austin to get into this point in my career. Lots of trials and tribulations that I've been through, lots of hardships, injuries that I have to battle. It's been a long journey. So when you finally cross the line and getting called, the thing you've worked so hard for in your entire life when it finally comes through and you cross the line first it's such an amazing feeling all I could scream was yes yes yes I mean it wasn't so calm but I was screaming at the top of my lungs

but honestly such an amazing feeling just knowing that all your hard work and sacrifice is finally paid off and it's what my coach and I have been working towards and early on that season well this season sorry I had a breakdown I was completely out of it I told my coach I didn't want to continue the season I told my agent to cancel my meets because I just didn't want to continue I was just so hard on myself I was overweight as well, struggling mentally, and just feeling like I couldn't go on. But my coach, he worked with me. He took me off the track for a little bit.

We had a long conversation. We both cried on the phone. And the last thing he said to me was, are you ready to be an Olympic champion? And he believed that I could be one. He worked with my agent as well to get me prepared, you know, mentally and physically and have some meets in place so I can prepare for the Olympics.

Yeah, so, I mean, goodness, I mean, he stepped in at the right point, didn't he? He could see what was happening. I mean, to go back, for people who don't know your story, you know, you were running on grass in bare feet because where you were in Solution, there wasn't an athletic stadium for you to train because where you were in Solution there wasn't there wasn't an athletic stadium for you to train on was that? No there wasn't actually the our national stadium is all the way to the south of the island in Viewford but where I where I

lived the castries the capital of Solution we don't have a track there so we have a grass little grass tracks that we paint around when it's time for school sports so I trained on there and I joined the club at the age of nine and you know just being so young I didn't have the right the proper shoes until until my coach my childhood coach but modest he gave me my first pair of shoes my my first pair of trainers and spikes. Until then, I was just running around without any shoes. Sometimes I would be training in my school shirt, my school uniform at times because I just didn't have the proper attire to train at times. So all of that stacked up against you. And then the tragic loss of your father when you were just 12 years old.

And you always you talked about walking away maybe before the Olympics. But that was a pivotal point as well when you thought, I'm old. And you talked about walking away maybe before the Olympics, but that was a pivotal point as well when you thought, I'm not sure I can do this. Yeah, that was such a hard time for me. At a young age, knowing my dad, and he also had his own struggles as well. So the last time I saw him was when he took me to training at the Mindo Phillip Park.

That was probably like a few weeks prior, and that was the last time I saw him was when he took me to training at the Mindo Phillip Park that was probably like a few weeks prior and that was the last time I saw him so it really hurt me that I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to him or even just see him in his final days and it really hurt me and I was devastated I was hurt and it just took a toll on me to the point where I felt like I couldn't go on and he really looked forward to me he He was always so boastful to others when he spoke about me and spoke highly of me. But I mean, it really took, it tore me apart just seeing that my dad is no longer here with me.

You've had to come back from so much. You must have so much strength. And you talk about moving to Jamaica. And this is obviously one of your all-time heroes, Usain Bolt. Usain Bolt is from Jamaica so I'm wondering how much strength or guidance that you got from people like him I mean you won in the pouring rain and he and some of his greatest achievements were in the pouring rain as well

that must have that must have inspired you oh my god the morning of the Olympic final I watched some of his races and I took myself back to that younger Julian looking up to Usain Bolt and just pictured myself crossing the line first and being just like him. And I just wanted to put that into the Olympic final as well. I think he wants to be just like you now. You're the more recent. You're the more recent winner. Let's talk about what you're doing here in the UK and using your position as Olympic 100 metre champion to inspire the next generation. What are you doing? So right now I'm here for the World Travel Market

with St Lucia promoting our island's beauty, the warmth of our people and allowing people to know what St Lucia is like. It's such a tiny island that not many people know about, but also using my platform and using my voice to talk about and promote my country. And your prime minister says you're going to have a day named after you. How does that feel? It's an amazing feeling.

One that I didn't expect, especially after winning an Olympic medal. Like I said, they could have given me the smallest thing and I'll just be so appreciative of just how much love and support that they've showed me since winning. And a day named after me, it means a lot to me. And do you want a new stadium? I mean, I know that's a big passion of yours as well, to actually use this opportunity to get people to invest in facilities back home yeah we don't have that many to be quite honest

we right now we have a national stadium that needs to be renewed also a mini stadium that we use now for small track meets but I think because of the state of our stadium back in St Lucia we don't have as many big track meets as we should, especially when it comes to inter-secondary school or island champs. I think when our new stadium gets built, I mean, the youth will be excited to race on it. They'll look forward to it. I'm sure it'll allow them to stay on the track more.

So I'm just looking forward for the government of St. Lucia, the Ministry of Sports, to just rebuild our stadium so track and field can be even bigger in St. Lucia. We need the new Julian Alfre, don't we? And just a little insight, when you're back home now, you said St. Lucia has gone absolutely crazy for you and what you've done for the country. I mean, how long does it take you to go to the shop these days? I don't go to the shops, that's what it is.

So I stay at a hotel when I went to St. Lucia. I usually make the sacrifice to just stay in Texas and train, so I don't really get distracted by what's happening around me. But when I do get a chance, I do have to, you know, watch where I go, because St. Lucia is excited to just celebrate me, to see me. And like I said, I've just felt the love and support from them. So it's always an awesome feeling going back to St Lucia and being on stomping grounds.

Julianne Alfred speaking to Claire there. Now, a recent email from one of you, our lovely listeners, began with a slightly tongue-in-cheek phrase, Dear Sirs. It came from Ellie and it continued like this. I'm on a mission to eradicate the common default salutation, Dear Sirs, from legal correspondence. It's something I come into contact with weekly, if not more. As a woman who runs her own estate agency, an almost all-female team, I'm still shocked and baffled every time I receive an email or letter that begins this way,

despite over a decade in the industry. It's from Ellie Rees, and she's the co-founder of Brickworks Estate Agency, and she joined Claire this week. Also joining them was Susie Dent. You might know her best from Dictionary Corner on Countdown. She's an author, broadcaster and lexicographer. Her new Radio 4 series is called Unspeakable. Claire began by asking Ellie why Dear Sirs gets her goat so much. Well, as you say, tens of thousands of emails and letters are written every day

and sent to people in the property industry, my industry. But it's the default salutation in legal correspondence and basically has been, I guess, since the 1800s when these big male-dominated, traditionally male-dominated firms were established. But we're still using them today. This is language that is fossilised. Put simply, and I'm sure Susie will concur, I hope she will, it's also inaccurate grammatically.

I'm not a man. There's not multiple of me. So to call me a sir, neither am I a knight of the round table by the way um it's non-inclusive you know we live in a progressive society these are not words if we believe that language matters these are not words that represent um new cultural attitudes in 2024 and you've only been in estate agency for 10 years and your background before that was what I'm trained as a fine artist so I come from third sector academia the creative industries whereby referring to yourself as a feminist is hardly radical it's you know so far so normal and I entered into an industry a

sector a workforce which is incredibly male dominated, aggressively so, whereby the stats are staggering in terms of discrimination against women and representation in the C-suites. We have a huge larger than average gender pay gap, for example, huge bonus gap because of the pay structure of the state agency. And it was just sort of in the water, you know, everywhere I looked that thing of the culture being represented, I felt by this language, which just reinforces paradigm. And when you brought it up or bring it up and say, can you ditch that? Initially, what was the response? Interestingly, there's been a lot of resistance. Now, of course, there are progressive law firms and estate agencies who agree with me. And Freshfields, which is a large magic circle law firm in 2016, went through the Herculean task of eradicating dear sirs.

But many did not follow suit. It's not actually supported by the Law Society of England and Wales. And that is an issue because it's a top-down problem. They don't have formal guidance to say we should be using gender-neutral terminology, we should be using gender-neutral language. The Law Society of Ireland did do that in 2020, but people aren't really picking it up, and I often get a lot of resistance,

and that is usually in the form of it's tradition, it's the way it's always been done. We're trained this way as solicitors. We do get a statement from the Law Society of England and Wales and they said, we encourage replacing dear sirs with gender inclusive salutations. Quite an old-fashioned word. Exactly.

To strike the right balance between best practice, inclusivity and appropriateness. We recommend using dear, followed by the person's name or job title and to avoid using pronouns if they haven't been established, if it is not possible to identify the person using phrases, including to whom it may concern or less formal options, such as good afternoon, morning, evening, but you're saying they need to go further than that? Absolutely, it must be policy. And I think they need to say it should be eradicated. It's the first time I've heard from them, by the way. So I really welcome that. But it's got to be formalised. It has to be galvanised. And it has to be,

I think, policy to an extent. It would be good if Lady Chief Justice, for example, said, this is a problem. This is what it represents. And therefore, our guidance is that we change it to dear colleagues, for example. And before we move on to Susie, so it's not just words you think it represents something so much more than that. Oh absolutely, absolutely. It reinforces the culture and that's in law and finance and other male dominated

industries whereby we just don't see women visible. I mean if you say dear sirs you are just not speaking to 50% of the workforce. You are just not respecting everybody in the room. I spoke to my daughter yesterday. She's 12 years old.

And I said, you know, she's been living this, but why does it matter to you? And she just said, just sounds like all the men are in charge, mum. Yeah, but we know that's not the case. Susie Dent, what do you think about this? As we heard from Ellie Rees, she sees it as fossilised language. Do you? I think Ellie puts this so articulately I mean there is an inbuilt patriarchy in language largely because the voices have been recorded over the centuries you know I spend my life in the historical

dictionary and women are the ones usually being spoken about rather than speaking and I think this is a this is a really good case in point. And it's strange because I know so many corporations and institutions are making active efforts to change things. I suppose the other side of the argument is we're speaking with our fingers as we type away on our keyboards and screens these days. And so we are producing the sort of written spoken hybrid that is less formal and that over time will hopefully make salutations like this redundant, but not as quickly as we would like. And so it might well take action, direct action to change things, because, you know, for all its versatility and its speed, language sometimes just doesn't keep pace with us. I mean, it is a democracy, but it's down to all of us to guide it to the places we want and need. And, you know, I think the thing that's frustration

is that women have consistently been at the forefront of language change and yet not recognised for it. Even in Shakespeare's day, it was women who, in letters, were changing things up and using does instead of doth and you instead of thou. And it's estimated by some linguists that women are about a generation ahead of men when it comes to language change, because perhaps of our social networks, perhaps traditional roles as carers, you know, speak of our mother tongue, after all. But yes, I think some things are fossilised, and they need a giant

shove into the present. And do you think that shove needs to come, for example, as we were just discussing with Ellie, needs to come from the kind of sector that you are working in? Because if there's a standardised sort of industry-wide, this is how we, you know, we talk to one another or in a formal setting in this business, then that would accelerate things because everybody sits there and goes, dear, and then thinks, what do I write next? Yes, this next yes this is this is sort of what I mean is that I you know I think we all struggle with saying do I say hi in something formal do I say hello dear just dear administrator also sounds wrong and slightly aggressive I think so I think we all need to get our heads together and and come up with things that are

acceptable I think certainly if you have um you know looked at a company's website and found the name of the person you need to write to that that's great and I think that shows a level of effort as well but it surprises me that dear sirs is still being used as a standard salutation because in so many other areas of life there are you know active efforts to change all of this and um so i applaud ellie for what she's doing i mean so many people have got in touch ellie with this already here's one from anita as a family lawyer i hate the standard dear sirs salutation and wish that a standard gender neutral replacement could be introduced i try my best to find a suitable alternative, but absolutely agree that a formal policy change should happen.

Somebody else saying chairman made worse when it's changed to chair. What's wrong with chairperson? I don't like guys, says Sister Exeter. Nobody could think of calling us gals, just as people do not like ladies, gentlemen. Why do I need to be referred to by what I consider a male term?

And talking of male terms in your business, in estate agency, they creep in as well, master bedroom. We don't even think about that, do we? No, and it's a good one. And there have been huge efforts made in the US in particular to discredit master bedroom. And if you are a guilty pleasure watcher of Selling Sunset, you will know that they call it the primary bedroom.

And here we call it the principal or the main bedroom. And that's because of its connotations of slavery and sexism. But they managed to get rid of it pretty quickly and just replace it with an alternative. And as Susie said, we can get our heads together. You know, we can put men and women on the moon. We've got the imagination to come up with an alternative. Often the resistance is that dear

all, for example, if you don't know the person's name is not formal enough. But then let's go to whom it may concern. Let's go to dear colleagues. There are progressive law firms like Futansi, who are rolling this out on the ground, they're going to their employees, they're saying, do you think it's appropriate? Yes or no? They've all agreed broadly, no, it's not yes or no they've all agreed broadly no it's not let's come up with something else susie final words to you i mean uh you've got this new series on radio 4 which started last week i don't know whether you can throw this in the running order at some point but is it something you think we need to talk an awful lot more about i absolutely do and it was interesting listening to ellie you know i I was talking about master bedrooms. I mean, if you think about those sort of couplets from the past, governor and governess, courtier and courtesan, bachelor and spinster, you know, they are so unfairly sort of rated in terms of sort of liberty for the male role and promiscuity or, you know, some kind of subjugation almost for the women. I mean, it is very much enshrined in language.

And I think, yes, it is a linguistic gap, which is what Unspeakable is all about, that definitely needs filling. So I think it's a perfect candidate. Ellie, where's the campaign going next? Well, we've got over 4,000 signatures, which is fantastic. And it really is about getting those sort of bastions of law to change their minds and to do it formally so and and put out the word that this is going to to make a change we need a paradigm shift ellie reese and suzy dent there and suzy dent series unspeakable is on bbc sounds we've had lots of comments on this let's take a look at a few from Instagram this one here says we are a business of two women we received a dear sir's email we challenged it we were aggressively told that this was standard

business correspondence when addressing the directors of a business we did not receive an apology or acknowledgement that this was in any way inappropriate. And this one here says, I've been looking for an alternative to landlord, just a ridiculous term all round. And landlady is even more absurd. I'm privileged to be a landlord lady and take my responsibilities seriously. I'd love a more inclusive and humbling term for what I do. And this one here, another thing I've noticed with our family business is I always get listed last after my brother in bank and legal documents when I'm both older than him and my name is earlier in the alphabet. Thanks very much for all of you getting in touch. Still to come on the programme, food writer Irina Yarnakievska on the history of Balkan cuisine through her family's food story.

And remember that 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 for free via BBC Sounds. Next, do you have a first date red flag question? What would be a definite no-no answer which would tell you there will not be a second date? We're asking this because Olivia Rodrigo, the American singer-songwriter and actor, was quoted as saying that if her date wants to go to space, that's a red flag for her. So we wanted to know, do you have a red flag question? Do you ever use it? Was it effective? Or if you don't have one, what would it be? Well, Krupa Pardi was joined by Helen Coffey, a senior journalist at The Independent, who's written her take on questions she would ask. And also by Poppy Jay, director

and podcaster, most famously on Brown Girls Do It Too, and now the spin-off Big Boy Energy. Krupa began by asking Helen what she thought when she read Olivia Rodrigo's comment. I mean, I think at first I was like, wow, what a niche question to ask. And is that really very fair to eliminate men based on that? And then I started thinking about it more and I was like, well, maybe not 20 years ago, but now kind of that desire to go to space is really associated with, let's face it, the sort of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos types who have made it their mission. Like, I'm going to be the first to get commercial space travel going. And with the best will in the world, with the greatest respects, I really would not want to go out with someone who even vaguely resembled either one of those men so I thought actually

maybe it's a genius thing like a very subtle question to slip in although now she's let the cat out of the bag or she people gonna know they have to just lie and say no avoid that question puppy what do you make of this I mean you're dating for fun at the moment you're not settling down at the moment but do you think Olivia Rodrigo's got a point about having that red flag question no I I love her niche question because it shows the caliber of men that she goes out with the caliber that I go out with um I do I am even though I'm um just dating and um having fun and not necessarily looking for well definitely not looking for a relationship there are a set number of questions that I ask guys on first dates that are like my universal

flag red flag questions one is do you have any female friends or close female friends and if he doesn't I'm like I mean I say get in the bin I'll probably see them again if it's fun but there's no future there right he has no female friends then to me that says about a myriad of things number one he sees women as female objects or, you know, women that he can only have sexual relationships with and not see a friendship. I also, being Asian, with Asian guys, will absolutely first in, just to scare them, will ask them what their relationship like is with their mother. Yes.

Obviously, I'm being very sort of on the nose with you guys now. I mean, I do kind of, I'm much more subtle, believe believe it or not but I do ask them well the relationship is like their mother if it's very very problematic and too unhealthy then they're going in the bin I always ask uh what they don't like to eat I don't like fussy eaters okay so if they come up with a list of oh I don't like fish and I don't like this and I don't like that in the back of my mind I'm like well there's no second date here and also I always ask them maybe this is a second date question because it's a bit too deep but I ask them a bit like Helen's article when was the last time they opened up to a male friend and last time a male friend opened up to them and I think also this is a red flag question reserved for first slash second dates. I like to get a makeup of their friends because if their friends are all from the same class in the same world, I have no interest.

They have to have an interesting group of friends from all over. And if they just have a set group of friends and it's all lads and they all have the same kind of world experience and the same worldview, then I'm sort of much less interested. That's a lot to sift through, Poppy. And we're going to break some of that down. Well, I get too long for a date. I do a lot. Well, look, Martha is one of our listeners and she agrees with you about food. And she says, if they had broad and varied answers to me, it tells me a lot about who

they are. Are they willing to try new things? Are they worldly? Are they open minded? And she's talking specifically there about cheese, believe it or not. And this listener says, my red flag question is what are your thoughts on OnlyFans? So again, Poppy, going back to what you were saying about the female body,

it opens up a whole conversation on how they perceive women and their bodies. And I asked this after three months and realised I was dating a misogynist. For context, I am pro-women and they can do what they want. Thank you for your messages um helen your key questions that you must ask on a date well i mean they were somewhat tongue-in-cheek but also i think probably do stand up under scrutiny uh because i just started thinking about not the big questions like do you want kids what is your religious view what are your politics you know these things that we we can all agree you might want fundamental agreement on but especially these days I think lots of men would

identify as a feminist perhaps or would never say I'm a misogynist and yet the more you kind of delve Anthony the more you're like you've got some problematic ideas there that you're not being upfront about so just quick ways to sift them out um I also would ask what the last book they read was uh not being a snob here unless it's a really deeply problematic book that they were like I'm such a big fan but it's mainly to ascertain like do they ever read because these days a lot of men will literally say to you oh I haven't read a book since I was a kid and this will be like a 45 year old man and I just find that absolutely like flabbergasting I mean audio books I'll accept but if they just are like no literature whatsoever for me that's a red flag but hobbies matter right hobbies do

matter and having something in common matters yeah and I think I didn't include this but I think that's a great shout I think a man that doesn't have any extracurricular activities that they're interested in at all. That's a big red flag. If all they do is work and go to the pub and they've got nothing else going on. Not sure we're going to really get along in life. And who they who they choose to spend their time with. Poppy was so right in saying that really you can tell a lot of by a person's friends because they might not really tell you what their friends are like but asking who their kind of celebrity kind of

friend crush is like if they could go for a drink with anyone for a fun night out who's famous who would it be can tell you a lot because that will tell you who they think is sort of on their level and if if they're saying like joe rogan or something i'm again i'm sorry i'm out if that's your sort of dream well helen catherine agrees with you she says i like to ask new people who would you love to go out to dinner with and talk to you about their life and views alive or dead so she agrees with you there um here's one question i'd like to put to both you maybe poppy you want to kick off look dating can make people feel really nervous when you're sat in front of someone you hardly know or sometimes you've never met. Sometimes you say really silly things, right? Second chances, where do you

stand on that? If they give a dud answer the first time round, do you follow up, Poppy? Yeah, I have a traffic light flag system. Red flags you can't come away from. Ambers, I'll give you a chance on an amber. And obviously green flags are great. Yeah, I think it's like if you weigh it up, if they've got like one, you know, when you take a driving test, you've got majors and minors. They've got like one major and a couple of minors. You know, you're just like like I like you enough I'm going to give you another chance so you might throw them another question like a lifeboat and

see if they latch on yeah yeah and if they don't I mean it depends on the red flag because if the red flag is very red flaggy you're just there's no saving from that really I don't know about Helen but it's like I don't know how much you can come back. But also I have to turn the mirror back on me. I mean, I hope I'm not giving red flag energy, but there might be some things that I say that I'm, that guys are like, God,

not going to see her again. So I think sometimes you've got to approach these things with an open mind, but it really depends on your boundaries. And it really depends on what you're like. It's not always about the serious stuff, right? let me put this one to you um a listener writes uh her red flag question would be or his uh can you pay for my chips i don't want to break into a fiver helen what do you make of that money talk on a first date is that is that a red flag do you know this is one of mine and people will have really different opinions to me on this,

but actually a red flag for me would be in either direction, but because I'm a heterosexual woman, it normally happens a certain way around, which is a man will offer to pay. I absolutely refuse. I would say on nearly any kind of date, but especially a first date, I want to pay half I feel very passionate about that this is 2024 they don't they're not paying for me because I'm like

their property or because they necessarily earn more money than me so if they I don't mind someone offering but if they are really insistent and they say I am not going to let you pay that for me is like no it's an absolute no and the other way around like if I was a guy and and the woman expected me to pay and was very like you're obviously covering this I that's a red flag in that direction as well for me I'm sorry I should have I finished reading that I completely agree sorry just to jump in yeah I completely agree. Sorry, just to jump in. I completely agree with Helen. Unless you're some billionaire and you insist on taking me out to a bar

that's well beyond my means, then that's fine. But this idea, and on this podcast I host called Big Boy Energy, I have guys on and they're like, girls expect us to pay all the time. I'm like, who are these women? Because Helen and I don't. And a guy who's like, no, no, no no no no i insist on paying i'll pay i'm like i i'm just as much we can go halves on this it's okay i'm not going to think any less of you i'm sure those women exist but like i'm not seeing

those women and those women are not my friends either and i should add that uh this this listener who got in touch actually married this man and uh so the nightmare began she says he plundered everything and everyone i brought into our world after two breakdowns i finally woke up which is why those red flag questions are so important i'm going to put this last one to you briefly poppy a red flag question for this listener was do you iron your jeans uh if a yes comes out that means the guy is too high maintenance for me your thoughts pop, Poppy? Can he iron my jeans? And then that would be, that would make that red flag into a green flag. Yeah, I have to admit, a guy who's ironing t-shirts and shoelaces and bedsheets, if he's got more product in his wash bag than I do, it's just, and I feel that's actually quite an unfeminist statement for me to make,

because on the one hand, I'm like, I do want him to be quite clean but yes if he's ironing his jeans. That was Poppy J and Helen Coffey there. Now Irina Yana-Kievska is a food writer and recipe developer. Born in what is now North Macedonia she left her career in corporate law to follow her passion for sharing her love of Balkan cuisine. In her new cookery book, The Balkan Kitchen, she takes us on a journey across the former Yugoslavia with recipes that speak for the vast and varied cuisine of a region overshadowed by conflict in recent years. From North Macedonia to Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Kosovo. Irina joined Krupa this week and Krupa asked her why it was important for her to write about Balkan cuisine. So for me, as somebody who was born in the 80s in former Yugoslavia, we were born with this great ideal of a country where you could,

you know, rise above your ethnicity, your religion. It was a very multicultural, very accepting, very idealistic place. And as I lived through the wars of dissolution in Yugoslavia, the tragic, tragic fragmentation of it, suddenly Yugoslavia and most importantly the people from Yugoslavia started to become associated with this negative stereotype. Yugoslavia became synonymous with the Balkans and the Balkans with Yugoslavia, even though obviously the Balkans as a region is much wider. And I suppose I wanted to reclaim that term. I wanted to show the world the inherent beauty of the region.

And for me, as a historian, initially, it was the best way to do that through food, because food is the thing that unites us all around the world. It is the thing that brings people around the table and people can share stories Balkans with a view, with a purpose to hopefully making the world understand that there was more to us than our wars of dissolution. It's a very clever book because you talk about the region's history, but you also intertwine it with your own family's history. And that starts with you growing up there's a wonderful part where you talk about cooking when you're just four years old chopping walnuts peeling fruit under the watchful eye of your grandmother tell us about that childhood and the role that's played I mean it was it was it's influenced everything in my life everything I do is influenced through the through the prism of these women that raised me.

And in Balkan culture, you grow up in and around the kitchen. You are expected to help, not just with the preparation and chopping walnuts, but you're just expected to be around and adored and immersed in this cultural experience. And the food is incredibly important to that. It's sort of the Balkan rituals, not just religious, but wider than that, all revolve around preparing food for people, sharing food for people. One of our famous welcome customs is when you come to a person's home,

you are first offered slatko, which is a spoon sweet made of whatever seasonal fruit you love, a Turkish coffee and water. And that's your welcome to my home. And then after that, the things start to come out, you know, things that we have, that we've prepared. Then you sit down for a meal and that continues. And then you have sweets in the afternoon.

Food is a love language. It absolutely is. And so, and that's how I've always seen it. And I didn't realise to what extent that was a love language until I lost my grandmother, sadly. And I thought, well, I'll never be able to learn from her.

In Balkan cooking, like in many cultures around the world, cooking is instinctive. It goes, it moves with the seasons. There are no recipes in my family. No measurements. Absolutely no measurements. It's all by eye. It's all with feeling pinch of this exactly it's all based on what you have in the home and how to cleverly use it to create something beautiful and delicious and nourishing and and i suddenly realized well i'll never be able to know how she

approached that so i'm going to teach myself more. Luckily, my mother has all the family recipes and cookbooks. Well, tell me how you put this all together then, if your grandmother hadn't written all this down, how did you go about the process of gathering all these recipes? So it was a combination. The idea was inspired by actually finding one of her old cookbooks that was published in the Yugoslav era. It's called Veliki Narodni Kuvr. And it was a cookbook that had had various iterations over the 20th century. It was written by a lady who was essentially the Julia Childs of the Balkans. And what she did was collect recipes from different women around the region of former Yugoslavia and put it in this tome. And I happened to,

after my grandmother died tragically I happened to open it on a page next to which she'd written my date of birth uh more a date two weeks after my date of birth for a cake she'd made and I thought well this is beautiful you know as we said this is a love language so so I started with these kind of collections of historical cookbooks. And then I used her notebooks, and as vague as they were at times, little scraps of paper, little notes she'd written in the margins of her cookbooks, my mother's translations of these and slight updates, and then a lot of research as well in archives and articles online and travels through the Balkans as well.

So I traveled extensively across former Yugoslavia to places I knew were associated with particular foods or ingredients. And slowly a picture between this kind of historical analysis of the region through digging through family recipes, through digging through published recipes from different periods in Yugoslav history, through speaking to people that I met on my travels across the Balkans. I started to piece together this picture of a cuisine that was very special, that pointed to a commonality, as well as an incredible diversity across the region. Yes, because you do say quite clearly that there is no such thing as one Balkan cuisine. Absolutely not. In the same way, there's no such thing as Asian cuisine or, you know, or any other part of the world. It is, I use the term as a sort of a safety net,

because unfortunately, food is inherently political these days and has begun to be appropriated as a nationalist fig leaf, which it never should be, because food is an artifact that preserves more stubbornly than anything. The threads of history, the influences of history, the human migration actually is, you know, you can you can trace human migration based on the usage of ingredients around the world. And so I didn't want to allocate nationalities to dishes, because I think that undermines how complex and how interconnected ancient food ways are. So what I tried really hard to do was to explain to people, well, this is now commonly seen of as a national dish for whatever country it happens to be. However, it is also made in other countries in the region. However, it is also, you know, has iterations wider than the Balkans, you know, as far as the Levant, obviously pointing to a connection between the Balkans,

either through Silk Road, through the Ottoman Empire, through human migration and so on. So Balkan cuisine is an umbrella term, which allows me from the safety of regionalism to explore all of these different threads that tie the cuisine together and celebrate that and celebrate the diversity and how it's meaningful to particular groups, either for religious reasons or from an identity perspective, or simply pointing to kind of the availability of ingredients in the region. So, yeah, being practical. I believe you brought some along with you. What do we have? Can I stand up and have a peep?

Absolutely. So I brought you some of my favourites. Am I meant to try some on air? If you'd like to. Can I? I don't think I've got time. I'll have some afterwards. So I brought you some Ivar, which is a pepper spread made from red peppers and aubergines. Sounds gorgeous. In North Macedonia. And it's on a little solenki, which is a little salty biscuit. And I've also brought you lutenitsaica which is made with also with red peppers but this is garlic it's sort of like a relish it's a little bit spicy and with tomatoes spice yeah and then i

brought you my favorite cookies they're vanillizzi so need them this morning absolutely um they're like little walnut um walnut cookies sandwiched with a plum pekmez, which is a fruit butter. And my mum's fruit and nut roll. So we always knew it in my family as mum's fruit and nut roll. And as I was researching, I found out that actually it's probably something that was inspired by Austrian bishop's bread. And it's now known as Austrian bishop's bread, even in Slovenia. But it has had some kind of adaptation as it traveled down into the Southern Balkans

or in my mom's kitchen. I love these stories. You have some, and I want to understand from you how important it is that you pass this food journey almost down to him as well and include him in the process. My son, yes. Well, he it's a very strange thing when you find yourself a mother and suddenly you go from kind of cooking for yourself to being the only one that can pass on the identity to your children.

And he is born and bred British. So he will never know, as we have the saying, that you are from when your eyes first see sunlight. So he will never have the benefit of that identity. It is, isn't it? It's a lovely saying. And so the only way that I could pass on my heritage to him, I felt, was food, because I failed atrociously to teach him my language. I thought if I involve him in this he will at least have the benefit of feeling part of what it is to be from the Balkans. And reading your book I understand that the kitchen is you know the focus of the kitchen is not just on women it's absolutely it's a family affair absolutely yeah absolutely i i mean i talk about the women who've inspired this because they

have been central to my family but certainly you know my grandfather was very involved uh even my dad early early on so it's food um everyone has a role to play in the Balkan kitchen. Everyone finds their role. You know, some people love being involved in the fermentation aspect of things, for example, or making that stalwart of the Balkans, rakia, which is like a fruit brandy. That was Irina Yanakievska speaking there. And her book, The Balkan Kitchen, is out now.

Now you can join Nuala McGovern on Monday when we'll hear the first part of our Forgotten Children series, which looks at the impact on families when one or both parents are sent to prison. Kerry describes how she coped when, aged 17, both of her parents were imprisoned. She was left homeless while studying for her A-levels. But that's it from me. Have a lovely 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 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.