Let's hear it for the bed jacket! (with Groove Armada)

0:00Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most advanced heart rate sensing in an Apple Watch. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, could tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. For general wellness purposes only, not intended for clinical use or to detect, diagnose, monitor or treat medical conditions. How do we truly navigate life's hardest moments? I'm Julia Samuel, psychotherapist and best-selling author.

0:37In my podcast, Therapy Works, I open the therapy room for candid, insightful conversations with people known and unknown. Discover what my guests have learnt and failed to learn about resilience and human connection. Listen to Therapy Works today, wherever you get your podcasts.

1:23a little bit more alacrity, but it's just been a slightly kind of bumpy ride over the summer. So we have got round to it, and the remarkable Laura Hackett joins us to discuss Jumper Lahiri's The Interpreter of Maladies, our first adventure into the world of short stories. And I think we have... It's okay to think that we have done it, and Laura was brilliant. She was superb. She is superb. Yeah, yeah. Right, let's talk about your emails, which are many and varied. And I don't know why, but for some reason, a lot of you really made me laugh today. So we can't always include all the emails, obviously, but we do continue to love reading them.

2:07Isn't that true? Well, it is. And also, sometimes you'll start reading an email. and I mean, maybe we should record the noises made on first reading some emails because I do laugh out loud a lot and also sometimes have very sharp intakes of breath and sometimes find myself, I do read in bed at 6.30 in the morning just letting out a bit of an explosive along the lines of what? I know, and just to think of Fi in her bed jacket reading your correspondence. Well, I'm in my sparky 90, yep, when the boyfriend's not around. We're creating my own crackles. Let's hear it for the bed jacket. Is it still out there?

2:53Who knows? I don't know. So, do you know what? The bed jacket belongs in that department that very sadly doesn't exist anymore because the department's door has slightly changed, hasn't it? Or just disappeared from view. But sleepwear now is ever so sexy and then there'll be just one rack of elasticated flannelette stuff kind of pushed towards the emergency exit. I suppose if I'm honest, does anybody... I mean, I just wear a T-shirt. If I want to wear something, I just wear a T-shirt. I don't really have formal bedwear anymore. No, neither do I. I just wear pants, actually. That's a nice gesture.

3:32Can I just say, Karen made me release a small Oh My God, expetive this morning. So here we go. Prepare yourselves, everybody. A couple of weeks ago, Fee talked about the awful process for retrieving her lost property. First of all, did she get her bag back? I do hope so. No, I didn't. But it's about to go into perspective, everybody. Here we go. I thought you would enjoy my story of lost property and British Rail back in 1979. I was going on my last ever family summer holiday to Italy with my parents and brother before I left school. We took the sleeper train to London and then flew out to Florence, Mum and I shared a cabin on the sleeper with me on the top bunk.

4:12All was well until we were sitting on the plane to Florence when Mum asked, where is your hand? Yes. What? Thank you. Honestly, Karen, it was so remarkable. I have an upper limb difference and in those days I wore a prosthetic hand which was cosmetic rather than being functional. As a result, I didn't wear it much if I could help it. Well, I'd left my prosthesis on the shelf above my bed on the sleeper. I swear this wasn't deliberate and I can only apologise to the poor cleaner who made the discovery two weeks later we were on our way home having had a fantastic holiday with no need for a cosmetic sleeve filler at any point Dad and I went to the lost property office at Euston Station we explained to the man on the desk that I'd left my prosthesis on the train with details of dates and times the man didn't react at all not a flicker he simply said describe it my dad had a think and said right and white this seemed to be enough detail three months later my hand three months yes i know my hand arrived back at our local railway station ready for collection it was completely filthy but in one piece i have to wonder what other inappropriate pieces of lost luggage the man on the desk had seen as he was completely unmoved or even amused by our story uh thank you for a fantastic podcast i've been with you since the start of the fortunately pod i haven't missed an episode Well, Karen, it's so lovely to have you on board.

5:37I mean, when I read that this morning, I just thought, OK, well, I say goodbye to my yellow wash bag. I'm never going to see that again. But just your dad in the moment saying right and white. Oh, that's proper dad speak, that is. But the guy just not batting an eyelid. Not batting an eyelid. Right, fine, yeah. I am still intrigued by why it took three months. I mean, I'm just about old enough to remember British Rail, but all I can really remember about it, because I wasn't a consumer necessarily. I was far too young, but it was properly shit. Everything about British Rail was terrible. I think the food was widely mocked.

6:14I think the trains were... But there'll be people out there who say, no, absolutely not. So take me on if I'm completely wrong about British Rail. Do you know what? That's not what I took from the story and examination of the state of Britain's railway network. In the 70s. Yes, post-privatisation. But, I mean, you can go there if you want to. Three months with the... Why did they... Surely they could have... It can't have been... There just can't have been that many hands. Well, I think the situation might be a bit worse now because I think it maybe is a cost-cutting exercise on behalf of the privatised rail companies to not really staff any lost luggage and all of that kind of stuff.

6:50But, Karen, the way you tell your story, absolutely superb. And it is delightful to know that you've been with us from the beginning. Thank you. You deserve something for that as well. You deserve a lot. Some sort of therapy, I would imagine. Alison in Nottingham has tried a massage chair that might be suitable for us in a hotel in Osaka. It was a game changer, she says. I'm about five foot four, so a bit taller than you, but the massage-y bits were perfectly placed as I sipped a Sapporo and gazed out over the cityscape below. My partner, six foot, couldn't get on with it at all. Perhaps a bit far to go for a DIY massage, but if you're ever in the land of the rising sun, give it a go.

7:31Alison, thank you. I mean, the massage chair down at the pedicurist continues to profoundly irritate and alarm me. So I always say a firm no when it's offered. Yeah, I think I'm going to follow suit next time around. When I went to the hairdresser last week, it actually made me feel a bit peculiar. It was there was just something a bit kind of a little bit travel sick about it. There's just a lot going on in a confined space yeah and i didn't i didn't like the lack of control i didn't know when it had stopped because then you know it does that kind of bit for a while where it just goes somewhere near your kidneys yeah and you think oh thank god for that that's over and then it starts up again oh god love it uh i can't remember now it's appalling on me that i can't have you seen the odyssey yes yes yes well yes thank you our correspondent i really sorry, I'm not sure I know how to pronounce this.

8:28Have you seen Nulleg's email? Well, I think Nulleg has been in touch with us before and given a handy pronunciation guide. Okay. So I'm going to go just firmly and here it is, Nulleg. Okay. Thank you very much for the email. She saw the Odyssey last night and she says, well, she could appreciate it's well made. She didn't like it. I thought it was boring watching all these men kill and be killed and then just journey on. It was also grey and brown in tone. I thought it was quite depressing. I must be a complete philistine as all the reviews are so positive but I just thought I'd share in case there are others out there like me who might be feeling rather alone.

9:05Did anyone on screen even mention the name of Anne Hathaway's character Penelope? If they did I missed it. I don't know. She seemed to be constantly described in relation to the men around her which I realise is the point but even her husband just referred to her as my love and my wife etc at times it reminded me of monty python and the holy grail well i mean odysseus had been away a while maybe he'd forgotten maybe he just couldn't quite place her i'm sure i know her oh yeah i love maybe he was lingering in british rail lost property in the 1970s who knows um i really must make the effort to see it i really must yes must i i don't know well i mean And I don't think you have to.

9:48And it's one of those weird things, isn't it? Do you remember when Barbie was out at the same time as Oppenheimer? Yeah. And everybody was doing, what do they call it? Barbenheimer. Barbenheimer. Where, you know, they were seeing both shows in one day. There was so much hype around it, Jane. I just thought, no, I'm not going to go and see Oppenheimer. I don't want to see it. I mean, it's just, it's quite depressing territory. Well, it doesn't get much more depressing. Not really. And we waited quite a long time and went to see Barbie right at the end. Last opportunity. So, no, I think sometimes when there's a huge amount of hype about a film, it's quite natural to think, oh, God, do I have to join in?

10:23Bathwater. Yes. Angela has alerted us to a valve that diverts bathwater down from the downpipe to use as a pipe for the garden. She says, I've got mine set up, diverted into a water butt. Now, this is because there are genuine water shortages now in much of England and Wales. And I'm sort of, we had to have a WhatsApp message yesterday, didn't we, from a man called Neil. He sounded like a lovely guy. This is a listener to the Times radio programme, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4. Well, worth a listen. And Neil was just saying, look, I'm having a great summer. This is wonderful. And I think we do have to bear in mind that for some people, this has been a beautiful time.

11:04If you're not looking after anybody, if you're... If you're not commuting. If you're not commuting, if you're in good health, if you're not a farmer, Any more people I need to involve? Yeah, if you live in a house where you can get a breeze. All of that. This has been a glorious summer and I suspect many people might well look back on 2026 as a truly special time. But there is a huge but here. This is not normal. It's properly weird. And there are going to be real problems for the harvest. Anyway, Angela says, this valve, I found it online, it's a valve that diverts bathwater from the dam pipe.

11:40You can use it as a hose for the garden or, as I have, I've set it up being diverted into a water butt. Also, if you have a bath in Epsom salts, it's good for you and for the garden and it stops the water butt foaming up. Angela, thank you. Clever. Yeah. You like a bubble bath, though, don't you? Well, no, do you know, I've actually grown up now. I've left matey behind and I've moved on to all those post-workout salts, which is a bit rich, considering the workout is the optional bit. The workout is turning the taps on. Turning the taps on and walking upstairs to the bathroom. So do you think that they make a difference?

12:16Because they are quite a big thing, aren't they? And especially the magnesium salts. They are sold and advertised as having so many properties. Properties, yeah. I mean, I'm not sure about the properties. I read an alarming article the other day that said that the bath will soon be a thing of the past completely and that lots of new builds don't have a bath. Young people don't want baths. I was really quite upset on behalf of the Bath loving community just not the same, I know you're only lying in your own rubbish but call me what you like I love it I wouldn't miss it really? Everybody's different aren't they I do increasingly like quite a fastidious shower I do, I do I tell you what I do hope comes back and I know we've touched on this before and not in its collapsible form, but the bidet.

13:10So I think if you're going to take your bath out, put a bidet in, then everybody's happy. What a name for a nightclub. This is from Ella in Shore and Bysea. It's a very brief one. All the talk of the G-Spot drink conjured up memories of going to the G-Spot nightclub in Hastings in the early 2000s, quite the night out. Cages and foam parties. Oh, God. Ella says those were the days. I believe it's been converted into flats now, probably for the best. Excellent. Have you ever been to a club with cages and phone parties? I haven't been to a nightclub since, quite possibly since I was at university, Fee.

13:49Oh, my God, Jane. I don't think I have. Have you? Oh, no, you were quite frisky, weren't you? No, I wasn't quite frisky. And actually, my enjoyment of the London nightclub scene in the 1990s was massively hampered by the fact that I was doing a breakfast show. And also, I was working really hard. I just didn't have the time or the stamina to... You could have come straight from the club into work. Well, we tried that. Yeah, we tried that. That didn't really work. Again. But I've not been a regular nightclub goer at any point in my life, actually, but I really, really love knowing that they're there.

14:26And sometimes, occasionally, when I've gone to them, I just think, oh, my God, this is just heaven. Because losing... It wasn't heaven. No, it wasn't. No, it was another club. It was fabric. there's something there's something so wonderful about just completely uh losing your inhibitions on a dance floor i think it's one of the great great places to go in your life and in your head so uh i'm a firm believer in everybody's right to go to a nightclub they are closing all over the country i think that is really sad i bet eve's got thoughts about clubs bring her in Here she comes. Youth correspondent.

15:02I am not much of a traditional clubber like that. I feel like not many people my age go to nightclubs. They go to events where DJs are headlining. Yeah. Which brings in our... Which beautifully, beautifully... What a link. You're about to hear in probably about 10 minutes' time from Groove Armada, who've got a special over-50s night coming up in October. But are your generation not going to clubs because the clubs are closing or because... You see, when we used to go to a club overnight, it was almost the days before the really superstar rock DJ. So you wouldn't have a club advertising who was DJing.

15:54It wouldn't be the big thing on the poster, but it is the thing, isn't it? so this is so and so's club night at whatever yeah and it was just the other way around and and also studio three in canterbury it didn't advertise its dc by name at all shoosh in brighton was not doing that either i think i clubbed myself out at the age of 18 when i first got my id and now i don't really do that sort of clubbing i i view it as um a bit of a misogynistic setting really as well oh interesting because of dave double decks in control well yeah and it's a lot of like boys who are paying lots of money to have tables that's my perception i'm sure people go and have lovely times whereas the events with the djs feels more like people are there to go and see an act or a musician as opposed to just pulling girls and being a bit slimy yeah but also i doubt whether you went to the same kind of nightclubs that Jane and I experienced in our, or were available to experience.

16:58Did you go to Shoosh? I didn't go to Shoosh. But in every town, there would be a nightclub that just, I mean, it played the kind of top 10 hits, didn't it? And maybe a little bit of 1970s disco, but it wasn't defined, it wasn't really defined by its music. So you could be on the dance floor, you know, really moving and shaking to something by calling the gang or imagination. I was quite fond of body talk. What was the one where you sat down and rode? Body talk. You got the motion. Oops. No. Oh, God, what was the one where you rode? Bloody hell. Oh. I can sing it. You'd like to know, if you got the motion.

17:40Rock the boat and rock the boat, baby. No, that wasn't the one where we sat and rode. Yeah. What was it? The Hughes Corporation. Rock the boat. Rock the boat, yeah. Just see if AI's got that far. Yes, just see if it. Let's go to Nella, who says, To Hannah, the gut booster salad in M &S should also be called the gut blaster. It has a similar effect to Hannah's special salad that she made, which is called... Shit yourself salad. Nella says, The gut booster from M &S is like a spring clean for the alimentary canal, but with a little tub of extraordinarily tasty dressing, which I have managed to recreate.

18:17Well, lucky you, Nella. Is it... I Don't Believe You Want to Get Up and Dance by The Gap Band. Oh, it might have been The Gap Band, yeah. But was it... That title doesn't ring a bell. It doesn't ring a bell at all. No. It is The Gap Band. It's I Don't Believe You Want to Get Up and Dance, brackets oops, widely known as Oops Upside Your Head. Oh, okay. I tell you what, that's one to know for Popmaster. Popmaster. This informed discussion of the musical scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it doesn't bode well for the interview coming up with Groove Armada. Now, you say that you don't know any Groove Armada songs, but you will.

18:54When you hear the montage that Eve is going to lovingly make, you will definitely, definitely know some of them. And the really extraordinary thing is how popular they've remained in your generation, Eve, because you just immediately were straight on it. Yeah. Wonderful. So, Sunday Night TV themes, tiny one in from Sonia. GCSE Maths is many years in the rearview mirror, but I still cannot hear these Sunday night TV themes without going a bit cold about undone homework due on Monday morning. Here we go. Songs of Praise, Antiques Roadshow, Last of the Summerwide. I hate them all. I hated Last of the Summerwide.

19:33I just couldn't see. It's like cobwebs on windows. I just couldn't see. Sorry. And Howard's Way. Well, no, that was good. I loved Howard's Way. I loved Howard's Way. It was super. It was so, so glamorous. It was our Dallas, Sonia. What are you talking about? It said on the Solway Firth, wasn't it? No, it said on the Hamble. Oh, was it? Sorry, it's whatever it was. Vicky says, I've been enjoying the funny dolls' names, especially Big New. I didn't have any exciting dolls' names. Alice and Emma were mine. Oh, come on, do better, Vicky. But my husband's Tesla, I'm embarrassed by having one, asked for a name to be inputted into the app.

20:12Do you know this happened? No, I don't. What was the choice? Well, I'd always said, says Vicky, that if I had a dog, I would name it Bernard Hogan Howell. A former, I think, chief constable of the Met. Yes, that's so bizarre. And I'd call a cat Miss Babs. Unfortunately, I haven't managed to acquire a pet yet, so I have named the car Bernard Hogan Howell. every time the Tesla app on my phone tells me, tells me, Bernard O 'Connor is now at your desired temperature. It makes me smile. That's absolutely brilliant. I didn't know you could do that. Obviously, I don't have a Tesla. No. But extraordinary.

20:56That would keep you perky through the day, wouldn't it? I think I'd call mine Harry Styles just to see that come up on my phone. Harry Styles is waiting for you outside. Yay! And he's at a really good temperature. Well, who was our correspondent there? That was Vicky. Vicky. Well, Vicky, would you like to co-own Miss Babs? Because one of my cats is called Barbara and she's quite often referred to as Miss Babs. Yeah, rightly. And also the fabulous Babra Cadabra. Can we just... Oh, that's good too. You're all a wishy household. The home, of course, still very much available and absolutely good, no, genuinely gorgeous.

21:33Olivia is in Brisbane. And she's popping over to London. She's going to be in London between the 16th and the 21st of August. And she just wants suggestions for a nice, easy day trip from the city. So I'm assuming you mean, Olivia, somewhere you can go there and back from London in a day to see a different slice of British life. I would suggest, because I think you can do this if you get as far as Paddington, which is a major station in the capital, serving the west of England and beyond. um i would go to bath if you haven't got very long and you can easily get to bath and back in a day from london as long as you can get to pannington in the first place which shouldn't be insurmountable especially if not for someone who's traveled all the way from britain you should be able to do it because you just see um there's just a lot to see and it's a beautiful place and it's obviously very different to london yeah i would completely agree it's and also it's quite a good train line that one and you've got nice rolling stock yes you have yes very comfortable what would you suggest uh well i think if you've come from australia then you you know you have got much much nicer beaches than us so i wouldn't head anywhere don't go to a beach no i wouldn't go anywhere so you wouldn't say margate coastal no okay no and i think bath is probably a very good shout i mean obviously there's the alpaca farm just outside swindon oh that's good yes yeah but otherwise Otherwise, yeah, I think Bath would do it.

23:02And also you could wander around Bath without actually having really booked anything to do and you would still feel like you'd really seen something. Yeah, but if you have got a bit of time, you could book yourself into the Roman baths because, I mean, what did the Romans ever do for us? Well, so much. Well, they gave you your buble bath, didn't they? Absolutely. Yeah. Before that, one does wonder what the ancient Britons were up to. Well, they were showering. can we just say a big hello to to wendy from fife who who um was disappointed is disappointed that we're not able to do fringe by the sea and thank you for uh your uh thoughts and your kind sentiments for the predicament that jane finds herself in which is a predicament i know so many of you are in and i should say actually that as we speak on wednesday august the 5th raymond has had something of a revival.

23:55So, I mean, look, it's a difficult time, not least for him, poor soul. But it's just so difficult to predict when somebody is very elderly. And I know lots of people know exactly what we as a family are going through. But look, he's in a safe place and we're hopeful that he's, well, he is, he's comfortable, which is the best you can hope for. And of course, we will try to get to Fringe by the Sea next summer if they'll have us. And if you've got tickets, just keep them because Ruth Davidson with Jan Ravens will be a really, really lovely hour. And actually, you know, Ruth has got so much to say about Scottish politics as well.

24:33So you could have a really, a much more in-depth and intellectual conversation than you and I would have managed. Quite right. Yes, it's just true. It's true. It's brilliant. And it's not as if there isn't anything to say about Scottish politics. No, there's so much. And in fact, only last week they had another great big whammy in the Labour Party. yeah oh yes okay well done good point thank you there's trouble in quite a few of the major scottish political parties and of course there's trouble down south as well yes there's trouble everywhere you look have we yet found out where andy burnham's taking his holiday no we don't know no okay he's just going to get followed isn't he until people find out where it is he's gone and i feel for him and his family on that score because david cameron did used to do and in fact quite a few of the politicians used to do the available photo shoot yeah at the beginning of their holiday on the basis that everybody would then leave them which seems fair enough alone yeah wasn't david cameron once photographed pointing at fish i do remember that yes who hasn't pointed at a fish i mean it's i tell you what that's that's a place you could travel to as well if you had a little bit more time available you could go to cornwall and point at some fish so maybe maybe andy burnham will just go to london's aquarium i mean there's a lot in there i haven't been to that actually oh my goodness it was my kids favorite destination when they were tiny because they've got this incredible um kind of multi-floored tank so you can you know you can see kind of three floors up and they do have sharks and things like that in it we could spend hours watching the fish there hours and hours i'm very grateful very very grateful to that uh and um the hornsey road soft play right did you have a did you have a seat can you get a season ticket to the aquarium oh i don't know no i don't know because we we did get briefly uh season tickets to kew gardens which that's very good well no because that had a kind of uh what somebody once described to me as the middle class wacky warehouse there was a kind of soft play zone there oh i bet that was classier than hornseys there's a lot of bowden little Bowdoin frocks down there on a Sunday morning.

26:47But listen, I was there too, so I don't know why I'm locking it. There are loads and loads of parents and grandparents out doing the childcare at the moment in London. So many grandparents. And props to you. It's a very long summer holiday to fill. One day we've got to tackle this because it is a form of madness. Most parents, both parents have to work these days, especially if you want to pay off a mortgage and stuff like that. And so, you know, I've seen some absolutely exhausted octogenarians doing the swimming lessons and taking kids to the Tower of London and stuff like that. You think, oh, God, good for you.

27:24Good for you. That's a good point. I mean, at the rate my children are progressing, I'll be well into my ninth decade before I'm doing the summer holiday shift if I'm spared.

27:38Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every 5 seconds with the most advanced heart rate sensing in an Apple Watch so your vitals app, now with heart rate variability could tell you when something is off and your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12 for general wellness purposes only not intended for clinical use or to detect, diagnose, monitor or treat medical conditions requires iPhone 11 or later Groove Armada, which in layman's terms consists of Tom Finley and Andy Cato, who formed the electronic music duo in 1995.

28:19Nine studio albums, two Grammy nominations, over 100 million streams on Spotify. Their tunes are now loved by a whole new generation. Tom and Andy have gone on to other careers. Tom is a therapist, Andy a farmer, who specialises in regenerative techniques to keep our soil healthy. But they do still groove and they're putting on a special gig to celebrate 25 years of super styling their mega 90s hit. It's in October at Phonox in South London and it's got a theme of hearing loss. One in five music fans over 50 say that hearing struggles have reduced how often they go to live gigs. Nearly half have experienced some form of tinnitus and over one in 10 find that a night out with loud music on will leave them with temporary hearing loss.

29:04Here's more about the evening from Tom and Andy. Well, yeah, we're involved in this campaign because we wanted to contribute towards hopefully taking some of the stigma that's associated with hearing loss and hearing aids and so on. And so this is a campaign with Specsavers. And the idea is that you can go online, you can do a hearing screener. It takes about three minutes. We both did it. And if you do that, then your name goes into a hat and some names will come out of that virtual hat for a gig that we're doing at a place. It's a wicked club, actually, we've almost had to play for a long time in Brixton called Fonox in October and then after that there'll be other live gigs with other bands.

29:47Okay. Eve and I were discussing this before we started our interview with you and actually complete props to you for the imaginative nature of this as a PR campaign and I suppose we're kind of showing the pants of the workings of interviewing people like you, but it's very rare that we get something that is as well thought through as this. Would you agree? It's probably quite a good thing to be asked to do. Yeah, you're right. It is. I mean, it's also, from my point of view, I struggle with hearing loss myself. I'm wearing hearing aids now as I speak to you. And without these, I don't think this interview would be possible.

30:27I didn't be able to speak, but I would definitely be struggling to hear you. So it appeals on that level. uh appeals because we're the sort of generation they're trying to reach we're we're still raving just like all these people are hopefully still raving and hopefully encouraging people to still do that but i guess the thing for me that really spoke to me was i've had the last couple of years i found myself kind of maybe avoiding situations where there would be a lot of background noise or sort of tuning out of conversations and self-isolating a little bit like not to a chronic degree but i was conscious i was doing it and um and i've had these now for two years i have a kind a side hustle as a therapist as well and i think i started missing quite critical things in sessions as well and that was obviously not good so these have been really transformative for me and uh it is hard like taking the test for the first time is difficult because it's never gonna with me it was quite uh concerning how much how much loss i was having to deal with actually so um but but Since I've done it and been brave enough to do it, wearing these has been utterly transformative for me.

31:32So I'm completely went through with it. And hearing loss is going to be such a huge thing for our generation to deal with and future generations, isn't it? Because actually listening on in-ear headphones, listening at a very high volume, is already proving to have really cost young people a part of their hearing that we probably still manage to maintain so we've just got to talk more about going deaf haven't we i think so i mean i think each generation is going to have its challenges so i remember when i started going clubbing in in leeds there was one place called the warehouse and it was so loud in there um that the the joke was and it was literally we did treat it as a joke that when we rolled out of there at whatever time in the morning and we couldn't hear each other talking to each other it was just funny i remember it now we were just thinking what a laugh that was you know and uh and when we started DJing um either side of the turntables you have your own monitor speakers and these days you can turn them up and turn them down but uh for like I don't know 20 years they were just on 11 and uh you're in the middle of a nightclub it's lasers it's smoke it's sweat on the walls really exciting loud things are just exciting and so we've had all of that and one of the reasons why we're doing this is is to put these things on the radar that weren't on the radar for us but as you say this new generation is living a life in headphones and there's a statistic I can't remember but it's pretty terrifying when you you convert equivalent volume of headphones into as if the same thing was coming from speakers it's a pretty terrifying conversion so so each generation as its challenges, I guess.

33:19Sure. I mean, if somebody had come along when you were in exactly that situation that you're describing in your youth and said, now, in order to preserve your hearing well into your fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth decade, you really should turn it down now. What would your reaction have been? Well, yeah, I would have said no. But if they'd come in and said, here's some hearing protection where it will keep the vibe, but after a quarter of an hour, once you've got used to it, it will keep the vibe, but mean that you're going to leave this club and the thousands of other clubs that I and we have been lucky enough to be in, and you won't have constant tinnitus like I have now, I would definitely have taken it.

34:06So we just need to talk about, there are solutions to all these things. We just, we didn't talk about it then, and hopefully we can talk about it more now. Do you think that we will ever get to a place where people are displaying their hearing aids in the same way that we have got used to displaying our eye protection. We are fine to wear glasses now, aren't we? And in fact, it's a massive industry. The designer glasses industry, quite a few people wear frames when they don't even have anything wrong with their eyes. Can that happen with hearing loss, do you think? Well, I mean, I think it's already happening in a sense.

34:40I mean, so the ones I wear now, they're kind of skin coloured. and because like you're saying most how many people of the sort of all generations now wearing these in-ear pods you know just walking around and having conversations with them constantly so in a sense these just look just the same so i don't feel any sense of stigma i think those ones are just hearing aids you can see that maybe go back over the ear or the larger pieces that's definitely but these ones these modern ones are super discreet you know and so i don't think i'm necessarily going to stop you know painting them or making a big fuss about them but i don't feel any sense of discomfort, like social discomfort, about the fact that I'm wearing them.

35:16And it means I'm able to have plenty of really interesting conversations again, which is fabulous. Absolutely. Let's talk about the tunes then, if that's okay. This night is also marking 25 years since the release of Super Stylin, no G. I mean, it's a great gag if you were fans of Steve Wright in the afternoon. Tell us where you two were when that song was created. you'd met before hadn't you in an attic and not very many people can say that no well yeah there been a lot happened since we met in the attic um in tom's bedroom in cambridge which was full of um uh disco records and um and that smoke not unfamiliar to teenage bedrooms and it was a lot of fun and we moved to london and we started doing parties together and we've made some tunes to promote those parties, one of which was At The River.

36:11And that went on the cover of Music Magazine, it was a big magazine at the time. Zoe Ball played it on the radio and everything went from 0 to 60 pretty quickly. So with the time we were working on super styling, we were already signed up to a major label and we'd have all kinds of mad experiences in the kind of heyday or the last heyday of the old school record industry. Lots of generally, well, no, exclusively men with cigars and gold jewellery and all that stuff. But super styling is an exception to a rule which generally states that the best tunes happen really quickly because that one didn't.

36:46It started in Fabric, the opening of a London nightclub called Fabric, where our MC who we were working with, Mike, first said the word sound of the groove Armada was super styling and even amongst all the chaos, we said to him, remember that? And amazingly, we did. And then we developed the tune and the bass line And for ages, it just kind of rolled around as an interesting kind of underground groover until we moved the bass line to come in where it now comes in and created that moment. And we debuted that version with that moment as Fatboy Slim's warm-up act on Brighton Beach. And suffice to say that since then, it's a tune that's changed our life.

37:23Absolutely. And it's still there, isn't it? I mean, it's still being streamed. It's still being chosen. a whole new generation, love your music. I have to tell you that my 20-year-old son, he's hard to impress when he says, who are you talking to on the radio? Eyes can glaze over, but not when I said that I was talking to you. Tell me how that feels. I mean, it feels fabulous. We just, I mean, it's funny because we've just come off, we're actually hopefully making some sense, but we've just come off the back of five gigs in five days. So we... You're doing very well for men of your age. and the last three shows were all in the uk and the last show was this place called kendall calling up in the north near the lakes kind of thing and uh yeah we played to a crowd i would say about average age like about 20 about your son and uh and they all know super signing and they love it and we play about six different versions of it just to keep everybody happy and it's a great vibe it feels really lovely to be to be be sharing that with people again i think you know sort of streaming companies you know have have issues they need to deal with in terms of getting the right amount of money back to the people that write the songs but in terms of kind of you know songs having longevity and having second third fourth lives and it's great that this music's still out there because i think that that's they've been great for kind of keeping super styling alive and it's amazing like it's uh it's a it's a really wild experience when every time you drop it there's just the same sense of excitement so like annie says when we wrote that song it was the one that sort of changed everything for us you know it changed our lives um much as we've written some other songs that we like too that's probably the one that that that changed everything and it still seems to be doing the business today sure and as you've mentioned so much has changed uh in the last 25 30 years in the music business and do you look back and think that you were young in a golden time?

39:23Or do you think that the same kind of success would have been available to you if you had been starting out now? I think it's just different. You know, what we had to put up with was all of the cliches about, you know, contracts that are unfair for young and naive artists of being pushed around by the cliched, powerful record company executive to do huge promotional tours of uh of the states as they try to turn us into a kind of uh boy band version of britney spears our label partner at the time and all sorts of um uh pushbacks and being kind of sold from one record label to another and on and on it went you know uh however the other side of that coin was these record labels were gatekeepers and once you got through those gates your music was going to get heard because they could get it played and they could get it distributed now it's the it's the reverse there are no gatekeepers which is fantastic to avoid all the stuff that i've just spoke to you about but there's a tsunami wave of new music breaking every single hour so like from my son's perspective he wants to make music he wants to be a dj uh and just finding your way up out of that ocean of tunes is is incredibly tough so it's a different set of challenges the arc of your lives from a distance seems to be um quite golden actually you know your creativity got the recognition it deserved when you were young you did manage to make money from it and you've now both found yourself in different careers where presumably you're feeling fulfilled again andy in farming and Tom as you mentioned in in therapy I mean obviously I'm not going to ask you to reveal the dark side of your lives but but you do seem to have got it pretty sussed not everybody manages to achieve that no and I'm sort of bit of a cliche but I think that the things that helped us do that was we have a always had a fantastic relationship which is really lovely it's a very supportive relationship because you go through some and and you sort of touch on it but some sort of dark times and we're periods of you know either being dropped by labels or being moved around by labels or times when albums didn't land and you feel quite isolated and that's when you sort of have to roll your sleeves up and and and i think we've been really good at that and i've i think about tons of people i don't mean that have been lost along the way peers of ours who aren't doing it anymore and i think there is we have been very lucky and been rewarded for our creativity and and that that's fallen for us but i think we've also not been afraid to sort of graft occasionally when we need to or sometimes take a change of like a vault fast and just move around and do something different when things felt like they were getting tired i think there was a bit where we just caught up and everything being very major label and then we just went very underground and that did for us for a bit so i think it's about some self-awareness about where you sit in the sort of panting of all this stuff and we're quite good at navigating that as well so we have been really lucky but i also think we've been quite smart at times and we've been grafters at times and that stuff is also super important you know yeah no it's good to recognize the the good stuff isn't it um andy can i just ask you about farming i mean in this rapacious summer of heat and drought uh how have you been doing well yeah i mean on on my farm it's a national trust farm near near swindon um which i rent from them and um so we we completed our harvest three weeks early like a lot of people have it's it's actually it's not just this drought it's the fact that it's It's the third drought in five years.

43:06It's the fact that it's followed by record wet winters. So it's this whole whiplash thing. And agriculture was developed around a stable climate, and that stable climate is rapidly disappearing. Farmers have their backs against the wall before any of this. It's incredibly tough. The good news is that we know how to farm in a way which materially and quickly changes the ability of soils to deal with droughts, to store far more rainfall and therefore deal with flooding as well. We know how to farm in a way which quickly and materially regenerates biodiversity. We're measuring that across all of our 150 farmers that we work with.

43:45And so what we're trying to do at Wild Farm, which is a bit all consuming, it's a big project, but we're giving high street shoppers, high street food buyers the chance to buy food from farmers who are actually doing this, making it happen. Because this is of existential importance. It will make such a difference to our future if we grow our food this way. and it needs to become a movement like house music became a movement 40 years ago what do you need for the government to help you to do that well i've spent a long time uh working with the government and it's very very difficult and i'm sure lots of other people are finding all sorts of different areas um two things one is the revolving door of people who you're dealing with and secondly is how siloed thinking is because um we talk when we think about farmers yeah because they grow our food, but they also determine how much water we've got, how clean it is, the state of our nature, our ability to even just exist in this changing climate.

44:41So they do far more than grow food. And yet when we talk about building a reservoir, we'll use the word investment. When we talk about supporting farmers to grow in a way where their soil can store far more water, infinitely more than all of the reservoirs put together, we talk about it as a subsidy. So one of the problems with government is that it's all siloed in different departments. And what we're trying to do is create a more holistic economic model that recognises the reality of what happens on the 75 % of the UK that's farmland will determine our future. And that's all there is to it. Do either of you two ever put on your own tunes in your house just to please yourself?

45:19Do you find yourself getting to 3.30 on a Wednesday in November and thinking, yes, I need to be shaking some arse? I do. I mean, I'm definitely a bit of a... I'm on the whole Spotify playlist thing now, so I've got multiple playlists for different movies. But I definitely have, particularly my Balearic playlist, I have a heavy dosage of GA. And Car to Your Heart, which is one of our shared favourite tunes of all time, one to check out of ours, it came on yesterday. And I didn't have a week, but I was feeling a bit emotional post the gigs, and I was deeply touched by it. It was lovely. But I don't put it on, it just pops up every now and then.

45:54Okay. It's a lovely, honest answer. I've asked that of artists before and they always slightly deny it. And I think, nah, come on, you sing your own tunes in the shower. Of course you do. Would you, Jane, if you had written some absolute belters? Of course I would. I mean, I replay some of my greatest news reading hits going back to the 90s. Some absolutely cracking episodes of Weekend Woman's Hour. Shut up. Right, now you've gone too far. Although it is a good programme. Anyone can take the free three-minute hearing test on the Specsaver website. but if you take the test and you are over 50, you can then join the guest list to get free tickets to Grieve Armada's gig at Phonox on Thursday the 15th of October.

46:34You go to specsavers.co.uk slash testlist. They did sound really nice blokes, and what a lovely way to... I don't know, you've had a rock star experience, you've done all that, and now you're just using regenerative techniques to keep soil healthy. What a fabulous life. No, seriously. It is. Oh, can we just do one more doll's name? You have two minutes. OK. Oh, my God. I come here for a laugh. I don't come here to work. Emma is in Redditch. She's 56 and she has... Her cousin Charlotte, who was about five at the time, had a dog she named after an area in Redditch in the Worcestershire, North Worcestershire region.

47:13Unfortunately, the area she chose to name her doll after was Headless Cross.

47:21What a beautiful... I hope she enjoyed a little cuddle with Headless Cross overnight. Children are so weird and so is life. Yeah, and so wonderful. Keep them coming, please. They're making us laugh. Yes, they really are. Right, we'll see you tomorrow for a book club about our short story collection, not ours, but Jhumpa Lahiri's short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies.

47:58Congratulations. You've staggered somehow to the end of another Off Air with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4 on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale. And if you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online on DAB or on the free Times Radio app. Off Air is produced by Eve Salisbury and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler.

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