Nobbly Bobblys and counterfeit Feasts

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2:14Well, the good news is that last week, nothing happened at all. No you didn't. Honestly it was the world was a sea of tranquility. You missed absolutely nothing. Welcome back. How was it? So we had a lovely time Jane. Absolutely lovely time but you need to go first because I haven't caught up with your Bordeaux experience. So let's do this chronologically. How was Bordeaux? Well it was ever so hot but obviously totally restful and beautiful and I don't know what it is about France. What is it about France? It is a really lovely country and it slightly pains me to acknowledge that um are we going to have a france greece standoff well because they're very different um but i was really just struck by just how big france is and i do forget that sometimes well it's what an opportunity to mention bonnie tyler again um it was in in a sense it was a really sad week we'll talk about ann wittekum in a moment but actually bonnie tyler's death which was announced on wednesday or thursday i I confess I now can't be absolutely certain.

3:18I think it was Thursday. It was also really sad and it really struck a bit of a chord with listeners to Times Radio because we had a number of messages, people saying that they'd met her in their real lives and what great value Bonnie Tyler was. We had a lovely message from a man who'd met her in an Italian ski resort a couple of years ago and she was just cracking fun in the hotel bar. So that's what came through in all the obituaries, wasn't it? And wasn't there that lovely guy who had asked her to sign a Christmas card once and ended up spending every Christmas with her afterwards? Because they just became really good friends.

3:52But she had a turn of phrase. And actually, there are a couple of things that are mentioned in her obituaries that we wouldn't be able to repeat. Even, you know, being visualized on the YouTube. Slightly, slightly. Was it to be vulgar? Of Com's reach. I mean, really, really. but but also you can imagine delivered in her fabulous welsh tones which she never ever left behind her apart from in song weirdly and maybe we'll talk about that another time but yes i mean you just think she would have been as my mum would say a guinea a minute so it's a good expression very very sad loss and then of course you know she was lost in france wasn't she she was that was one of her big big hits i did listen to her greatest hits as soon as i heard the news i downloaded her greatest hits and i mean she's she's so well known isn't she for the booming great big power ballads um but i didn't realize that she'd veered off quite so much into pop i mean proper proper pop name name a pop song i can't and i didn't like it Oh, you didn't?

4:55Okay, well. But she had this huge kind of solid pop career as well, which was all part of her shtick. The guy who messaged to say he'd met her in an Italian ski resort said that one night they did a bit of karaoke and the locals were absolutely amazed when this woman sang Total Eclipse of the Heart, did it really, really well. And he had to explain, you know, that's her. That's Bonnie Tyler. So, yes, much missed and fantastic to hear about somebody's, I don't know, full-bodied authenticity to the end. Absolutely. And I mean, that is the same, although there are very, very few other similarities with Anne Whittacombe, an authentic person whose life has been taken away from her way too soon.

5:40And there's no charge has been made yet, but we still need to be very careful about what we say about the exact events surrounding her death, Jane. But the shocking nature of realising what a violent end she met is quite something, isn't it? It is quite something. Her death was announced and then it was a bit later that her murder was announced. And I still can't get my head around it at all. I worked with her. We did a BBC One reality show together. Goodness, I remember this. 24 hours in the past and I was hosting it lightly and she was one of the contestants or participants so it was an amazing program it was her Colin Jackson Alistair McGowan Makita Oliver Tiger Drew Honey forgive me if I've left anybody out what was the setup the shtick was they had to go and completely immerse themselves in three or four different situations from early Victorian England so a workhouse a prison a hospital i think and a pottery and they actually probably had to live all the way through as those workers would have lived back then so they had to sleep in prison overnight with no heating they had to build all their own fires for the furnaces and pottery this was a bbc show it was a bbc show and it was grueling and ann widdekombe was remarkable i I mean, they were all remarkable.

7:12What year would this have been? It was, well, I had children. I always have to, do you do that? Always work it out based on. Pre and post. Yeah. I think probably, I'm going to say 2010, 2012, maybe. Right. Yeah. Quite a while back. Yeah. And all of the participants were great because it really, really was hard work. And I thought after the first week, one of them was going to say, I'm a celebrity, get me out of here. because they didn't, I think nobody understands quite how unpleasant you're going to feel living in those kind of Victorian workhouse conditions after a while. She was so nice to everybody on the set.

7:51I'd only known her politically. I didn't share very many of her political opinions and her attitude sometimes towards women I'd found very difficult to take on board as so many people had. There is never a reason for a woman to be shackled when she's giving birth. Apart from anything else, they're very unlikely to run away, I would say. But she was she genuinely had a twinkle in her eye. She was very, very kind to everybody around her. And I was really struck by how seriously she wanted to take it. So she wanted to have that experience. She wanted to understand how those people felt. And I'm not trying to be salacious in saying this, but she was the only one of the contestants who said, and to that end, I'm going to dispense with every single thing from the 21st century.

8:37so she dispensed with her brassiere and she lived life for a sacrifice i would not be willing to neither would i neither would i uh but she did it because she just wanted to she had a curious mind she wanted to properly properly be that person uh and she really was nice to people around her i'm really glad you i've forgotten about that and i'm really glad you you've told us about that and also i just think it's worth saying that the way people treat other people in the end when is all that matters when nobody's looking or where they think nobody's looking and when the gap actually and and as is often the case in a workplace person up there person down there but she didn't treat people like that i haven't spoken to anyone who hasn't found the circumstances of her death genuinely distressing and i want to hear it for forthright women who if they want to should be able to live in the middle of nowhere with no security and be their authentic selves for as long as it's possible for that to be the case.

9:38I completely agree. Her life should not have been ended that way. It's horrendous. And if you believe that in order to be it, you need to see it, then she represented a very, very rare part of female society. So she had completely rejected the excitable frisson between men and women or between women and women. She had just said, that bit of the world is not for me. And she had dedicated herself to politics and to faith and there just aren't very many women who are doing that very publicly in our world and we should always cheer they get mocked yes we should always cheer because there will be younger women out there who will seek to find a role model or just somebody who they feel an affinity with and she represented yeah i mean quite a kind of rare thing i think i think um The reaction to her death has been quite, there's been some nastiness and some toxicity, but there has been a great deal of decent reflection on a life that was a bit unusual and should not have ended in the way it did.

10:51And I hope that the majority view is actually this view. We've got a lovely email from Anne in Cumbria who says, let's set aside all the speculation, political chatter, whether we agreed with their views or not. Can we just take a moment to recognise that two women in their 70s died this week? Polar opposites in so many respects. Bonnie Tyler came up through performing in Welsh working men's clubs before success as a recording artist. Anne Widdecombe undoubtedly had her own battles with a male-dominated institution to follow her own career path and wasn't afraid to take on new challenges in later years, which you've talked about.

11:27I mean, she really was utterly unafraid. I'm 62 and a generation below these women definitely more in the bonnie camp I mean who didn't want to be a rock chick however these two women in their 70s both still working and it seemed to me embracing life they should be commended for living their lives on their own terms and showing us how it's done long before girl power was a thing and I think that's brilliantly expressed and you certainly speak for both of us and thank you very much for sending that in I think that line about living on their own terms and showing us how it's done. And Anne Whittacombe would have been the last person to acknowledge girl power.

12:06She probably would have always, I'm a load of nonsense, stuff of nonsense. And she would have said exactly that. But, you know, she did her thing in her way. Absolutely. I like to think that maybe of an evening when she'd taken a dip in her pool, she came back in and put on some Bonnie Tyler and just rocked out a little bit. I'd love to think that too. Anyway, how was Austria? Austria was beautiful. Austria is very, very beautiful indeed. Oh, gosh, I don't think I want to set these countries off against each other, Jane. There's enough going on in Europe. Yes, that's true, actually, yes. Okay.

12:38But Austria was magnificent. And can I just say that if Andy Burnham, who is going to be our prime minister, I'd almost forgotten about him. next week, if he is looking for a way to incentivise and raise the game of the water executives in this country, send them to Werthensee in Austria to learn how to keep a beautiful, beautiful lake clean. Can I ask a dark, is that a freshwater lake? It is a freshwater lake, yep. And they can quite safely say it's one of the cleanest lakes in Europe. They built a 154-kilometre high-powered sewage pipe all the way around the edge of the lake so that no waste goes into the lake.

13:27And it also benefits from the runoff from the slopes, the alpine slopes, which does some kind of very brilliant natural decalcification. Are we at the outer edges? Or at the boundary. The boundary. But the combination of respecting the natural environment and building using really, really clever modern engineering stuff to protect the natural environment means it's so bloody beautiful. and you do think what have we done in this country that we have ignored the possibility of keeping our lakes and rivers as lovely as that it was an absolute treat to be in it the water is so clean Jane so you were in it every day every day for hours and hours and hours bobbing about yeah it was just spectacular are there fish yes so you swim alongside the fish and an awful lot of birds I swam every morning with a duck and seven ducklings.

14:24I ignored the swans whenever the swans were around because they can be terrible, can't they? Oh, a swan once nicked a sandwich of mine. Really? OK, well, they say don't go near them when they've got their young around them and there were two swans with their signets. And Dave the seagull, who we made friends with and we're both missing him very much indeed. He was lovely, very territorial bird. It's just a holiday romance, though. Yes, a little bit. You'll never hear from him again. You do know that. But yes, we have done something very bad in this country that we've let our, because Windermere suffers terribly now from pollution and it makes people very ill.

14:56And that shouldn't have happened. Is Austria, was it like Germany, a fashionable holiday destination for the British, but then wasn't? I believe so. Yes. And where we were is still a very fashionable place for Austrians to go on their holidays, especially Weldon and Werthersee. and apologies for my lack of, you know, Germanic touch with the language. Come in Austria. Yes. I'm not sure we get loads of emails from Austria. Your near friends, Australia, we do hear from, but not so much Austria. No. And in a way, it was one of those destinations, you know, where you selfishly think, I'm not going to tell anybody about this because it's so lovely.

15:34Well, you've done it now. Yeah, I don't know. It should be shared. Truly, truly beautiful. You were mentioning where you flew to. So what was it again? Klagenfurt. Yeah, which is, I've never heard of it. and it's close to? Slovenia. It's closer to Slovenia than it is to the rest of Austria, really. But we also did a massive train journey on the way there and then we flew back. So we took a train, we flew to Vienna and took a train from Vienna down to Klagenfurt and then across to Port Czach, which is where we were. Keep up at that. Some of these pronunciations are approximate, but we welcome them.

16:07But I went at them, so I'm hoping I've got away with them. Food? Really? Well, schnitzel. I mean coat me in breadcrumbs and deep fry me. Well that's just, I don't really get it. That's just chicken and breadcrumbs. Sorry, you don't get schnitzel. It's breaded chicken. Yes it is. What's the, I don't get it. What don't you get? We've had Finder's breaded chicken forever. Okay, it's very very finely beaten and it's usually pork or veal. I don't do veal, sorry about that. And the meat layer is very very thin and the schnitzel layer is really quite substantial. and it's always served with a kind of cranberry or loganberry sauce which I think is rather a lovely touch.

16:46I don't mean to be disrespectful, that's just Ikea, isn't it? No? Right. I'm going to just look to the hive for help here. What did you eat in France? Oh, well you sent a voice note, didn't you? It's saying that everything had chicory in it. It's a weird chicory, isn't it? Chicory is not widely available in British supermarkets, is it? Or am I just going to the wrong supermarkets? no I don't well I mean it probably is but we're not buying it are we maybe that's the case I had a friend on the holiday who was very chicory positive so there was a lot of chicory in our salads I wasn't doing any of the cooking I was with some friends mercifully who are so much better in the kitchen than I am so another of the ladies on the trip we did the clearing up oh that's nice I say we but actually I'd slightly put my back out on the way up there I had to we had to we were crossing Paris to get the connecting train I know and I was a bit worried about you because i did look at the weather over there it was 37 celsius on the day we made that trip across paris yeah and there were a couple of occasions where the escalators had just simply run out so you had to haul your wheelie case up up some steps and i just did my i think a bit of butter cake throughout the time i was in bordeaux but i did some exercises uh which were recommended by one of the holiday makers of the trip and more or less sorted it out uh but we had a lovely time and i sent you an image of a stone greyhound yes um which um my friend actually has in her house which they were lovely and they are widely available in those extraordinary french i'm probably i'm going to mispronounce now a brocante yeah which means what antique yes what it means well i suppose is it where bric-a-brac comes from bric-a-brac it must be yeah yeah uh there was some lovely so we went to a brocante um and um there was a an oil painting um in the middle of it was a huge warehouse type installation um there was an oil painting which had been covered up with a bit of gauze and all you could see was a woman's head but the rest of the image had been covered covered up now i i'm afraid i couldn't resist was it a naked image well i pulled back the gauze and the oil painting fee it was of a lady pleasuring herself and that's why they'd covered it up with gauze but i thought the french were you know open to almost everything but apparently not to that but i did wonder well or uh well but who buys that and where do you put it well very good questions very very good i don't know how much it cost um but it did seem like um i'm going to say it would it would be a bold image to stick in your uh your front sitting area so to speak you've chosen you've chosen your language very carefully there so do let us know So if you have ever been to that brocante, let us know if you've seen the image that I've just referenced.

19:33It could be a famous painting for all I know. I don't know. It was probably a copy of something. Maybe. It was definitely bold. But listen, nothing wrong with what the lady was doing. Do you know what? No, but if I walked into, let's say I walked into just a random Airbnb somewhere in Ix-en-Provence. I never know how to say that. Ix-en-Provence? Whatever. It's very down south. Don't worry. And that was hanging in a bedroom. do you know what it would it would i'm not trying to make a terrible joke here it would kind of be all right if i was staying there on my own but if i was with company yeah well who knows i don't know and i definitely definitely do not want to see the male equivalent jay absolutely not i don't know why but we welcome your thoughtful emails on the pleasures to be found in a brocante uh where so much heavy brown furniture is available oh my reasonable prices yeah yeah our glasses are steaming up at the mere thought of all of this.

20:27Oh, can I just say before I forget? Yeah. I have one of those wonderful chance hive encounters on Saturday morning in the park in Liverpool. And hello to Kim and her sister, Julie, who are regular listeners. Kim had, she'll never know how much I needed to speak to her. Or perhaps she will if she hears this. Kim, we just met at the right moment. And I like Kim for a multitude of reasons, not least that she was a great person to talk to. But she was walking a friend's dog. I won't mention the dog's name, although I do remember it. And she was loosely speaking in charge of the dog, but got slightly distracted by the conversation she had with me, which I was very grateful for.

21:03And the dog she was caring for started to mount another dog in the park, which the owners of the second dog were not entirely happy about. So I hope nothing resulted from that encounter. And Kim, I hope you haven't got into trouble. I tell you what, you've had a very sexy week, Jane. If only. anyway it is one of the many many brilliant things about doing this is that sometimes out in the wild you just you meet people and it was lovely so hello to her hello to Kim hello to Kim likewise I met a lovely lady at the Lido on Sunday who was reading Valerie Perrin's Freshwater for Flowers the first book that we read in the book club yes yeah and in fact her mum who's no longer with us ran a bookshop and she would quite often recommend Freshwater for Flowers to people who equally like us had never even heard of Valerie Perron before.

22:03Shall we move it on to some I'm always intrigued when I get back from holiday to see what the inbox is full of. So you appear to have been in search of knobbly bobblies and just talk me through briefly if it's possible the kitchen roll. I will keep it brief because people did suffer with this last week. Now, in your absence, we had Eve who did a great shift until she was off sick with her glands and Rosie stepped in. Then Eve came back. All this with more news than, frankly, any of us could handle last week as well. So a lot going on. But when I was in France, I did observe that there was half sheet kitchen roll available.

22:43Now, talk me through what you mean by half. Do you mean half the average size or half vertical? half vertical on a wedge of kitchen roll which meant that for minor spillages you didn't need to use a whole wedge but of course you do use a whole wedge of the half sheet none of this makes any sense so we had so much reaction from people telling me that actually this kitchen roll so called half sheet is available in britain too okay does any of that make any sense no i'm still struggling don't worry then no i'm still struggling to i'm to me in my head i've never seen this thing at all. It makes more sense if it's a horizontal half sheet so you just rip off a little bit.

23:22Does anybody just rip off one small part of a sheet? But sometimes the spillage doesn't justify a whole square. A whole sheet? Oh don't be ridiculous, every spillage does. Anyway, you don't use kitchen roll. No I don't. I don't. So it wasn't a conversation strictly speaking. You could have taken part of it. So it's very good that you had it in my absence. What happened with the knobbly bobblies? Well here's one. In response to Imogen's plea for a knobbly bobbly stockist. We're solving the problems of the world. I can confirm that boxes of four of the genuine article can be purchased at Iceland and Farm Foods.

23:53Even better when there's an offer on. I've been a fan for a few years now, says Lucy. Also been a fan of your podcast since stumbling. Stumbling. Stumbling. I've been a fan of your podcast since stumbling across them during lockdown. I can totally relate to the topics covered. I am a menopausal woman of a certain age. Lucy, we are your people. You are our person. Stick around. Thank you for that. Now, Martin Groucho-Horseman. Do you think that's his real name? Well, I want it to be. Okay. Let's just say it is. Hello, Jane Fionnive. I've had flat feet for as long as I can remember. Were you specifically talking about the flat feet?

24:32We were talking about why flat feet prevented men from entering the military. Okay. And you've had a successful answer to this or not? Do you know what? in the heat and we haven't even mentioned the football i don't know okay uh back with martin my parents searched for a cure i jumped off stairs on tiptoe and picked up pencils and ping pong balls with my toes my start right brogue shoes had arch supports all to no avail i still have flat feet my chiropractor once said i had the body of a couch potato but the calves of a marathon runner because of my flat feet that's brilliant and martin describes himself as editor cook gardener and gentleman oh yeah he's very very welcome in our salad of menopausal ladies so that's quite funny isn't it because i do remember i remember at school having flat feet it was a bit of a it was a bit of a thing i think my mother regarded it as morally dubious if you had flat feet is it common yeah you'd let your family down you'd literally let your arch down and you only had yourself to blame but i didn't realize that you could do exercises to try and raise them again and and i think this is just gone martin i don't think the younger generation care about whether or not they're flat-footed and they're all housing their feet and trainers now aren't they and i don't know whether that helps or hinders i'd like to hear from um a profession we very rarely hear from but they do such valiant work the chiropodist yes yeah um what what are the potential long-term impacts of all this trainer wearing?

26:05It's a very good question. I'd like to know. Because women have had terrible problems throughout the last couple of centuries through having to squeeze their feet into small shoes. Small feet have always been the feminine ideal, haven't they? When did the heel emerge and when did the high heel emerge? Because men wore heels before women wore heels. I think so, because dandy men did wear. high heels yes that's really so when did the male heel go down and when did the female heel go up to the point of which i mean nobody in their right mind would now if they were starting from scratch design a high-heeled shoe for a human being to walk in they're so impossible i've got some little platformy things on today which i haven't worn i've been wearing my wedges abroad yeah i know so i thought well i'll put my heels back on to isolate the austrians is very much so pretty much holiday footwear um and and even you know just doing the kind of half mile walk to the tube station in these my little clicky clacks has made the back of my legs hurt i mean they're just they're they're ridiculous aren't they a high heel chew is ridiculous it is ridiculous it's painful it's almost certainly bad for your feet and why we put up for them so long i do not know so chiropractors of the world come on in chiropractors and chiropodists because in later life difference Well, chiropodists just do feet.

27:32What does a chiropractor do? That's aches and pains. Is it? Yeah, yeah. Chiropodists, I mean, pensioners, I'll include myself here. As you get older, I'm not quite a pensioner, as you know, because the state pension age has been rather crudely raised to 190. So I've never, who knows? No, I'm tantalising five years away from my state pension age. I know. But do you think it is going to change again? before you get it's not due to it's due to go up to 68 but that's after i will have started mine if i'm spared um and we should never take anything for granted obviously but yeah chances are we'll have to after going up to 68 we'll have to go up to 70 and i tell you what we did do last week we just had a brief conversation on the radio program about the possibility of the old triple lock going and fee people are listeners times radio listeners they don't like they don't like the idea of the triple lock vanishing, but chances are it'll have to.

28:32There's a lot, there is a lot going on at the moment. I mean, Andy Burnham starting next week. When we know, honestly, I'm not a nailed on Tory, but I do think it's not unreasonable to ask, why is it we know so little about what this man actually stands for and what he's going to do? Anyway, that's kind of next week's conundrum.

28:55Your 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, requires iPhone 11 or later. 98 of the top 100 U.S. accounting firms trust Bill to handle BillPay processes.

29:31Why? Because our tools are built on over a trillion dollars of secure payments. We're not just moving money. We're powering financial workflows for half a million customers. That's a level of expertise you just can't fake. Ready to talk with an expert? Visit Bill.com slash proven to get started and grab a$150 gift card as a thank you. Terms and conditions apply. See offer page for details. Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text.

30:06You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average$21 with insurance, and some pay as little as$0, depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality, licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends.

30:42You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as$0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST. That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. There was a bit of a technical interruption there, wasn't there? It was. Because apparently, to quote our producer, who's Hannah today, because he was on holiday, with our glands they always travel together to quote Hannah we'd got comfortable and the sound had changed I mean I think I don't know what that means we haven't been drinking or anything um I was ranting about Andy Burnham taking over next week when although I'm not necessarily of a right-wing disposition on political matters I am a bit boggled by how he's kind of being imposed on most of us without all of us or too many of us knowing exactly what he stands for and what's going to happen the thing that i think might come back to bite everybody on the bum is the fact that they couldn't find within 400 more than 400 people currently elected as labor members of parliament a person who could lead them forward so they've invited in you know the one over there and i don't know i mean it's just always easy to fancy the french exchange guy but it doesn't mean that there wasn't anybody nice in your own school that you could have had a snog with yeah should we put it that way i think that's a very very good way of putting it yeah and also he's not putting himself up for scrutiny so he just doesn't go down well like nigel farage and you know there is a direct comparison statements rather than you know the usual q a and you can argue that uh usual q a favours mainstream media or any certain outlets or whatever you want to do.

32:48But actually, politicians without good journalism are dangerous. So just if you're going to make statements, allow people to ask questions. You know, journalists are asking questions on behalf of their listeners and viewers and readers, aren't they? Yeah. You know, the fact that they say their name first, that makes them sound super important, might be annoying to some people. But I really don't like that. I don't like that direction of travel at all, Jane. Not least because it threatens our own place in the world. Well, there is that. I mean, who else is going to talk about knobbly bobblies if not us?

33:22But no, I mean, you're completely right. I mean, journalism gets so much stick. But where people think we'd be without it, I do not know. Yeah. And we will suffer if we can't poke and prod. Yeah, it does not bear thinking about. Anyway, Andy Burnham is next week's issue because the plain truth is... We're too full this week. We're just too busy this week. But also, I don't want to say it, but you know what? Could have come home. Stop it. I must admit, I just need to out myself. I fell asleep on Saturday night before. In the second half. In the second half. Me too. I mean, for all the... I mean, it is exciting on one level.

33:59The temperature in Miami, I think it wasn't the greatest football match ever played, although the result was obviously marvellous for England. And I'm really sorry for Scotland. I gather Glasgow was absolutely packed with people wearing Norway shirts, which does make me laugh. And I don't blame them. I mean, why wouldn't they feel that way? But it was a tough old watch, that game, for those who were asleep. Well, it was, because obviously both teams have been told to stand still as much as you can. I mean, in the first half, Norway stood still. I mean, they stood in the right place. They stood still.

34:32They didn't move a lot. I mean, that's what boggles me. I'm not an expert, obviously, but Erling Haaland, he doesn't do a lot of moving. no but when he does but when he does it counts for something obviously um 6 000 calories a day he takes on board that's incredible isn't it how how i'm just going to say it how fat do you think you and i would be by the end of a month if we took on 6 000 calories a day i'd be a knobbly bobbly for sure we would be knobbly bobbly yeah on the subject of knobbly bobbly and i don't want to start a terrible thing here but i had a feast the other day and they've changed what's happened to them well you know a feast used to have a solid block of uh hardened cocoa flavored vegetable fat in the middle of it wasn't chocolate was it it was chocolate adjacent surrounded by a bit of ice cream adjacent vegetable fat and then you had the lovely crunchy thing on top what's gone the inside chocolate bit and the chocolate flavored ice cream so i had a feast that was basically the stuff on the outside the crunchy bit with the nuts or whatever it is and then just ice cream in the middle i know i i did wonder afterwards whether it had been knockoff what i know i know what you mean counterfeit yes now out there feast it's nothing sacred no probably not but it's hard to find you know i'm not an enormous fan of ice creams and the huge magnums i just can't do a whole one we've always said the minis are too small and the average size are too big so quite often the feast is my go-to in a in an ice cream vat in a chest freezer yeah go girl can you also explain what you've been saying about offal well i wondered um i don't know why oh i know that was not unconnected to in its own way this podcast is a tremendous uh entity erling harland eats a lot of offal and i was talking about him and his calorie intake last week because um our man at the world cup who is les snowden who's been traveling around the world cup for times radio and who's been brilliant because he's taking i don't normally like sideways looks at things i just think just look at it um but he's been doing a really good sideways look at the world cup visiting locations meeting people chatting to normal folk and he's had some incredible insights actually and i know he's been spending time because i heard him this morning with argentina fans in miami ahead of the big clash on wednesday against england um but i challenged him last week to eat awful like erling harland but he couldn't find any hearts because erling harland eats a lot of stuff like hearts that led to a conversation he did have pork intestine in the end les by the way okay quite enjoyed it he said finished the whole thing um That led to a conversation on the podcast about offal and whether people still eat liver.

37:21And do you? I haven't for ages, but I'm always struck by how cheap it is. Yeah. Are you a fan? I am a fan. In fact, it was one of the very few cravings I had in pregnancy. It's full of iron. It is, but you're not meant to eat too much of it, are you? Oh, my God. In pregnancy, because it's got vitamin A in it. Oh, I see. And you can't have too much of that. And you can overdose on vitamin A quite easily, I think. but I had a real craving for that and ice. What were your cravings? Just food. Hence the substantial weight gain. Honestly, I didn't discriminate. Well, I'm glad to have cleared all of these things up.

38:03Michael is telling me off. Why? I don't know. Fee, Penelope, Keith and the Burden of Reality. That's quite a title for an email, isn't it? Do you think any other podcast on earth gets emails with titles like that? Go on, I need to hear this. As I'm a little behind, I think Fee will be away by the time I send this. Nonetheless, colon. In reference to Penelope Key's death and her role in the sitcom To The Man Are Born, Fee recently offered the opinion that the programme would look old-fashioned to modernise. The set was incredibly obviously a set. It was very clear it wasn't filmed in a great big country house.

38:40it really was the wobbly kind of acorn antique set design that's a quote that's actually what i said did you on the podcast while you were away okay michael says indeed it is obvious that it isn't filmed on location but rather than the fault of the set that's the result of the usual television production methods of the day where exteriors would routinely be shot on film which in basic terms has a more realistic look and interiors on videotape in a studio which has a correspondingly more artificial look. In addition to this, studio interiors were frequently overlit to avoid receiving complaints from older viewers who, remember, would be watching on much smaller televisions than we have now that the picture was murky.

39:20The set design of To The Manor Born from designer Ian Rawnsley is really rather good, thoughtful and well-observed and is additionally, though this is to damn with faint praise, sturdy, no wobbly walls at Grantly Manor. But there is a further point. I had a feeling you might say that, yeah. Colon. I believe some comedy benefits from a shared understanding of its artificiality. Private Eye front covers still look as though they're made by someone with scissors and glue because subconsciously we don't want to think that someone took too much time over a quick silly joke. If they looked more polished, we'd feel the execution was in excess of the gag.

39:56Ronnie Barker's sublime sitcom Porridge shares the same production techniques as To The Man Who Born and the benefit of this is most clearly shown in the film version of 1979, which is shot entirely on film, in a real disused prison. It is too real, and seeing Fletch, Godber and Mr Mackay in a real prison, in all its grime and grimness, puts us in mind of the brutal reality of that existence and of the likely crimes of some of their cohabitees. Suddenly, it doesn't seem so funny after all. Reality isn't always better, with apologies for having felt compelled to send this. Do you know, I thought...

40:31I thought that was fascinating. Yeah. That's me absolutely told, Michael. Well, but by somebody with genuine experience. And we enjoy being put right by people who know more than us. Don't. We love it, Michael. What did you say? What did Michael do? What's his professional experience? We don't know. He doesn't say. But I think he's got some kind of insight into it. Yeah. And I confess I'd never really thought about that, But I suppose the comparison to Acorn Antiques is for a reason, isn't it? That Acorn Antiques was taking the piss out of things like To the Man Who Born with its very obvious built sets.

41:14And I'd never thought about that. I'd never taken it back and back and back and back. OK. And you don't get TV like that anymore, do you? If you do, it really screams wrong, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. You know, sometimes you'll still see people in driving sequences where you know that they're just in a backdrop because they've always been doing that, aren't they? And you just think, that wouldn't work on the road. If I did that with my Skoda, I'd be arrested. Yeah, but you have been. Not arrested. No, not arrested. No, just penalty point. Oh, yes, yeah. Yes, too many. But otherwise, no, I think we...

41:50You look lost in reverie there just for a moment as you thought about your Skoda. I was just counting up your points. Adding up your points. dear oh me it's 23 and a 20 it's nothing to brag about or laugh about no I didn't I just wanted to mention this because it was weird this I had the privilege of going to Wimble's last Sunday did you? yes I went to Wimble's with my eldest who'd got the tickets it was nothing to do with me absolutely brilliant who did you see? Well, we were on fashionable number one court. Yeah. Mercifully fee in the shade. Because had we been on the other... I honestly, I don't think I'd have survived.

42:34No. Honestly, you don't. And now you're putting me on the spot and slightly asking me... Well, more than slightly. You did ask me who I saw. And I definitely saw a women's match. This is terrible because so many people would love to go. can you remember the nationalities well it was Jovic who was an American but with Croatian roots yes playing another American and it was a it was a good game actually and she didn't win the Jovic but she was only 18 she was beaten by a 31 year old fellow American I think okay and then it was Felix, the amazing Canadian player, against another player. Oja Aziasim.

43:24That's right. Thank you. But who did he defeat? Because it was a long old slog in the heat. And he then went on to lose to... Did he lose to Djokovic? He did lose to Djokovic. Yes. Anyway, I wondered, in the light of our Wimbledon experience... By the way, the price of drinks there. How much? off the well champagne was an extraordinary off the like 20 quid for a glass I mean I think it was more than that so just on that tip did you see the cutaway to some of the boxes at the England game in Miami Mick Jagger yes and Venus Williams sipping champagne and it just you just thought how far this game has come yes I mean extraordinary you know from pies and pints to that it was quite It was just like, whoa, okay, that's what they're doing now.

44:16Anyway, sorry, back at Wimbers. No, no, I was just... Mick Jagger, he is... Is he 82? I think he's definitely an octogenarian now. Yeah, he's over 80. He's still 95 % sinew, and the other 5 % is pretty robust hair dye. Let's just... Look at me. But what a guy. In the past, I think he's only ever brought England bad luck. Oh. Yeah, he's never been at a winning... significant winning match until Saturday night he has. So I don't think he's going to play up front in the semi-final, but we wish him the very best. Anyway, I'm very interested in your Wimbledon experience. My question was simply, after the Wimbledon experience, what happens to this...

44:58Because it is huge. The All England Club. I've been there in the past, but not for a couple of years. And it just seems to have grown. And I know it wants to grow even more. And I think some people in the area are pretty enthusiastic about this possibility and I just wondered what happened there the rest of the year because unless you're a member of the club you can't you can't go in is it not used as a training I don't camp I honestly don't know but apparently I'd asked last week you asking says Caroline who's near Marlow I'm actually near High Wycombe she says but it doesn't sound quite so good you have to be familiar with the home counties to really understand why why she makes that comment.

45:41But there's nothing wrong with High Wycombe. I like High Wycombe. But Marlowe is nicer. I mean, it's just, it's as simple as that. Last year, last week, I apparently asked what happened to Wimbledon for the other 50 weeks of the year. Well, that's true, I did. And he went on to say, would it be possible for a Mrs. Joan Sparks to pop along for a midweek game with her mates? I must have just used that name. It came out of my head. I can't answer that, says Caroline, but my nana was Miss Joan Sparks. Spooky. I mean, what are the chances? I doubt she ever played tennis, but when she was in service as a girl in London, a long way from her little village in Suffolk, she did like to go and stand in the gods at the Royal Opera House if she had a Saturday afternoon off.

46:23As a child, she regaled me with many tales of that time, including the time she was sent out to buy rabbit for dinner. Disappointed by what was on display in the butcher shop, she went back to the house empty-handed. Cook was less than impressed, so the ever-resourceful Joan sent word to her George, my grandad, back on the farm in Suffolk. He caught a couple of proper fat country rabbits, put them on a train, and Joan collected the box from Liverpool Street and Cook then had her rabbits for dinner, albeit a bit later. That anecdote has got nothing to do with Wimbledon, but I'm still really glad I know it.

46:56It started off. Caroline, thank you. And how lovely that your late grandmother was called Miss Joan Sparks after I just, for some reason, came up with that name. yeah so a lot has changed in our world hasn't it it doesn't answer the question what happens to Wimbledon the rest of the year no it doesn't but but the idea that you could be traveling on any inter-city rail connection and somebody next to you would have a box of freshly shot rabbits going to a kitchen to be skinned and eaten yeah it's it's another it's another world it is and also the train service was so reliable that uh yeah you got back to London yeah uh right final one from me comes in from Jeanette who says I was listening to your podcast in the early hours of Wednesday morning as I often do at 2am when I heard somebody has written in to say that Split Kitchen Roll is available here I immediately so this is 2am I immediately went on to the Ocado app and added Plenty Flexi Sheets Kitchen Roll to my order that's arrived in the morning deep joy is the only way I can describe it who knew such a thing existed I also wanted to tell Fee that while I was on holiday in Greece last month again in the middle of the night I went back to your old Bee podcast and scrolling through I spotted the episode with Lisa Tarbuck we did do Lisa Tarbuck didn't we which was of interest as I was at school many many moons ago with her older sister that was the episode where Fee Disclosure was suffering from a frozen shoulder and couldn't swim I've had mine for a few months now and it hadn't crossed my mind before Greece that I wouldn't be able to swim so that was a pain literally Jeanette says it is much better now post a jab and lots of physio and exercises and you know i just want to say i think frozen shoulders for me anyway have remained up there with childbirth as a painful experience and i'm so glad that you've got a jab because i didn't have a jab i just thought oh no i'm going to push on through with this and it took such a long time it was really unpleasant you know when you catch your frozen shoulder on something and you can actually feel it ripping inside it is just so grim and so many women of a certain age get it it's to do with all of our lovely kind of juicy cartilage disappearing in our joints so to anybody who is suffering and it will be many of you investigate having a jab if you think that that's something that will help you I would say absolutely go for it and definitely definitely do the physio and the exercises as much as you can and then it is one of those weird things a little bit like many cases of childbirth to where you just forget that you ever had it you know it is it's so odd really really odd well I still can't do front crawl for long periods of time because that might exacerbate it something just didn't ever quite go completely back to normal but when I was swimming in the lovely lovely lake in Austria I did realize that I don't miss it at all because of course if you're doing front crawl you can't see the scenery around you which is fine when you're in a pool or if you're swimming in a place that you know and swim in every day and whatever but actually when you're in a very very beautiful place just doing breast strokes so you're coming up for every stroke and looking around absolute magic every cloud has a silver lining oh do you know i mean with the mention of juicy cartilage we're back to awful so just very briefly um sam says loving the podcast i listen on the tiny greek island of leros i've never heard is it leros our home for nearly 15 years.

50:17Liver is one of my favourite meals, despite the gruesome, leathery stuff we had served to us in the 70s. It is readily available here in the butchers and the supermarkets, mainly beef liver, sometimes chicken livers, which can be made into a lovely pate. Yeah, that's true. Personally, I like to slice up some beef liver and marinate it with Worcestershire sauce and fresh oregano from our garden. Cook it with some onions and thinly sliced peppers and mashed potatoes. It is delicious. Sadly, none of this appeals to my dear wife, Jo, who's been a committed vegetarian for 43 years and finds the sight of raw liver rather revolting.

50:53Thankfully for her, I do all the cooking while she keeps our Greek garden resplendent, even during the sweltering hot summers. On that point, I should say that air conditioning is a godsend and the cost of AC units and installation are a fraction of those in the UK. What I cannot understand is that Greece has an almost endless supply of sunshine yet not much is done to promote installation of photo voltaic panels to pump electricity into the greek national grid that seems like a very very obvious missed opportunity well it would seem to be one but perhaps we're all missing something here um sam thank you very much for that yes uh being married to a vegetarian when you like a bit of liver is probably not easy by god we've covered some ground haven't we just wow and it's only monday it's only monday guests coming up later in the week include the fashion designer Amanda Wakeley and believe me she's going to have her work cut out I've been looking at her book on style tips and Amanda well I'm looking forward to asking you some questions on behalf of the shorter lady excellent and Andy Oliver is in this as well and it's so speaking actually I was thinking about her randomly the other week and thinking it would be lovely to have Andy back on the podcast her energy is just so massive isn't it so she's booked in just by coincidence we will look forward to that very much it's another week to stagger through do it in our company and thanks for all the emails Jane Riffey at Times.Radio

52:38congratulations 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 two till four 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.

53:49Transcription by CastingWords

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