Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: Violence against women and girls, Kate Hudson, Female tribute bands

Episode Date: December 20, 2025

This week the Government set out its strategy to deal with violence against women and girls. This makes up nearly 20% of all recorded crime in England and Wales. Over the last year alone, one in every eight women was a victim of domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking, according to Home Office figures. Educating boys on misogyny is a key aim of the strategy and figures show that nearly one in five boys aged 13 to 15 are said to hold a positive view of the self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate, according to a YouGov poll. Alex Davies-Jones, the minister for Victims and Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls, joins Anita Rani to discuss the Government's strategy.Hollywood actor Kate Hudson’s latest movie Song Sung Blue is based on the real life story of Wisconsin couple Mike and Claire Sardina. Kate plays Claire, who along with her husband Mike, played by Hugh Jackman, finds local fame in the 1990s as a Neil Diamond tribute act. Kate tells Anita about the appeal of the role and how she’s now found empowerment and her voice.Woman’s Hour celebrates the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. Nuala McGovern delves into the world that Jane was born into in 1775. She is joined by the author Gill Hornby, President of the UK Jane Austen Society, and by Dr Zoe McGee whose book Courting Disaster explores the issue of consent in Regency literature.According to a survey in the press this week, nearly half of younger women surveyed said they are confident in painting and decorating, compared with just 28% of young men. The stats are from the motoring and cycling firm Halfords who said its study revealed a reversal from previous generations. We hear from Vickie Lee, DIY YouTuber known online as The Carpenter's Daughter, alongside Caroline Henn, founder of bePractical DIY in Bristol, who runs courses aimed at making DIY accessible.We celebrate the phenomenon of female tribute acts to male bands. Gobby Holder, aka Danie Cox of Slady and Lolo Wood of The Fallen Women and Ye Nuns discuss.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Dianne McGregor

Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. Coming up, we take a look at the life of Jane Austen in the week marking 250 years since her birth. Why more young women are confident tackling DIY and if that's not you, what you can do to get started. What happens when women take on legendary male bands? Female tribute acts are rewriting the rules. We'll hear from gobbie Holder of Slady. You heard right.

And keeping with the tribute vibe, actor Kate Hudson talks about her new film where she fronts a Neil Diamond tribute band. But first, a national emergency. That's how the scale of violence against women and girls has been described and not for the first time. On Thursday, the government set out its strategy to tackle the issue. Violence against women and girls accounts for nearly 20% of all recorded crime in England and Wales.

In the past year alone, one in eight women was a victim of domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking according to home office figures. A key aim for the strategy is educating boys about misogyny. A recent UGov poll found that nearly one in five boys, age 13 to 15, a whole whole. holds a positive view of self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate. Labour's commitment is to halve violence against women and girls within a decade. Well, on Thursday's programme, I spoke to Alex Davis-Jones, the Minister for Victims and Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls, ahead of the full announcements in Parliament.

I first asked her about the £20 million being spent as part of the strategy, which is going into schools. This money will go towards supporting teachers. It will go towards ensuring that we have experts and specials. coming into our schools to teach our young children about healthy relationships, about consent, about misogyny and really to try and tackle those dangerous, harmful behaviours that we are sadly seeing in our schools that our young boys are displaying and it is hurting them as much as it is hurting our young girls and we need to tackle this.

How is it going to differ to what many teachers and pupils say is already happening in schools? So this is different because we're actually bringing the experts in directly. So we're going to be working with specialists, bringing them in because our teachers are overwhelmed as it is. They just want to get on and teach and they're trying their best and dealing with very difficult situations right now. Every time I go into a school,

whether it's in my own constituency in Pontiprith or another one across the country, teachers are crying out for support and guidance and also that expert knowledge on how to tackle this, how to deal with this. So that's exactly what this money is for doing. So experts will be coming into schools to work alongside teachers.

Yes. Many critics are saying it's not enough. For example, Nicole Jacobs, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, has said the level of investment falls seriously short. So we're investing over a billion pound in victim support services alone as part of this strategy. We're investing in police to go after perpetrators directly. We're establishing a brand new centre to tackle violence against women and girls in policing. We are investing in our schools, in our healthcare. This is a 10-year strategy and it is fully costed and fully funded. And the Chancellor and the Prime Minister are totally behind this.

Schools will be able to send high-risk students to get extra care and support, including behavioural courses, to tackle prejudice against women and girls. What evidence is there that these kinds of courses work? So, again, this is something that hasn't been done before, but we can't just keep doing the same thing and hoping for a different result. As you mentioned, this is a national emergency. The scale of violence against women and girls is totally intolerable in our country. And those statistics that you reeled off at the start are really stark.

But those statistics aren't just numbers. They are people who are really, really hurting right now. And if we want to change things, if we want to prevent this violence against women and girls from happening and from perpetrating in our society, then we have to try something new. This hasn't been done before, but we have to give it a go. And we will be evidence-led and we will be working with those experts. We are learning from other countries who have been trying to tackle this. And this will be a pilot to begin with so that we can see if it's working.

So it's a bit of trial and error? It has to be trialing something to see. What works? Because, again, it is a national emergency and we have to pull every single lever to try and tackle it. So we don't really know. Well, again, that is part of the problem here, is that we know that perpetrator programs can work. There have been some success with them in terms of tackling harmful behaviours around going after the root causes of why certain individuals carry out these awful crimes, whether that is because of their own trauma, whether that is because of drug and alcohol. And I'm not making excuses here. There are no excuses for violence against women and girls.

I want to be really clear about that. But we do know that we need it to stop and we need to prevent it from happening in the first place. And these programmes are just one way of we can do that. Obviously schools have some level of responsibility, but not solely on them. So let's look elsewhere, like where these young men and boys are being radicalised in the first place. Doesn't more need to be done to stop the spread of misogynistic content, which they are accessing online? Absolutely.

is a huge problem across society. And what is happening now online is proliferating into the real world. It's causing real world harm. We are seeing that in our statistics. And the Online Safety Act, the new child codes, offcom as a regulator, are responsible for enforcing the Act, putting more onus on tech companies to stop this type of content from proliferating online. But we need to do more and we need to go further. We're working with the tech companies directly. We are bringing in new policies and the strategy to try and tackle some of this online dangerous behaviour. We are bringing in new laws to prevent the creation of deep fake intimate images and to prevent the sharing of this content. We're trying to bring in new measures in order so that you can

get these taken down quickly. There really isn't a stone left unturned here in trying to tackle this problem. Okay. So then let's look at women in general and the trust or the lack of trust that they have in the systems which are put in place to protect them. Delays in rape trials are a huge part of this problem too. Some victims waiting seven or eight years and others dropping their cases, as you know, due to delays. It's something we talk about women's hour a lot. What's being done to tackle those? So again, we can't keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome here.

As you mentioned, we inherited a criminal justice system in crisis. And part of my role is to try and rebuild trust in that process so that women, Victims, survivors feel like justice is done because that age all saying, we hear it all the time justice delayed is justice denied. We've had the stats out about the current court backlog, 79,000 cases in our Crown Court backlog, which is wholly unacceptable. And again, these are people whose lives are on hold whilst they're waiting for justice. I will never ever forget meeting one rape victim who told me that going through the court process and the trauma of the criminal justice system, made her want to die. No one should ever, ever feel that way about the criminal justice system,

a system that is meant to support them and bring them justice and closure. So we need to fix it. And we've announced our response to Sir Brian Levison. We asked Sir Brian Levison, who's one of the most eminent senior members of the justice world, to do a huge review for us into the Crown Court system, to look at how we can fix this, what options are available in order to really bear down on the backlog. because funding sitting days, which we are doing to record levels, which is the amount of times that judges are able to sit in Crown Court,

isn't just going to be enough. We have to do something different. And he came up with a swathe of measures on extending magistrate sentencing powers so that we can move more cases into the magistrates courts where there is less of a backlog, where cases can be heard swifter, where we can remove the right to elect, which is where defendants have the right to either elect to have a judge or a jury trial. Again, we are one of the only systems in the world where that is possible.

And it does seem quite perverse that that is a system where we know defendants are gaming the system in order to wait it out. Because the backlog is so high, victims are withdrawing from the process and they are choosing to just actually give up on the criminal justice system. So we need to do things differently. We will be bringing forward legislation to ensure that we bring forward Crown Court reform in order to fix this backlog. because victims and survivors are waiting far too long. Defendants are waiting too long too, and it is making a mockery of our criminal justice system. How do you regain the trust that women have lost in the system?

It's going to take time. We have to rebuild it. We have to ensure them that we have got a criminal justice system that is putting victims back at the heart of it, whether that's tackling the so-called rape myths and stereotypes in the courtroom. We are making legislative changes on that. We are providing independent legal advisors for adult rape victims so that they feel like they have to.

somebody on their side, providing them with that support and advice in the courtroom. All of these changes might seem small on their own, but together, as part of this strategy today, it will hopefully go some way to halving the levels of violence against women and girls and rebuilding that trust that has been lost, whether that being the police or the justice system. So you can tackle the systems, you can look at what tech companies are doing, you can go into schools, but what Alex can be done with an issue that is endemic? It's cultural change. Yeah, in society.

So how do you even begin to, I mean, look at where these boys, what these boys are accessing at home, what they're seeing with their own fathers, their uncles, role models that they're being influenced by in their day-to-day lives outside of school? And it's not just in the UK. This is a global problem. It's a global problem. We're not on our own here in terms of the issue and the national emergency of violence against women and girls. But we are working with everyone to try and solve it. And it is going to take everyone, as you rightly say, it's, I mean, me as a politician, in a. a government department in Whitehall can create a strategy working with colleagues, working

with every government department, and every government department has been pulled into this strategy in order to make it robust, effective and deliverable. But ultimately, this is going to take all of us across society in order to change that culture. And it can be done. It's not going to be easy. And it is ambitious, but it has to be because of the scale of the problem. But I'm appealing to your listeners, I'm appealing to the public, to parents, to society, to work with us on this and to be committed to really tackle.

the problem. There's been some frustration from some survivors and campaigners this week who say the fact that it's being published on the last day of Parliament sends a message the government isn't taking it seriously enough. How can you reassure them? I would robustly reject that. I would say that since we came into office 18 months ago, we have stressed every senior year. We haven't stopped in terms of getting on with the job of trying to tackle this, whether that is creating new criminal offences, clarifying the law on spiking, outlawing the deep fake intimate images, abuse, really trying to bear down on stalking and creating our domestic abuse protection orders, funding victim support services to record levels. This is something that we

haven't rested on our laurels with because we haven't got time to. We needed to make sure the strategy was right. We could have published it sooner, but it wouldn't have been, it wouldn't have hit the mark and that's not good enough. It has to be right. Alex Davis Jones there, Minister for Victims and tackling violence against women and girls. Now, Holly Hollywood actor Kate Hudson has starred in the likes of Glee, Running Point and her Golden Globe-nominated film Music. Her latest film, Song Sung Blue, is based on the real-life story of Wisconsin couple Mike and Claire Sardina. Claire, along with her husband Mike, played by Hugh Jackman, find local fame in the 1990s as a Neil Diamond tribute band. Their lives are tinged with joy and tragedy, and I have to admit, a sobbed bucket when I watched it.

When Kate came into the Woman's Hour studio, she told me, more about the real life Mike and Claire. They were both impersonators. They were both, like, worked in the sort of circuit of impersonators. And she was a Patsy Klein. My character, Claire, was a Patsy Klein impersonator. And he was multiple different artists. And they fell in love and started this Neil Diamond tribute band.

And it became a sensation. It was huge. Lightning and thunder. Lightning and thunder, yeah. He was lightning. And then when she came on board, He wanted her to be Thunder. And they were so committed to this band that they were creating that people just fell in love with them.

They fell in love with their commitment. They fell in love with their love for Neil Diamond and music. And Neil Diamond's music is obviously such a fun experience for people to have. And they just became a big sensation in Milwaukee. Why did you want to play the part of Claire? Why did you say yes to this? Oh, any actors would have been lucky to play this part. I mean, Claire's life, all of this being true, which is almost unimaginable when you see the movie how wild their life is.

Yeah. We can't give too many spoilers away, but a lot happens. Yeah, and it's almost unbelievable. And yet it's all true. Were you a Neil Diamond fan before the film? And are you now? I was a Neil Diamond enthusiast in the sense that I loved Sweet Caroline and it was like, you know, anyone who sings that in karaoke, you know it. But I didn't know anything about Neil Diamond's catalogue.

A great discovery. Oh, it's prolific. I got to sing some of them that I never had heard before, like Suleiman and, yeah. Beautiful. I'm the same. I had no idea of the catalogue and actually went in with a bit of trepidation. Will I like the music?

Stunning. And actually the way the songs have been sung and the places they've been put in the film are just really genius. I've been here before. I've never heard that song. the song I sing towards the end of the film. Yeah. So there's real chemistry

and you're singing with Hugh Jackman. And you have a beautiful voice. Really beautiful. Not the first time you've acted in a musical. You acted in music, co-written and directed by Sia. Sia was a huge part of opening my throat chakra and giving me confidence as a singer.

I was so fearful of like sharing my voice in multiple ways like writing music. I've been writing music my whole life and opening this part. I was always so timid and afraid to do it. And there's been a lot of people along the way who were really wanted me to get in the studio, wanted me to be singing more. I don't know what it was that was holding me back until I got a little bit older.

And then working with Sia and her musicality, her writing, and her songs, which are big, you know, you have to really be a very confident singer to really get her songs right. And she just gave me so much confidence. She had so much belief in me. And I just, she really, like, unlocked it. Is it significant that it was a woman who did that? Yes, absolutely. Like, 100,000% for me, yes.

I think people will be surprised to hear you say that you, there was something holding you back. Because you can obviously sing. I bet there's people who've told you this your whole life. And you knew on some level yourself that you can sing. Well, and I had been singing. You know, I sang in nine. I sang in glee. And it's not like my voice.

I wasn't able to access certain parts of my voice. It was like the whole embodiment of myself and the belief in myself as a singer. So once you felt the belief and you fully embraced it and the throat, chakras, it just flew open. Yeah. I'm just thinking about women listening who will full well, me included,

we all have our thing, know the thing that we want to release but something is holding us back. Give us some advice. It's so different for everybody. I think the thing is, is that it comes at the right time. I think the only advice I would give is to be patient with yourself. I think sometimes we're fighting so hard to make something happen, you know, and maybe sometimes

you just need to be patient and be okay with it. You're not there yet, you know? And I have that with music. Some people go, what took you so long? And I'm like, life. Like, this is exactly where I'm supposed to be and why I'm here now is because everything that I was afraid of, and all of the people along the way that empowered me, Sia being one of the biggest ones, helped me be here and, like, open this up for me.

And I remember hearing a woman talk about not liking the word empowerment because it means that someone else has to show your power. I thought that was a really interesting thing. I thought about it a lot. I love provocative statements. I'm thinking about it now. And as I thought about it, and I'm all down. I'm down for everybody's point of view.

Right. But like, I don't know where I would be without other women empowering me. I needed it. Maybe some women don't, but I did. And in many ways, whether it be from my mother or from my girlfriends or from colleagues, sometimes you do need a little bit of that push. It doesn't mean your power doesn't exist. It means it just helps you find it, you know, and access it. I bet your words are doing that for someone right now. It's a very beautiful film, and ultimately it's about the hardworking every person and life and struggle and the ups and downs. Ultimately, it's about love. And even saying this sentence is like, oh. And I just thought about when I was watching it, I thought, what I wonder what gets Kate through her toughest times? Like when you've really hit those moments in life, what's got you through them? I mean, there's the, it's always my support system.

It sounds cliche and ridiculous, but it really is. It's the people in my life. It's my girlfriends. It's my mom. When you have kids, you do everything to be there for your kids. You try to power through anything to show up for them. But sometimes, you know, it's funny. Even with your kids, like it takes a girlfriend or someone that really, like your support system for you to show up even sometimes for your kids in the right way. And that's what gets me through. But honestly, and this is one of the big connections with me with this movie, music. Music is my medicine, yeah. Yeah, I don't know what I would do with that. Like, music has saved my life over and over and over again. I think that line is in the film. Music is Claire's medicine as well. Yeah.

I have to talk about your mom and dad, Kurt Russell and Goldie Horn, because I do have, like, a list of my favorite Hollywood couples. Your parents, right at the top. Oh, they're the best. Tell me more. My mom turned 80 this year. And so it's been an amazing celebration of mom this year because... How is Goldie Horn 80? How is she 80?

That's incredible. That's exactly what she said to me. It's crazy. It's a big number. I can't believe it. And she's just amazing. I mean, she's so active and great. She's doing so great.

She's so beautiful. And, you know, I feel very lucky. Their love story is unbelievable. And also very, very connected to this movie. You know, I had Kurt. He took us on as kids when we were very young and raised us. And there's a moment in this movie where she calls Hugh Jackman's character, Mike Papa. And when I was a kid, Kurt was in our life so much that we didn't want to call him Kurt.

It felt weird. And so we decided to go through this process to figuring out what we were going to call him. And it's Paa. So Kurt's always been pa to everybody, but that was a man who can take on someone else's kids and do it and raise them like their own is one of the most beautiful things to be able to have. So he's one of my heroes. And my mom and them, you know, they've been through it all. They've been through everything.

And they choose each other almost every day. And that's it. Almost every day. Yes. That's all right. 40 plus years later it's working for them for sure um we will be for our christmas special talking about christmas rituals do you have are you a christmassy person big i love christmas it's my favorite i love it so much my christmas decorations are already up since when how long i'm in a name drop

who i'm trying to think of who i think it was gwenith paltrow gwenith my one of my really really close beautiful friends who's the best and everything she does is perfect was like no you can't You can't put your Christmas decorations up so early. And I was like, I have to. Give me a date. Like, November 1st. I mean, I want them up immediately. I'd have them up half the year.

If it was up to me, I'd be like, I just want, it makes me so happy. Who's going to be there, Christmas Day? Is it a big family? It's the whole family. We're a big family. There's four kids between my mom and my dad. And then between all of us, there's eight. Matching pajamas.

Matching pajamas. The truth is, it's definitely not. Not relaxing, but it is filled with fun and chaos and memories, and it's the best. Kate Hudson and Song-sung Blue is in cinemas from the 1st of January. Still to come on the program, how to find your confidence doing DIY. And remember, you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day. If you can't join us live at 10 a.m. during the week, just subscribe to the daily podcast. It's free via BBC Sounds.

Now, on Tuesday's program, we celebrated the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth. Austin is a master of exploring themes of love, marriage, class and money, with legendary heroines, sharp social commentary, and a generous dose of humour. Nula was joined by Dr Zoe McGee, whose new book, Courting Disaster, explores the theme of sexual consent through the lens of classic novels, including Jane Austen's works, and Jill Hornby, who's president of the UK Jane Austen Society. She's been so inspired by Jane Austen

that her best-selling novel, Mr Austin, follows the life of Jane Austen's sister, the very important Cassandra, and her most recent novel The Elopement is also based on the lives of the extended Austin family. So where did all this begin for Jane? She was the seventh of eight children. Her parents were kind of the perfect genetic concoction

to create somebody like Jane. Her father was a brilliant scholar, a poor orphan who'd been paid by an accident, uncle to go to school, went to Oxford, became a really distinguished scholar. His wife was obviously not educated on account of having been born a woman, but she had what she herself called a good sprack wit and was a very natural writer. I mean, even in her busy household with eight children and cow to milk and parishioners to look after, she would write her recipes in rhyme and, you know, endlessly write poems for no reason whatsoever. So I think

She was a very sort of natural writer. There was six boys and two girls. Jane came seventh. Cassandra was older by three years and was thrilled to get a sister at last in this great big sea of boys. And it looks like Jane adored her back throughout her life,

such a massive presence that was there in her creativity and her day-to-day life. So how would you describe the social climate, of early 19th century England for women? I mean, it was, there have been like quite a big period of unrest globally. We had the American War of Independence. We've had the revolution in France. There've been all sorts of kind of tensions with Ireland.

And women in that time were, and growing, living through this change. And with a lot of the men being off fighting and not necessarily coming back. And also in a time where, they weren't necessarily given a lot of the freedoms to explore other options for themselves, especially if you were in that more genteel class where, like Jane, it's not really the done thing to have a job, to work, to kind of do much with your life. When you come from a certain social class, that is quite comfortable.

Yes, exactly. If you're less comfortable, you are a bit busy. Yes, you're out and you're working for those more wealthy families. You have written a book about consent in the Regency era, which is fascinating, because we often hear about the proposals to get married, for example. But what would a woman be consenting to if, in fact, she accepted a marriage proposal? It's something that basically tyranny is sort of how some other philosophers talked about it. When you got married, you handed over sexual consent to your husband at the point of marriage. And legally, you couldn't retract that at any point from the... then. It also would give him ownership over any children you might have and kind of control over

your finances more broadly. You wouldn't have a legal existence. So if you ever wanted to take a case to court, you'd need your husband to take it for you. It very much kind of took over your legal identity as an individual. But isn't it so interesting that, you know, 250 years after her birth, consent is so much part of the conversations right now, as such a part of I think it's something that's never really gone away. It's something that people have been talking about as long as they've had a platform to talk about. But I think we tend to think about like Austin's time as being less focused on that because the 18th century loves its euphemisms. It loves its double speak. And I think now we're, you know, we're in a phase where

we're having that conversation more openly again, which is great and important. What was considered a good match? Anyone economically superior to you or with a title? that was potentially better than yours. You kind of want to marry nobility and money as much as possible. Marry up, I put that in... Marry up if you can, yes. But Jane did not get married, Zoe. No.

Why? I think something she really advocates for in a lot of her books and in a lot of her letters to her various kind of nieces is not settling for someone who isn't going to improve your life. She doesn't, I think, want to give up the independence that she does have. and it's not a small thing to kind of hand over that much control over yourself. I think all of her heroines very much look for something that improves their own life, both personally and economically.

And how do you see that, Jill, Jane's reasons for not getting married? Well, she never had a decent offer. I think that is very important. It was a flirtation when she was 17. There's a rumor that there was a gentleman by the seaside, but it's no more than sort of, I think it's family apocry. and then there was a proposal but again that comes that comes to us from a very unreliable sister-in-law who always had her own reasons for giving stories about Jane so the thing is she wasn't particularly attractive

she was slightly cursed with a superior intelligence which did not make her very marriageable she could see through people the minute she saw them and no man particularly wanted a woman who could see through him all the time and she didn't have a penny to her name. And, you know, so it's simply... Putting all that together. Putting that together, it wasn't going to happen. But also, to put it in context, because all of her novels end at the altar,

we think that that was the destiny for every woman, actually fewer than 40% probably of women got married in those days. Her books have been very distorting for us. But of course, she died so young at just 41 in 1870. Who knows whether they might have changed, I wonder, as life went on. You have described Jill Jane Living in a spinster cluster, which I just love that term, towards the end of her life. What is a spinster cluster exactly?

Is it as fun as it sounds? Well, I think it depends who the spinsters are. I think that's crucial. She was very lucky in her spinsters. She was with Cassandra, her beloved sister, Martha, her beloved best friend and her mother. but, you know, into each life some rain must fall. The spinster cluster was a natural kind of,

it came out of the fact that there were so many single women and so many poor women. As Jane has said, the argument for marriage, single women have the most dreadful propensity for being poor. If there were four women and they all had a pittance, if they all put their pittance in the same pot, they could have a house and they could share the duties. And if they were companionable people,

What happened? And for Jane, I think it was utopia. She was able to write. Jill Hornby and Dr Zoe McGee. And if you missed the program celebrating Jane Austen, go to BBC Sounds and search for the 16th of December. Now, do you love DIY or loathe it? According to a survey, nearly half of young women said they were confident in painting and decorating

compared to just 28% of young men. The stats are from the motoring and cycling firm Halford's, who said its study revealed a reversal from previous generations. Caroline Henn is the founder of Be Practical DIY in Bristol. She runs courses aimed at making DIY accessible. And Vicki Lee is known online as the Carpenter's daughter, a DIY home improvement blogger and YouTuber. Was she surprised by the figures? I'm really not because so many people now are, well, so many women are creating content on social media.

And there's so many easy to digest acts on Instagram where also brands are hopping onto that trend as well. where if you go, for example, on B&Q's page, which with content creators, it's mostly women. And it's really empowering seeing other women doing DIY. For you, what's the favourite DIY job? I would say just seeing big transformations like tiling and kitchen, building decking, installing gravel driveways or patios. I hate corking.

And I'm not a big fan of painting and decorating unless I see colour changes pop. Well, let me bring in Caroline. Good to have you with us as well, Carolyn. How do you see it when it comes to gender? Yeah, well, most of my customers are women. About 90% of my customers are women. And the men that come are men who are brave enough to admit they don't know how to do DIY because society expects them to be able to do it, I think. That's funny, isn't it? And what sort of jobs do they want to learn? Just give us an idea. Yeah, I think most people, they want to know how to use a drill. Most people are terrified of using a drill. and that's the first thing that they want to learn. So that's probably the first thing that I teach them, really, because I think if you feel confident using a drill,

then everything else starts becoming so much more doable. And it doesn't take a lot to learn to use a drill. What about that figure that I mentioned at the top, the younger women, you know, half of them confident in painting and decorating compared to the 28% of young men? I'm fascinated by what you say. Some men feel they're expected to know how to do it without actually learning any skills.

I mean, it doesn't surprise me, and I think the reasons that Vicky said is that, you know, social media is making practical stuff so much more accessible to people. And I think younger women are more likely to watch it than older women. That's where they get their confidence from. But I think sometimes some of the videos show perfection. And when it doesn't quite go according to plan, when you tackle the job on your own at home, that can not confidence, which is a bit frustrating for people. A lot of people rent these days, so they don't actually get the opportunity to. to try stuff out because they can't touch the house that they're renting. So until they own their own home, they don't get a chance.

And then when they own their own home, it's terrifying because suddenly it's all their responsibility and they don't really know where to start, which is where I come in, really. I run a service called DIY assist. So I actually go and help people in their homes as well. So I go and teach them DIY in their own homes. Now, what about, I'm just thinking, Vicky, do you show always those parts as well? when it doesn't go right? Because I think that does put a lot of people off.

They're like, oh, if I put it up wrong or it's not level or I don't know whether it's secure enough or I'm worried about blowing something. Absolutely. But I've always done that for YouTube because you've got time. You don't have, if you want a video to do really well on Instagram, for example, if you want to do one within like 15 seconds, I don't always show those bits, but I always say

go to the YouTube video to see everything. So I suppose it is a bit of an illusion. If you break it down into like four parts, then you've got time. And you would absolutely create a lot of engagement. I think that's where people don't realize that showing the real bits of life, they actually make people feel more human and you're more likely to be trusted as well. If somebody was starting out, where would you say? Caroline says the drill, that's great skills to have most definitely.

What do you think you might add? I would say really absolute basics like filling walls, putting up a shelf, starting small, the worst thing you can do is doing too much too soon because it can hurt emotionally if something goes wrong. If you start small, you slowly add your skills and it creates a compound effect. You'll get hooked on the big transformations, just tiling a kitchen. I know it sounds scary, but if you tiled a kitchen and it looked horrendous before, it can look absolutely amazing by the time it's finished

and you'll forget how bad it looked before. Lots of messages coming in. I used to teach teenagers basic DIY. The young men and boys always claim to know everything. So it was always girls, sad that the boys were embarrassed. They felt that being a man meant they had to pretend to know. Here's another. My mother, born 1923, always did all of our decorating,

says Carolyn, wallpapering and painting. and my sister and myself have done the same. Here's another lady. I'm 74 and a half. And I have a cupboard full of power tools, rollers, chisels, screwdrivers, case full of different screws, nail sizes, and I have never been afraid of doing my own DIY. And that doesn't even stop today.

If you can knit or sew, it is an easy step, says Karen. Caroline, you are nodding your head. Yeah, yeah. If you can use a sewing machine, you can use a jigsaw. Anyone who comes on my door who learns to use a jigsaw, if they've done sewing on a sewing machine, they're so much better at it than anyone else. Caroline Hen and Vicky Lee.

Think Christmas and one song springs to mind. Slade's Merry Christmas, everybody. That's because it wasn't Slade. It was Sladey, an all-female tribute band keeping the glam rock sound alive. These female tribute bands are flipping the script. Women stepping into the spotlight to perform iconic hits from legendary male bands

with power, style and attitude. Well, Nula spoke to Gobby Holder from Slady, otherwise known as Danny Cox, and Lolo Wood, who's in the band The Fallen Women, who pay tribute to the fall, and singer with your nuns, a tribute to 1960s band, The Monks.

For Gobby, it must be a very busy time of year. Oh, it's being absolutely crazy. I mean, it's the most lucrative time of the year. And, okay, lucrative, that is definitely one reason why you might create a tribute band to Slade. But what was the reason? No, the reason being we, me and my friend, well, she was my bassist in crime.

Is she still your friend? Yes. Wendy Solomon, she plays Gemley, who is Jim Lee in Slade. And we just wanted to have a little bit of fun. We were both musicians at the time doing our own stuff. But we wanted to do something for a laugh, a little bit of fun, to go down the pub and get on stage, do a couple of numbers, and go, ha, ha, ha, we're Sladey, we're the female Slade.

And our first show that we played, people were coming from all over, Germany, Ireland, just to come and see us play a pub in South End. So, and then we just became part of this. And for me, who's a massive Slade fan, to sort of be adopted by a whole Slade fan community. It's been absolutely amazing. So you're staying close to the original sound and style?

Yes, more energy, I think. as well. So I feel like it's more of an energy rather than a colour by numbers, Slade. That's a lot of energy. Yeah, if you can imagine Slade reborn or Slade in another dimension

where they were all women, that's kind of what we're going for. Sladey. Who came up with that? Me. It's genius. Let me bring in Lolo. So you play keyboards in The Fallen Women and Singer, as I mentioned, in Ye,

That's right, yeah. But you also set up the all-female tribute to Juran-Juran called Joanne Joanne. That's true, yes. I love this. I mean, I even just love the names before we even get to the music. But if you played keyboards for Joanne Joanne, Lolo, were you a fan of Nick Rose? Were you trying to channel him? Oh, absolutely.

No, he was my favourite member. And the reason I didn't choose to be the singer in Jouan Jouin is because I'd be too jealous of whoever got to be Nick Rhodes. Also, Nick Rhodes, a man known for wonderful makeup. Indeed, yeah. And that's, you know, that was part of the reason I wanted to do as well. So let's talk a little bit about your tribute bands. The Fallen Women, what's happening with them? You have your, it's a tribute to the fall.

Yes. Give me a little flavor of what people could expect. Now, it's a tribute to the fall played by women, well, non-men, because we do have a couple of non-binary members as well. But the twist is that everyone in the audience can be Markey Smith, the singer of the fall, for one song. So we have, sometimes we get famous people like Sharon Hogan and Stuart Lee coming up to do songs. And sometimes it's just random people from the audience. Did I see Maxine Peak?

Yes. Yes, she did the song with us as well. Yeah, yeah. But how does that happen? Well, when we find out that somebody is a fall fan, I have to confess that we do stuff. talk them a little bit and ask them if they want to do a song with us. Yes, yes, it does. And how would you describe Marky Smith's style what it was? It's very difficult to describe. It's kind of a half singing, half talking style. So you don't actually need to be able to sing in pitch in order to channel

Marky Smith. I mean, he could sing. There's one song called Edinburgh Man, which shows that he could actually sing, but he chose to just have this very idiosyncratic vocal most of the time. Which is really fun to do. Exactly. The monks I'd never heard of. Right. Well, I got into the monks through the fall, actually, and I think most people my age had

because the fall covered a couple of their songs. They were American GIs stationed in Germany in the 1960s. They were the anti-Beatles, basically. They were on the same Hamburg circuit as the Beatles. But they were singing, I hate you with a passion baby instead of, she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah. And for that, what costumes do you have then for the monks?

Well, I do dress as, the monks did dress as monks and shaved tonsures into their heads. I looked at some photographs this morning, I have to say, and it was surprising. Yeah. So I do wear a nun's habit. My mum was an actual nun. Hang on a second.

My mum was a daughter of charity of St Vincent de Paul in Dullery and then in France. So, yeah, I'm channeling my mum's pre-marriage. What was there a habit in the wardrobe somewhere? There wasn't, though, unfortunately. I have to go to Halloween shop to get mine. But our banjo player did actually shave a tonsure into her head for one of the gigs, but it kind of grew back a bit weird, so she didn't do it again.

That is, I mean, that is commitment to the cause. Who is coming to your gigs, Gobby? Danny. when we first started it was predominantly men and predominantly men it was and we were playing for a long time people's 60th birthday parties but now it's families it's become like a family event people bringing their teenagers along there's so much nicer now to see a balance of women in the audience and also it's a really good chance for people to get dressed and a good excuse to glitter and glam up and yeah even if you're not really a Slade fan lots of people come

along to hear the Slade hits or also the novelty around Christmas as well Christmas parties Christmas nights out and then people are genuinely quite surprised by actually how good Slade were for you know not just being a Christmas band what about for you Lolo the audience and I wouldn't even say it's predominantly men as much as the actual fall gigs used to be I'd say it's a mixture to. And again, people who aren't even particularly a fan of the bands we cover end up at our gigs as well.

When we were thinking about this, they are obviously all male bands that you are a tribute to. Well, the fall did have various female members over the years. That came true. Yeah. Like, is that part of it

that it's kind of stepping into a very male space? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Lola? Yeah. I went to see Dave Hill's Slade and it was at the time Dave Hill and Don Powell on drums and I just stood there and I thought well initially what had happened they were looking for a lead singer and I applied for it and I never got anything back

and I thought actually I can just do this I can do a female slave that's kind of like what I thought I'd do so it wasn't really like when I'm going to take on a bloke's job it was more like I can do this as well Gobby Holder otherwise known as Danny Cox there and Lolo Wood That's it from me, but do join us on Monday.

As many of us prepare to open our doors to friends and family, we'll be discussing the psychology of hosting with Philippa Perry, including how to enjoy hosting more, especially if it stresses you out. That's on Monday at 10 a.m. Hello, I'm Nula McGarverin, and I want to tell you about a BBC podcast called Send in the Spotlight. The number of children with special educational needs is increasing. Too many parents are having to fight to get those needs met.

and councils are spending money that they do not have. Against a backdrop of government reform, I bring together families, teachers, experts and decision makers to reimagine the system. Listen to Send in the Spotlight on BBC Sounds.