Mental health: The festive survival guide

NIKKI- Hi everyone, it’s Nikki and Emma here. 

EMMA- We are passionate about stories on disability, mental health and wellbeing, and we really want more people to hear them through this pod, Access All.

NIKKI- So if you can, please can you follow and subscribe to Access All on BBC Sounds, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, it really helps others find this pod, and we really appreciate it.

MUSIC- Music

NIKKI- The enemy of the disabled, the cold.

EMMA- Pretty much haven’t left my house this week, Nikki. It’s slippy and it was snowy, and we know that we call snow blind man’s fog because it kind of coats everything and you can’t hear properly, all your [sound] shadows are kind of muffled with snow. But then the ice and the slippiness, can’t see patches of ice, get on them too quickly. Obviously everyone has to go out, and blind people figure out a way round it, but I’ve opted to stay at home. But it’s cold that bothers you, isn’t it?

NIKKI- Snow and ice, really not my friend when I used to walk, Em. But now I use the scooter majoritively it’s not quite so problematic. But, you know, getting in and out of the car, if I put my feet down anywhere or do any form of standing, yeah ice is just a nightmare. But for me as well it’s the cold. Obviously when I used to walk, you can keep yourself warm because you’re using so much energy. But when you sit down you’re not really moving a great deal, even though I try and swing my arms furiously.

EMMA- Yeah, I was going to say, all the ways of keeping warm are kind of like very sort of muscly.

NIKKI- [Sings] “They are physical, physical”.

EMMA- Yeah, very physical. Because you’re between a rock and a hard place, aren’t you, because you can’t swing your arms around, you’re sitting down. But also you can’t wear that many clothes, like you can’t bundle yourself up in a big coat.

NIKKI- Unless you put like loads of hot water bottles, are the only kind of thing.

EMMA- What is your tip would you say for surviving?

NIKKI- Tip? You’re asking me for a tip, Ems?

EMMA- A tip, yeah.

NIKKI- Oh blimey.

EMMA- Advice. Expert.

NIKKI- Well, I’m at the age now where I’m quite looking forward to an excuse not to leave the house. Stay at home, I’m all for it. I don’t get FOMO anymore, fear of missing out, I get JOMO, the joy of missing out.

MUSIC- Theme Music

NIKKI- This is Access All. I’m Nikki Fox, and I’m in London.

EMMA- And I’m Emma Tracey, and I’m back in a very, very “brrr” chilly Edinburgh.

NIKKI- This is your weekly podcast about disability and mental health from the BBC.

MUSIC- Music

NIKKI- [Sings] “It’s Christmas”.

EMMA- [Sings] “It’s Chrismaaaaaaas”.

NIKKI- I’m trying to do it in a Noddy Holder kind of way, because I was listening to someone on the radio say that apparently he does that every year to his family.

EMMA- He just says it in his house?

NIKKI- Yeah, yeah, yeah. He goes round his whole household and does, [Sings] “It’s Christmaaas” in a Noddy Holder way.

EMMA- I love that.

NIKKI- I know.

EMMA- I love that he doesn’t hate that with a passion.

NIKKI- No. It’s brilliant, isn’t it?

EMMA- I do. It’s great. It’s brilliant.

NIKKI- My first one in the bungalow, this one.

EMMA- Your first Christmas in the bungalow.

NIKKI- I mean I’m not going to be there on Christmas Day, obviously I’ll still be with my fam who I love and adore.

EMMA- Yeah. But you will be there during the festive period.

NIKKI- Yeah. In-between Christmas and New Year, Dave and I will spend a couple of days there, along with him being with my family and vice-versa. So yeah, that’s how it’s going to work. So we’ve got our very first Christmas tree.

EMMA- Awwh. Have you put a lot of decorations up?

NIKKI- No, we haven’t actually. Really boring. But with work when we see each other we kind of just want to smooch.

EMMA- Oh my goodness, that’s so romantic. Have you got a bit of mistletoe then?

NIKKI- It’s quite romantic and disgusting at the same time. We don’t need mistletoe, Emma.

EMMA- But it would be cute, wouldn’t it?

NIKKI- Yeah, I suppose so. Yeah, I guess.

EMMA- I don’t even know what mistletoe feels like. What is mistletoe?

NIKKI- I think it’s quite sharp. I wouldn’t go near it, Ems.

EMMA- Is that not holly?

NIKKI- Oh, maybe.

EMMA- [Laughs]

NIKKI- I don’t have a clue, Emma Tracey, I don’t have a clue.

EMMA- My mother put up my decorations because I had to get her over for some emergency childcare a few weeks ago, and I was so overwhelmed with all the Christmassy things that I just didn’t have the headspace or the time to do it, so she did it for me.

NIKKI- Do you have to feel it all then, like all the decorations, “Oh yeah, that feels all right”, “That’s like some paper rings my kids knocked up at school”?

EMMA- Do you know what, I just put up everything in the box as quickly as I can in a random order. And then I forget it’s there until like I bump into a wreath or find a bit of tinsel on the banister or something like that. I like the idea of them being up. We have a couple of wreaths that have like dried fruit, and when the house is warm it smells like Christmas. It’s not very accessible for you, putting decorations up, is it?

NIKKI- Well this is the thing. I say “we”. Dave put them up. I just sat back and was like, “A bit more to the left”, “More to the right”, you know, yeah. So that’s the thing, you know when you’re not actually actively doing something it doesn’t feel quite the same, does it? I have to spend my life telling enough people to do something for me, I don’t really want to add to it as well at Christmas time.

EMMA- You have hit the crux of the thing there. You spend so much time asking people to do things, “Can you do this?”, “Will you do that?”, “Would you mind?”, “I know it’s a bit out of your way”. I get over it after a while, and I do just not do some of the Christmassy things because I can’t bear to ask for another favour. Is that really sad?

NIKKI- No. I hear you, babe. I am with you, sister.

EMMA- Because I get so much help, I actually buy a lot of ‘thank you for helping me’ gifts. I have an enormous pile.

NIKKI- Oh god, I don’t do that. If I had to send ‘thank you for helping me’ gifts, I’d be bankrupt.

EMMA- Well yeah, I think it’s cost me like over 100 quid all together.

NIKKI- What?

EMMA- Deserve it. They all do good stuff for us.

NIKKI- You’re so cute. I know I sound awful now I’ve just said that, but the people that I work are lovely. We do go on lots of nice things and get prezzies and stuff, and me and my sister take them out for an evening and stuff.

EMMA- You see, there you go, you do do it.

NIKKI- Yeah, I know, I know, I know. I love that. I’m always the slowest at opening my presents. Apparently even when I was younger I used to open them painfully slowly. My sister would rip through all of hers. I used to have a little notebook and I used to write down exactly who they were from and what they were.

EMMA- Awwh, that’s so cute.

NIKKI- I used to enjoy doing that.

EMMA- I thought you opened them slowly because of your impairment.

NIKKI- Here she goes again! I mean for one second I’d forgotten I was disabled then, Emma, for one second, and you had to remind me, didn’t you?

EMMA- [Laughs] This is a disability podcast, I’m just saying.

NIKKI- It’s not all about disability though, is it, Ems. Or is it?

EMMA- No, we’re not our impairments. We’re more than that.

NIKKI- Thank you. Thank you! Remember this? 

FRANK- Once again I’m stuck on a plane at Heathrow and it does seem that disabled passengers are a lower or the lowest priority. By the time I got off the plane all the other passengers were gone, already off and out of the terminal. The trouble is that this is now the fourth time that this has happened to me. One time was extreme in 2018 when I was left stranded on a plane for an hour and 40 minutes.

NIKKI- Wow! That was Franky G, aka the BBC’s Frank Gardner, and he was talking to us on Access All back in May. And that was about the fact that as a wheelchair user he had been left on a plane again. Air travel and assistance, it’s a topic that we keep hearing more and more about. We’ve covered it here on the podcast, haven’t we Emma.

EMMA- We have, numerous times. But it just keeps coming back.

NIKKI- It has been a difficult time, and I think everyone recognises it’s been a difficult time. And this week, the CAA, which is the Civil Aviation Authority, released its report into the UK’s 16 biggest airports which handle over 150,000 passengers a year. In April it had warned them that the experience for disabled passengers was unacceptable. This report charts whether or not the airports did improve from the last time that we were speaking about this, and whether or not they hit the gold standard of providing assistance once a plane has landed to 98% of passengers within 20 minutes, whether they’ve prearranged or not.

EMMA- And how did the airports do, Nikki?

NIKKI- London Luton was rated poor. That was the worst of all, having consistently missed arrival standards and shown very little progress. In many cases this resulted in missed connecting flights, which is awful. In a statement, an airport spokesperson told us, “We’re sorry that we have fallen short on this occasion. We have been working with our service provider, Wilson James, to improve assistance times, the one area in which we missed the CAA target”.

EMMA- And what about some of the other airports like London Heathrow?

NIKKI- London Heathrow, which is the second busiest airport in the world, was on the ‘needs improvement’ list. This is like the naught and nice list, isn’t it?

EMMA- Yeah!

NIKKI- With the average time for assistance being 45 minutes. The CAA said, “The very long delays were disappointing”. Although it did say, “The number of passengers requesting assistance at Heathrow had increased by up to 30% since 2019”, which I think is something that a lot of the airports are saying, are feeding back.

EMMA- What about the airports at the top of the list?

NIKKI- Oh this is exciting, yeah. On the nice list, those rated as ‘very good’, include Aberdeen, Belfast International, Edinburgh, Glasgow.

EMMA- Woo.

NIKKI- I know. There you go. And London City. It also included East Midlands, which the CAA was impressed with because it set up a messaging service so those needing assistance could stay in touch with the team while going off and using the airport facilities independently. Which I think is a phenomenal idea.

EMMA- I mean shock horror that you’d want to go and get something to eat.

NIKKI- Or buy a bit of perfume.

EMMA- Yeah. I don’t know if I told this story before. I probably did. But once when I was flying from Edinburgh, I’d had a long day, I was going to have a long evening, I just wanted a bit of quiet time to have something to eat by myself. But they would not leave me. They wouldn’t leave me. Someone had to stay with me, but they were only allowed to stay with me for 20 minutes while I went and got something. So I had to go quickly buy a burger, scoff it in front of her, so that she could bring me back to a seat to wait for the next person, even though there was about an hour until my flight was boarding.

NIKKI- Well this report is kind of like an annual check-up, Emma, so we will be keeping on top of this on Access All and we’ll be following this during 2023.

MUSIC- Access All

NIKKI- With all this festive chat, we’re very aware, aren’t we Em, that this festive period can be an incredibly tough time for so many of you. I always go on about the pressure, the pressure, pressure, pressure, that a lot of people must feel at this time, whether it’s financial, the pressure to go out and have fun all the time, or to be with family, and if you haven’t got those things in your life how difficult that might be. This year seems to come with added pressures because it’s the first, I hate the word normal, but you know it’s the sort of Christmas as we know it since the pandemic, and of course we’ve got the cost of living crisis which is having a huge impact on so many. But Ems, you’ve got some stats around this time of year, haven’t you? Tell me about them.

EMMA- I do. A survey from YouGov a couple of years’ ago said that a quarter of people said that Christmas makes their mental health worse. While the Mental Health Foundation found that 54% of people worry about the mental health of somebody they know at Christmas. And brace yourself for this one, Nikki. According to YouGov, 51% of women have found Christmas to be stressful, compared to 35% of men. And worryingly, due to the cost of living crisis, mental health charity Mind’s Infoline has seen a 40% rise in calls relating to money compared to 2021. 

NIKKI- To help us all get through the next few weeks let’s say as peacefully as possible, we thought we’d come up with a little mental elf toolkit. Do you like it? It’s not my cockney accent, we’re just saying elf instead of health.

EMMA- So elf health.

NIKKI- Thank you for clarifying, Emma. And we’re going to do that with the help of mental health writer, broadcaster and charity worker, Seaneen Molloy. She’s here.

EMMA- Hi, Seaneen.

SEANEEN- Hello. I am here, and I’m about the size of an elf, so-

NIKKI- Oh me too, Seaneen.

SEANEEN- It’s a busy time of year for me.

EMMA- But nobody, nobody puts Seaneen on a shelf.

NIKKI- Ha-ha-ha. Seaneen, I know that you’ve lived with mental health difficulties for a long time. Do you mind me asking what your particular mental health difficulties are?

SEANEEN- I have bipolar disorder and anxiety. So, lots of fun.

NIKKI- You’re going to give us some practical advice on how to look after ourselves over the festive period, which I think is great. But first of all, can I talk about your own personal experience of Christmas. What is the hardest part of Christmas for you?

SEANEEN- It’s like you said, it’s just like the sheer pressure to have a good time. Especially the whole making memories thing, like the insta elf on the shelf stuff. There’s so many things that seem to have popped up in the past couple of years, I’m like, ‘Oh great, something else I should be doing which I’m not’. So, you know, I suck as a person and as a parent.

NIKKI- No you do not.

SEANEEN- It makes you feel that way.

EMMA- There’s no elf on my shelf, Seaneen.

NIKKI- I didn’t know what elf on a shelf was until last year when I saw two elf legs coming out of a bush near where I lived. I was like, ‘What’s that?’. It’s not quite on a shelf, but what is it?

SEANEEN- You’re being watched, Nikki, is it?

NIKKI- Yeah, yeah. But in all seriousness, it is exactly like you said, Seaneen, you should be doing all of this stuff, making the cupcakes, having the best time, making memories, doing the photos, having the shots with your friends, being with your family, dressing up your kids. It’s all very perfect.

SEANEEN- It’s dark. Everyone’s skint. It’s like the month when you really just want to bury yourself in your duvet, and everything is saying you must get up and do things, and be excited at all times, and be happy. It’s really tough. I think it’s a really tough time of year.

NIKKI- Yeah. Have you had a particularly hard festive season that you can remember?

SEANEEN- Yeah. When I was younger especially. I had a fairly severe eating disorder and Christmas was just the worst time of the year, because it revolves around food, and there was chocolate everywhere, there was always something to scoff. There was loads of social eating, and you’d see family you hadn’t seen in ages. Every year it would always be the same thing, I would either get, “God, haven’t you gained loads of weight”, or, “Ooh, you’ve lost weight, you’re looking well”, and I don’t want to hear any of that.

NIKKI- No. I used to get, Seaneen, because I had terrible adult acne, so I always used to get at Christmastime, “Ooh, it’s not getting anything better, is it?”.

SEANEEN- People just need to not comment on people’s bodies generally. And it’s difficult if you struggle with alcohol as well. My dad was an alcoholic, a fairly bad one, and so it was always really difficult at Christmas because he always tried to stay sober. It was very, very tense, we were all just waiting for him to kind of crack and start drinking again. I think because there’s so much drink around at Christmas, and everyone wants to crack open the Baileys at 11. If you’re around people who have problems with drinking, or you have problems with drinking yourself, it’s really hard. Christmas was pretty tough growing up because of the eating disorder and my dad. It’s tough in different ways now, because my dad died from his alcohol-

NIKKI- Oh, I’m sorry.

SEANEEN- Thank you. But that makes Christmas hard because you’ve lost at Christmas. And having children makes it nicer, but also all the pressure, all the money, all the weight of expectation and the worry of disappointment. That’s hard in a different way.

NIKKI- Those tough times that you talk about, what got you through them, Seaneen?

SEANEEN- I’m lucky, I have four siblings, so basically we all kind of leaned on each other. That can be a bit of a double-edged sword at Christmas, I think, you’re often brought back together with your family, and if you have really difficult relationships it just amplifies everything about them. And if you’re alone, then you feel even more alone. So getting through it, my siblings, we all kind of leaned on each other.

EMMA- Seaneen, what advice do you have for people who are struggling with their mental health during the holiday season?

SEANEEN- First of all, to acknowledge that this is a very difficult time, not just because it’s Christmas but because everything shuts down. So if you have regular appointments, they’re going to be paused. All those usual places you might go will be closed. The first thing, I just want to emphasise this so very strongly to anyone listening and who takes medication for any reason, but especially for your mental health, please once this has finished and you’ve taken a minute to just listen to our words and absorb them and just think, ‘Wow, aren’t those ladies brilliant’. Once you’ve done that, ring your GP and sort out your repeat prescription. It’s really important. Do not leave yourself stranded in that period between Christmas and New Year where you don’t have your medication. It is super-super important to please do this before anything else.

NIKKI- That’s great advice, Seaneen. I hadn’t even thought about that.

SEANEEN- People don’t. I forgot too one year and it was a disaster. The other advice I would give is protect your rest at all costs. If you need to rest, if you need to have timeout, take it, you need it. Tell people around you what you need, if you are around people. 

There’s a lot of places to get support online. There are some really good online communities. Mind have a peer support community called Side by Side, which is really good. It’s very safe, very moderated, if you’re struggling with grief and bereavement, which is basically a lot of us, especially at this time of year. Sue Ryder has an online bereavement community which won’t make you feel weird or terrible for feeling weird and terrible for not being happy at Christmas. To be honest, if you’re feeling rubbish then someone else is feeling rubbish too and you’re not alone with it. And if you don’t really like online support, you can call the Samaritans and you can also text Shout. 

NIKKI- Seaneen, have you seen the hashtag that Sarah Millican does as well on Twitter? It’s #joinin.

SEANEEN- Oh yeah, join in. 

NIKKI- It’s really good, isn’t it?

SEANEEN- Yeah, it’s lovely. She runs that every Christmas now, doesn’t she?

NIKKI- Yeah.

SEANEEN- So it’s like a big kind of festive get-together of people on Twitter, yeah join in and then just chat to each other. There’s always community out there, there’s always people out there who are feeling the same way you are. 

A lot of people living with mental health issues struggle with alcohol. I just say, be careful of the drink over Christmas. We do have to approach drinking differently to people who aren’t living with mental health problems, it’s a real flashpoint if you have issues with alcohol. So skip to the end of the bottle, just think about the fight that comes afterwards or how crap you’re going to feel the next morning. 

And a crisis is an emergency and it’s still an emergency at Christmas, so if you can’t keep yourself safe you do need to go to A&E or call someone. Crisis teams are open at Christmas so ring them, pick up the phone if you can. Or if you can’t, if anyone else can do it on your behalf, get them to do it. You’re not disturbing anyone, you’re not wrecking anyone’s Christmas by struggling. 

I haven’t had a manic episode in a while, and that’s one of the reasons why I have to be so boundaried at Christmas, because it is a time which would exacerbate that kind of pattern of my illness. So for me having manic episodes basically is just being swept along by stuff, having that next drink, going to that next place, doing that next thing. And just the increase in activity sort of hets me up and then I start to get unwell. To protect myself from that I have to be really boring. And it’s actually really useful as a coping mechanism, and especially over Christmas, to just be like, ‘Actually I need to go to bed’. It does protect me. It protects them as well. Because you talk about how special Christmas is, but it’s every year, it’s not that special! It’s every year and it basically starts in November now. It’s the seven weeks of Christmas, not the 12 days of Christmas. [Laughter]

NIKKI- Seaneen, we’ve obviously been talking about the hardest parts of Christmas, but is there a best bit for you too, something you look forward to?

SEANEEN- Yes, actually. Apart from the joy on my children’s faces and all that kind of stuff, I love medieval Christmas cookery programmes. They’re on BBC.

NIKKI- I did not expect that.

SEANEEN- I love it so much. I like having time off. It is the time I do try to spend it with my family and I try not to work.

NIKKI- Oh Seaneen, you are brilliant to talk to.

EMMA- It’s a good reminder for me that I don’t have to do all the things. And just to say that in the show notes for this podcast, so in the bit of text that you find on the BBC Sounds app or on the BBC web pages, we will put a link to the BBC Action Line, which has lot and lots of details for organisations which support people who are struggling with their mental health. 

NIKKI- Brilliant. Thank you so much, Seaneen.

SEANEEN- Happy Christmas.

MUSIC- Access All

NIKKI- Have you ever heard of the silent twins? June and Jennifer Gibbons were sisters who grew up in Wales but only communicated with each other. As teenagers in the 1980s, they were sent to Broadmoor Hospital after a spree of theft and arson. They’re the subject of a new film, The Silent Twins, which stars Letitia Wright from Marvel’s Black Panther series.

MALE- We will move the girls into special education. We will get them to talk yet.

MALE- Guilty or not guilty?

FEMALE- You need to take care.

FEMALE- Please say something.

MALE- How do you plead?

MALE- They shall be institutionalised indefinitely.

MUSIC- Gospel music in the background

FEMALE- If you were telling your story, how would it begin?

EMMA- Hollywood has now come calling. But the first person to tell their story was Marjorie Wallace CBE in the 1986 best selling book, The Silent Twins. Marjorie herself is living a remarkable life. She worked with David Frost on tele in the 60s. Was a big part of the quest for justice for thalidomide survivors in the 1970s. And wrote about mental health in The Times in the 80s, and that’s how she got to know Jennifer and June. Her mental health work led her to found mental health charity SANE, which is still going strong, and Marjorie remains CEO. And she is here with us.

NIKKI- Let’s start off with this incredible story. For the people that don’t know, can you tell us who June and Jennifer were and why did they end up in Broadmoor?

MARJORIE- I was an investigative journalist for The Sunday Times, and I was known for being able to do human stories about thalidomide and about many sort of injustices to people who were disabled and dispossessed. One day one of my colleagues, I was always envious of the war reporters, and this colleague was a war reporter said, “Oh, I’ve got a friend in Wales, an educational psychologist, and he says there are these two black girls, identical twins, who have never spoken to any adults, including their parents and teachers or any other person at school”. 

So with slightly heavy heart, because he went off to a warzone and I went off to Haverford West in the rain, I went down, and I didn’t know what I would find. No-one could get them to communicate. They left school having had almost no education that anyone knew about. They then put themselves in their bunk room and they actually educated themselves. They went to the post office, by mail order they got books of Brontës, Austen, all the famous literature. They got themselves on creative writing courses. They bought typewriters. They were educating themselves. 

Then they went off the rails a bit, they felt lonely, they were totally isolated, and they saw these American boys and the girls became obsessed by these boys. The boys sadly had a pretty bad history, introduced them to glue sniffing, vodka and arson. Then the girls went one day and the boys had left. They’d left. They’d not told them they were leaving, they’d gone back to America, and they were absolutely desolate. And they blamed each other. Because they fought a lot together, they both loved and hated each other.

NIKKI- Complex.

MARJORIE- Intensely. They went on a five week spree of vandalism. Frankly, pretty minor, like stole a rubber, half a Polo mint pack from schools. But they did commit three acts of arson. They did check, and I checked only last weekend with the surviving twin, they checked the buildings were empty, but nevertheless it was arson. It was a cry for help, they were desperate. 

They were then taken to the prison, they went on remand there. The only place in our country that would take the two girls together, because when separated they simply withered away, was Broadmoor, which took women then. Broadmoor, a special hospital used for people like the Krays, the Sutcliffes. And that’s where they were for 11 years.

NIKKI- And they were two black women. Young women. They grew up in Wales in a majoritively white town. That’s right, isn’t it? Was it the bullying that they encountered that kind of led to what happened to them and them going sort of non-verbal except for with each other?

MARJORIE- When I talked to the twins, absolutely not. It seems they’d taken this pact of silence and that they were drawing each other into it. Mainly I think it was Jennifer, she was holding her sister June in this pact of silence. And from then they discovered it was quite a power base against the world. It got to the point that if one of them ever tried to speak, the other would gag them. I’ll just tell you, when I first met them I went down with the father to the prison, and the two girls came in, they looked like coffins and they’re sort of literally lying on the shoulders of the warders. They sit down. They do have a cup of tea, but they move in perfect synchrony. They’ve obviously practiced mirror image perfect synchrony. Eyes downcast. They don’t speak at all. 

Suddenly – and this is the crux of the story – I’d been given by their father all these bin liners filled with writings that they’d been trying to do, and even a book they had Vanity publish using their doll money. I had been piecing them together. So I said to June, I said to both of them but June was the one who looked up, I said, “I’ve read your stuff. I’ve read your writings”, and suddenly she flickered into a smile and she said, “Di-di-di-did you like them?”, and I said, “Yes, I think you’re very creative”. 

And then the next visit she smuggled over to me a wonderful diary, and I’ll show you this, a dense tapestry of words perfectly formed but like four scenes to one line on a prison notebook. Jennifer also gave me her diary, smuggled them over. It was quite extraordinary, I was completely stunned. In their writing there was these everyday minutia they described, with a lot of with and perception, but a lot about each other. It was a sort of battlefield, a psychological battlefield, and they were using words as their artillery. But they always misinterpreted each other, although they thought they were absolutely identical. The extraordinary love that they had for each other, and in fact for their family and for other people, that they couldn’t express. 

They couldn’t free each other to speak, but they chose me – and I read this in their diaries – as someone who began to understand them. So together we started to talk about writing a book.

NIKKI- The story took a bit of a dark turn really, didn’t it? Can you explain what happened?

MARJORIE- Well, before their 11 years in Broadmoor, they managed to keep their love/hate relationship under control. But then came the point where they were actually going to be discharged from Broadmoor into another secure unit that had newly been built in Wales. They didn’t know which day that was going to happen. I went down to visit them and had my little daughter with me. Broadmoor would never allow this now. They’re chatting away, and suddenly Jennifer, who was the second born 10 minutes later, turns to me and says, “Marjorie, Marjorie, I’m going to die”, and I said, “But Jennifer you’re 29, you can’t die”. And I saw June’s eyes nodding, yes Jennifer was going to die. 

That was the pact that they’d made, that Jennifer had to die to truly liberate her twin, June, when they left Broadmoor. Just as they left Broadmoor and the gates closed, in the little mini van Jennifer laid her head on June’s shoulder and said, “We’re free at last. Don’t forget the television set I gave you”, and then by six o’clock she was in a coma. By eight o’clock I had a call from the psychiatrist that was looking after them saying, “Jennifer is dead”. I wasn’t surprised. I knew.

NIKKI- You knew?

MARJORIE- I knew the strength of their pact, and the strength of their willpower. But the cause of death, nobody has ever known. June then left the clinic after a year. She had a little bit of halfway therapy, and she doesn’t think the therapy did anything for her. I did in myself. She now lives independently. She’s 58. I see her quite often.

NIKKI- Do you?

MARJORIE- Yes. Yes, I went down only last Saturday.

NIKKI- Would they have been treated differently if this had happened now?

MARJORIE- I don’t think that they would have been put under this top security.

NIKKI- Might they have been sectioned?

MARJORIE- They would have been sectioned. But they were no more troubled and lost than many, many teenagers I’ve known. They just needed help.

NIKKI- Did their story inspire you to set up SANE?

MARJORIE- Well it wasn’t actually just June and Jennifer, because care in the community was failing desperately. They were shutting down all these hospitals, saving a lot of money actually I have to say that way, but not providing these nice units in the community and the community treatment teams visiting every day. There were so many people came to me and there were so many tragedies, suicides should never have happened. I was going to funerals every month or so. I can’t tell you the distress that I found all over the country in families. 

I was given by News International – I can’t believe it, Rupert Murdoch and everyone – six months to prove my case that this was a scandal of the then century, the 20th Century. I came back and I had written these articles. I was given no help, I had to do it alone. I went to back wards of hospitals. I slept on floors. I slept with the homeless. I came back with a series of articles, The Forgotten Illness, and they were printed in The Times. From that, I was allowed to set up half my time as an investigative journalist, half my time setting up a new organisation which I called SANE, s-a-n-e. 

But of course I was running alongside with June and Jennifer. But I did ask June and Jennifer, I said, “Are you mentally ill?”, and they said, “No, no, no, we’re not mentally ill”. I said, “Well, are you entirely normal?”, whereon they both burst in laughter and they said, “You might call us eccentric”.

NIKKI- Eccentric. I love that. [Laughter]

EMMA- Have you seen the new film, Marjorie?

MARJORIE- Oh yes. I went to Cannes for the opening.

EMMA- Ooh, fancy.

MARJORIE- And had a standing ovation, which was really nice.

NIKKI- Oh, as you should.

MARJORIE- Usually the writer gets completely forgotten.

NIKKI- Have you any ambition that’s left unfulfilled?

MARJORIE- I still want to be the war reporter, but they’re not so keen on me going now.

NIKKI- Well more fool them!

MARJORIE- I still feel that I’ve got a lot of battles to fight for myself and my troubled mind, for other people and their troubled minds. I’m facing growing old and I’ll tell you, I’m not doing it gracefully.

NIKKI- Thank you so much, Marjorie. It’s worth mentioning, The Silent Twins, the movie, is in cinemas now so go and watch it.

MUSIC- Music 

NIKKI- Before we go, we have had some lovely messages from you over the past couple of weeks.

MUSIC- [Christmas music in the background]

EMMA- We had one from Chloe Francois. Hello Chloe.

NIKKI- Ooh, Chloe Francois.

EMMA- Yeah, it’s a great name, isn’t it?

NIKKI- Love that.

EMMA- Chloe started listening to us in October, and our chat about disability allies got her thinking about what an ally really is for her. She says, “For me an ally is somebody who listens and tries to empathise. An ally is someone who asks me how do you feel about this, before setting plans in stone”. Good one. “And an ally basically is someone who sees me, the whole me”. “Thank you so much for this podcast”, Chloe says, “I’m so glad I found it”.

NIKKI- Emma, I have a feeling you’re going to know the answer to this next question that we’ve got in. Eva Rich has got in touch to say – hello Eva by the way – Eva says she found us at 4.30am – I like that – on BBC 5 Live. Eva says, “Although totally blind, I am an avid fan of Strictly Come Dancing”. Great taste. Eva says, “I’m desperate to know how to get audio description on the live programme. Keep up the good work and Happy Christmas. Keep up the good work”.

EMMA- Oh, thanks for your nice words, Eva.

NIKKI- Now give her an answer.

EMMA- Yeah, okay. It’s not on the live show as it goes out, because audio description needs an extra track which can’t be put on a live programme. It’s so that not everybody can hear the audio description, because sometimes who see don’t like hearing the audio description. But there is an audio described version of each show, it comes out around the sort of Wednesday lunchtime time. It’s supposed to come out on Friday, but they always upload it early, so thank you very much iPlayer, and you go onto iPlayer and you can watch it there.

NIKKI- Love that. Remember, you can email us over the holidays with all your thoughts and stories. Our email address is [email protected] Alternatively, why not open up WhatsApp and send us a text or voice note on our number, which is 0330 1239480. We’ll be staying here throughout the festive season, and we’ve got some extra special episodes up our sleeve just for you, so do stay tuned. And thanks for listening.

EMMA- Bye.

NIKKI- Bye.

[TRAILER]

MALE- You know when you’re worried about something but then you talk to your friends who know more about the subject than you do and straightaway you start to feel better. That’s what we try and do every day on Newscast.

MALE- Now they’re saying that that would be simple to do, it would give everyone certainty. 

MALE- We talk to people who are in the news.

FEMALE- You were chasing me round with a plate of cheese.

MALE- We talk to people who know what’s going on in the news.

MALE- At least I didn’t get up and slap anybody.

MALE- We talk to people who understand what the news means.

MALE- I think that he’s decided he’s going to listen and then he might just intervene.

MALE- And we talk to the best BBC journalists asking the most important questions.

MALE- What’s wrong with chinos? 

FEMALE- Oh don’t start me, Chris.

MALE- That’s Newscast from BBC News, the podcast that knows a lot of people who know about the news.

FEMALE- I was like, “Go on Kay, put more some welly into it”.

MALE- Listen to Newscast every weekday on BBC Sounds.

MALE- I’m glad I asked that.

FEMALE- I’m very glad that you asked that. [Laughter]