Sabrina Cohen-Hatton

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. This is an extended version of the original Radio 4 broadcast and, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:46

My castaway this week is Dr Sabrina Cohen Hatton, Chief Fire Officer for West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service and one of the most senior firefighters in the country.

Presenter0:56

Dr. Cohen doesn't fit the stereotypical image of a firefighter, just 5% of them are female. She's even more unusual in the role she occupies. Apparently, there are more chief fire officers called Chris than there are women in the job. But what really sets her apart is her story. She was a homeless teenager when, tired of being invisible, she set her heart on a career in the fire service. After applying to 31 different stations, she was accepted into the South Wales Fire and Rescue Service at the age of 18. It was while working there that she became fascinated by the hidden processes underpinning the high-pressure decisions she and her colleagues faced every day. When she discovered how little research had been done into the experiences of firefighters, she decided to pursue a PhD in psychology while continuing to work in the service. Her research was pioneering. As a qualified firefighter, she was able to observe her subjects in the field during real incidents. Her findings have gone on to help shape national policy, and last year she won the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council's Social Impact Award for using what she discovered to help keep fire service professionals safe. This year, she clocked up her 18th year in the service. She says, My best advice to anybody facing adversity is be brave. Being brave doesn't mean not being afraid of something. Being brave means doing something even though you're afraid. Dr Sabrina Cohen Hatton, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you.

Presenter2:24

So almost 20 years in the fire service. What is it that you love about your job? Everything. Probably for me, the privilege of being trusted by people to know what to do when they're quite literally having the worst day that they've ever experienced. Whether they're hurt or injured or in pain, afraid they might not make it through, they might have just seen a loved one lost. It's us that they trust to come in and help to make it better or at the very least stop it getting any worse. You've often joked about not fitting the stereotypical image that people tend to have in their minds of a firefighter. What do you think they're expecting? If you look at the national psyche of what a firefighter is, I think nine times out of ten, if you ask people to imagine a firefighter, they're imagining some tall, dark, handsome, hunky calendar model. And the reality, I'm afraid, and I say this with love, I really do, the reality is I've seen more firefighters that look like headballs than Tom Hardy. So I'm really sorry to disappoint. It's not true. But in all honesty, it does have an impact because selfishly, as a senior fire brigade leader, I want the best of the best to join the fire service. Because you know what? Being a firefighter is tough. And we need the best of the best. But right now, we're only really appealing to kind of proportion of the demographic that appeals to that stereotype. And that gender gap is not as severe in every country in the world, apparently. Apparently, Ecuador, for example, you know, more female firefighters per head of population than in the UK. Yes, I did a bit of work in South America a couple of years ago and I went to a Congress over there and it was really fascinating to talk to people from other fire and rescue services and the proportion of women that they have in some of the South American fire and rescue services is actually significantly higher. I think in Quito in particular, something like 28%, which is phenomenal when you compare it to our kind of 5%. Time for your first disc today.

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton4:13

Yeah.

Presenter4:17

Tell us about it. So, my first track is Girl on Fire by Alicia Keys. And this song is quite special to me because I've got a little girl, Gabriella, who's nine now. Going on 19 though, I have to say. And she really loves this track. She will blare it out on her iPad, bellowing it out at the top of her lungs, and it fills me with a really warm sense of pride because the song for me is about.

Presenter4:43

Not stopping at what you think your limits are. It's about pushing past it. And some of the lyrics are really beautiful, you know, about having her head in the clouds and her feet on the ground. So it it's having a dream and pursuing it, but not being afraid to take the practical steps to do it.

Speaker 35:00

She's just a girl and she's on fire

Speaker 35:06

Hotter than a fantasy

Speaker 35:08

Lonely like a highway She's living in a world and it's on fire

Speaker 25:16

Yeah.

Speaker 35:16

Yeah.

Speaker 25:16

Yeah.

Speaker 35:16

Filled with catastrophe, but she knows she can fly away. She got four feet on the ground, and she's burning it down.

Presenter5:34

Girl on Fire by Alicia Keys. Sabrina Cohen Hatton, it was working as a firefighter that first sparked your interest in psychology. How did it happen? I had a really harrowing incident actually that completely changed the direction of everything for me. My husband and I were both firefighters on neighbouring stations and one day I was called to an incident where a firefighter had been severely burned and there was a one in four chance that it was him. And I can remember the bells going down and going into the appliance bay and a couple of the guys were already at the teleprinter and you know when you can just tell by the look on someone's face that something's wrong. Anyway they told me what it was as I was kind of pulling on my my jacket and pulling my arm through the sleeves and I can remember thinking, oh my god, I might actually be one of those people that we see every single day who wake up to their cornflakes and a normal morning only for their whole world to be ripped apart and it was horrendous and I got in the truck and we drove there and for the entire journey it was all I could think about and the funny thing is I was torn between the role of a loved one and the role of a responder because I also had to function when I got the other side. Anyway we we got there and I jumped off the truck and I could see this pair of legs with these boots sticking out with a huddle of firefighters around them and I couldn't tell who it was. I couldn't see anyone's face at that point and I can remember grabbing the oxygen cylinder to run over and I bit down on my lips so hard to stop myself crying that I've still got a scar inside there to this very day and then I saw Mike stand up and I felt this overwhelming sense of relief that it wasn't him but as soon as I had that sense of relief I was flooded with this sense of guilt because the guy that was injured he wasn't just a colleague he was our friend and I felt like not wanting it to be Mike I felt like I'd wished it on him and I found that really difficult to cope with and but to try and cope with it then I started to look at what we could do to stop it happening to anyone else and naïvely I thought well maybe I can kind of find a better burns pack and we'd be better prepared.

Presenter7:44

But when I started looking, what I found was incredible that 80% of injuries across all industries, not limited to just fire, happened from human error. That's not a problem with a piece of equipment or a faulty policy or a flawed procedure, but a human mistake. And in my world, that meant people were getting hurt. And that's when I started to look at what we could do to help reduce that. But, you know, I left home at 15, left school at 16, and further education wasn't a luxury I could afford. So I had to start again at the bottom and did a degree all the way up to a PhD to try to understand this area more. And after my PhD, that's when we started to do the research nationally and really kind of understand what was going on in people's heads when they were making these kind of decisions. Exactly, and specifically making these decisions in extremely high-pressure situations because that changes the way that the brain works, right? It changes the way that we process information and you know come up with ideas about how we're going to deal with what we're faced with. Exactly that. So the kind of environments that we operate in are extremely high pressure and they're high stress. And when your brain experiences stress, then some of its processing capacity is reduced because it's focusing on that stress. And that means that you've got less processing capacity available to process the information with the scene and to make a decision. So all of the research in these areas had either been kind of focused in a lab or they'd been in other industries and there was nothing specific to fire and I needed to get to the bottom of how we could make it safer for my colleagues and my friends, you know, so no one else had to experience that. And you could do the research in the field because you were a firefighter? Because I had that draw role, I was able to access that environment and get some really rich, valuable data. We found that 80% of the decisions that people were making were very intuitive gut decisions, if you like. They were responding to a piece in the environment. But interestingly, all of our policies and procedures would only recognise the kind of analytical processes that you use. Now, of course, these processes happen in very different parts of the brain as well. So it's impossible to say to somebody, hey, make an analytical decision here, because the reality is your brain is going to work in a particular way. So by doing this and recognising the impact of both intuitive and analytical decisions, we were really, I think, supporting firefighters in a way that if your decision is going to be scrutinised after an event, then it's being done in a way that recognises the natural decision processes that you're making. But just recognising it wasn't enough for us. We had to build on that and help support firefighters to make better decisions and protect them against some of the what I call decision traps, those traps that you can fall into in that kind of environment. Let's go with the music and tell us about your second choice today. Why have you gone for this one? I love this song. So this song is Miente by Jay Balvin and Willie Williams. And the reason I chose this song is I did a bit of work in South America and there were a couple of fire services over there that were really interested in the research. So I'd gone over and presented and did some work with them out there. And I discovered Reggaton, which is just amazing. And this song was on consistently and I kind of remember getting really into it. I never thought in a million years with everything that had happened to me that I would ever be in a position where I'm flying off somewhere else to another country because someone's interested in some of the work that I've done, especially through the research.

Speaker 211:13

It's fine.

Presenter11:32

Stamorum bienola discoteca. La fiesta no para pena comienza. Secamse, secamsa. Maché, la la la la la. Francia.

Presenter11:43

Number one

Presenter11:44

Mi Gente, Jay Balvin, and Willie Williams. Doctor Sabrina Cohen Hatton. You grew up in Cardiff, but your parents had met in London. That's wow.

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton11:50

Mm-hmm.

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton11:52

Wow.

Presenter11:53

My dad was an immigrant and I'm very proud to be the daughter of an immigrant actually. He was an amazing man and he came to this country with not a penny in his pocket, but he had a really big idea. And depending on who in the family you ask, some of them think that he had a scholarship to go to Cambridge and others laugh and say, yeah, that's just what he told his mother to kind of get the green light to come over.

Presenter12:18

Where did he come from? He came from Israel. His parents are from Morocco and he was the first in the family to be born in Israel. And he then came over here. And he was so clever. He was like a math genius and he had a photographic memory and he was just the most charismatic person. And when he first came over, he didn't even have anywhere to stay. You know, he slept on the tube a couple of times until he got settled. But he was incredibly good, not just at reading cards, but reading people. And he discovered he had a real affinity with playing poker and blackjack. You know, I certainly can't say how or why he became so good at it, but he had a very good memory and he was very good at math, so I'll let people come to their own conclusions on that one.

Presenter13:08

Okay, paint the picture. Painted the picture. And he met my mum, who was actually a croupier, and she's very sharp as well, but she was a Playboy bunny in the Playboy Casinos. And they met, and the rest is history. Oh, wow. So so she's a bunny. She's a bunny girl. And he's someone who has a a real talent for playing cards and is trying to make his way in the world.

Presenter13:31

What a combination. Okay. So your parents met at a casino and and your dad is obviously, you know, this slight Jack the Lad character, fair to say? Yeah, I think so. He'd always find a way around something. Alright, was your mum besotted with him instantly? Absolutely. And they were absolutely head over heels in love, idolised each other.

Presenter13:55

And they came to Cardiff and settled in Cardiff. They had me and my brother and they ran a business. They had a pizzeria in Cardiff. And this is after my dad had finished playing cards. Let's go with the music. It's your third disc. Tell us about this one. So, this song is Bank Robber by The Clash. And I think it's one of my favourite all-time songs. And the reason I chose this track is it really reminds me of my father. Not because he was a bank robber.

Presenter14:26

But there is a particular line in it where they say, Daddy was a bank robber, he never hurt nobody, he just wants to steal your money.

Presenter14:34

He never stole money and I've got to make that really clear. He never hurt anyone, but he would always find a way around the rules. He'd never break one, but he'd always find his way around them. And so that's why I chose this one. It reminds me of my father.

Presenter14:51

Fight for never go

Presenter14:56

He does.

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton14:56

Love to live that fake May love to steal your mind Some is with

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton15:04

Some is for not the way it is

Presenter15:07

Don't believe in lying back Switzerland, you're looking

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton15:17

Recall. Since I think I never loved a song

Presenter15:22

Uh

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton15:22

Uh

Presenter15:22

and bank rubber for your dad, Sabrina Cohenhatten. So your childhood, which had been very happy, was derailed when you were just three. Your dad found out that he had a brain tumor. Obviously, you were tiny when it happened. What do you know about his diagnosis now?

Presenter15:40

It was so hard because we were so young and they were so happy and they completely idolized each other and

Presenter15:47

My mum had often kind of reflected back and said, you know, they used to say that they were so lucky and they couldn't believe how lucky they were and then all of a sudden this this thing happened and because of the location of the brain tumour, it was in his prefrontal cortex, it affected his behaviours and it affected the risks that he took, it affected the decisions that he made and it affected his personality a bit as well. So not only did you see the kind of physical deterioration of somebody with cancer throughout the years as he got iller and iller and it spread, you also saw that kind of cognitive degeneration and the impact on his personality and I think in a way it's like it took away part of his soul.

Presenter16:26

I've never had a conversation with my dad as an adult, so I don't know, you know, the reality of who he is. I get that from other people who knew him and the stories that are passed down. And I look back at Gabby, because I was nine when he died, and she's nine now. And I kind of look at Mike and I think, by me, you're a couple of years older than my dad was when my dad died. And you kind of replace yourself into adulthood and think, you know, and I started, um, I started doing this thing actually where I set up an email account for her and every so often I'll email her just with thoughts and musings or something that's happened. And I've got her password stashed away safely. And I think, you know, when she hits a certain point in her life, maybe when she has kids herself, then I'll send it to her so she'll have access to all this. But mainly that if anything happened to me, if anything happened, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, then she'd have some conversations with me as an adult. And I think that's the one thing that I took from it, is the finality of death and the reality of our own mortality. So he was diagnosed when you were three and then he died when you were nine. Nine. It must have been absolutely devastating for the whole family.

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton17:34

Yeah.

Presenter17:38

It was really hard for a long time because

Presenter17:41

My mum, I don't think, accepted that he'd gone and she even to this day actually, she still sleeps on the sofa where he died and she's never been interested in another relationship since. But her she really suffered with her mental health and it broke down terribly and it was a very volatile, difficult environment. The business failed and went under. And we lived in abject poverty for a long time. We we grew up on benefits. You know, we were kind of on the at-risk register from the age of about nine and a half, ten, something like that. So the social worker was round all the time which would stress mum out and and it would be

Presenter18:25

difficult and then you know it would be even more volatile and she found it really difficult to take care of us but she did her best suffering on with you know with mental illness and it got worse and worse gradually worse and worse and by the time I was 15 it got to the point where we couldn't continue it had broke down so badly I think it's fair to say that when somebody goes to war with their demons everyone around them gets hit by shrapnel and that was certainly the case with our family and when I was 15 I found myself sleeping rough because it was a better alternative to the one that I was experiencing and I don't blame my mother in any way shape or form because she was ill.

Speaker 319:04

Yeah.

Presenter19:16

It's time for your next piece of music. This is your fourth disc today. Tell me about this one. Well, I love this track and it's called Samaritans by a band called The Idols. And I appreciate that there might be some listeners that aren't necessarily into this genre of music. And I would encourage you, please don't turn the volume down, listen to the lyrics, because they're very poignant. And the reason that I've chosen this track, it's about the toxicity of macho masculinity and the impact that that can have on people's mental health and how damaging it can be for people. And I really love this because in the fire service I experience that kind of culture of toxic masculinity often. I also experience a very different side of things, which is really lovely and fantastic. But we are disproportionately exposed to trauma in my job, but we're also disproportionately likely to suffer with our mental health because of it.

Presenter20:13

And mine did some research and they found that even though we are more likely to suffer with our mental health, we're less likely to ask for help. And some of that comes down to the fact that being a firefighter becomes such a core part of your identity that you see yourself as a protector and that you don't want to be seen as being weak in any way. But you know what? Sometimes you've got to say it's okay not to be okay and ask for help at that early point in time. And I think if we could just eliminate that toxic element of masculinity, not the good bits, because there's some really good bits, but if we could just get away from that idea that men aren't allowed to cry, men aren't allowed to show their emotions, that you have to man up, you know, that kind of rhetoric, that language is really unhelpful. And if we could get rid of that, then I think that our sons would have a better chance.

Speaker 221:08

Man up, sit down, chill up, pipe down, socks up, don't cry, drink up, dust line, boss off balls, easy, boss off balls.

Speaker 221:21

Turn up, sit down, chill up, pipe down, suck, suck, don't cry, drink up, don't whine the s

Presenter21:31

Idols and Samaritans. Sabrina Cohen Hatton, as you said, by your mid-teens it had become impossible for you to stay at home. You found yourself selling the big issue and homeless. At what age had that happened? It wasn't long before my 16th birthday and there were some really, really dark, difficult times. And in fact, one of my teachers saw me selling the big issue, kind of made eye contact, then put his head down and crossed the road to avoid me. And I kind of knew at that point nobody, actually nobody cared. I mean, what do you think about that now? That, you know, your peers knew, people at school knew, somebody must have said something to somebody.

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton22:11

I love it.

Presenter22:19

I don't know if people actually knew the extent of it, in all honesty. You know, in those days, this was before the Children's Act came in, when public bodies have a duty to inform each other if they think that a child is at risk. So whether it would happen in today's day and age, I sincerely hope not. But at the time, it just felt like no one was interested. And by the time I was 16, I thought, no, I'm going to have to get some help with this. And I went back to try and find my old social worker.

Presenter22:46

And I went into the office in Newport and I was asking after him and I can remember there being, you know, like a really empty office and just piles and piles of folders and stuff everywhere. And the mummy said, oh no, he's moved on, he doesn't work here anymore and you know, can't help you. And looking back in retrospect, I think that maybe she didn't kind of, I don't know, maybe she didn't believe what I was telling her, but and it was just a matter of let's get you out the office kind of thing. But, you know, I'm sure if I'd have gone back and persevered, then I might have got some help. But at the time, it was just like, well, that's a rejection. So how were you living? I mean, weren't you, you know, you were sleeping rough? I was sleeping rough, yeah. So I started off sleeping rough in the doorway of an abandoned church and there were a few others that were sleeping rough there as well, which in a way gave you some comfort in the fact that it wasn't only you. And sometimes I'd sleep rough in shop doorways. Once, ironically, I went to sleep in a subway because I

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton23:20

Yeah.

Presenter23:42

This is going to sound really silly, but I was fed up of the dark and I just wanted to be somewhere light. And I went to sleep and um I had a a stray dog that

Presenter23:54

We befriended each other, I think, and he used to sleep at the bottom of my feet. And people might look at homeless people and think, Well, why do you have a dog? You can't look after yourself But actually that dog was my rock, he was my best friend and he was that was menace, yeah, he was a menace, but he was my menace and I loved him.

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton24:06

Was this menace type?

Presenter24:12

But he was my protection and on this occasion when I tried to go to sleep in the subway, I woke up with some drunk guy urinating on my sleeping bag and and, you know, laughing hysterically and his mate was laughing and Menace jumped out the sleeping bag and let's just say I don't think that guy will be urinating on anyone any time soon. Um but the point was, you know.

Presenter24:33

It felt dehumanizing on so many occasions and I can remember being so hungry all the time. And it was so bad at one point that

Presenter24:47

I started eating out of a bin by a hot dog stand and there were all these people sat around and it was a burning hot day and they were all happy and with friends and, you know, chatting to each other. And I could see people chucking away like half a hot dog and I was I'm so hungry, I could cry.

Presenter25:03

I can remember just waiting by the bin and waiting for someone to chuck one in and then just quickly darting in and grabbing it. And I can remember people looking at me with disgust, like, how can you eat out of a bin? And I can remember firing back a look, thinking, how can you let your fellow human be so hungry that you'll stand by and look on in disgust when they're eating out of a bin? And it was just such a dehumanising experience because people would walk past you like you're not there, like you're some kind of ghost, like you don't matter. And it's funny because if someone falls over in the street, everyone will rush to pick them up because you don't want to see someone suffering. But you have someone there sat on the side of the street with no food in their belly and no hope and you just walk past like they're not there. And I'm not suggesting that everybody can be a saviour and somehow completely fix what very often is very complex and difficult set of circumstances. But make eye contact, say hello. Don't just see the figure in front of you. See the human being. That's someone's son or daughter there. Very possibly someone's mother or father. You know, they're a person. You said someone sitting on the ground there with no food in their belly and no hope. Did you have hope?

Presenter26:20

Not always.

Presenter26:23

But enough, I think. I went to see if I could get on a housing list and I was told that because I was already homeless, I wasn't a priority. They prioritised people who were about to become homeless. But what I found was the big issue. Now, the big issue is a street magazine, and every vendor that you see is either experiencing homelessness, or is vulnerably housed, or is experiencing extreme poverty. And each one is a micro-entrepreneur. They're not begging, they're working. And you buy a magazine for a certain amount of money. In my day, you used to buy it for 50p and sell it on for a pound. It's a bit more now. And that meant that I could save up enough money to try to earn my way out of poverty. It's time for your next piece of music. This is your fifth. Why have you chosen it? Oh, so this is Sex Pistols Anarchy in the UK. And not only do I really love this whole genre of music anyway, there was a guy called Ian that used to sleep rough at the same time that I was.

Presenter27:25

There were a number of people, including him, who really looked out for me and I think really helped me to survive in that kind of environment. And sadly, he's no longer with us. He died whilst he was experiencing homelessness. But he was a special guy with a really good heart. And this song kind of reminds me of him. And it also reminds me of why you shouldn't have tattoos when you're 14. Because when I was 14, I decided to have an anarchy symbol tattooed on my back, which I later had removed.

Speaker 228:08

I am an antichrist.

Speaker 228:13

Man and a coaster Don't know what I want but I know how to get it I wanna destroy Possible

Speaker 228:24

Whatever

Presenter28:26

Uh

Presenter28:30

The Sex Pistols and Anarchy in the UK. Sabrina Cohen Hatton, that track then reminds you of, among other things, a friend who used to keep you safe when you were on the streets. I had read a really interesting thing that you wrote about the experience that you'd had being homeless, created this sense of hypervigilance within you, which has it ever really gone away? Is it still with you? I think it is, but I control it a little bit more now.

Presenter28:56

When I was sleeping rough, I'd very often be worried about, you know, where the next threat might come from. And for a while, I used to sleep in a derelict building and it was completely derelict. You know, holes in the roof, gaps in the floorboards, and stuff like that. But it had some shelter from the rain. And winter outside, it's hard. So it was a bit of a sanctuary. But of course, when it offers some shelter, you're not the only person that finds it. And so I'd worry sometimes about what might happen and who might come in. So I'd kind of play through these scenarios and I'd always find an exit route. I'd find multiple exit routes and I'd do things like, you know, stack paint cans that I'd found in a skip near one of the exits. I've had to pull them behind me or throw them at someone, then I could. And you'd find yourself constantly going through these what-if scenarios that could happen. And it does make you very alert and aware of your surroundings because, to be frank, you know, you need to survive. And the downside to that is sometimes it can make you quite anxious because you're constantly looking for the next threat. But some of those common traits about, you know, constantly being very vigilant about your environment have actually served me quite well in my job. So there was one incident which was quite a large fire.

Presenter30:08

In like a warehouse building, and there was a very, very small change, and it was a change in wind direction. And no one had picked it up. But the point was that change in wind direction meant that the burning embers were previously going in one direction where they were quite safe, they were blowing into the fire. It meant that they were blowing the other way and it could have sparked the neighbouring garages alight. We had to change our operational tactics around that. But it was only because I was constantly doing that kind of hyper-vigilant thing that I picked up on it. And otherwise, you know, we could have been looking at a very different outcome. You joined the fire service at 18, so by this point, you'd managed to scrape together enough from selling the big issue to get a little flat and to set about trying to join the fire service, doing a few other jobs here and there to make money. What was it about the fire service in particular that appealed to you? Because you applied to 31 different fire services. Yeah. You know, you were really determined to get in. Yeah, the idea of doing something to help other people, I suppose, in a funny kind of way.

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton30:37

Thank you.

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton30:54

Hearing that.

Presenter31:09

I wanted to rescue others in a way I felt like no one had been able to rescue me. And, you know, there could have been a number of fields where you could argue you do that. I think social workers do an amazing job every single day and do that. But I'd grown up in an environment where I was told not to trust a social worker. Definitely not the case now. The police? That was never really going to happen. Why not?

Presenter31:36

When you experience homelessness, then you can experience some other challenges as well. And the idea when you're kind of sat there and you are completely desperate and you've got a police officer that moves you on.

Presenter31:51

I think the world of the police now, I really do, but I didn't always have a brilliant experience at that point in my life.

Presenter32:00

So how much of your background did you disclose when you were applying to these 31 different fire stations? None.

Presenter32:06

Right. None at all. In fact, it's taken me, what, 21 years to talk about it. It's only been this year when I've started to talk about it, and there are some very close friends of mine that were like, wow, I had no idea. And I'm glad that I did now because there are, you know, lots of people who've got in touch with me since who've had similar experiences who hadn't before felt like they could they could raise it. So you finally were taken on, as you say, at the age of eighteen. So you're five foot one and a half teenage girl, wearing twenty-three kilos of fire gear. The only woman in your crew? Yep, I was the first woman at my station, first woman in my division.

Presenter32:44

At quite a few of the stations I worked at, actually, yeah. How did the other male firefighters react to you? In the early days of my career, it wasn't brilliant. My first six months, I wasn't even allowed my own name. They called me something really derogatory, which I certainly can't say on the BBC. You know, they made no secret of the fact that they didn't think it was a job for women. And very often, people would say to me, There's no place for women in the fire service. You know, I'm not being funny, no offence to you, Sab, you know. And you imagine someone saying that to you as an 18-year-old girl. You don't know where to put yourself, but after a while, I'd get really fed up and I'd be like, Yeah, you know what? I hear you. And I feel the same way about morons. I don't think that morons should be in the fire service. No offence to you, mate, but here we are.

Presenter33:29

Now I know that you were kind of bullied and they've people filled your boots with rubbish and all sorts of things like that. And all of that is wrong. But I'm trying to think of a kind of if we could apply logic to that mindset. You're this slight five foot one teenage girl

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton33:31

Be more f

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton33:33

The things are

Presenter33:44

We need a big strap-in fireman, don't we? To go into emergency scenarios and drag people out. What did you used to say to counter those kinds of stereotypes? And I think that's part of the problem. I think that the stereotype of a firefighter is so pervasive that if I can do what people perceive the fire service to be about, then I worry that sometimes some of those people who behaved in that inappropriate kind of way may have perhaps felt threatened by the fact that if I can do it, perhaps it's not quite so macho after all. But I have to balance it by saying that, you know, this happens to people in lots of industries. It's not just fire. And I've also worked with some amazing people, more so than I've had those negative experiences. Let's hear some more music. This is your sixth today. Tell me about choosing this one. So this song is Don't Look Back in Anger by Oasis. And the reason I chose this song is it reminds me of my darling, long-suffering husband, Mike.

Presenter34:48

I had been really clear that I wasn't going to date a firefighter because, you know, you become mess table gossip. I can remember thinking, don't fall for him, just don't fall for him, because it's going to end in tears. And then, lo and behold, I ended up falling for the guy. And the night that we got together and decided that, you know, we wanted to have a relationship, this song was playing and it was the first song that we danced to.

Speaker 235:18

Slip inside the eye of your mind Don't you know you're my father?

Presenter35:26

Uh

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton35:26

I bet a place to play

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton35:30

You said that you'd never be But all the things that you've seen

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton35:37

It slowly faded away

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton35:42

So I start a revolution from my brain

Presenter35:47

Oasis and don't look back in anger.

Presenter35:50

You mentioned earlier, and I know that you've written about this too, the repeated exposure to trauma that is part of the job for those in the fire service. There is at last a conversation happening about that, about PTSD and emergency service workers. What's your assessment of what's being done and what still needs to be done? I think that we've actually made huge strides in the past few years. Because when I think back to my experiences and the fact that I didn't feel able to talk about them, unfortunately, I found an outlet and I processed mine. But there were some people who weren't so lucky. And there was one guy that I worked with who'd had a particularly harrowing incident with a little girl who died in a fire. And he blamed himself because he was doing that sliding doors thing about what if I hadn't got the hose reel trapped and when I was a couple of seconds sooner and you know, what if I turned left instead of right? Maybe I'd have found her more quickly, but he was the one who carried her lifeless body out of the house and he was the one who zipped up the body bag and closed her off from the world forever. And his whole life fell apart. And it was only by chance when he was going for a routine medical that he kind of broke down in front of the doctor and admitted how he was feeling that he was able to get the help that he needed. But, you know, the guy was off work for about nine months. And then when he came back, and this was a long time ago, when he came back, he found it really difficult to navigate his relationships with his peers because people thought, you know, they didn't know how to deal with it. And they said that he was attention seeking or, you know, try to downplay what it was. And why would they react like that?

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton37:24

Well

Presenter37:26

I think because they didn't understand it. I think because at the time and you know, I've got to stress we are going back at least 15 years.

Presenter37:34

Then it wasn't spoken about, and there was a stigma around mental health. It wasn't an easy ride for him. Are things getting better now? Definitely. I think that there have been some sustained campaigns from charities like Mind with their Blue Light Mental Health campaign, which has really helped. And I think the fact that we've had some high-profile incidents where people have been very open about their emotions and about their feelings, and about the fact that, you know, mental health is important to us and we need to look after it. We need to look after our mind and not just our body. You weren't on duty the night of the Grenfell Tower fire, but at the time you were a deputy assistant commissioner in the London Fire Service and you were involved with the aftermath of helping staff to process that event. Where on earth do you start with something like that? Yeah, I mean it was a it was the most harrowing event that I think any of us have ever experienced and I wasn't there on the night but I ran our welfare centre debriefing the crews as they came off the next morning and then I was in charge of the scene for two days when we were dealing with the body recovery and I haven't spoken about it publicly and I've maintained that and I won't because from my perspective there's so much that happened that night and there are so many families and victims that still don't have answers that for me they're the most important people and they're waiting for an outcome from an inquiry and that's the bit that will give them the closure and I think you know to be honest even if I could speak about it I wouldn't because I feel very strongly that it's not my story to tell and I believe that from the perspective of the victims and what they experienced but I also believe that from the perspective of our staff and I was privileged to some conversations with people and what they experienced and they're not my stories to tell and I never will but I think that that scale of incident and I think it's the same for the the terror incidents that we've experienced they raise that wider question about mental health in the emergency services but you know what it's not just those big high profile incidents that are impactful for people sometimes it's the little incidents that no one else knows about but are really personal to you because they trigger something that you can relate to. It's time for your seventh disc today. Why have you chosen this, Sabrina? This song is Stereophonics Local Boy in the Photograph and I had to have something that nodded to my Welsh roots being born and raised in Wales and Stereophonics. Well, you don't get much Welsher than the phonics unless you glass Welsh cakes on.

Presenter40:17

Or Welsh rare bit. So it is a nod to my roots, but also.

Presenter40:22

The point about this song is it's talking about a group of friends who discover that their friend has been killed by a train. And the point about it is you always think it's going to happen to somebody else. This tragedy, it never happened to you. And certainly what my career has shown me

Presenter40:42

in a multitude of ways is that actually it can happen to you. And I've had that personal experience of it as well as seeing other people in that place every single day. And it's just that

Presenter40:54

Gratitude for what you have and who you have and never taking them for granted.

Speaker 241:04

There's no mistake, I smell that smell

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton41:08

It's mass hack I'm of the American, I can't taste the air.

Speaker 341:19

The clocks go back, railway to ride, something blocks around again And that's her

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton41:27

Hey, we're on to it for the first time.

Presenter41:33

The Stereophonics and Local Boy in the Photograph. Sabrina Cohen Hatton, this past year has seen you publish your life story. Was it emotional putting pen to paper and recalling your past? Yeah, it really was. And when I decided to write about it, I was primarily writing about decision making and the experiences that we've had in the fire service and how that relates to kind of everyday life, because we're all human and we're all wired in the same way. And it was as I was writing it, I was finding it really difficult to disentangle who I was and my experience and how they shaped me.

Presenter42:09

And then I knew that I had to include it because otherwise it was missing a huge piece of the jigsaw. But by doing that, it really has made me kind of confront that past and that experience and start to talk about it. And it is emotional and it is tough. It took a lot of guts to talk about that. And I don't regret any of it. You also shared your story with the big issue and became a big issue ambassador this year. I wonder what the current generation of vendors made of reading what you'd gone through and where you've been since. I hope that they can take something from my experiences because I've been in the position where you feel like you're written off, where you feel like society has put you in a place and that's it, that's your place, where you're confined by what people expect of you. And I wanted to say to them that you can break out of that. That doesn't have to be the case. So I hope that if it's done anything, it's inspired some hope for people who perhaps at one point didn't have any.

Presenter43:16

It's time for your final disc, Sabrina. What's it gonna be? My final disc is Toots and the Maytals. 5446 was my number. I love this song firstly. I just love that proper old school Jamaican ska music. But I love the power of perspective in this song. And certainly when I was experiencing homelessness.

Presenter43:40

That perspective of people that were looking at the people that were my community and judging and fearing and crossing the street to avoid, and they were

Presenter43:51

The people who were my friends and who I shared some really warm moments with and and it's often the case that people with the least share the most and that was certainly our perspective. We kept each other safe. So it is that song about perspective and challenging what you think is the perspective and walking a mile in someone's shoes before you judge them.

Presenter44:16

Said you don't miss the

Presenter44:21

Yeah, what a sense of yeah.

Presenter44:24

Yeah, no no no no, yeah. Get your hands in your eyes, sir.

Presenter44:29

Then you will get no hurt, mister. No, no, no.

Presenter44:39

I fled.

Presenter44:41

I didn't say.

Presenter44:46

That's the one.

Presenter44:48

Toots and the Maytals 5446 was my number. Okay, then, Dr. Sabrina Cohenhan, off to the island with you. You will be in complete isolation, but you will have your books and music. How do you feel about the prospect of spending some time on this place of ours? I think the thing that I'll miss the most is my little family. The idea of being separated from Gabby and Mike is a tough one, but I'm sure I'll learn lots of new skills like tree climbing and making coconut moonshine and things like that.

Presenter45:20

Oh, it's starting to sound quite loud.

Presenter45:22

So then the books. I will give you the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible to take with you and a book of your own. What will that be? Well this was really tough actually and I initially tried to cheat the system by saying can I please take a family photo album as my book. But a book that I would choose is Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea. Why? The reason for this book is I think it's such a powerful story of hope and resilience and mental toughness that it's something that really resonates with me and I love the story and I love the character and I think Ernest Hemingway was just an incredible writer and every time I read it I kind of picture him in Cuba in this little kind of island paradise almost and I find it a very evocative book and every time I read it I take something else from it on a different level. So I think I could probably repeatedly read it and never get bored.

Presenter46:17

You can also take a luxury item. What would you like? So my luxury item is going to be my family photo album. Because I thought originally, well, maybe I could bring Gabby and Mike with me. And then I thought, well, that would be a really selfish thing to do, because then they'd be stuck in isolation.

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton46:32

It's also not

Presenter46:34

All these rules. So, I will take a family photo album with a caveat that it has to be with technology now, things are wonderful. So, a self-updating family photo album so I could see them throughout time. And also, it would be a family photo album that dispenses an unlimited supply of ice-cold gin and tonic. Well, I can't give you two luxuries, but I can give you the photo album. However, self-updating makes it too close to some sort of communication device, which simply would not be allowed. Sabrina, but I can give you a beautiful photo album.

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton46:35

Pretty basic.

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton46:44

Yeah.

Presenter47:09

In glorious technicolour, and you've already got coconut moonshine, so. Well, that's true. Yeah, that's true. It just makes the moonshine escapades a little bit more exciting, a bit of drive to make the best moonshine that you've ever had. Well, there you go. And if you just had to choose one of these eight fine tracks to save from the waves, which would it be? Bank robber. Bank robber by the clash, it is.

Presenter47:32

Dr. Sabrina Cohen Hatton, thank you very much for sharing your Dazzer Island discs with us. Thank you.

Presenter47:48

As we leave Sabrina on her desert island, there's just time for me to remind you that there's a whole range of fascinating castaways in our back catalogue. Sabrina told me how she'd managed to get herself back on her feet by selling The Big Issue. The founder of that magazine, Lord John Bird, was cast away by Sue Lawley back in 1998. What were your motives when you took on the editorship of The Big Issue some seven years ago? Was it more business than social concern or vice versa?

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton48:15

It was really important in those days, back back in the early nineties, uh which seems like a lifetime ago in some ways. There were so many people having a go at homeless people. There were people the police were being asked to be social workers and sweep them off the streets and all that, and and they weren't

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton48:30

That that wouldn't have been the answer. So what we wanted to do was stress the importance of work.

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton48:36

That they, by their own efforts, would get off the streets. So, therefore, I was very, very insistent that homeless people bought the paper, which outraged homeless people, outraged the public, outraged the charities and other organizations who said, You can't turn people into sellers and just for some mechanicalistic or capitalistic things. You know, and I said, No, what we're going to do is we're going to give all the profits away. All what is left over will go into social change for homeless people. But we are going to say to people, you have to be responsible for your own social transformation. It is not enough to simply give you another bowl of soup or another blanket. What we said was that you are given ten papers to start with, and you're inducted into the paper, and then you go out and sell the paper, and if you want any more, you come back and you buy it.

Presenter49:32

But there's a cover price. I mean, these days it's a pound, isn't it? So what would they have paid you for that paper?

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton49:35

Yeah.

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton49:37

Well, uh f f at the moment they are paying forty pence for a paper which they sell for sik for a pound, so they're making sixty percent.

Presenter49:44

But you have to be beware, don't you, of falling into the trap of saying, you know, we've invented a a wonderful system that is having marvellous effects when that isn't always true. I mean, you you people will actually look at people who get sent to halfway houses, you know, and say, isn't it marvelous they're at a halfway house? But they might never arrive.

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton50:03

That's right. We say that our work is good, bad, and indifferent, like most people's work in life. We're trying to improve the good, get rid of the bad, and improve on the indifferent. But the thing is, we will never be beyond criticism because we're working with people who are themselves good, bad, and indifferent, who are themselves riddled with all sorts of social problems, all sorts of baggage. And we will always have to struggle to win the battle, to enable people to stand on their own two feet. But the point is.

Presenter50:38

But the point is, isn't it, that that you know that that's possible because it's exactly what you've done for yourself.

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton50:44

Yeah, there is a kind of element i in there. Yeah. The big issue was wonderful because people suddenly queued up to believe in me. I hadn't been believed in for a long time. I I learned to develop uh um the the pattern uh of uh knowing what I was doing. And then once I'd learned uh I I then developed the ability to know what I was doing. And it is all about having the confidence and that's the kind of confidence we have to give homeless people, even though they will

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton51:11

Louse up, even though they will make problems. We are not perfect, they're not perfect.

Presenter51:16

Founder of the big issue magazine Lord John Bird. Next time on Desert Island Discs, you'll be able to hear writer and actor Lynn Manuel Miranda.

Speaker 351:32

Doctor Rouger persuaded millions of people to join her financial revolution, and then she disappeared.

Speaker 351:41

One of Europe's richest women, someone who looks set to change the world, had vanished into thin air.

Speaker 351:48

I'm Jamie Bartlett and for the last six months I've been on the hunt to try to find the missing CryptoQueen and it gets far weirder than I thought possible.

Speaker 251:59

Kidnapping, kidnapping, killing, all those from the traditional bank. This is the trick that they do.

Speaker 352:05

It starts to get Very, very, very scary, very, very, very fast. Subscribe to The Missing Crypto Queen on BBC Sounds.