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Woman's Hour

Michaela Coel, Lockdown in paradise, Female HGV drivers, Tribunal win

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture

4.13K Ratings

🗓️ 7 September 2021

⏱️ 58 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 2015, Michaela Coel’s Channel 4 series "Chewing Gum", adapted from a one-woman play she wrote while in drama school, about an awkward virgin became an instant hit. She's an established screenwriter, director, producer and actor and now well know for shows like "I May Destroy You," a story based on her own experience. She talks to Emma Barnett about her first book ‘Misfits: A Personal Manifesto’ which is a call for honesty, empathy, inclusion and champions those who don’t fit in.

As you’ll have heard reported in the news recently, a shortage of lorry drivers is causing serious supply chain problems, affecting amongst other things supermarkets and even some pubs! Covid-19, tax changes, levels of pay and Brexit have all combined to contribute to an estimated shortfall of around 100,000 qualified HGV drivers. Hayley O'Beirnes is retraining as a HGV driver after her cake business went under. She talks about her experience alongside Karen Stalker, the MD of Stalkers Transport based in Cumbria.

Plus we meet Zoe Stephens. She's spent the past 18 months through lockdown 'stuck' in Tonga in the South Pacific. She'd been living and working as a tour guide in Beijing, taking tourists travelling to Tonga in March 2020, just as the world shut down due to Covid-19. She tells Emma about her adventure and what it's like being back home. And we hear from Alice Thompson, an estate agent who's been awarded almost £185,000 after her employer refused to let her leave work early to collect her daughter from nursery. A tribunal judge upheld her claim, awarding money for loss of earnings, pension contributions, injury to feelings and interest.

Presenter Emma Barnett Producer Beverley Purcell PHOTO CREDIT; Natalie Seery.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless

0:06.8

searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the

0:11.8

telly we share what we've been watching

0:14.0

Fladiated.

0:16.0

Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.

0:19.0

Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.

0:21.0

And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less

0:25.0

searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

0:35.0

Hello, I'm Emma Barnet and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4.

0:40.0

Hello and welcome to today's program.

0:42.0

My first guest this morning is the screenwriter,

0:44.0

director, producer and actor Michaela Cole, the creator of the award-winning BBC TV

0:48.8

series I May Destroy You. She has her first book out in which she takes on her own industry, railing

0:55.0

against how exploitative the TV world can be, and at how at one point she was

0:59.4

too cash-strapped to buy Caniston for Thrush, but fast forward forward a few years she was in a better place but

1:04.7

still turned down a million dollars from Netflix. Imagine that. All that to come as

1:09.9

well as much more including period sex and tomatoes or other tomatoes you'll hear

1:14.7

what I mean by that very shortly but what Michaela has done is take on her

1:19.1

industry her bosses and colleagues and so has another of my guests this morning, Alice Thompson.

1:25.5

In her first interview, I'll be joined by the estate agent who took on her former boss

1:30.0

and has just one big at her tribunal, after he refused to let her leave at 5 PM to pick up her daughter

1:35.9

from nursery and her request to go from five days to four.

...

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