The disappointing journey down a Fab (with Luke Jones)

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0:43Stuff that you might want to order or something. Hello. Welcome. Welcome to Off Air with Jane and Fee, without Fee. But she's back on Monday and Eve is back today. Hello, Eve. Hello, Jane. Yeah, hello. That was very, very professionally done. Now, Eve did cop for a bit of a sickie yesterday. When I say that, it sounds judgmental. It does a bit, but there's a surprise. Don't mean it. But you're better today, aren't you? I'm feeling much better, thank you. I am the picture of health. Well, yes, because you're only very young, you always look the picture of health to me. Oh, thank you. But it's good to have you back, although Rosie did a reasonable job yesterday in her executive producer role.

1:23I heard. It was very good. It made me laugh. Did it? Yeah. I think it was intended to. And of course it all went to pot because we couldn't have Lisa Jewell, who was our best-selling novelist guest, because of the Farajarama that ensued yesterday afternoon. But anyway, it was, for me at least, an invigorating day of rolling news radio. It's quite good for me to do that occasionally. Were you knackered? I was ever so tired. I was. I spent force. Did you see that email about a chunk of cheese when you get home? I did, actually. Did you do a bit of that? I actually just collapsed in a bit of a heap.

1:56and I'm finding... You couldn't even make it to the fridge. I couldn't even stack it to the fridge. Actually, I don't think I could. It's funny because obviously the air con in the office is brilliant. Yeah. I get through the tube journey home and then I don't have air con in the house and it's just so uncomfortable. Well, that's also partially why I'm back today. Oh, I see. How can you be ill at home? There's just no cooling in sick and being home. It's horrific. It's terrible. It's absolutely... Unless you live in a fridge, you may as well just come into work. Honestly. I know, but I've got it put into perspective slightly because I was talking to a friend of mine whose mum is French, lives in France.

2:28She's in her 80s. And in their part of the country, it's been 44 Celsius. So a lot of elderly people are properly struggling. And they're just living a kind of half-life. You know, they're not going, the blinds are shut, the shutters are shut. There's no sunlight coming in, apart from maybe first thing in the morning for an hour or so. It's crap, isn't it? Even if I get my clothes out for work for the day, I have to move really slowly, because if I get myself worked up ruffling through my drawers, I break into such a sweat. You do have to do everything. Very calmly. Don't ask much of yourself.

3:03Don't get too worked up. Never do that. And that is quite a half existence for me. Well, I'm not sure how life is at the moment for people with a short temper. It must be incredibly difficult for them. And actually, I was wondering, you know how Fi is just an incredibly fast walker? Very fast. She is a turbocharged bustler. She is. Just extraordinary. Even she, I think, would be walking at a slightly slower pace around London at the moment. Because that's the other thing about London generally. It is a busy place. People do move around super quickly, normally. But at the moment, they're not. Everyone just looks on the tube this morning.

3:41I thought a few people looked like they were about to throw up. It's just horrible. Have you invested in one of those portable fans? I haven't, but partly because it is a bit of a middle-aged woman cliche. But listen, there's nothing wrong with it. It's not anymore, though, is it? Isn't it? I don't know. I think the portable fan has been freed as what liberated from the clutches of middle-aged women. Well, that's just not, that's another judgmental thing about middle-aged women, which I don't like. So we can all be judgmental and cross about people who are judgmental. Now, you're a young, you're a feminist, aren't you?

4:16Like all right-minded people. Yeah, go on. Okay, well, no, I'm just interested. This has always really made me laugh. This idea of wife-carrying competitions. I love this. Maria has emailed in to just mention an article I did see on thetimes.com. Yes, still on message. About the wife-carrying competition in Finland over the weekend. Teisto Mittinen, a Finn considered a legend in the 30-year history in what is described here as a niche sport, said there was another woman in his partnership. The world champions in the fringe world of sport, of wife-carrying, are in fact not married. They're just friends.

5:01His partner, a woman called Katya, herself a three-time champion, is just a pal. My girlfriend understands this is a sport for me, she told. So we've got a gay woman who takes part in a wife-carrying competition. Her partner's okay with it. She isn't with the bloke who's carrying her. I mean, this is just a whole... If you are in a relationship with a young man, he seems very pleasant from what I can gather from what you say about him. Thank you. If he said that he wanted to carry you in a competition, what would you say? I'd say fat chance. Right. That reminds me, Fat Tony's on the... He'll be on the pod.

5:43he's back with us things we've been. DJ Fat Tony, yeah. Go on. It also seems like that you need to have an element of athleticism to be carried. And I don't think I have that. Well, I certainly don't have. I just don't understand. I don't even know how you get into this. Would you take issue if your husband was carrying another woman? Well, he is. And the position is quite compromised. They've got their legs wrapped around their head and then they're kind of down their back, aren't they? I mean, obviously this man's wife, Teisto's wife, is absolutely fine with all this. And the woman he does carry, her partner, is okay with it too.

6:21And she was happy to take it. I don't get it. There are similar events, we're told, held in the US, Australia and here in the UK. This year, 60 couples covering 12 nationalities signed up for the main race in Finland in a place called Sonka Javi. and it drew a crowd of 2 ,500 onlookers, according to the organisers. Contestants must negotiate obstacles, including a water pit, as they sprint around a 253.5 metre track, part of which is sand and gravel. OK. It does sound like it'd be quite an entertaining watch. You think? Yes. OK. And it goes to show you weren't a million miles off when you were talking about the farmer carrying high rocks.

7:04Oh, yeah, that's true. I still stick by my original premise, that Britain's farmers are too busy, particularly at this time of year, to agree to be carried in any kind of athletic competition. Take your wife instead. Yeah, exactly. Use a wife instead if you're fortunate enough to have one. Now, we mentioned, you probably weren't listening because you were off sick and you were terribly poorly. We did mention a village called Rittle, which is near Chelmsford in Essex yesterday. and a number of people have emailed to make this valuable point and I just want to draw attention to its significance.

7:41Ellen is one of those people. I had to write in after hearing you mention Rittle. Rittle should be very close to your hearts as it's where the UK's first regular scheduled radio broadcast began from a small ex-army hut in the village on February 14th 1922. It's quite amazing. Did you know that? I didn't. Did you? No, and I'm someone who's so peculiar, I have visited a transmitter site, so it's not like this isn't an interest of mine. It was operating under the call sign 2MT, and the station was led by Marconi engineer Captain Peter Eckersley, and it paved the way for the creation of the BBC. The team in Rittle took a famously informal and entertaining approach.

8:29I mean, who thought that would ever catch on in broadcasting? Programmes featured live concerts, comedy sketches, opera, and even a half hour of Morse code practice. I mean, that's how you get ratings, or that's how you got ratings back in 1922. The popularity of 2MT broadcast forced the government and the post office to recognise public demand leading to the formation of the BBC later in October of 1922. Okay, so there's obviously a lot about this I really don't know because the BBC is celebrating its centenary, I thought, this year, so I don't really... Anyway, whatever. Ellen, if you know more, do email in again.

9:10Ryttle does continue to be a great place to live and I'd really recommend a visit. I'm now intrigued as to how many off-air listeners might live in Ryttle. Well, here's Helen. Dear Jane, I was a student in Chelmsford in the 70s. Oh, she doesn't live there anymore and I lived in a shared house in Ryttle. So Helen's moved on, I think. It's a delightful village with a duck pond. God, it sounds lovely. And a village green. It doesn't take much to win you over. No. Mind you, Barnes has got a duck pond. It's a delightful village with a duck pond and a village green, and it's near a beautiful large park, stately home.

9:46I also fondly remember the local pub, which we would repair to during the oil crisis when the lights went out. Fantastic. Thank you for that, Helen. If you do live in Rittle currently, and you want to make contact with Ellen, who definitely lives in Rittle, please do so. Just let her know that you are around and you live in that part of Essex. I know you don't remember the oil crisis, do you? Doesn't ring any bells. I'm sensing an off-air day trip to Rittle. Yeah, maybe we could... Feed the ducks? Spend a bit of quality time by the duck pond. Yeah, that'd be absolutely gorgeous. Take some of those picky bits that are so fashionable.

10:23Still can't stand that phrase. There's an article in The Times today about them. When you were off, you missed National Picky Bits Day. So there was outrage. I'm glad I did. What were people supposed to do? Just eat little... Yeah, it was clearly a marketing drive, wasn't it? Get down to M &S. Oh, yeah. Get your picky bits. We don't fall for marketing drives. We absolutely rise above it. Now, kitchen roll. This is the stuff people want, Eve. Never mind your geopolitics. Never mind Farage. Kitchen roll. This sounds like a marketing drive. Yeah, actually, it could be. But Jill has a possible solution to those of us who sometimes feel that that one sheet of kitchen roll is simply too big for the task at hand.

11:07And we've all got to think about the planet. So Jill says, ladies, lie your kitchen roll on its side. Take a carving knife. Please do be careful. Soar through your roll halfway down its length and replace in the dispenser. It's far more eco-friendly. We'll have to just go with her. She sounds a really sensible woman. I love that I'm not the only one who counteracts sleeplessness by re-listening to the works of Jane and Fee. In so many ways, listen to this, Eve, you are doing the women of this world such a great service. Uniting like-minded women, my 44 and 33-year-old daughters are also inspired by you.

11:50Oh, Jill, actually, that's lovely. That is lovely. Thank you very much for that. Julia joins from Brisbane. In my opinion, kitchen roll is one of humanity's greatest inventions. I am an unapologetic devotee. It is absurdly useful. And the sound of tearing off a piece is frankly one of life's underrated pleasures. I love the idea of the half sheet kitchen roll. In Australia, we've got something called double length sheets. See photo. Have you seen that? There we go. Twelve rolls of something called Viva or Viva. double length 3D ripple for ultra fast absorption. Yeah, there's something about the phrase ultra fast absorption, which I'm not desperately keen on, but very much suggests down under, doesn't it?

12:36It really does. I remain a bit baffled, though, she says. If you need a bigger piece, surely you just tear off two sheets. Why are we reinventing the wheel, or in this case, the rectangle? Further complicating matters, Australians don't even call it kitchen roll. They call it paper towels. If you ask for kitchen roll, no one here will know what you mean. I was born in the UK to Welsh parents and moved to Australia when I was 11. It will always be kitchen roll to me. This is the hill I will die on. Quite right. Love you all to bits, she says. Hope Eve is feeling better and Fee is having a glorious Austrian holiday.

13:15Thank you. do you have your kitchen roll free flowing around the kitchen or is it fixed to the wall it's not fixed but it is on a little uh kitchen roll appropriate stomp oh yeah yeah you know those things what are they called i don't understand kitchen roll kitchen roll erection no it's not called that eve um caroline says my husband had a pacemaker fitted 20 years ago at the grand old age of 35 gosh i promise i have a point she says the surgeon took me to one side after the operation and said that my role was to make sure he didn't get an infection otherwise they would need to open up a new place on his chest for reinsertion of the pacemaker good god i was horrified and then on my way home i saw an ad about hygiene in a magazine essentially it was a huge fork with a fly on it, saying that a tea towel had more germs than a toilet seat.

14:13So the combination of all that meant that I became quite obsessed with kitchen roll for all things wiping, cleaning, etc. I have long abandoned anything approaching a tea towel. That's quite fair enough. I read some very disturbing statistics recently on the common kitchen sponge. Go on. Apparently they are literally the dirtiest thing in the world so now i'm wondering well they do sit there don't they just kind of soggy porous harboring bacteria so now i'm sort of wondering what is the appropriate tool to washing and cleaning your dishes when is a cloth a necessity but but fee doesn't use kitchen roll no she's a boiler isn't she she likes to boil but that sounds quite that sounds quite diligent i don't know where she finds the time.

15:03But what are we supposed to be cleaning our dishes with? Well, I've got a brush. You've got a brush. But then I also, but I do put the brush in the dishwasher. Do you? Oh, yeah, very regularly. Does that not melt the bristles? No. Oh, okay. No, it doesn't. Yeah. Leslie's in Gloucester, heatwave. This might be a widely known trick, but in case it isn't, I wanted to help anyone else who's struggling with the same issue I was. I'm trying to get through the heat wave plus the first few weeks of hrt patches now the skin on my face and neck is going through what my friend described as chaos this is obviously a good friend of us hope you hope you are still friends i've got bumps redness spots dry bits and oily bits the weather has made it all worse because my skin is constantly clammy well i mean we we totally hear you leslie I get that completely.

15:59I recently talked to somebody from a well-known high street skincare shop who gave me this wonderful tip. Put your favourite toner in a spray bottle with three quarters water and one quarter toner. Got it? Got it. Yeah. Keep it in the fridge at home or at work if you have one. On a regular basis, spray it on your face and neck and either let it settle or rub it in. It saved my sanity and vastly improved all of the problems so that I have stopped noticing people staring when they think I can't see them. I really hope it helps somebody else out there. Leslie, thank you for that. And I'm sorry that you feel that people are staring.

16:39I mean, do you know what? It's a difficult one, this, isn't it? Because all of us are very, very self-conscious. I've never believed that anyone isn't self-conscious. And we all think people are looking at us and sometimes they probably aren't because they're actually as self-conscious as we are and they're thinking about themselves. But there are times when probably people do think, oh, I wonder what's going on there. Yeah, oh, that looks a bit sore. But yeah, I think it's true that often you are too busy worrying about yourself and how you're presenting yourself to really actually be looking or critiquing anyone else.

17:17And I'm supposed to wear contact lenses, but I don't. So half the time I can't see a meter in front of me. Why aren't you wearing your contacts? Does that mean you can't see me now really? No, I can't see you. Do I look 28? I can see you, but if people are in the slightly... You do look... You are looking rather fresh today. If there's someone that I know in the distance, it will take quite a while until they get closer to me. I really am not noticing anyone's flaws because I literally can't see them. They're all blurred out. And actually, until I recently got my prescription, I thought my skin was really gorgeous.

17:48Right. And then I got my glasses and I realised... Oh, bloody hell, though. It wasn't quite smooth as I thought it was. Your skin is lovely. Just own it. she has trust me she has the dewy radiance of youth everybody um grace is the woman who has sent me the and it's good this actually it's from a book by eleanor stiefel it's a lovely new book according to grace and it's called but first dinner and she thought that this might resonate with me and in ordinary heat heat wave free times it absolutely would um this is an extract from Eleanor's book, A Moment Please for Supermarket Cheddar is the title.

18:23People, people who do yoga, artistic, properly spiritual people often seem to talk about having a practice. Well, my practice is my daily commitment to eating a slice of cheddar. The way I will every single day, walk through the door, put my bag down, wash my hands, go to the fridge, pull out the cheddar, cut a slice with a specific knife on a very specific board and feel the balance of things being instantly restored. I remember seeing a post on Instagram once where someone declared their birthstone to be a chunk of sharp cheddar. And honestly, it's the same. Right. Eleanor, I don't know Eleanor, but that is me in normal times.

19:07I don't know about anybody else. I can't eat strong cheese at the moment. I haven't really... Oh, what's that? Well, it's the heat. I haven't actually got my normal appetite for anything. Are you one of those people? I think that's a very annoying thing to say. What? That I haven't got... I've got no appetite. It's so hot. I just lose my appetite in the heat. No, when I say I've got no appetite, I obviously have breakfast, lunch and my dinner and I also have a snack before my dinner, Eve. So, yeah, it's just that I'm not having... So I bought some ice creams and actually I haven't even wanted to eat those.

19:35Gosh, I've been having a couple of fabs a day recently. A couple of fabs. God, I always thought they promised a lot but didn't deliver. I sort of agree, and they get worse the further you get down. The further you journey down the fab. Remind me, what is at the bottom of a fab? It's just pure ice lolly. It's like the pink bit. Oh, yeah, no. But above that is the cream, and above that is the chocolate and the sprinkles. Yeah, oh, God, a fab. You really just want the whole thing to be chocolate sprinkles, really. Yeah, I wasn't actually aware that fabs were still being sold. Yes, we've had quite a few bucks in our house, sure.

20:06Oh, right. Right, the way how young people live, she said intelligent. Now, our guest today, we'll bring him in in a minute, but I have got one more email I wanted to mention, is Luke Jones. Now, Luke Jones, he's well known to Times Radio listeners, isn't he? He's hosted many a show on Times Radio. He's also the voice of the Story podcast, which is available wherever you get your podcast. Now, the Story is excellent. It properly fills you in on one big story of the day, and it's always worth your time. And Luke often features on that. But he's also, he's an independent flexi worker. And he goes out and about actually just uncovering some incredible stories.

20:46And his latest podcast series is about the island of St Helena. And honestly, I'm about six episodes deep into this. And it's really interesting. So hang on, because Luke is coming. And I think you're going to find this really quite involving, what he's got to say about St Helena. We'll find out where it is and who lives there and all the rest of it during the course of that conversation. Sharon has emailed to say, I do love you and your many ramblings. There is a but. Oh. This is about the book, well, she's titled this podcast Book Club Playground. When listening to your initial advice to the anonymous book club lady stuck with a newbie who, quotes, didn't fit in with the group, I had flashbacks to my school playground and the multiple occasions I was frozen out of groups of popular girls because my face didn't quite fit in.

21:37My hair was too curly, my teeth had gaps and then braces. I had national health specs. There was a multitude of other reasons so frequently pointed out to me. I loved school, but I did spend the majority of it alone or with one friend equally ostracised. Today I've got many friends and I always give people a chance before I decide I don't want to spend time with them. I try to be honest with people and if they're annoying, I have been known to tell them. So often they know it about themselves and often agree. two of them are now really close friends of mine still annoying at times but I do love them why on earth can't this group put their big girl pants on and actually have an adult conversation with this new woman maybe help her to fit in with the group or simply say they don't think she's sharing the same vibe they are and perhaps she might be happy elsewhere have they considered she might be socially anxious and over-egging it in an effort to be liked and accepted okay you're always saying that we don't have to feel worried about turning up alone to your events because the hive is a welcoming place you've given advice in the past to people in new cities to join a book club we're all different and maybe if we take the time to find similarities we'd all be a bit happier um sharon thank you for that um she says thanks for everything you do except for the book recommendations where the author has written over 20 books you've got me into louise penny and I'm on book eight so far out of 20.

23:09Wow. Then listen to Fee's chat with Peter Granger and his book Sound Fab, also prolific. So my stack of books to read is climbing higher and higher. Well, that's good and both good and bad for you, Sharon. It can be perhaps a bit challenging. It's another health and safety issue if you have a teetering pile of paperbacks, isn't it? You never know. You've made some interesting points there and you clearly feel that adults need to be adults and they need to make an attempt to get on with people, but that might mean occasionally that you have to have some up there, out there, full and frank conversations with people about the way they conduct themselves.

23:48Do you think that is a generational thing? Do you think your age group are better at, I don't know, just talking about how people conduct themselves or do you think you're as bad as we are? I think we're worse, but I think now these conversations maybe happen over text. Oh, right. And I think in that way, you can almost be more direct, but you're being so less direct because you don't have to face them. So maybe tougher conversations are had, but they just take the form of text. In a different way. Which is maybe more hurtful, but also does it save face? Have we still got the issue with full stops being thought of as passive aggressive?

24:26Well, they just are, Jane. You just use commas. What? You just use commas. What you should do. Yeah, that's what I'll either write a long text with commas or I'll send multiple small texts. I can't keep up with this. Hey, we're Nick and Jack hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, email, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the Headline Hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about.

25:09Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. That's goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini.

25:22We have somehow secured an interview with reclusive podcaster Luke Jones, host of the story. and also it has to be said, and I don't praise talented young people easily, a genuinely gripping new podcast series called The Surgeon of St Helena. Can I have that in writing? No. Welcome, Luke. Now, it's worth saying that your other series was the Pitcairn Trials. Because I also, I mean, I was going to say I didn't enjoy it, but I did listen to it. Have you sort of cornered the market in terrible events in very remote places? Yeah, I'm hoping for a tip-off about the British Virgin Islands or Bermuda or somewhere like that so I can go and investigate it.

26:01Yeah, well, because I started that Pick Home one, which I came to talk to you about, what would have been, two years ago now? Yeah, I think it was. And it was after that, and that was about, that was sort of investigating these quite awful child sexual abuse trials that happened on this little island in the South Pacific in the early 2000s. And we had, you know, people who'd never really spoken before on tape. And it was after listening to that that loads of people got in touch saying, well, you should look at this island, you should look at this, come and look at this. And one of them was about St Helena.

26:26So the hope is now releasing this one, someone will get in touch about a different, maybe sunnier island. Well, the Isle of Dogs. Yeah. It's not funny. What happened on Pitcairn is truly terrible. And St Helena, we'll talk about what's gone on there in a moment. But first of all, where is it? How does anybody get there? Yeah. So if you imagine the world map and you look at the South Atlantic and put your finger right in the middle. So it is in the absolute middle of nowhere. To get there now, as I did for reporting on the podcast, you would fly from London to Johannesburg and then get one of the weekly flights that goes from Johannesburg over to St Helena.

27:03It is a weekly flight. The airport is very temperamental. So as I found sometimes, you know, the flights just aren't on. Back in the day, you'd go on a long ship from Cape Town. But even though they do have internet access and things, you do when you're walking around the place. It feels absolutely far from the UK. And yet there are pictures of the Queen. There are Union flags flying. The secondary school no longer called the Prince Andrew Secondary School, but used to be. It is very, you know, they say about the Falcons, don't they, more British than the British. They're sort of very aware of their British identity, even if it is tropical looking.

27:35And I thought I didn't know anything about it. Couldn't possibly have ever done an interview about Santolina. And of course, I had done an interview about the elderly tortoise. I thought you were going to say you interviewed Napoleon. No, I'm not quite that old. God. So remind us about the absurdly old tortoise. Oh, yeah. So he's called Jonathan. He's 193 years old, or maybe 194 now. I think he's just had a birthday. And he has the Guinness World Record for being the oldest living terrestrial animal ever. Obviously there are sharks, I think, which are many, many years older. But it's this enormous tortoise that lives at the governor's mansion plantation house.

28:14and he just waddles around. When you look at him up close, I mean, you can think what a tortoise looks like. He does look prehistoric. But the groundskeeper there told me he enjoys the sun, he's still eating grass, he's still having relations with the other tortoises around. Well, I heard that unlikely claim in the podcast and I'm not sure, but it's a nice thought. I mean, I'd say quite a mean thing. Get near it. He does hiss quite loudly at you. He's quite terrifying. Right, so we've established that the years have not been kind to him and there have been many years. Also, of course, you mentioned Napoleon in a very rude way to me, but Napoleon was exiled to St Helena by the English.

28:51And the whole point is because it was so remote. So they first exiled him to Elba, managed to get off and raise a rebellion. So they thought, OK, where can we put him, which is really remote? And they landed on St Helena. And actually, north of St Helena is an island called Ascension that people might have heard of. There's a big military base there. The BBC World Service has a relay station there. And then there's also Tristan de Kuna to the south. And because Napoleon was on St Helena, that is why those two islands, far to the north, far to the south, are also British, because they thought we need some troops in case the French come.

29:21Yeah, I thought I'd been to his tomb in France, but... Oh, yeah, so Napoleon was exiled there and did die there after six years. Got very big into gardening. The garden there at Longwood House, it's called, is still very lovely, but also was very bald. There's some suggestion that he might have died because of arsenic in the wallpaper, all these kind of strange stories about him. But he was buried in this little plot on the island. But then about 20 years later, don't quote me, when there was a detente with the French, part of the deal was, well, you can exhume Napoleon and take him to somewhere in Paris, isn't it?

29:53Yeah, he's got a very grand tomb. OK, so the residents of Santolina, who are they? Who are they descended from? Are there people who originated there? What's the story? So they are, well, they're British citizens and for the vast majority they are descended from slaves from the East Indies who were brought there because St Helena was actually first landed upon and colonised properly by the British. There wasn't a native population there. There were some people who had trade ships who would stop off there. But it is really a product of the slave trade and of the East India Company. So if you're on St Helena at the moment, you are likely descended from one of those slaves or from some of the many British people who have landed on there.

30:37But also now it's an increasing mix of people who are just really into islands. There was one guy staying there who is an Australian and was on a yacht and travels the world and landed on St Helena a few years ago and just decided to stay. So it's an interesting mix. Now, you have written about this and I think you described it as looking inland, not unlike the Peak District. Yeah, so if you go around the outside of the island, which I did on a boat, it looks volcanic, well because it is a big old volcano, really steep cliffs and you think this looks like a part of the moon or something really sort of tropical and otherworldly.

31:10go into the interior of the island and you could be in the Derbyshire Dales. It is beautiful rolling hills. There are chickens, there are cows, very green, very misty. But then you go to some other parts and all of a sudden it gets very dry looking and barren and there's houses that look like, you know, they could be in parts of Africa I've been to before or Asia. It's to say it's such a small place. It's such variety. And what do the residents do? For work. Can they farm? There's not much farming. I mean, they do grow coffee there. The vast majority of the workforce work for the government. So that is one of the issues.

31:44It's not necessarily like a former British colony where there is a cash crop that is the reason that it existed. It only ever existed as a stop-off point for East India Company ships that were moving around. And when they stopped stopping, there wasn't really an industry there to support them. So they have struggled quite a bit with trying to get fishing properly off the ground. Lots of people do sort of odd jobs to do with tourism, but the tourism trade isn't necessarily massive. It's quite difficult to get to, quite expensive to get to as well. So that is one of the issues that quite a lot of the population are just dependent on having some kind of public sector job.

32:18Right, and we're getting close to the heart of what your podcast series is about because this is a small place. It's governed by the British from Britain, effectively. There is a governor. He's a man currently, Nigel Phillips is his name. And you do say in the series that, I mean, this isn't Washington, D.C. or Paris. This is a role that tends to be given to people, to be blunt about it, who might be edging towards the door marked exit. Well, this is what one of the islanders said to me. They said, you know, whenever we last had a governor or an attorney general who was on the up. And I guess part of the problem is that, well, it's very far.

32:57It's difficult to necessarily get people who'd want to work in some of these places, as beautiful as it is. but you do end up with a situation where you have a population who live on the island who are living on an average of£11 ,500 a year and then you have a lot of imported Brits or people from other parts of the Commonwealth there doing big jobs like the governor or the attorney general or certain sort of technical jobs and they can be on 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 times as much. So there's quite a divide that has been baked in for many years. Right. Now, the surgeon who is at the centre of this, the podcast series is called The Surgeon of Santolina, is a man called Sergio Villatoro Bran.

33:38Now, it's worth saying that, as you say frequently throughout the series, you've tried to get a statement from him. He hasn't ever acknowledged your existence. Is that true? I tried to follow him on Instagram. Didn't work. I've tried his solicitor, tried, yeah, his office, his WhatsApp. We tried many, many different ways to get in touch with him. Right. How did you find out about him then? So this whole issue with him has been bubbling for a few years, but obviously being such a small place, so far away, not many people have paid attention to it. So after we released the Pitcairn series about a different island in the South Pacific, someone who's sort of tangentially related to this story sent me an email saying, you know, there's this whole business going with a surgeon, you need to look into it.

34:19And it is not just what happened with the surgeon. He came from Guatemala to be the orthopaedic surgeon there from 2015-16 till about 2020. And he is accused in that time of seriously injuring, maiming, disabling people. But then the way it was then handled afterwards, and the person sold it to me as, you know, imagine it's a crime story that turns into a mini tropical post office scandal, because that's the sort of second half of the story, how it's been dealt with or not. Right. OK. Just want to, oh, a couple of questions for you. Alistair says, is it near Tristan da Kuna? Yes, so just north.

34:54So Tristan da Kuna is even further south and even more remote because they don't have an airport. 250 people live there. You might remember that was recently where some paratroopers dropped a doctor and some medical supplies after the hantavirus crews stopped there. OK, and Theresa says, has Luke forgotten to mention the flax industry? Flax, which was very important to the island economy. Yes, so that was something they grew, which was very useful for twine. One of the big issues for the island was when the Royal Mail, at some point in the last century, stopped using flax for their twine and that immediately killed off that trade.

35:27Wow, honestly, this stuff is genuinely fascinating. Let's go back to the surgeon because you do include in the series, honestly, some horrific examples of the so-called treatment that this man meted out. Tell us about Mario, who's a disabled person. He's now in his 40s. he has cerebral palsy and his elderly parents are trying to look after him. Yeah, they're a family called the Peters family. They live, the parents were born and raised St Helena. Lovely couple called Gillian Patrick. They have a son, Mario, as you say, he's now in his sort of mid-40s, born with cerebral palsy to the extent that he can't talk, can't really hear, but could walk.

36:07And, you know, if you're a parent looking after a disabled child, that is such a help because they could, he could wander around the house. If he needed some food, he could do that. getting him out of bed, washing him was a manageable thing. He then, one day, coming back from some respite care, there was some kind of accident where they were told that he stubbed his toe, he seemed to be in pain. They realised it was actually to do with his knee and it was really swollen and they tried for weeks to get this surgeon, Dr Sergio, to properly look at it. He had a massive delay in even x-raying the knee.

36:37When he finally did, it was a fracture. So you think this poor middle-aged man can't even communicate the fact that he's in such pain and where it is. and then when the surgeon reset the knee the fractured knee and then put it in a boot as would be normal here for that kind of fracture he set it at an angle so his leg was going out to one side and the mum recounts to me that you know they said to him you know his leg didn't look like that and the surgeon was quite dismissive and said yeah you should go out at an angle like that anyway it then reset in that position to the extent that he can't now he not only can't walk but he can't even bear his weight on that leg.

37:10So if you imagine two people, two elderly parents trying to look after this middle-aged man, you know, they're having to devise bits of kit. The dad had built this sort of wooden thing to help him get it out of bed. And actually, as with all the solicitors who was on the island when I was there, who's working with them, they said, and yet you still look at Mario and he is the cleanest, most well-looked-after, cared-for person you could ever imagine. and yet with all this extra added stress and faff and complication because of this surgeon. Right, I mean we could talk about other examples. There is a woman who had a pin inserted into her arm by this doctor.

37:50What happened to her? So she, like lots of people, I bet the worst people I did meet who had instances with him where they said, oh yeah, it was sort of fine, he sort of sorted me out. But obviously there were lots of these stories where it didn't go like that and one of the common things was people would go for some kind of procedure, you he said you'll be fine a few days and they weren't this woman had enormous amounts of pain in her arm to the extent that she kept going back to the hospital eventually they said right well we'll medevac you out to Johannesburg to properly look at it and when this person said well I just bandaged this bleeding elbow that she had months after the fact after this pin was put in he raised her arm and the pin um which was described as being the size of a knitting needle fell out of her arm which is not normal not what should happen and this woman to this day you know still has problems and all these people have that's probably you sort of think well it's all that happened to them in the first place but also it's then how do you live with it if you can't properly lift your arms anymore she was having to have clothes specially adapted so she could even dress herself when people tried to get help when they raised concerns about this man what happened so i was told by the police officers of some british police who went out to investigate him um to help the investigation and they said to me that when they were investigating how it was handled at the hospital they were told by people that concerns were raised but that they were just ignored these people were told you know Dr Sergio knows what he's doing leave off it we did put all this to the hospital in the government they said they didn't want to comment on any of this but eventually it did get to the point where he was suspended there was a disciplinary and he fled the island so that problem stopped but then it became clearer and clearer the scale of the problem because one of these people who was involved, actually the woman with the pin in her arm, said to these British police officers when they were leaving to return to the UK, get us help from the UK police from off the island.

39:40And that is how this law firm based in the UK got involved to try and launch this civil claim. Because even though he was eventually charged with five counts of unlawful wounding and pled guilty to that, returned to the island to face those charges, there are lots and lots of other people who weren't included in that criminal trial who need some help. Yeah. We need to ascertain he was a doctor. He was a qualified doctor. Yes. On his Instagram, there are pictures of him with his certificates from a university in Guatemala trumpeting that. But, you know, there were concerns about people. I was speaking to somebody only the other day who got in touch with me after listening to the podcast series, who was one of the people not in the series, but they had had to look into him at some point.

40:26and they said, yeah, I could never actually get to the bottom of whether he did complete his training. We did put some of this to Dr. Sergio, as you say, he didn't get back to us. And you look at his resume now and there are certain things in there which don't add up. He says he has experience in institutes and hospitals and universities which don't exist. He now, on his resume, trumpets his experience in the United Kingdom. Really? He hasn't worked in the United Kingdom. He's worked in St Helena, which is a British overseas territory, but he's marketing himself as a doctor with experience in the UK.

40:56I mean, if I was going to be very generous, I'd obviously say that it must be very difficult, as you mentioned earlier, to attract some people to work in these circumstances. Yes. That sort of goes without saying. Absolutely. So they do, you know, struggle to get people with skills. There is a lot to attract people to the island. You know, if you want to live on a tropical island with these beautiful, pristine volcanic waters, a nice lifestyle, and you're willing to move away from the hustle and bustle of living in the UK, I'm sure there are people who would like that and the money is good to attract people from abroad.

41:29But it does seem like they struggle. One person said a lot of the people who come over are sort of driftwood is how they would have termed them. And one man actually got in touch with me while I was making the series who sort of got wind of what I was up to. And he described his experience of going out as a Brit many years ago for a number of years to do a contract. and he said it was just useful British people going out there. And he said, and I include myself in that. He said, you know, I wasn't very good, we'd fallen on hard times. I thought, well, you know, I'll do this contract because no one else will really hire me.

41:58And he said, and that's what I saw when I got there with other people. Which, again, that's about the issue at hand here, which is the way Britain treats residents of these, well, what are they in law? Overseas territories. Overseas territories. So what does that mean for the people who live there? So it means different things, but they are British citizens, so they've got British passports. They have every right to come and live here and work here. They've got the same passport pretty much as you and I. But, I mean, some of them make lots of money. Obviously, you know, in a place like BVI, where there are more companies registered than people living there, they make lots of money.

42:34Hang on, British... British Virgin Islands, my pardon. But then there are places like St Helena, which rely on a lot of foreign aid, even though it isn't technically foreign. but the the status of those people is you know they are even though they have a little local government who can legislate for them the governor who is someone sent by London can disallow laws if they want to the UK parliament can pass legislation and it affects them they have no say in it and how much oversight is there because the minister who we tried to speak to this series and they and they turned down our request in the foreign office is the minister for the overseas territories but also for europe and north america which are not unbusy patches so how much attention can you give to you know saint helena something that's happening on saint helena yeah i mean i should have asked you earlier the total population is what about four four thousand four thousand people okay um it isn't a great number but a surprising number of those people had operations that's what's so extraordinary um 600 um they thought were operated on by dr sergio in his time How?

43:37Yeah, quite. So we worked out the maths and the rate as compared to England is a lot higher. And that's one of the things that people pointed out saying, you know, was no one just looking at it and thinking, well, why is he operating on so many people? Is it not too much? One of the first people who successfully raised concerns about him, I understand, was a physio who was seeing all these people going in for orthopaedic surgery, but they weren't getting any referrals for anybody for anything similar. So even just on the sort of maths level, maybe alarm bells should have been rung. Where is the man now?

44:05He's still operating as a doctor. Yep. So after he returned to St Helena to face these five criminal charges that he pled guilty to, he then left, even though all this legal wrangling is going on at the moment. He has returned to Guatemala and, as I understand it, looking at his online presence, is still working as a surgeon, as I say, sort of trumpeting himself as being somebody with experience, working in the United Kingdom. and you know still posting photographs on his Instagram of him, so in scrubs, operating on people so perhaps very busy This is a pertinent gag from Bill, who's in Canada Hi Jane, what do you call the person who finishes at the bottom of his medical class?

44:44Answer? What? Doctor I mean it's thought provoking stuff that Bill Thanks Bill You can't get an appointment anyway can you So I wonder where else are you going to go after this? You did go to St Helena, didn't you? Yeah, fabulous place. Is it? Yeah, really beautiful. I looked at the climate and actually it's incredibly temperate. In fact, the way things are in the UK, I was thinking, oh, well, you know. They have no central heating. Right. Because you don't need it. Because it never goes below. It never gets that cold. But it never gets that warm. But that's fine. Yeah, I know. Isn't it? Yeah.

45:18Well, yeah, I suppose so. And the wildlife around it, I mean, on one of the days when I don't have much to do, I went out on this boat going around the island's edge and there are, you know, there are rays swimming, there is a whale shark that I swam with. It is sort of quite a magical tropical place. So as someone says in the series, actually, if everything's going okay for you, it can be a beautiful place to live. One of the interviewees who's been quite active in this story runs the Human Rights Commission there. And she moved from... Teesside. Was it? Oh, no, that's the current chief minister.

45:47She's from Teesside. No, the Human Rights Commission is from either Hampshire or Hartsha, I can't remember. And, you know, she hasn't left the island since 2016. so even though she's dealing with all these problems and seeing the worst of it there is still a love that exudes for the place and I met all these people who had moved away there's an enormous saint population in Swindon but on one particular evening I met these two women back to back who now lived in the UK but were there just visiting I said when did you come here to visit and it was back end of 2024 and they're still sort of toying with staying such is the pull Luke Jones and honestly if you just want a slice of a very different sort of life I really do recommend his podcast The Surgeon of St Helena and if you have anything to add to Luke's story there and his investigations I'm sure he would be very pleased to hear from you but you can contact him I'm sure via us janeandfee at times.radio now the guest tomorrow and I can say this with real certainty because i've done the interview and it was interesting it's with uh mark foster uh british swimming legend um and he's someone who well he's just got he's got a lot to say about his childhood about homophobia in sport about what it's like to be um hugely successful at one thing whilst basically feeling that you can't be entirely honest about your whole self so it's also worth saying that Mark Foster is 6 foot 6 and you are how tall?

47:15not 6 foot 6, about 5 foot 1 and a half and yes we did take a photograph so he's written a very interesting and quite unusual sporting memoir because let's be honest some books about sport can be a bit turgid not his book I've got to say so Mark with us tomorrow, please do join us then and if you are in the heat I hope you're surviving it And if you're in the UK and it's not that hot where you are, please do let us know how angry you are or how relieved. We'd welcome that correspondence, wouldn't we? Right, see you tomorrow. Was that long enough? It was, wasn't it? Yeah, it was 25 minutes. Okay.

47:50Did it fly by? Good.

48:10Congratulations, 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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