Magazine of the Year 2 2 . 5 0 . 4 1 GENERATION PORN MEN, WE HAVE A PROBLEM! JEREMY HUNT The next Tory leader? Watch out, Boris Eat! 30 -MINUTE MEALS (all under 400 calories) Five rounds of IVF, one miscarriage and no baby Emma Barnett on loss and infertility 14.05.22 Eat! THE HAIRY DIETERS 10 31 5 Caitlin Moran My holiday survival tips. 7 What I’ve learnt Grief never leaves you, says actor John Simm. 9 Spinal column: Melanie Reid Our Grand Designs adventure. 10 Jeremy Hunt The former health secretary explains his plan to fix the NHS. 16 The porn debate From the Commons to classrooms: how explicit imagery affects attitudes to sex. 24 Cover story Emma Barnett The Woman’s Hour presenter on the highs and lows of IVF. 31 Eat! Low-cal meals from the Hairy Bikers. 40 Save the National Trust The woman steering the charity through tough times. 46 Click to connect with God Meet the men behind an app designed for Christians. 50 Confessions of a DJ “Fat Tony” Marnach on surviving abuse and playing for royalty. 57 Shop! Jelly shoes are back. 58 Home! Pimp your garden tools. 60 Giles Coren reviews Sam’s Riverside, London W6. 66 Beta male: Ben Machell A tale of two childhoods: mine and my kids’. FAB FIVE: READY-MADE GAZPACHO DY NE N KE N A S, D ND N A AYES-WATKI QUE RIVALL W H ONI PAGE: ANDRE ALVALLE, £4.10 SOUS CHEF, £3.49 AUGA, £1.80 ANKO, £4.25 BRINDISA, £5.55 CHOSEN BY M HIS Classic gazpacho blended Made in Bilbao. Garnish Auga is a sustainable organic Thick, intense and fresh. From Earthy beetroot, sweet tomatoes DY. T with marcona almonds. Rich with cucumber and olive oil food company. Eco-friendly a Basque fine food company and red wine vinegar. Perfectly NE and creamy (ocado.com) (souschef.co.uk) pouch (welleasy.co.uk) (bascofinefoods.com) balanced (brindisa.com) N KE N A OVER: D EDITORD NEPICUOTYL AA RJTE ADLIR DEECPTUORTY J OED PILTEORN TL ODEUPISUET YF RCAHINECF ES UABR-TE DDIIRTEOCRT COHR RCISH RRIISL EHYIT PCICHTCUORCE KE DAISTSOORC AIANTNEA E DBIATOSRS EJTATN ED EMPUUTLYK EPRICRTIUNRSE A ESDSIITSOTRA NLUT CEYDI TDOARL ETOY NCYO NTTURRIBNUBTUINLGL EFDEIATTOURR EBSR IEDDGITEOTR HMAORNRIIQSUOEN REIDVIATOLLRAIANLD A SCSHIISETFA SNUTB G-EEDOIRTOGRIN AAM RAONBDEAR LTISNFOOT C The Times Magazine 3 CAITLIN MORAN My tip? Don’t go on a banana boat in a bikini! OMur kids are off without us. This is what they need to know y kids have just left wrong way. On Day Four, everyone should to go on holiday, with isolate from each other, and only really friends, to America. meet up again on Day Six – when all the It’s their first holiday conversations about “how to get to the without us – at 18 and airport” will rebond the group once more. 21, they “should” have 5. When you’re young, I think it’s tempting holidayed without to think of holidays as being a kind of their parents much unreal, perfectible experience: a chance to earlier, but Covid have a week in which every meal, outfit, obviously derailed a couple of prime holidaying conversation, sunset and kiss is exquisite, and years into sitting in a kitchen with us, antibac- your Instagram will duly bear witness to a ing individual oranges, doing jigsaws and ceaseless parade of exemplary moments. worrying that civilisation had ended. Consequently, if, on Wednesday, one As a seasoned traveller – I’ve both spent member of your group orders one disappointing nine hours in Chicago O’Hare airport waiting crab roll, there is a danger that the whole for a connecting flight to Wisconsin and done party can enter a Dismay Spiral. Four hours a week at a caravan park with a club building later and the anxiety over possible Future called “the Freaky Fun Lounge” – I have Suboptimal Moments can get so out of control much true life-hack travel advice for them. that the most control-freaky member of the Unfortunately, I only thought of it after they group is researching the possibility of taking left, as they shouted, “And don’t text us with out “disenchantment insurance” on Thursday’s any advice – because all your advice is overly donkey trek, in case one of the animals has detailed and makes us oddly anxious. Bye!” unbearably “sad” eyes or breaks wind. And so I’m going to have to put all my As you get older, however, you realise the advice here, in case your children are off on best attitude to go on holiday with is to treat it their first holidays without you, and you want as “exactly like normal life – but in a different to make them anxious instead. place”. Like every other day of the year, you’re just as likely to be bored, irritated, annoyed and 1. In hotels, take a picture of your hotel room let down by a pair of trousers that somehow door as you enter. That way, later – when you look “wrong” by 2pm. Statistically, young are drunk, lost and bitter about living in a travellers are far more likely to suffer from world of bland corporate keycards that don’t upsetting Expectation Deflation than they are have your room number on them – you can any of the things we warn them about – losing simply look on your phone, note you are in their passports, having their drinks spiked or room 2404, and not fall asleep in the corridor having their toenail ripped off by an automatic next to the ice machine. bus door because they’re wearing flip-flops, 2. Time your meals around visits to art galleries which did happen to a friend of mine in Cuba, and museums. Their cafés have the best food as I kept telling the girls. Sidebar: when you in central city locations – as middle-class go to a hospital in Cuba, they ask you if you culture-ponces will not tolerate substandard know anyone who has any anaesthetic. This is smoked salmon, potato salad or cake. why I’ve told the girls never to go to Cuba, to 3. Don’t ever go on a banana boat in a bikini. always buy morphine if offered it and never Take a photo of your The forces of wind and wave will eventually wear flip-flops. Honestly, you might as well be internalise your bikini bottoms into your wearing a paper plate on your foot. hotel room door, for sacred woman-space. Even if they don’t, your Anyway, as you read this, they’ll be in tits are absolutely making a break for freedom. New York, wearing stout walking boots, when you are lost and 4. Bear in mind that, if you’re holidaying with eschewing bus doors, and braced for the small friends and/or family, Day Four is the most yet inevitable disappointments of life. At least, drunk. And beware likely day for you to have a massive row. For that’s what they’ve told me. I am also aware the first three days, you’re all on best behaviour. that, many years ago, I told them that the very the Day Four Row By Day Four, however, the person now known best bit of advice is never to tell your parents as “the supplicant who got the shit bed” is what you’re actually doing on holiday – or ON down on their sleep, there’s probably a couple they’ll somehow ruin it by telling too many S WIL of rolling hangovers, and the people with anecdotes about their holidays, and fretting. RT ADHD will be rubbing up the people who’ve I suspect this might be the one piece of advice BE RO tested INTJ on the Myers-Briggs scale the they listened to. Good for them. n The Times Magazine 5 What I’ve learnt John Simm Actor John Simm, 51, was born in Leeds and started out playing in a ‘My dad has been band with his musician father. He is best known for starring in Life on dead for six years, Mars, Doctor Who and Mad Dogs. He is now playing DS Roy Grace in but I still pick ITV’s Grace. He lives in Brighton with his actress wife, Kate Magowan, up my phone and their son and daughter. to text him’ Hiding behind my guitar was like hiding behind a mask. I grew up watching my dad play working men’s clubs in the Seventies and Eighties. I started doing them with him from 13, when I learnt guitar. Those audiences are notoriously hard. It made me grow up really quick. I was very shy and would just stare at the floor. My dad was constantly nudging me and telling me to smile and move. I found it hard being myself in front of an audience. I had to pretend to be somebody else. Maybe that’s why I became an actor. Abattoirs are horrendous. The smell and the noise. It was difficult filming a Life on Mars scene in an abattoir, then being served beef sandwiches. It took a while to get over that. I’m not veggie and I apologise to the world for that. When someone dies, you’re left with this huge black hole in your life [Simm’s father died in 2015]. People say, “You’ll get over it,” but I don’t want to get over it. I always want to remember my dad. I’ve still got his number in my phone. Every so often I see something on TV that I think he’d like and I pick up my phone to text him, INTERVIEW Georgina Roberts PORTRAIT Matt Holyoak still. What I find with grief is if I’m driving and I hear a song he taught me that we used to play which, ironically, put an end to They ended up getting remarried, you leave it, the more terrifying in the clubs, I’ll have to pull over. my clubbing life. That and having so it was all fine in the end. it becomes. Every single time It hits me like a ton of bricks. a child. It was fun while it lasted. Being from the north was I do it, I look at myself in the It’s like a punch in the stomach. My parents’ divorce messed up fashionable in the late Eighties. mirror and think, “Remember In my twenties, I scratched all the my world. I was 13 and it was a I played on that when I came this feeling. You never need to itches. I was 20 in 1990. To be in strange time for me. I was doing down. I was a chippy northerner put yourself through this again.” London at that time was great. the clubs with my dad, so I was who thought, I’m not losing my But you always forget. Once I left drama school, I was very close to him. I had to go accent. I’ve been here since I was Looking back on interviews I’ve out in the big wide world, working off and live with my mum and 18 and I’m 51 now, so inevitably done makes me cringe. I’m not and having fun. I’d go clubbing sisters, which I didn’t want to it has watered down a little bit. sure I was ever young and cool. and enjoy the whole scene. It’s not do, but he said, “You need to go We actors subject ourselves to But I’m not as mouthy any more, SS as if I wasn’t functioning properly. and look after them.” I used the a weird frisson of fear. When I hope. n PRE I was just having a good time divorce as an excuse to escape. you’ve got to go on stage, that RA – up until Human Traffic [a film Soon after that, I left home, went feeling is absolutely terrifying. But Grace season 2 is on ITV at 8pm ME A about club culture] came out, to college and became an actor. it’s the reason we do it. The longer on Sundays and on the ITV Hub C The Times Magazine 7 SPINAL COLUMN MELANIE REID I want to scream. Dave and I didn’t know what we were letting ourselves in for… W hen we set out to compromise. This involves him consulting his of rock. But I accept it has to happen. I accept build a disabled trees and woodlands officer, which, as you can everything. I just wish they’d hurry up. annexe in the garden, imagine, takes time. What they also never tell you on Grand we had the fond It also necessitated a bat survey. This took Designs is the dominance of process – the notion it would be time to arrange too. Bat men and women are achingly methodical creation of a mountain fairly straightforward. busy people. Our bat man – gloriously called of bureaucracy, an end purely in itself. The Single storey, small, Robbie – came in February and communed hideously long email chains. The waiting. The modest, contentedly with the ash tree. Health and safety forbade weeks when no one does anything. The notes agricultural-looking. Tin shed porn. Not an him to climb it – ashes are known as widow- from professionals that begin, “Apologies for architrave anywhere. It would be up in a few makers – but he examined it with binoculars the delay, I found your email in my junk mail.” months, wouldn’t it? and put an endoscope up the trunk cavity, If I’m honest, some of the problem is ours. We’ve been on a learning curve. finding no evidence of roosting. As he said Two lifetimes spent in newspapers, where What they never tell you on Grand Designs cheerily, “If you were a bat, would you? There deadlines are immediate and unmissable, is the maddening stuff. Trees. Archaeology. are lots of much better places here.” where regardless of anything you get the job Local authority firewalls that send emails to Months passed; buds sprouted. The bat done before you go home at night, has left us junk. Holidays. Bats. Planning consultants survey is now under discussion with the temperamentally unsuited for this. Journalism and designers who disagree, leaving you local authority ecologist and the trees and is the antithesis of working for the civil floundering. Even baby problems, like woodlands officer. If it gets to next Christmas service or in planning or corporate strategy, penetrating massive utility companies to ask I will definitely have cracked and driven occupations where life moves, er, sedately. about electricity and water connections. my Tramper at full speed down the garden, Look, everyone is really nice. But just Trees first. Now I love trees. I plant trees. revving a chainsaw with my good hand, and occasionally I want to explode with frustration I talk to trees. But I also know there is a tree committed hara-kiri against the tree. and, yes, self-pity, and scream, “Never mind hierarchy. Some carry less heft than others. Oh, and we’ve accepted an archaeological the fecking tree and bats and possible human We have, in the corner where we hope to build, watching brief. This means that when – if traces from the 3rd century – what about an ash tree, two trunks fused together. All the ever – the digger comes to break the earth, today’s urgent human needs, in the here and ash trees nearby are affected by ash dieback; archaeologists will need to be there to peer at now, with unsuitable housing and a finite this one has several dead branches. what’s in the hole, because our area has some amount of time left to enjoy life? Surely But it’s a tree, and under planning law all Pictish stone carving. that weighs in the balance somewhere?” trees, be they mighty 300-year-old oaks or As with trees, I love archaeology. I’ve read And then, with a sinking heart, I remember half-dead scabby ashes, merit a full-scale Alan Garner’s Red Shift ten times. I’ve sat in that it’s taken two years to get this far and we exercise in conservation. Ideally, we’d move awe by cup and ring carvings in nearby fields, haven’t got within a sniff of construction yet, the building many metres away to protect its pondering the ancients. I’m also aware, from so Dave and I just keep smiling. n D ACLEO rooOtsu, br uptl atnhnerine gis onf’tf iecenro, usgyhm rpoaothme ttioc dtoo othuirs . ttrhyei ngga rtdoe cnu wltaivsa ate 2 i0t tihn- ctheen tpuarsyt ,f athrmis cmoridndeer no f @Mel_ReidTimes M O housing plight but bound by the rules and – wire, oil cans, broken buckets, scraps of Melanie Reid is tetraplegic after breaking her D UR regulations, has been helping us explore a broken machinery – and contains no outcrops neck and back in a riding accident in April 2010 M The Times Magazine 9 ARE YOU PREPARING A LEADERSHIP BID? ‘I DON’T RULE IT OUT’ 2019 Since his failed attempt to become Tory leader in , a more reflective Jeremy Hunt has emerged – a far cry from the hate he provoked when he was health secretary. Now he’s written a book about how to fix the NHS. But is the makeover enough to reposition him as a contender if Boris’s mistakes prove terminal? Interview: Andrew Billen