M.I.A., Sex and dementia, Sarah Moss

Available for over a year

When Sri Lankan Tamil-British rapper M.I.A. performed her hit Paper Planes at the Grammys three days before giving birth in 2009, she was hailed as the first truly global superstar. A few years later she was labelled a “terrorist” and sued for millions by the National Football League for showing her middle finger during a performance with Madonna at the 2012 Super Bowl. Her journey from pop star to political activist has been a difficult one and it is documented in the film Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. She joins Jane to talk about her career, why the music industry couldn’t bend her to fit their idea of the perfect pop star and being on “Team Normal”. UKIP has fewer women in leading roles than other parties and electoral analysts have long pointed to the party’s stronger support among men. So what’s behind the decreased visibility of UKIP women and where have the women voters who had previously backed the party gone? With the party’s annual conference beginning in Birmingham, we ask how UKIP is dealing with criticism that it's oft remarked “woman problem” is getting worse? Dementia UK have just produced an information leaflet on sex and intimacy for couples living with dementia. It aims to help people consider and address the changes in their relationship. How do you deal with changes that can include one person becoming more interested in sex than the other, issues concerning consent or difficulties for the person with dementia in recognising the ways their relationship may have changed? We hear from Sue, who had to face such challenges with her husband, Dr Sarah Simons and Zena Aldridge from Dementia UK. The writer and broadcaster Sali Hughes has been talking to women about objects in their lives that are important to them. The things we cherish aren’t always vintage, or even antique - or even expensive. Instead, we treasure the stuff that reminds us of special people, or particular times in our lives or which stand for something important. Today it’s the turn of publicist Bianca Presto. The ‘bog people’ – bodies preserved in the peat bogs of Northern Europe since the iron-age – are studied enthusiastically by the history-obsessed characters of Sarah Moss’s new novel, Ghost Wall. But for one of them, teenage Silvie, the experiences of the bog people aren’t so far from her 1990’s reality. Sarah joins Jane to discuss how history doesn’t always stay in the past.