Top Guest Appearances: Fi & Jane

As long-time broadcasters (initially, on the BBC, and more recently on Times Radio), Off Air with Jane and Fi podcast hosts Fi Glover & Jane Garvey are no strangers to a microphone and an in-depth interview. But how will they fare when the attention is turned on them? As it happens, very well.

The below is my whittled-down selection of podcast episodes from various shows featuring Fi & Jane as guests, including a couple of respective solo episodes I enjoyed – a sure-fire way to get to know this much-loved duo in a whole new way, as podcast guests, with their ‘host’ personas left behind. The result is that we see their more vulnerable, personal side, together with revelations about their careers and lives to date. Listen and enjoy.

The Shift
Fi Glover and Jane Garvey on Fortunately, friendship and pushing boundaries in your 50s // Nov 2021

I’ve long been a huge fan of former Red magazine editor Sam Baker’s podcast The Shift, which explores the experience of midlife (i.e. after your fifties) and features a smorgasbord of high-profile, interesting guests. Fi & Jane come on, aptly, as a pair for this one – they discuss openly how they became a collective ‘voice of a generation for p*ssed off older women’, open up about their own friendship and the success of their former podcast Fortunately. Listen on your podcast app >>

White Wine Question Time
Fi Glover & Jane Garvey – Leaving the BBC and podcast ‘Fortunately’; Oversharing; the fight for gender pay parity and their return to live radio. // Oct 2022

Hosted by Kate Thornton, Yahoo UK’s White Wine Question Time (WWQT), which (as it says on the tin) takes place over the course of three glasses of wine, has enjoyed a slew of brilliant guests over the past four years. In this episode (which you can also view a filmed version of), Fi & Jane are fresh from their announcement of moving from the BBC to Times Radio – they speak candidly about this decision, while Jane opens up about her sister’s comments that she didn’t ‘sound like herself’ while hosting Woman’s Hour together with her much-publicised fight against the gender pay gap at the BBC. Listen on your podcast app >>

How To Academy Podcast
Fi Glover and Jane Garvey – Did I Say That Out Loud? // Feb 2022

The How To Academy podcast invites influential guests to share new ideas for changing ourselves, our communities, and the world. In this episode, recorded live in London just before Christmas 2021, Fi & Jane get a bit meta when discussing the freedom associated with podcasting as a medium compared to radio, plus the power of social media to ‘tell your own story’. Listen on your podcast app >>

How To Fail
S6, Ep 8 How To Fail: Jane Garvey // Nov 2019

In this moving episode of Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail, Jane Garvey presents the host with not three examples of failure (as the format demands) but actually seven, as she ‘struggled to narrow it down’. She speaks honestly about the grief of having gone through multiple miscarriages (as Day has herself), together with sharing her secret to being a good interviewer. Listen on your podcast app >>

Women’s Prize For Fiction Podcast
S2 Ep6: Bookshelfie: Fi Glover

Fi shares her selection of favourite books with journalist Zing Tseng as part of this popular Women’s Prize for Fiction series, including I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron, plus why she’s chosen them. Memorably, Fi discusses her experience of growing up in Hong Kong – an experience which influenced her love of another book, After You’d Gone by contemporary bestselling author Maggie O’Farrell. Listen on your podcast app >>

To learn more about Fi & Jane and their show, read our interview in Issue 25 of the Pod Bible Magazine now!

What’s your favourite Fi & Jane guest appearance? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter!